Overhyped Physicists: Richard Feynman

[@WhimsicalShark]

Feynman would probably agree with you that he is overhyped and that is what makes Feynman great

[@TheMachian]

Well, the problem is that the very basis of his work, QED, is flawed. See Consa's work.

[@junacebedo888]

Could Feynman be humble enough to expose himself as a fraud?

[@guesswho-og2wv]

@@TheMachian so Consa, is to be believed without any scepticism but Feynman apparently conspired with experimental physicist to tweak with the experimental data, in order to proove his theory correct. Mate, let me get this straight. You are speaking a whole lot of garbage just to gain views and comments and you can't probably write Newton's Law of gravity correctly, forget about Quantum field theory or Quantum electrodynamics.

[@tensortrain1621]

@Arun Pirta Great comment! This channel is insane!

[@WhimsicalShark]

@@guesswho-og2wv I agree two papers doesnt justify it. Like the book rare earth from brownlee and ward doesnt justify the anthrophic principle as a scientific fact

[@liangjianghong]

We have no interests in evaluating Feynman's ingenuity, personality or being overhyped or not. No one can be 100% correct in his scientific pursuit. We only need to enjoy the intellectual benefits he brought to us. It's even more beneficial if we can find out why there's incorrectness in his theory and improve on it. I believe this is exactly the scientific spirit and logic analytical skills that Feynman would encourage us to possess.

[@pietropipparolo4329]

Unzicker is about as knowledgeable as a historian of physics with no understanding of mathematical physics.Listen.to.his elementary knowledge betray him.Unzicker failed mathematics in college.

[@johnwest7993]

Hype is hard to quantify, but listen to Feynman's lectures and it will become very clear that he was a genius.

[@iftikharshafia8538]

Why is so attention and praise lavished on Feynman's Lectures. What I remember of them, they were just books for physics undergraduates. In fact, they were far too verbose for my liking.

[@binra3788]

Smart people are not necessarily wise or selfless. But he enjoyed speaking and teaching and had a naturally confiding and engaging manner. The practice of telling you that you are being scammed is a particularly 'smart' way to charmingly disarm a natural inclination to challenge it. This is the way post-truth manipulations operate now. Who has eyes to see, let them see.

[@Idkwhattonamess]

The word "genius" is defined as someone with an IQ over 140. Even Feynman admitted to only scoring 125 on a school IQ test.

[@dragossorin85]

Everything is relative so he was a relative genius that didn't believe in washing his teeth as Einstein didn't believe in a medical act and this goes on with everyone

[@brucejackson4219]

Yes: criticism is relatively easy when compared & contrasted with the art.

[@dulli41]

Experimental physicist here... and i can say in my field of study nobody is trying to tweak their results or shit because everybody is looking at the publications of other groups and trying to reuse their ideas... and i am in quantum optics, where we are right at the edge to this whole quantum field stuff, where sometimes we need to put in terms from it as an correction. and they work. and if they wouldn't we would publish the shit out of it because it would be super exciting to find an inconsistency like that. And i want to emphasize here we use calculations from these "wrong" theories to build real machines in the real world that do what these "wrong" theories predict. just wanted to leave this here because i got some misinformation vibes from this video.

[@arandomguy777]

Theres is no the misinformation narrative in science. There are ideias that can be true or false depending on the result of a scientific debate

[@katalyst4stem]

i guess even Ptolemy introduced correction (epicycles) and gave the mathematical correctness to a geocentric model which stood for more than TEN centuries .... until Copernicus came along and the rest we know is History

[@sergeysmyshlyaev9716]

Do you really use theoretically calculated values to build those machines, or you just use values measured experimentally by you and other groups?

[@TheMachian]

@dulli41 I do believe that tehre are healthier fields of physics, such as quantum optics. For example, Hänsch's group is certainly extraordinary, and my impression from him is the highest integrity. Regarding the corrections, it would be good to know which experiment of QO contretely nees such a QED correction and to what amount. Some depend on the fine structure constant, and it would be worthwhile to have a look if there is a discrepancy. Thus, be specific, please.

[@wasoncethr7565]

@@katalyst4stem and that geocentric model is not wrong coz it is mathematically correct.... there's no centre we can specify accordingly.... although the usefulness is what we are looking at while using our models.... and it just seems to happen that that geocentric model isnt useful.... but again it does not make it wrong..... it is correct

[@gurmeet0108]

By your standards, calculus would have been bogus too when Newton and Leibniz invented it as it was also not rigorous took almost 100 years. Same is true for Fourier series (finally made rigorous by Lebesgue integral) and delta function and countless other examples. In all these cases, including Renormalization, these were useful first so people paid attention, few cared to make them rigorous but ultimately they did succeed. For rigorous understanding of infinities in QFTs, you need to look into Wilson's work and asymptotic series.

[@amirb715]

exactly

[@TheoEvian]

When I saw some dates on those papers he cited I thought: "wow, hasn't been this solved since the times of Freeman Dyson?" I get that physics has some problems with mathematical self consistency (one of those problems is a Millenium Prize problem after all) but as long as it gives us good predictions I don't really see a problem with that.

[@graystone2802]

He won’t respond to this because he knows it’s true

[@estring123]

agreed, non rigorous ideas come first, then everything gets reverse engineered back into set theory. nobody thinks rigorously/logically when tackling an open problem, human mind doesn't work like that.

[@timeWaster76]

EXACTLY I can appreciate Newton. Didn't he say we stand on the shoulders of giants. Every major scientific advancement is an example of a theory the wasn't completely correct ... like "Newton's gravity". And Calculus existed before it was considered Heresy in western medieval culture as non rigorous. Newton wasted most of his time on alchemy Astonomt and the occult.

[@pcb8059]

Feynman was my introduction to enthuastic physics as a kid. He was accessible, fun and nonpretentious.

[@Arete1]

@Science Revolution Seek help

[@biggSHNDO]

Unlike this guy.

[@stephenanastasi748]

Me too, but I think Unzicker is quite correct. Watch a few Feynman videos and see what happens when hard questions are asked.

[@kevinholly5517]

@Science Revolution what are you saying ?

[@lucasfc4587]

@Science Revolution Your prediction is so much non sense that “cheating” is a reason to be sued, regardless of all the great mathematicians and physicists that put on the work there

[@bhangrafan4480]

Feynman outspoken? No, he was just a New Yorker.

[@rohitjha8978]

Old York >> New York

[@GreenDistantStar]

Unless he was joking on you, Feynman was anything but superficial. For me, Feynman's greatest contribution was the way he thought, and the analytical tools he developed, and he did this across disciplines. Most of his contemporaries were in awe of his intellect, his legacy will live on past any mediocre criticism.

[@amirb715]

and also the way he taught

[@pocojoyo]

Which analytic tools ?

[@kdub1242]

@@pocojoyo Feynman diagrams, among others. He developed this graphical method to quickly analyze terms in the perturbation expansion of quantum electrodynamics that could make calculations in minutes what before took physicists weeks or more to do. This made him instantly famous in the world physics community, and is considered one of the most original contributions to the methods of theoretical physics of the 20th century (read what other physicists like Hans Bethe, Freeman Dyson, or many of the other big shots thought of it). This incredibly useful technique has since been applied to other fields where perturbative and asymptotic analysis is employed, and it's long since been a standard textbook subject. It's a very big deal, and a large part of why Feynman got the Nobel.

[@pocojoyo]

@@kdub1242 ok thanks

[@lumo9435]

this is the best description of him

[@atg131000]

It is always fascinating to read how the people like to “cut to size” individuals achieving outstanding results.

[@marksea64]

This guy is a fraud, a nutter and an absolute clown.

[@TheVincent0268]

Every great mind can be overhyped, but that says nothing about the genius of that scientist (or artist, etcetera). By dissecting Feynman's work you try to explain the hype but that is foolish because the hype originates in the minds of media, journals, colleagues and the general public. It is not brought forward by the scientist himself

[@bhangrafan4480]

Watching you criticise Feynman is like watching me criticise Roger Federer when he misses a ball. Practitioners know something that observers don't, that all success is the "art of the possible". It was the physics community and the supporting media who feted QED and decided to award a Noble prize. It was actually extremely brave of Feynman to point out the holes in the fabric, but these were highly technical issues which junior students, the mass media and the general public would not appreciate, while many gravy trains stood to be spilled if QED came off the rails. If we are to talk about philosophy then it is clear that no theory can possibly be perfect, because theories are representations of reality, 'models', simplifications that capture only certain aspects of reality we judge to be of interest. The search for a perfect theory will always fail.

[@TheMachian]

I find nothing wrong with the idea that you, e.g. as a referee, determine when Federer's ball was out. And maybe a roaring mob would complain that the hit was too beautiful to be wrong...

