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Comment by wizzwizz4 | Hacker News Reader

In this case, Richard Feynman is just writing about his personal experiences of a well-known phenomenon. https://profkeithdevlin.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/lockh... ("Lockhart's Lament") would perhaps be a better reference, but nearly anyone who's been through the education system would be able to tell you this.

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> Richard Feynman is just writing about his personal experiences

Let's see

1. The personal experiences of a guy with no formal training in pedagogy or education

2. A research paper in nature written by expert education economists

Hmmmmmmmm

I wanted to upvote your other comment because it caught a detail of "how much" that may have slipped past the other commenter's or other reader's minds but...

0. The Kardashians

The distance between 0 and 1 is vast compared to the distance between 1 and 2. Feynman was a professor and also beloved for his ability to bridge across the academic to pragmatic divide that is the subject of this paper.

What is the relevance of this point? No one has linked a Kardashian's take on anything? So who cares if the distance between 0 and 1 is larger than the distance between 1 and 2 - we are only discussing the distance between 1 and 2.

The original comment you responded to made no comparative claims. It simply offered another person's attempt to describe. Feynman is fairly famous but nonetheless an authoritative source relative to most of the population (probably more so than both of us, though I don't know you do have little basis beyond priors [sorry if you have greater credibility than Feynman, I didn't know]). Feynman is less authoritative on the subject than the authors of the article but still... Being well known doesn't remove the authority level that Feynman does have on the topic.

I should, perhaps, have used:

0. Average person

Richard Feynman is famous for being an educator, and he's clearly quite good at it. Who cares if he has no formal training? I reckon he deserves at least a 1.2 on this scale.

> Richard Feynman is famous for being an educator

It's amazing how deep the celebrity worship goes. No he's famous for being a mathematical physicist (his Nobel is in physics not education). He was actually a very mediocre educator - you can read his own assessments of his success/failure in teaching the "famous" intro courses.

Or you can ask literally any physics major that's actually had to use those books (they are horrible for actually learning from).

Most Nobel winners are not famous. I never said he was a stellar educator: I said he is famous for it, and that he is quite good at it.

And why should I simply assume that "Education Economists"* really know the subject they purport to talk about? Because they are credentialed members of university departments with some label? Because a few of them won some Bank of Sweden award?

Just because a particular department or field of study exists in academia does not magically give them the imprimatur you think it does.

* Btw, I know for a fact that a few of them are not "education economists"

> And why should I simply assume that "Education Economists"* really know the subject they purport to talk about?

I'm glad we've arrived at Fox News level takes. At least we can all admit what we are here.

Wow, it's really a no-brainer when you phrased it that way.

Unfortunately it destroyed your argument.

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