feynman’s bananas
22May09Down in the comments of an earlier music post I dug up a seminal BBC documentary about Richard Feynman. I must have seen it when it first came out. I recommend you plug your computer into the TV, sit down and watch it with any children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces or godchildren; there may be no greater gift. A few minutes in he says this:
When you are thinking about something that you don’t understand you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called ‘confusion’. It’s a very difficult and unhappy business. So, most of the time you are rather unhappy, actually, with this confusion. You can’t penetrate this thing. Now, is the confusion… is it because we are all some kind of apes that are kind of stupid working against this? Trying to figure out to put the two sticks together to reach the banana and we can’t quite make it? …the idea ? And I get that feeling all the time: that I am an ape trying to put two sticks together. So I always feel stupid. Once in a while, though, everything — the sticks — go together on me and I reach the banana.”
When it came to deciding on a business card for the blog, there must have been some spooky action operating at a distance, for this is what we came up with.

Long-time readers will remember my own grappling with bananas only to find that, as usual, I was thwarted. Parce que…

banana photo credit -eko-
Donate and help me buy back my Fender ('About' tells you why) Tags: bounded rationality, Christopher Sykes, confusion, curiosity, physics, quantum entanglement, Richard Feynman, spooky action at a distance