[@Rahul016-d6k]

Bangra Fan,it's an insult to us who are working to unify the theories.A theory can be perfect dimensionally,but not magnitudely; have you thought about it?

[@bhangrafan4480]

@@Rahul016-d6k My point is philosophical, no theory (which has past countless experimental tests) is perfect, no theory gives an exact prediction to an unlimited number of figures. Many physicists today do not have a correct understanding of the relationship between maths and physics. They have a mystical faith that physics is embodied in mathematics. I strongly oppose this, maths is simply a human language, which like English can be used to construct a description of something but in a quantitatively precise way. In a sense what makes a theory useful is what it leaves out. It captures only those features or dimensions we consider important or interesting in the context we are working. To believe that a physical theory in someway embodies reality is like confusing a cartoon of a dog with a dog. Any verbal description, or artistic representation of a dog will only capture certain aspects of the animal we think important in the context it is being discussed by us. There will always be other aspects or dimensions we choose to neglect because they do not seem important in our current context, but they exist in reality, and have consequences in other contexts. I argue it is the same with any mathematical representation of physical phenomena. Maths and physics are totally separate and different things, but a culture has arisen which blurs the distinction.

[@bhangrafan4480]

@@TheMachian This is not the point. The point is the "art of the possible", that not any shot can be made in a particular circumstance. In the context of physics the current generation of physicists must work with the legacy and the tools they have inherited and this shapes what they can achieve to some extent. Conceptual leaps into completely new theoretical frameworks are rare because they have to be motivated by something. Often the something will be anomalous observations which cannot be explained by current theories. So motivating QM there was the UV catastrophe and the photoelectric effect and so on. More often theorist have to build on the framework that currently exists. Feynman hinted at this sort of thing when, as you quote, he said OCD looks a lot like QED because that's how we know to do the maths (or something like that).

[@Rahul016-d6k]

@@bhangrafan4480 Yeah that is why we have "Hypothesis Testing". (Like I said,variable magnitude is infinite in reality or finite in partial reality.And dimensionally it's finite always).

[@tomctutor]

Genius enough to get a Nobel Prize: "For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965" [Wiki] He also was a major contributor to Quantum Computing, a great communicator and his lectures to undergrads was embodied in a three tomb publication for which generations of students follow. As well as his famous _Feynman Diagrams_ . So maybe some are just jealous of his achievements. 🤔

[@disposablehero1235]

nobel prize doesn't mean anything. you sound like a mid wit that says "i have a PH.D" therefor im smarter.

[@pranaynayak]

Anyone with a background in Feild Theory would recognize that you have left out the point that Condensed matter has helped to make sense of renormalization. Hence, QED remains valid with a better understanding of the scales at which the theory holds. The so-called effective field theories. Also, Feynman is the last name one should take when mentioning who honored their predecessor or took away the elegance of physics. Path Integral formalism was inspired by Fenman's reading of Dirac's lecture notes. Please do a better job at gathering facts

[@MacLuckyPTP]

QED does not explain anything. It's just kicking the can down the road. All fields are non materialistic, yet QED intruduces particles everywhere. It's literally Clown World!

[@pranaynayak]

@@MacLuckyPTP Sorry I cannot see how that addresses my point in any way

[@haroldmatias12]

At least someone commented these points. This is the essence of why QFT along with renormalization do a great job actually PREDICTING fundamental phenomena when compared to actually MEASURABLE physical quantities.

[@federicodematteis6500]

Ulrich i suggest you to follow a course in QFT, and after talk about renormalization. In modern theoretical physics Is part of the definition of a QFT, togheter with the action and the partition function.

[@marksea64]

Anyone with an undergraduate degree in physics can tell right away this guy is a clueless assclown.

[@dujondunn2306]

I thought this was a serious critique. I'm glad you brought up Dirac because much of his work on Quantum Mechanics was not very rigorous either. He certainly didn't give it a rigorous operator-based formulation. The Dirac delta function didn't even make sense until Schwartz's distribution theory. Schrodinger didn't even initially understand the importance of complex numbers in quantum mechanics and his initial wave equation was wrong. Quantum mechanics didn't get cleaned up until the work of Von Neumann and others in his Mathematical foundations of Quantum Mechanics. Calculus - the mathematics on which Newton's theories are built - didn't get cleaned up until the work of Cauchy and Weierstrass and others. The history of physics has taught that the formalism need not be totally mathematically consistent as long as it can be used to make consistent predictions.

[@sverkere]

I read somewhere that Newton is the inventor of calculus so no wonder it was a bit of hand waving initially then.

[@sparephone8228]

Feynman's great strength was his ability to explain physics. I like the Feynman lectures, especially the section on electromagnetism. His Quantum mechanics is great if you can understand matrix algebra. Freeman Dyson said that Feynman's great strength was his imagination. Prof Dyson worked at Cornell. He described Hans Bethe as the greatest problem solver of the 20th Century, but lacked Feynman's imagination. Murray Gellman clearly disliked Feynman near the end because of his ego.

[@imeprezime1285]

Feynman's explanation of natural lightning phenomenon is superficial and partially flawed in the Lectures. Better to skip over it than to learn incorrectly

[@samvenker3137]

@@imeprezime1285 ooooo any other tid bits about FLP? have you read the hughes lectures?

[@imeprezime1285]

@@samvenker3137 I haven't. But have you read Martin Uman''s textbooks on lightning?

[@rohitjha8978]

Many chapters in Feynman Lectures are great. Many are outright boring. Only volume 3 is something that has no equivalent elsewhere, although selected chapters from Merzbacher + Resnick Halliday + Kittel + Reif collectively can explain the same content in a better way.

[@sparephone8228]

@@rohitjha8978 I never thought Resnick or Young and Freedman went into great enough depth. They did not really use calculus for the mechanics bit. The EM bits are okay in both books, but again do not really use vector calculus to a great depth.

[@Jackissimus]

Feynman is respected because he got results. They might not be mathematically consistent or perfect. But he didn't shy away from the imperfection. It's possible there could be no perfection at all, see Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem. Feynman just produced something of value that other people could use at the time. At least temporarily, until a better theory comes forth. He took his skin to the market and let the world criticize his theories, he even started with the criticism himself. The world chose to idolize him instead of picking up the work where he left off. It's not his fault. And I don't think he was happy about it either, he hated authority worship. You come off as slightly bitter about him, yet I suspect he would be happy if you came up with a better theory.

[@Diamond_Tiara]

". The world chose to idolize him instead of picking up the work where he left off. " is the exact hype that made Einstein a star, even if they don't get a thing of what he did. yes he was brilliant on a lot of stuff but really without Poincaré, Dirac and many others he would remain in a copyright office in Bern.

[@Jackissimus]

@@Diamond_Tiara I don't even disagree. Feynman was just a guy who tried to make himself useful while also having fun. He wasn't a hero. What I was trying to say with that sentence can be recursively seen in this discussion. We are both judging some guy's character, when what we should really be doing is some useful physics.

[@nfineon]

We cannot expect those who are exceptional in their field to also have the quality of being exceptional in every other way. We are human and thus subject to all the limitations of group think, confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, etc. Thus we cannot fault newton for his theories, given there are better versions today, he was nonetheless brilliant and far ahead of his time. Same with Einstein, nobody could ever doubt his genius but it's hard to let go of the narrow focus one develops after decades entrenched into a particular field. This is a flaw in human nature that doesn't take away from their brilliance, only highlights they are indeed human. Now we've reached the late stages of particle theories and generally realize we need new ideas beyond what been established which is exciting as it means new physics are inevitable. Hopefully, a new generation of theoretical physicists can stand upon many great shoulders, especially those of Feynman's, and improve upon their approach to formulate more encompassing (and simplistic) theories of everything. I love your channel and contrarian mindset which is a welcome change to most physicists I meet, we will need more of that to let go of failed aspects of existing theories but that may require a considerable amount of time (science moves forward one death at a time as they say).

[@FIRE_STORMFOX-3692]

I would like to be a scientist too, for the better.

[@ignominius3111]

Yeah, and Billy the Kid wasn’t all that fast neither.

[@charlesspringer4709]

When I was a physics undergrad the blowup over ownership of the Feynman Lectures films had not locked them sway yet and we were able to order them through the college library and showed them once a week in a small Physics Dept. seminar room. Fantastically good stuff! They inspired a generation.

[@davidrennie8197]

I can't recall Unzicker publishing any original research work that made anyone in physics excited

[@Helmutandmoshe]

You can't recall it because it has never happened... and never will.

[@ziggityfriggity]

QED is not "bogus" in the least. I'm glad you're a skeptic, but the renormalization technique was proven to be mathematically consistent by Kenneth Wilson in the 1970's. You're right that he was arrogant but he was Richard Feynman. He figured out the path integral of QM. Enough with the ad hominem.

