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Comment by piramida | Hacker News Reader

The thing he tries to avoid is extra attention to his persona. With all the media buzz, I feel sorry for him, tabloid "journalists" will keep distracting him for a while now. Let the man live his life the way he wants to; leave him alone. People should respect his decision however impossible it may be to comprehend for an average money-driven individual.

Don't turn him into a lab rat for own amusement; don't visit that tabloids linked above.

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If he understood how other social human beings behave, he'd realize this only brings extra attention to his persona.

It's very similar to something Feynman said when he found he won the Nobel Prize. I can't find the quote specifically, but he essentially said "is there any way to turn it down?" But he recognized that he couldn't and it was easier to just accept it. But he bemoaned that forever afterwards he was no longer Richard Feynman, he was Richard Feynman Nobel Prize winner. That is all from his book "What do you care what other people think?"

I read that, when he gave technical talks away from Caltech, he would have to use a pseudonym, so that the room wasn't packed full of people wanting to see "Famous Nobel Prize winning Feynman" give a talk. This way only the appropriate people in the physics dept would come to see his latest results.

Both this anecdote and the parent comment can be found in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman". (N.B. The quote marks are correct: the title itself is a quote.)

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