2024 #2 -- Richard Feynman, Morpheus, Dark Matter

June 28, 2024

A summary of what I've been reading, watching, and exploring.

Bernie Hirsch

What I am reading:

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (Richard Feynman): A collection of insights from Richard Feynman about his life and career, including some interesting childhood memories with his father. This includes his time in academia and also working at Los Alamos, in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. He shares snippets of conversations with and thoughts on many well-known theoretical physicists -- Einstein, Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi. Feynman's everyday language, honest opinions, heartwarming memories, and comments on a variety of subjects all stand out in sharp contrast to his sheer intelligence and thoughts on science, his analysis of the Space Shuttle Challenger inquiry, and ending with his thoughts on the relationship of science and religion. Here are a few quotes and short stories of Feynman:

• “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.”
• “The things that mattered were honesty, independence, willingness to admit ignorance.”
• “it is our capacity to doubt that will determine the future of civilization.”
• "all the kids were playing in the field and one kid said to me, “See that bird, what kind of a bird is that?” And I said, “I haven’t the slightest idea what kind of a bird it is.” He says, “It’s a brown throated thrush,” or something, “Your father doesn’t tell you anything.” But it was the opposite: my father had taught me. Looking at a bird he says, “Do you know what that bird is? It’s a brown throated thrush; but in Portuguese it’s a . . . in Italian a . . . ,” he says “in Chinese it’s a . . . , in Japanese a . . . ,” etcetera. “Now,” he says, “you know in all the languages you want to know what the name of that bird is and when you’ve finished with all that,” he says, “you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You only know about humans in different places and what they call the bird. Now,” he says, “let’s look at the bird.”
• “The general principle is that things that are moving try to keep on moving and things that are standing still tend to stand still unless you push on them hard.” And he says, “This tendency is called inertia but no- body knows why it’s true.”
• "I said to my cousin then, “What’re you trying to do?” You know, I hear him talking about x. He says, ”What do you know-2x + 7 is equal to 15,” he says “and you’re trying to find out what x is.” I says, “You mean 4.” He says, “Yeah, but you did it with arithmetic, you have to do it by algebra,” and that’s why my cousin was never able to do algebra, because he didn’t understand how he was supposed to do it. There was no way. I learnt algebra fortunately by not going to school and knowing the whole idea was to find out what x was and it didn’t make any difference how you did it-there’s no such thing as, you know, you do it by arithmetic, you do it by algebra-that was a false thing that they had invented in school so that the children who have to study algebra can all pass it."

I strongly recommend this book, if you'd like to find out more about Feynman -- his short stories are impactful. The stories and memories with his father are particularly heartwarming and impactful. If anything you will walk away with a much stronger passion for following the scientific method and not believing things until they are proven. It's a light-hearted read and funny at times even if some of the subject matter on the atomic bomb is heavy. Inspiring also are some of the meetings he had with Einstein, etc. There is not a lot of detail on his 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in quantum electrodynamics. You may gain an understanding in how Feynman thinks about things and why that wasn't so important for him, after reading this book.

What I am watching:

Dark Matter (Apple TV): An intriguing sci-fi series based around the premise of "what-if". Have you ever ruminated about taking a different path in life based on some decision that you made at some point in your life. This focuses on the life of a physicist as he grapples with his goals of a physics career, a family with his true love, and being a professor at a university. Dark Matter is built around the ‘many-worlds’ interpretation of quantum physics, which suggests that every time a choice is made or an event is observed, reality grows new branches — one for each possible outcome. Each door leads to a different version of reality, a different world but with the same people, just different outcomes. The good storyline combined with the multiverse theme makes it powerful and intriguing to watch.

What I am exploring:

Morpheus Heart Rate Variability (HRV): I've been using Morpheus for heart rate training for the past 6 months and so far I really like it. I use it to measure my HRV daily -- it not only informs me of my HRV trends but it also recommends the appropriate daily dynamic heart zones that I should be using for training, and it helps me also focus on my recovery. Recently the founder of Morpheus, Joel Jamison, sat down with Dr. Peter Attia on his popular Drive podcast to discuss how to measure and utilize HRV for training optimization. Strongly recommend purchasing this wearable, however I have heard that after the podcast they have a large backlog due to the higher demand. It's at a very reasonable price point for the value it delivers, and the HRV accuracy alone is much greater when compared to other wearables.