[@xxxYYZxxx]

Chess & Poker are "mathematically consistent", as are countless other mathematically related fields, all of which have diddly squat to do about the fundamental nature of reality or even just physics. I should have taken Mark Twain's advice about arguing with fools, and yes, that's an ad hominem because you deserve it.

[@ilyasfarhan1802]

@@xxxYYZxxx chess & pocker being mathematically consistent have nothing to do with discussion. Mathematical consistency is at least a prerequisite that a method coming from it is legit. QED is built upon renormalization technique so the consistency of it is relevant.

[@xxxYYZxxx]

@@ilyasfarhan1802 All you're saying it that QED can't be categorically excluded on grounds of mathematical inconsistency alone, but not why its even relevant to begin with. Citing mathematical consistency alone is like saying something made of steel, must be Superman (man of steel) himself.

[@johnchesh3486]

well, every whale has its louse. Feynman is the whale & unzicker is an opportunistic parasite, in medical terminology. grin.

[@janepowers6711]

He was such a charming and interesting man and most physicist are not. So naturally people were and are drawn to him.

[@Nat-oj2uc]

That's the problem. People confuse expertise with confidence

[@guitarslim56]

It's possible for a person to be both intelligent and charming. It's possible for a person to be both stupid and boring.

[@stephenkormanyos766]

So if Einstein really did plagiarize Special Relativity from Poincaré’s derivation while at the Patent Office, does he make the list as well? Pot shots evaluating the relative rank of historical scientists no longer alive to defend themselves is more a function of the mediocrity of the ranker rather than the ranked, and is a monumental waste of time when there’s real work to be done in Physics today. Steve K.

[@Rohan20103]

Thank you! Someone finally said it. And there are hundreds, if not thousands of physicists working on QM, and you're saying none of them noticed the so-called flaw with feynman's approach. Sounds like a load of bullshit to me.

[@s.l5787]

Einstein not only plagiarized Poincare but also many many others. The list is long. Most educared people before 1920 knew Einstein simply re-interpreted Lorentz while sprinkling Poincare's interpretations and many people were not aware of Poincare's ingenious ideas. Then he took Grossman equations as his own and finished it after much help from Hilbert, copying the trace term without ever showing how he obtained it. In both cases Einstein submitted papers to both special and general relativity only weeks after Poincare and Hilbert. People like Feeeman Dyson read Einstein's papers after 1920 and found them nonsensical. He was constantly rejected for foolish ideas, mocked by Heisenberg and Schrodinger. Flip flopped on gravitational waves and did not believe in black holes.

[@s.l5787]

Einstein fooled everyone by making what others found or proved and stating them as postulates. This is the basis of the myth that he solved problems through thought experiment alone. He did this for the photoelectric effect when he just took Poincare's interpretation of Planck's experiments. But his interpretation was worse because it was a conservative approach to maintain Newtonian particle view and reject the wave theory. He even flip flopped on its "provisional character" in 1911. Furthermore he probably did not work on any of the 1905 papers alone, this has been heavily implied by letters between him and his wife, as well as the "Einstein-Marity" named by Joffe when he gave the name of the author of the three Annus Mirabilis Papers

[@stephenkormanyos766]

Yes. But again my real point-this argument over “ranking” is a monumental waste of time. I did enjoy reading Poincaré’s work in French as a kid though-ordered to do so by my French mother. 😆

[@zadeh79]

@@s.l5787 Re-interpreted Lorentz while 'sprinkling Poincare'. Science builds on science. Einstein was just a brilliant empiricist deriving a new way to look at the world. Einstein did not plagiarize anyone - he utilized knowledge. There is a huge difference.

[@jozefserf2024]

Feynman was the best kind of scientist. He started from a place of curiosity.

[@kdub1242]

Coming soon in this series: Why Newton was a loser, why Maxwell was a dope, and why air is way overrated as a breathable gas.

[@TheMachian]

Given that you have taken the effort to write >20 comments in a channel you consider nonsense, it would be interesting to know your identity and motif.

[@godara2op566]

@@TheMachian can we make free energy i read a paper recently from a scientist where he published teslas free energy model(Testastika) aswell as showed how Maxwell's original equation is different from what is mentioned. He said the fundamentals of EM are all wrong and definition of energy is wrong. He said CEM uses model based on material ether although Michelson Morley experiment destroyed the material ether assumption.

[@godara2op566]

@@TheMachian "Classic EM theory is seriously flawed riddled with errors and should be redone" the present model solidly blocks free energy antigravity unified physical field theory and unified theory of mind and matter

[@kdub1242]

@@TheMachian Your cv at alexander-unzicker.com/cv.html lists your physics education as: 1993 Diploma in physics, state examination in law 2000 Highschool lecturer state examination (math/physics) but no PhD in physics. I also see no peer review physics research publications (eg. Physical Review, JETP, etc.). Have I missed something? I also replied to the email you sent me. Kindly respond and tell me what I got wrong and I'll heppily correct it.

[@isaiahj3968]

@@godara2op566 Where did you read this? Can you post a link?

[@scottsobolewski1041]

Here's my best analysis based on Unzicker's videos and Consa's paper: Unzicker is certainly qualified as a physicist, but he shares a minority opinion that is simply not supported by all we now know. Consa, in his paper, claims that all validity for QED comes from the single electron anomalous magnetic dipole moment calculation. I am sure that these calculations were flawed in the early days, partly due to the complexity of the calculation. Today, with computers, the calculation is no problem up to five orders, and it agrees way too well with our experimental data to simply throw out QED. Furthermore, there are many experiments done to a great amount of accuracy that also support QED: -Independent, precise predictions of the fine structure constant (via many methods) -Prediction of the Lamb Shift -Observed Vacuum Polarization ...to name a couple. QED never claims to be perfect, but it gets results. Until we come out with a better theory, QED is still one of the best models we have for the quantum world. I mean, this is how science works. There indeed are many problems with modern physics, but it does not mean we should throw everything out. Truth is, people are trying to make progress, but the more fundamental you get, the harder it is to make progress. Last thought: While Einstein and Dirac came up with very beautiful theories, nothing about nature stipulates that these theories be beautiful. I like Sabine Hossenfelder's take on this: that many modern physicists idolize Einstein and Dirac (rightfully so), and they are looking for mathematical beauty, but this may just be bias that leads nowhere.

[@TheMachian]

In principle, one can discover the flaws in the modern publications, too, but it is much harder. If you deal with history, you will realize that it is indeed important to scrutinize the very first `evidence' that helped to `establish' a theory, because there is no really independent testing afterwards. There are other alpha measurements such as from spectroscopy or the quantum hall effect, but they do not confirm QED. Vacuum polarization as such is not quantitative. Regarding QED being the "best we have"... well if a pilot flies across the Rocky Mountains with a map of the Andes saying "the best map I have", would you board the plane? Einstein and Dirac should not be idealized, even less for "beauty", but *simplicity* is indeed a quality criterion for theoreis backed by historic evidence.

[@philrulon]

My appreciation of Feynman, and I do appreciate him, is less for his, significant, scientific contribution, than it is, for his teaching. He was certainly one of history’s greatest explainers of Nature. He had a few insights along the way, vulnerable ones perhaps. In the interludes he brought great understanding to a huge audience.

[@junacebedo888]

In this video, Feynman has been proven to have committed a fraud. He is a dishonest human being

[@joshuascholar3220]

@@junacebedo888 yet the implication of these videos, that these quantum field theories do not work and are not accurate is entirely wrong.

[@kadourimdou43]

Hyped or appreciated for their contribution to physics? I would suggest that there are other lesser well known physicists that are massively under appreciated, not that the issue is RF is hyped. I think this is just a bad take on things.

[@joshuascholar3220]

@Pol Pot 2024 I am sure that Sabine would not agree with Unzicker. Sabine doesn't tear down ANY accepted physics, she criticizes the direction in which people are looking for new physics. It's a lot of work to verify a theory, and she disagrees with the aesthetic judgements that have gotten people looking and never finding any verification for a few decades.

[@harshkumarf4379]

a new phenomenon has occurred on youtube ,, sensationalising something by using a name who is regarded as some sort of celebrity ,, not even feynamn gets away with it

[@Jorbz150]

@@joshuascholar3220 Is there something wrong with criticizing "accepted physics"? Can you clarify what you mean by accepted?

[@geeklife101]

QED and renormalization make perfect sense and are very predictive. Its a subject that has been worked on by a huge scientific community for more than 60 years. There are millions of papers and textbooks on this. Do you seriously think it will be "debunked" by a 5 pages paper ?

