• blakestacey@awful.systemsM
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    9 months ago

    Feynman had a story about trying to read somebody’s paper before a grand interdisciplinary symposium. As he told it, he couldn’t get through the jargon, until he stopped and tried to translate just one sentence. He landed on a line like, “The individual member of the social community often receives information through visual, symbolic channels.” And after a lot of crossing-out, he reduced that to “People read.”

    Yud, who idolizes Feynman above all others:

    I also remark that the human equivalent of a utility function, not that we actually have one, often revolves around desires whose frustration produces pain.

    Ah. People don’t like to hurt.

    • sinedpick@awful.systems
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      9 months ago

      More like “People want things and hurt if they don’t get them. Also, look at me saying things like utility function! Function is math! Math is smart. I am smart! Isn’t that so cool?”