Richard P. Feynman

Recently, my sister cleaned off her bookshelf and sent me a box of random books. The first one I am working my way through is a collection of short works by physicist Richard P. Feynman called The Pleasures of Finding Things Out.

Not being all that bright myself, I can become obsessively fascinated by the thinking process of smart people. (My daily life is still influenced by Nicolas Taleb's works. See my Black Swan post from 2007.) There always seems to be some common themes with smart people (not to be confused with people who want you to think they are smart).

They are naturally humble. They have to be. They are so smart that they understand how much they don't know. That makes them humble.

They are funny. When you are smart, apparently absurdities present themselves everywhere. People, especially those that take themselves too seriously -- or think they do actually understand something they don't -- make for easy targets.

They have a skeptical outlook on anything or anyone pretending to be an authority. Anyone wearing a suit, uniform, or gown are all to be distrusted -- even disrespected.

And finally, they are more interested in truth than in being right. We mere mortals always have to have "the answers". We need to justify our existence. We need to have explanations for everything -- a why for every what. Smart people don't suffer from this affliction. Where Taleb eloquently explains that we are fooled by randomness and suffer from a need to have to make it all make sense -- even at the point of making up half-truths to placate ourselves, Feynman explains his total comfort with the unknown.

"You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about..."

Now I am off to get a little smarter. I think I will go pick up another Feynman book, maybe Surely You Are Joking, Mr. Feynman.