[@TheMachian]

If you study the history of physics, the size of a community says literally nothing about the validity of their shared beliefs.

[@geeklife101]

@@TheMachian Indeed, but scientific consensus on experimental validation does. Please learn about QED and QFT before advertising fraudulent claims. One wonky history (and not scientific) paper is not enough.

[@afazzo]

They do ANY sense and are NOT predictive without tweaking and changing rules along the road. The ONLY reason such theoretical delirium exists is that some thousands of absolutely mediocres "theoreticians" need to justify their wage and their titles by producing trendy garbage with some arbitrary formulas their masters believed to be promising, and it turned out to be just crap. But this disgusting show will come to an end, some day, and the posterity will look at them with compassion, for sure.

[@ronarkom1611]

Great minds like Feynman change the world in extraordinary ways and the rest are left to vlog while engulfed by his shadow.

[@TheMachian]

Welcome to the QED church.

[@xxxYYZxxx]

🤣Just replace "Feynman" with "Ophrah" and "Whoopie" for a truer sense of Ron Arkom's mindset.

[@nafisfuad1277]

​@@TheMachian Who/what'd be the God?

[@chanrasjid8688]

I'm not sure if Feyman "change the world in extraordinary ways", but I'm sure he need to live by bread. Chan Rasjid Kah Chew

[@jackspencer8290]

@@TheMachian Mic drop.

[@bakters]

QED can't be "just" nonsense. It's the basis of all non-trivial chemistry, and it works stupidly well. Mathematically flawed? Tough. It'd be nice if you guys gave us mathematically perfect theory, that actually worked. It's just that we simply can't afford to let this one go and wait for the miracle to happen. And no, it's not just "epicycles". We've *seen* the molecules having shapes merely predicted by a theory I was taught in middle school. There are actual pictures of those. We've also seen the Solar System and it *does not* look like epicycles, not at all.

[@pasii46]

The infinities and renormalization were big headaches for generations of physicists. Everybody was aware of the issues. There were big debates about them. It is absolutely silly to present this to the non-expert audience, as personal incorrectness of a single person. Nowadays we are beyond this.

[@TheMachian]

I never thought renormalization was Feynman's exclusive personal fault. Rather, it is remarkable how this collective insanity has conquered physics, with no other justification than people calling themselves "experts".

[@fabienpaillusson7390]

@@TheMachian Do you also consider Wilsonian renormalization semi-group applied to statistical field theory as nonsense or is your critique towards QFT and regularisation issues?

[@joshuascholar3220]

@@fabienpaillusson7390 thank you. I was under the impression that there has already been some mathematical work on formalizing renormalization, but I'm not an expert to know what it's called or how successful it has been. This whole picking fights with the past and ignoring the overall context of how these ideas are used every day in the present feels totally invalid.

[@Finn-xw4vn]

@@joshuascholar3220 There definitely is. This person is just ignoring a whole body of work in mathematics in order to drive a personal distaste for the lack of rigour in a famous scientists work. They can't actually get it past those who understand the field, so up on KZbin it goes.

[@youtubesucks1885]

Yep Kenneth Wilson made renormalization mathematical rigerous.

[@TheMotorcycleMuse]

You should do a video on the most underrated physicists of all time. Top of that list is James Clerk Maxwell. His equations of electromagnetism and discovering that light was electromagnetic waves was simply stunning. Its glossed over in University education and popular physics books. The amazing thing is that Maxwell did all this in the 1860's. If he did this work in the 1960's he'd have won a Nobel prize for it immediately.

[@TheMachian]

I do not think max, after whom are named teh equations, should be called "underrated" (Ther was no nobel at the time :-). Keep in mind however that he referred very often to Weber. Andre Torre de Assis has done excellent historical work on the development of electrodynamics.

[@infiniteloops1879]

Well those equations given in his famous 1860 paper on electromagnetism are in total of 20. Thanks there were others so called maxwellians and wrote those equations in vector algebra. We should thank to hertz and heaviside for their insight for compactifying them.

[@francishunt562]

How about a video of John Bardeen, two time Nobel Physics laureate, yet unheard of outside Physics.

[@petepeterson5337]

Maxwell is an amazing example of a physicist with insights a century and a half ago make him a giant whose shoulders are difficult to stand on by engineers today.

[@TomJones-tx7pb]

@@infiniteloops1879 Totally agree that Maxwell is undeserving of the modern equations, but deserves great credit for finding the ideas to derive them. I wish Heaveside got more credit for his work, in particular.

[@workingTchr]

Even _caring_ about which physicists have been over-hyped or not is such a petty and academic exercise.

[@sistajoseph]

Genius comes in many varieties even in physics. In his lifetime Feynman was surrounded by many "geniuses" and outperformed most of them, while having a lot of fun. He is renown for having many female friends, picking locks, playing the bongo drums, telling stories and other pleasant past times. When one cannot see the top of a tree, it is hard to guess how tall it is. Feynman could easily be the supreme genius, beyond your capacity to estimate, you are not in a position to know.

[@justadude8716]

I hope you enjoyed reading those popular science books.

[@v8pilot]

@newforestobservatory9322 hehehe

[@lowereastsideastrologist7769]

He had a 123 IQ and won a Noble Prize. I don't see how proponents can say that IQ is kosher

[@TheMachian]

123 is not that exceptional. Almost average among physicists.

[@steveopenshaw1219]

I’m not so keen on this series, especially this episode. It’s nice to learn about what their work involved and about some of the flaws in their research, but to say that Feynman was overhyped is a bit clickbaity in my opinion. What good does it do to point out that one of the beacons of inspiration in physics was ‘not all that’. If you are going to quantify a scientist’s contribution to scientific knowledge like you are here, you should evaluate every aspect. Feynman had such a charisma and a beautifully exciting way of communicating ideas that inspired thousands of brilliant minds to reach their potential, that his scientific contribution extends far beyond just his own research of QED. In a way, you could say that his hype is a part of his genius.. I’m much more interested in your series celebrating the great physicists than this one that tears down some of the more popular ones.

[@TheMachian]

Sometimes contrast makes us see things clearer.

[@rimondas6729]

@@TheMachian Right

[@steveopenshaw1219]

@@TheMachian That’s true. But too much contrast only enhances the extremes and the finer detail is lost.

[@FrankHeuvelman]

I don't think Feynman would had give a damn about your opinion. He didn't had to. He had humor on his side and a Nobel Prize to prove it.

[@Physicslover1879]

No Feynmann is one of the best Physicist ever

[@deidara_8598]

Perhaps Feynman has done more for the field of pedagogy that for the field of quantum physics, but nonetheless I believe he has done a major contribution to humanity in his own right. What I love about Feynman is his whole attitude towards learning and people. A lot of people doubt their ability to learn new things, Feynman believed it was only a matter of effort. It should also be mentioned that Feynman is regarded as one of the originators of the idea of the quantum computer, which will have major implications on society in a few decades. Currently it's causing a panic within the cryptographic community as it effectively renders a whole class of cryptographic primitives completely broken, and we're hurrying to come up with replacements that can withstand quantum computers. Though just last week one of those replacements (SIDH) was proven completely broken on a classical computer

[@Squidlark]

Quantum computers are overhyped nonsense.

[@deidara_8598]

@@Squidlark Patently false. Quantum computers poses a real threat to modern cryptography. We have quantum algorithms that break modern cryptographic schemes on a quantum computer in polynomial time. All that remains is building a sufficiently powerful quantum computer.

[@Squidlark]

@@deidara_8598 I wasn't talking about quantum algorithms, I was talking about the computers themselves.

[@deidara_8598]

@@Squidlark Yeah well the technology is still in its infancy, of course it will take a few decades before it catches up. Same as with the classical computer. But if you study the physics and how a quantum computer works, you realize that it's only a question of time before they become powerful enough to break modern cryptography

[@chanrasjid8688]

@@deidara_8598 Quantum computers will be available commercially in "30 years time" - just like fusion energy. Chan Rasjid Kah Chew

[@davidsaintjohn4248]

I enjoyed Feynman growing up, along with kaku and the like. When I got into particle physics, it became clear ( but heretical) that everything starts to come apart at the seams with quarks. Casual fans of the topic don't quite realize how odd the situation is. How do strings relate to quarks? String theory only exists because the standard model is so obviously contrived that other proposals will be entertained. There's an obvious direction to tie up the particle zoo, and kelvin had proposed the basic concept only too early. Now either people are looking in goofy places or locked into dogmatic repetition of useless snipe hunt ideas. Such is life! Lol

[@stratovation1474]

Bethe and many other top physicists had the greatest respect for F. Bethe said he was like Fermi. You understood the results, but could never have produced them. Like the F. Diagrams. He was also a great explainer without dumbing down the subject.

