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By who standard? It seems like an unsolvable problem to know every problem that is actually been solved correctly...

I think he's being sarcastic

It doesn't strike me as likely that Feynman would have written this with sarcasm behind it. Maybe someone knows the details better. Personally, I think it looks more like the sort of goal that you aim for even it's not literally possible. "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."

dhosek was being sarcastic, not Feynman

Neither of them were. The quote is saying "practice solving problems on solved problems as much as you can" and dhosek is saying "good idea".

I read it with a different (epistemic) emphasis… I don't need to know the solution if I know how to solve it. I've never produced a chip before, but I know how the problem has been solved by others. And therefore if I break it down, I could solve it myself.

It's also possible that he meant every problem in your domain. That would be slightly more reasonable, and something I could agree with.

> I don't need to know the solution if I know how to solve it.

That's how a modern school system ought to be designed, imo. There's so much wasted time, and so much unused potential.

And if that involves rote-learning at times, fine, but can we at least make that smarter too?

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