Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Feynman's Cargo Cult Science perspective

Feyman said, "In the South Seas, there is a cargo cult of people. During the war, they saw airplanes land and many good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas-he's the controller-and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they are missing something essential, because the planes don't land. It would be difficult to explain to the South Sea Islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science." Feynman was a Nobel Peace Prize winner based on how spin of atoms may exist in any path that met 'the Feynman rules', which led to a Bell Curve rating of where all electron paths can exist. Over my lifetime it has become my humble opinion that Feynman's true genius is in the fact that he realized just how difficult it would be to explain the necessary changes to these Islanders. Considering every decision they previously made before they attempted this effort was a result of human emotion and every desire from human envy, any opposing view to enlighten any group of people after giving so much... is an opposition to their cause that will merely strengthen and harden their resolve to stay the course.

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