[@tedlemoine5587]

The quote you use from him regarding quarks was him quoting soneone else. The Photo electric effect is nonsense?

[@elizabethhenderson3747]

Shortly before Feynman's death, he exposed NASA's blunder and liability that caused the death of seven astronauts.

[@zefallafez]

Feyman said that he was used as a pawn and didn't actually determine the cause of the Challenger explosion. The cause was well known when it happened by the engineers. Morton Thiokol executives overruled their opposition to launching in those conditions.

[@dariomartinez6358]

None of the coments here deals with the arguments given everybody says "oh but Feynman this or Feynman that" I think everybody recalls how Feynman made people fall in love with physics (incluiding me) but the claims in this video are spot on and just because someone criticizes some very important aspects of his contributions doesnt mean that person is anti feynman we should not be fanboys for any famous phycicist we should acknowledge and critique their work to advance physics knowledge.

[@edwarddejong8025]

A great video. Feynman was a really good and committed teacher. Unlike all of the other snotty professors of physics, he volunteered to teach undergrads.

[@xxxYYZxxx]

Feynman volunteered to teach undergrads because he wanted to sleep with younger, more attractive students, especially before they dropped out.

[@edwarddejong8025]

@@xxxYYZxxx That is a mean-spirited comment. Over 90% of his classes were men. The primary reason he stated for wishing to teach undergrad physics was so that he could inspire more students into the field. He was a very good teacher, and i know at least one person who loved his classes and it was the highlight of his undergrad time at CalTech, which is a very small and fun school

[@TheBarowner]

As much as I appreciate Feynman, I think you got this right. He had to have been conflicted later in life, expecting someone to make a few tweaks to qed to resolve the issues and having to watch for decades as no one fixed it but instead layered on top of it.

[@markcarey67]

I thought Ken Wilson showed why you didn't have to fix it, giving us a better appreciation of what the calculational tricks were doing and why they worked?

[@jasonc0065]

QED makes sense as EFT. Condensed matter physics also has renormalization and infinities, and it makes sense, because we know exactly what it approximates. Maybe the universe is a lattice.

[@rasto7175]

There was no bigger genius in explaining physics, and the way it works, in an understandable manner (at least to me) in 20th century, than him. And nobody is able to overhype Mr. Feynman as good and as entertaining as he himself.

[@EthelredHardrede-nz8yv]

"Overhyped Physicists: Richard Feynman" You have overhyped yourself. You are not fit to judge anyone.

[@jean-pierredevent970]

I like him because he knows exactly what good science is and he thought that in human sciences they are too easily satisfied. I admit that the human scientists themselves know any weak points. The critical reader notices often the honest: "this suggests that" , but the public overlooks that, swallows it all like sweet cake and thinks it's proven hard science.

[@Treviscoe]

I think you can dislike him, or at least dislike the cult that has built up around him where some people hang onto his every utterance about a subject as though it were the last word on that subject. I saw a program about Feynman on TV some years ago when I was at college and studying applied psychology. In that program, Feynman made a dismissive remark about social science in which he said that his years as a physicist had taught him how hard it was to know something and that social science didn't reach that same level of rigour. My tutor, when I told him of this, said; "Yes, that's why we have confidence limits (0.05%, 0.01% etc.) in psychology". He was right.

[@pjeffries301]

He predicted the magnetic moment of the electron to 8 decimal points, and was proven correct 10 years later. Your theory is a joke, not a strange circumstance for you I imagine.

[@TheMachian]

Read the papers by Consa, and you realize the value of those "predictions".

[@graystone2802]

@@TheMachian this video was an absolute waste of time. Literally just jealous that Feynman accomplished 1000x what you will, and using 2 junk papers to validate it

[@godara2op566]

@@TheMachian too many butthurt fanboys who can't accept That they had fallen to the celebrity syndrome

[@jakethemistakeRulez]

@@godara2op566 Celebrity for a well earned reason.

[@afazzo]

@@graystone2802 Sir, going into personal attacking is not a proof of being right. The tweaking in the derivation of the fucking electron g-2 ratio is a fact. They cheated either at physical AND at mathematical level, by artifacts in removing infinites. If this has been not pointed out clearly before, is just a measure of how the burocratic and servile mentality of some academicians downgraded the level of Physics.

[@1986Phoenix29]

He was extraordinarily gifted but most importantly he was very insightful with an abundance in common sense. He said it best.. I'm nothing special...I just worked hard at something I was crazy about so it came naturally.

[@wbiro]

First reaction is to come to argue... but, if he was not a genius, he had a good attitude toward exploration, analysis, and knowledge (give his dad due credit)...

[@gertjan1710]

"the most important calculation in the history of modern physics cannot be independently verified. " - Consa Come on

[@chrimony]

I think Feynman was willing to live with answers that seemed to work as a holding place until a better theory came along. I don't think his scientific integrity was an act. By the way, I predict at some point you'll be disappointed in some of Dirac's scientific reasoning.

[@TheMachian]

In fact, I am not denying his integrity. The only alternative is however that he was fooling himself, too. Regarding Dirac, it is his Large Numer Hypothsis what I appreciate the most.

[@cheetah100]

@@TheMachian But he wasn't fooling himself. He is totally open about the misgivings he has. He found a way to resolve the infinities in order to make predictions. As your own video shows when he talks about String Theory he cared about the predictive power of a theory. Einstein's theory is inconsistent with QM so we know one or the other or possibly both are incorrect, but we don't go on about this. Newton was wrong about gravity. Your argument at the end boiled down to 'he wasn't a sophisticated philosopher', which comes across as quite pretentious. As for 'overhyped', surely this is a subjective view. For me he was able to explain QM in a way no other was. He had a philosophy that was grounded - even if he would never call it such. He didn't like the accolades - although we know its not true because of how often he mentioned the award.

[@glenecollins]

@@cheetah100 I think he was proud of the accolades at least some of them but he felt he should only be interested in digging into the physics and that the knowledge from that was a much better reward.

[@ricomajestic]

@@cheetah100 I like Feynman a lot but David Bohm was a better teacher of quantum mechanics I thought and he was from that era as well.

[@kdub1242]

@@TheMachian The LNH is arguably the least scientific thing Dirac ever did as a physicist. It's just an observation of ratios, and a "feeling" that they must not be a coincidence. No theory with falsifiable predictions. Nothing scientific about that. But consider his Lorentz covariant equation for the electron, giving electron spin, and fitting (pre QED) the hydrogen spectrum. That is pretty remarkable science right there.

[@PhysicsNative]

I would assess QED higher than others might. The coefficients in the expansion for g-2 have been calculated using symbolic math up to third order in alpha, then numerically for the fourth-fifth+. The prediction depends on the experimental value for alpha. It is a remarkably accurate prediction. See “Revised and improved value of the QED tenth-order electron anomalous magnetic moment”, Aoyama, et al. on arxiv. This numerical calculation includes the”infamous” IIc diagram in Consa’s paper, which I read today, as you use it as some sort of lynchpin against QED. So what is his issue? He finds historically there were errors between authors for the set of contributions to the second order. Does he expect the latest prediction by Aoyama which agrees with experiment to better than 10^-11 to improve for what is an asymptotic series (does not converge, has zero radius of convergence, which doesn’t make it useless, in fact Stirling’s formula for N! is an asymptotic series). If Consa is so concerned about IIc why doesn’t he calculate it himself and then compare his result with what Aoyama et al. obtain?

[@TheMachian]

Thanks for being specific. If you compare carefully, Aoyama 2012 is barely consistent with his own 2007 paper (arxiv.org/pdf/0706.3496.pdf). Even earlier, an error had gone unnoticed for 7 years: arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0210322. The problem is that these flaws are more thoroughly washed out in later publications which are not really checked by anyone due to their complexity. Consa's merit is to have identified this tinkering in from the very first papers, which sheds a devastating light on the whole field - any diligent researcher should have stumbled over these inconsistencies. And no, it is not Consa's business to dive into shaky math that is not even well-defined. Rather, you should cite a reference for the "symbolic math" computation up to third order.

[@PhysicsNative]

@@TheMachian I disagree. Consa should provide a calculation of the “missing” contribution and compare it with what Aoyama find. This is scientific collaboration. Additionally if he finds QED insufficient to over 11 orders, then he should develop an alternative. I do not see the discrepancies between 2012 and 2017 work from the numerical group to be an issue. They made improvements to their code of some 6354 diagram contributions, finding a shift in -1.25 to the fifth order set, a the level of 10^-11. They explain quite clearly the source of the algorithmic error. They cite the third order calculations by another group in ref [29], also on arxiv. Some of the fifth order contributions were independently checked with those from another group [26]. Consa can sit at his computer and write baseless papers criticizing the work over decades, or he can provide independent checks or reasonable alternatives. I would say the same for you, Alexander. How about suggesting an alternative instead of shoddy criticisms? Now granted, I’ve watched a few of your other videos and I agree with Wolfgang Kundt and appreciated your interview with him. I left a detailed comment there with suggestions some weeks ago. There are merits to his approach, but also unanswered questions. This is healthy debate that should happen.

