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Comment by DoofusOfDeath | Hacker News Reader

> I'm finding it very hard to criticise the methodology of this sort of study without channeling Feynman and being extremely rude and dismissive to a whole field of research.

Can you elaborate on the Feynman thing? I haven't heard anything about that before.

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Probably refers to the "Uncle Sam Doesn't Need You!" chapter in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman", in which Feynman is given a psychiatric evaluation as part of the medical exam for the draft. Anecdotally, he came away with an even lower opinion of psychiatry (rightly or wrongly) than he had when he went in.

I seem to recall Feynman having a similar attitude towards philosophy.

It's really sad and disapopinting to see that sort of close-minded attitude come from such a talented person towards entire fields he knows nearly nothing about.

A point to make is mid 20th century psychiatry and philosophy were hot garbage.

That's a matter of opinion, one which I personally disagree with, though I am not a fan of some of the philosophy and psychology of the 20th Century.

Furthermore, philosophy extends back thousands of years and spans across many societies and cultures. To dismiss all of it in a handwavy way from a position of ignorance, as Feynman did, speaks of nothing but narrow-minded bigotry.

I'm not dismissing all of philosophy. I'm dismissing mid 20th century philosophy.

Even then, mid 20th century philosophy is a pretty broad category. It contains stuff like Derrida but also contains stuff like Quine.

Sorry, I should never have brought Feynman up because it could really cause offense. I edited the bit about him out of my comment.

Do you just mean that mentioning his viewpoint was overly harsh in this discussion? I've only heard him mentioned in a positive light until now.

I mean that what I had in mind was rather inflammatory and it was my mistake to refer to it even obliquely.

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