[@sergeysmyshlyaev9716]

@@PhysicsNative that's not how science work. Consa observed and described a phenomena - inconsistencies and adjustment in calculations that claim to be very precise. He doesn't need to be one of those doing the calculations to observe the phenomena. In the same way you don't need to be an electron to do physical measurements on electrons.

[@brunoborela4161]

I like Feynman in general, but damn these Feynman fanboys are annoying.

[@ResurrectingJiriki]

^^ this!

[@u.v.s.5583]

If you sum graphic arts, bongos, lockpicking and physics, Feynman is clearly the GOAT. He could outdraw Einstein, outdrum Bohr, outpick Heisenberg and outphysic virtually all of us, that makes him the greatest ever!

[@brunoborela4161]

@@u.v.s.5583 loool

[@ResurrectingJiriki]

@@u.v.s.5583 so you thought to prove Bruno's point about "these Feynman fanboys" then ey?

[@u.v.s.5583]

@@ResurrectingJiriki you bet!

[@lowereastsideastrologist7769]

Feynman wasn't overrated, he was underrated. Richard Feynman with an IQ 1/20 people can achieve (123 IQ), solving problems only 1/1,000,000 people can solve - the pseudo-equivalency between IQ the notion of productive 'intelligence' are suspect, to say the least.

[@vinay7397]

Feynman was very creative in developing his diagrams. I have used the bubble diagram for plasmons in semiconductors, it "works" but the whole theory seemed a bit shaky when I first read about them, however I think creativity is very important in making scientific breakthroughs.

[@attica7980]

This same person claimed in another video that Minkowski harmed physics by inventing spacetime. Without Minkowski, there would not have been possible for Einstein and Hilbert to develop General Relativity, and it would not have been possible for Dirac to develop the relativistic equation of the electron. So I would not take his view about Feynman seriously.

[@DuaneRich321]

I just read Consa's paper as you recommended and I disagree with you. QED is not irredeemably flawed because it relies on using finite values where infinities would otherwise appear. In a mathematically legitimate sense, the sum of the natural numbers is -1/12. Without reference to any physics-data-fitting, that value falls out from analytic continuation and the Riemann Zeta function. If that independently determined value gets used in QED to yield very precise predictions, isn't that just more evidence that the -1/12 value is legitimately useful? Also, I'm skeptical that the experimental validation of QED is just completely fraudulent outside of this issue. If it's all a sham like you say, why hasn't there been published papers which falsify QED? Clearly that would accelerate some careers.

[@kdub1242]

Yup, divergent asymptotic series are fruitfully used in physics and engineering all the time. Physics is not mathematics after all. And you're right, any _real_ physicist who could legitimately demonstrate that "QED is nonsense" would become famous.

[@Ottmar555]

You have to be careful. As with Mathologer's video, the sum of the natural numbers is not -1/12. It is from an entirely different definition of a sum. And so me must question wether this machinery is truly useful to represent nature. If anything, wrong models are also able to give useful predictions.

[@DuaneRich321]

@@Ottmar555 I agree it involves a redefinition. To that I would say, the redefinition gives precisely one value and that value happens to give QED very precise predictions. Either that is an absolutely extraordinary coincidence or there is indeed legitimacy to this new definition. Doesn't the latter seem more plausible?

[@DouglasKubler]

I've always been puzzled about claims of accuracy when the measurements are dependent on the same theory in question.

[@TheMachian]

That's Consa's merit, to have scrutinized all these claims.

[@AppliedMathematician]

Well, that is not what I expected from the thumbnail description. The video should have shown two things: 1. That Feynman actually thought he is a Genius. 2. That he was is in fact not and was/is over-hyped. Very few people think of them self as Genius in my experience. They are just too aware about the many errors they made until the found something to publish. Further, I have studied mathematics and physics, and it never appeared relevant to me, to considered the social standing or self-perceptions of researchers when evaluating theories. On the other hand I agree, there is a lot of unfinished stuff in theoretical physics, that needs to be sorted out and solved. With respect to handling the infinities the field of "nonstandard analysis" might be able to construct solutions. The lack of rigor might by far not be as fatal as Unzicker thinks.

[@TheMachian]

He surely was depicted as: www.amazon.com/Genius-Life-Science-Richard-Feynman/dp/B008YFC52O/ The question whether he was a genius, wholly subjective, is however of secondary importance; what the video should convey is that the theory Feynman is famous for is unfounded.

[@catwaterboy]

@@TheMachian If we are to accept the word genius I would attribute to him before most. However genius to me is like the word "magic". It is dismissive on a persons ability to be wrong and "retarded" which I think we should not get so hung up about as a term. Everyone is "retarded" in differentiating and alike ways. Feyman may or may not have tested high in IQ but it is clear that he benefits from a number of cognitive edges that is in line with other figures and exceeding for others. ->Intellectual Humility ->Curiosity ->Work Ethic ->Large Working Memory These characteristics are what made him successful, and I think success/usefulness should be separated for correctness/truth. The search for scientific revolution would seem to me to be required to be 'unfounded'. As otherwise it would be scientific iteration. I think if we are to take the historical perspective, we have to see that shitting on previous historical precedents foundations and formulas IS part of the history. Scientific Revolution requires this. But I think this is one of the distinguishable feature sets that makes Feynman Underrated. As he his contributions are infact different that the convinced and what I consider lesser practices. kzbin.info/www/bejne/j2bOfYCMnNtjjsk I think this is one of the big mistakes that smart well read scientists make more often that the smart less well read scientists make. It should stand to reason that each time you read something for someone who consider to be an authority that it is cognitively easy to accept their practices and ideas. It is easier to accept mathematics preconceptions that exist purely by the 'fiat' declarations of axioms. The quality to be miserable in the face of the cognitive difficulties of being on the 'outside' tribe. This is the quality found in revolutionary scientists. The kind I admire, model myself on and build myself around. For example as a modern scientist (and one who reads) you may be equipped with greater knowledge and therefore the ability to make deductions that Feynman could not. Even if we were to put you into an over lapping time period with Feynman and you could add a never before seen discoveries. If you excited as a famous history figure you would be more well known than Feynman. But the scientist is the man or rather the method and execution of that man the system. The black box. NOT the discoveries. In this sense Feynman is my favorite scientist, Not number 1 or number 2. Your ability to perform modern physics, chemistry predictions and understand more robustly tested frameworks. My ability to make predictions and understandings in Computer /engineering/*Not-a-science. is lesser to the intellectual honestly, working memory, work ethic and curiosity to that of Feynman. For his greatness in science is not his findings, but his reputation as the great explainer. To me what his true contributions is the simplification of stuff more important than the greater discoveries around him. His descriptions of what differs science an engineer and math, are more consistent and concise than anything else I have seen. To me his fame is the rejection of the misconception of what science is considered to be by the people who call themselves scientists. Computer Programing, Construction, Development and Research is not science. The declaration of what is true, what is and isn't is NOT science. This is why to me if the word "genius" is valid I'd give it to him. He and I both reject it because to think yourself as such would be to weakened by it. (Also is pretty poorly defined in any-case). You and I have a similar weakness/bias in that we recognise a pattern of "arrogance and pride" often found in the tribe we can label as "Americans". It is in this we must tap into the true quality for Feynman fame, His ability to be miserable with ourselves and not feel good about being greater than those with pride. For ironically enough it is our perception of ourselves as more humble than men people like 'Feynman' or for some people figures like "Al Gore" that give our mind a bias to selecting a label such as "genius", "magic", "unfounded"; for the sake of cognitive ease. Scientific revolution doesn't redefine science, it overthrows and rejections the perceptions and tools that were used in the last. Science is a rather simple model of rejecting the old for what is shown to work better. It's not the complicated thing people pretend or add on it. It's not the MATH that is a moving and changing language tool. When math changes science does not. It's not the facts or what is considered to be true. Science's place is simply to reject predictions from ideas/models/hypothesis given a test which is made on which it's soundness is determined to be acceptable in a given revolution. When that revolution fails to describe something that another set of principles can introduced. That's the next revolution. To conclude: Mathematics by it's own conclusions cannot be wholly descriptive of reality and therefore the best practices of scientific endeavor, due to it's incompleteness. A great disappointment for scientists but a liberation to mathematicians An argument for mathematical practice to overrule scientific endeavor is not a sound argument. The soundness is tested by reality. If the scientists is closed to the idea of reality taking the realm he has failed as a scientist, but if it is the mathematics in which he created that is bogus that does not => a scientific failure. That's actually out of scope. His critiques of string theorists is that they lead by the mathematical endeavor and tradition with disregard to the scientific one. They are building up, which is a engineering and mathematical practice. From principles to make things NEAT. Science: Science breaks things down to smaller pieces. In x => y we know y. The measurement. and we want to know what the useful x is. (it may or may not be true but it will need to be useful). Scientists do not have a tool for completeness they never have. So you can't show that x is completely useful. But you can figure out which x's are useless. Supposing certain contemporaneous acceptable language practices pan out. (This is the flaw in science, if you confine yourself only to these practices you cannot be revolutionary) We make the predictions on those language practices, to see if the different y's they make pan out. If you run out of candidates that is possible x's to test. You'd be a retard not to experiment (see science). with other practices. This is what makes revolutionary scientists, the mistake most smart people make is that it's arrogance. The real arrogance is that you believe the practices to be sacred infallible things. "Unfounded". If it worked perfectly you would have hailed Feynman as the ideal scientific revolutionary. Like so many other examples in history. This outcome orientated view to what is a procedural practice is what itself is "anti-scientific". His thoughts of possibility of renomalization being bogas is testament to the scientific process.

[@roberthubbard5696]

NDT also pretends to be knowledgeable about chemistry, which he is not.

[@bluewizzard152]

This video just made me sad. The son of a world class chess player studied physics, law, and neuroscience ended up teaching in a secondary school. I can understand his pain that he never achieved anything a middle grade student couldn't. This adult man try to belittle the greatest scientists, and thinks just because has an ironed shirt, and calm voice nobody will recognize the the lost child, who can't accept the fact that he will never reach the level of achievement his father ever did, and has to feel himself a failure. I am also sad about the commenters, who think this hollow man some kind of scientist. A quick look on his resume shows the lack of any meaningful achievement. Every second clown has a phd. The title is so inflated that it is just a this-guy-is-not-totally-analphabet id. I feel real sorry for his students. This character of unrecognized nobody is the worst teacher. As he quoted, Feynman was capable to realize his limits even after a milestone discovery. Somebody in the teachers room just can't.

[@TheMachian]

You took a lot of effort to discredit me based on my surname. Probably for good reason, you prefer to go unnamed.

[@amusedobserver6134]

So... Your argument against him is... *AMG, HE IS JUST SO SUPPER JEALOUS OF HIM!?* You are pathetic.

[@airuisheng1611]

As a retired professor, I am jealously aware of the genius of the world's best-educated bongo player. I remember a movie starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day that mirrowed his personna. His use of metaphors to simplify complex matters earned him a Nobel Prize when he created a system for illustrating nuclear decay.

[@torstenbroeer1797]

Feynman got a hint from Sally Ride that the O-rings do not work at low temperatures, so he made his well known experiment with the clamp and the ice water. So he showed that the O-rings were faulty but for me it is more important that he showed how easily they could have been tested before the start. A second point: He was the first who found the real reason for the accident of the Columbia! Parts of the insulation felt off on previous flights, but because nothing serious happened the problem was not fixed. THAT was the real reason! Please read the second paragraph of appendix F to the final report of the Rogers commission. We have also found that certification criteria used in Flight Readiness Reviews often develop a gradually decreasing strictness. The argument that the same risk was flown before without failure is often accepted as an argument for the safety of accepting it again. Because of this, obvious weaknesses are accepted again and again, sometimes without a sufficiently serious attempt to remedy them, or to delay a f light because of their continued presence. Feynman wrote this 17 years before Columbia crashed

[@TheMachian]

Thanks for sharing this detailed information.

[@losboston]

Thanks for the interesting perspective. One must certainly be careful with someone like Feynman not to confound the size and quality of the ideas with those of the personality, but ironically your argument feels akin to exactly this in that it is a bit ad-hominish. Furthermore there seems to be a flawed element in your premise, and that is that math IS physics, which it is not. Feynman was keenly aware of this, and therefore not duplicitous when simultaneously acknowledging the mathematical difficulties of QED while promoting it as the great physical model of his day.

[@DavidLoveMore]

"shut up and calculate"

[@gregorschoner9682]

This is not well balanced… too much superficial judgment,, too much ad hominem… too little interesting physics.. overall quite appalling

[@jlmassir]

It is absurd to criticise pioneer work this way. It is like saying that Newton and Euler were overhyped because they used infinitesimals instead of topological spaces.

[@guesswho-og2wv]

I haven't read a more nonsensical title or argument than this, probably ever. I mean is it even a debate ? Being genius or not, is absolutely subjective. This is not something to persuade people about. Just to cite an example, Osama-Bin-Laden might be a genius for some extremists. I mean, the man literally played around with the might of an entire nation for several years. So the matter is completely subjective. There is no scale or metric to determine the genius of someone. What a load of nonsense this is!

[@ResurrectingJiriki]

lol, Bin-Laden "played around"? The guy even said he wasn't responsible... Also, there's very little subjectivity to it too, as no one with the most basic of physics comprehension believes those towers could have gone down like that because of some "terrorists cave dwellers flying airplanes into them". Near free fall speed, through all that mass, through all that steal and concrete... build to carry its own weight and all.. yeah right. Or was Newton taking his Laws to the beach that day? Point in case being, at least use a proper comparison when you're not really addressing the arguments made but just pose your opinion.

[@josesaldivar655]

Wolfowitz and the bushes are the geniuses for making most believe 911 was done by Bin Laden. A tank of turbosine is not enough to burn steel to ashes and powder.

[@guesswho-og2wv]

😂I feel like conspiracy theorists have some social media group, where they discuss a whole bunch of nonsense. You guys came immediately for the rescue of your "conspiracy theory partner" who runs this stupid channel. Deluded clowns 😂

[@TheMachian]

In science (for other matters the comment section is not intended) the definition is pretty clear: someone who has developed an intellectually demanding theory... he has not.

[@guesswho-og2wv]

@@TheMachian oh I guess I missed a massive news in which you have been appointed, as global authority to decide what is intellectually demanding and what's not. Who is genius and who is not? Stop this nonsense. I think most sensible people won't stand a "good for nothing" youtuber and a conspiracy theorists to keep trashing globally recognized and respected scientists. Your way of criticism is totally devoid of concrete facts and utterly disrespectful. And the fact of the matter is you are talking so much trash, just to gain views and comments.

[@alvin8391]

I don't see any merit in Unzicker's personalizations of physics. They don't tell us anything we do not already know, and they serve only to deny merit that is deserved by outstanding physicists of the past. The Germany of the NAZI period, well before both Unzicker and Feynman, was infamously contemptuous of "Jewish physics". Richard Feynman was of Jewish descent. Unzicker's remarks may be a demonstration that the NAZI era has passed and that Germans are now free again arbitrarily to diminish the role of a physicist of Jewish descent. Another physicist with a frequent presence on youtube is also a frequent critic of contemporary physics, but she does not personalize her criticisms as does Unzicker.

[@jakechen8273]

Friendly advice, If you don't even understand renormalization group and and its profound implications, maybe theoretical physics is not really for you.

[@TheMachian]

Friendly response, as long as you prefer parroting things without even having reflected on the fundamentals of physics, this comment section is not for you.

[@francishunt562]

Theoretical physics is definitely for Dr Unzicker.

[@ozymandias3303]

Maybe i didnt understood correctly, but author of this video looks like he doesnt understand anything in physics and making his assumptions. Flawed things in physics doesn't stay for long. However QED proved its reliability many times and its widely used. By calling QED flawed you look like flatearther

[@TheMachian]

"looks", "looks"... try to read (Consa's papers), not only to look.

[@ozymandias3303]

@@TheMachian try to read other papers, which shows how qed is applicable. I can see how things that were derived from it used in every day life. And if you try to sound like physicist don't say "flawed" say "have boundaries".

[@user-vn9ld2ce1s]

@Ozymandias There are really some terms in the equations you have to kick out to get a finize result, but (at least in my mind) this doesn't mean the theory is a piece of crap. It just means that we've got some of it right (after all, when we remove those unwanted terms, we actually get the correct results), but something in that theory needs to be corrected so that these infinite terms don't appear in the results.

[@ThepurposeofTime]

@@TheMachian "consa's papers" "consa's papers!" I hope you don't spend your life doing this. Hopefully you do what you're supposed to be doing

[@cristianproust]

​@@TheMachian Hyped?. What a ridiculous concept is that?. By whom? ,aficionados?. What an absolutely nonsensical video, trying to create the tabloid-critique-style field,. Zero intellectual value. If you have nothing intelligent to say, don't expect anything but contempt (real, and physics are the furthest from what you are doing)

[@richardatkinson4710]

I think it is hard to overrate Feynman. His attitude to physics - especially renormalization - was “Shut up and calculate.” What is missing in this assessment of Feynman is his perpetual fascination with chequerboard analogies and models. The only obvious way to justify the truncation of calculation to avoid infinities is a model which is discrete, and the way to avoid the conceptual problem which worried Feynman - that a point electron has no space or structure to calculate its trajectory as laboriously as Feynman diagrams - is to allow the discrete space itself to be the computer. WVO Quine made an observation to that effect (particles as states of locations), and Konrad Zuse’s Rechnender Raum is a development of Feynman’s chequerboard. (JH Conway… S Wolfram…)

[@robertvaughn3554]

This video represents the essence of science. We must always be questioning.

[@Rohan20103]

So you quote a Dr. Oliver Consa, an "independent researcher", who publishes articles on vixra instead of an actual conference and you want us to simply "trust" your video? You need a reality check man.

[@Ottmar555]

Did you read the articles?

[@Stroheim333]

Oliver Consa is no "independent researcher". But you are a strange man. Consa's paper can be read on Arxiv.org arxiv.org/abs/2010.10345

[@Stroheim333]

@Robert Hunt Nonsense, dear. He do NOT deny special and general relativity, he is sceptical to SOME INTERPRETATIONS of quantum mechanics. And try to find any serious physicist who believe the standard model is 100% correct or complete -- you will not find that person. Nonsense skeptics like you are just haters and trolls, you usually destroy the scientific dialogue instead of improve it.

[@stawgorin]

I would think that in order to judge important scientists you have to play in their league. This is like Eckermann talking about Goethe. Ridiculous.

[@pong336]

I really don’t see the point of this series. He makes videos of ”overhyped” physicists and then justifies it by, like in this video, criticizing a completely reasonable quote by stating his subjective thoughts about it and then proceed by providing two papers that aren’t even peer-reviewed. Everything seems extremely counterproductive to physics and the physics community. If you look at Sean Carroll’s series called ”The Biggest Ideas in the Universe!” you see a man dedicating his time to teach science in a fun and accessible way. But when I look at this series, I just see a man making money off good souls by throwing shit at great minds ad nauseam. Not to mention, this guy has a PhD in neuroscience, but what are his degrees in physics? He calls himself a theoretical physicist, which would require a PhD in physics or a record of peer-reviewed publications in the field, and he has neither. I wouldn’t be surprised if he just had a Bachelor’s degree or even lacked one considering the fact that all his postgraduate education is in law and neuroscience.

[@TheMachian]

Sorry I cannot do the web search for you you are unable to do. If you are looking at Consa's papers while worrying about peer-review instead of thinking, I cannot help you either. Have fun with Sean Carroll, to whom I am happily incompatible (see our book on the Higgs).

[@pong336]

@@TheMachian I am yet to hear what your physics degrees are as well as why you make a series of ”overhyped” physicists instead of appreciating everyone for their contributions to the field and focus on educating. You can’t arrive at the conclusion that QED is ”nonsense” simply because two papers that aren’t even peer reviewed suggests so. You neglect all the predictions it has made and all the physicists who actually possess legitimate physics degrees that work on it. You’re a really educated man considering your degrees in law and neuroscience, yet cling to these wild opinions regarding theoretical physics. Is it to get views? Not to mention physicists would never have claimed the existence of the Higgs boson unless there was a proof beyond reasonable doubt. ”...while worrying about peer-review instead of thinking” this is comedy gold since this is the same kind of logic psuedoscientists utilize to justify the legitimacy of their ”scientific papers”. Don’t cherry-pick what critique you choose to answer this time.

[@TheMachian]

I am not interested in this discussion. Read books and articles, and then present facts if you have sth to say. There are already too many people in science who just parrot.

[@jwadaow]

@@pong336 midwit statements. Follow the science!

[@pong336]

So this guy doesn’t even have a physics degree and wants to determine what physicists are good and what physicists are bad. Makes sense.

[@christophjansen646]

If there is anything that I learned from the Feynman Lectures and various books and footage by and on Feynman, then it is what real science is. Feynman was Ockham's Razor alive, and fiercely so in any controversy. "Debunking" QED, what a nonsense. I am a solid-state chemist and thus quite familiar with the theory and especially its applications. QED is the best and most-tested theory we currently have about how matter behaves through electromagnetic interaction. If you like, you may make yourself familiar with the use of stress tensor density eigenvalues and apply them to such elusive interactions like the hydrigen bond. If, after understanding how difficult it is to discern whether a naked proton is ionically or covalently tied to negatively charged partner, and that is yet perfectly possible today to just do measurements and state, that indeed the hydrogen bond does have a directional and thus covalent nature, you still think there is anything to debunk, I would gladly like to see your own, flawless and more precise solution to the problem.

[@Paul-ty1bv]

My theory is: this video is clickbait.

[@davidcarr2216]

My theory is: Much of this channel is clickbait.

[@se7964]

My theory: you’re incapable of critical reasoning, and are wildly insecure in the presence of actual intelligence, and hence must resort to parroting

[@mcleodmichael1]

"you might consider this tangetial to physics" -- that's my favorite line.

[@cougar2013]

Unzicker going for those controversy clicks lol. Like when Sabine made a video saying there is no free will.

[@TheMachian]

Even if this video might seem controversial, that is not the goal. Unfortunately, if you dig into the deep questions, you inevitably realize that a big part of modern physics is bogus not backed by solid evidence. But as a scientist, you should not be afraid to call out also the big names.

[@cougar2013]

@@TheMachian I’m with you my man. I also have a physics PhD and got it working on neutrino experiments. I love the fact that you do not revere celebrity and I also got hit by group think when I questioned things like dark matter. Anyway, I really like this channel, and watch your videos whenever they come out!

[@TheMachian]

Glad you like it. Feel free to contact me via ChannelInfo-> Email. Would be interesting to have an exchange with sb inside in the neutrino business :-)

[@mamourizd]

@@TheMachian two fake physicists 69ing on youtube

[@jsmyth65]

Unless those big names are KZbin, google, or any university who claim systemic racism.

[@ericbitzer5247]

I never liked Feynman at all. He was full of himself.

[@docnelson2008]

It takes a brave physicist to state that Feynman was overhyped. I first encountered the famous Feynman lecture series in the early 1970s, as a mature student studying physics. At the time, along with my fellow students, I had not yet encountered quantum field theory. In my case I went on to study ionospheric physics and obtained a PhD but never got to study QED. Now I'm long retired and self learning QFT and String Theory but, although I already knew that QED was controversial, this claim of Unzicker comes as quite a shock. There must be many out there who are bewildered by all this. I once spoke to an American guy who had attended the famous Feynman lectures, like me he had found that the great man's explanations of how fundamental physics worked were not as clear and useful as so many others seemed to find. At the time I wondered if we were both just not clever enough to understand but now I am not so sure after following up this video and reading further.

[@TheMachian]

Thanks for sharing your experience.

[@absarius1216]

His humor is the last thing to like about him. He takes too much pleasure in talking about people who are dumber than him. There's a predatory look in his eyes that's always looking for weaknesses to exploit or share "hilarious" anecdotes about. Such predatory and confident people shouldn't be indulged with laughter when they make so-called jokes.

[@guitarika8477]

Its very apt that your channel is called Unzicker's Real Physics because what you talk about here has nothing in common with the (All people-Unzicker)'s real physics

[@Valdagast]

As I understand it, QED is used in solid state physics, among other things to build the computer I'm watching this on. Since the computer works, that would seem to indicate that QED is a decent approximation.

[@DavesGarage]

Clickbait misses the point - Feynman isn't important because of his Physics contributions. A thousand others have lived and died like him in that regard since.

[@bene1443]

Of course you're right. He is just the tip of the iceberg. The main problem with quantum mechanics is, that it's not actually physics. It's a merge of math, linguistically distortion and less logic.

[@nkmahale]

@@bene1443 What is "actually" physics? May be you need to read "The Character of Physical Law". LOL!

[@maxheadrom3088]

@@musopaul5407 Is the Nobel prize really that important? Dave's point is spot on! The genius of Feynman come from him being a great teacher, observer and scientist. I know a scientist and a mathematician (important people in their fields here) who think art is useless. Feynman, when dealing with the question, decided to learn more about art and even practiced it. He was a great teacher - by request of the State Dept., spent one or two years in Brazil teaching. He liked to play percussion with the Mangueira Samba School and wrote about the problems or our educational system (how bad it was) - and with that, revolutionized how science and engineering are taught here. I'm not a physicist - I studied electric engineering and that was enough for me to know how complicated modern physics is - so I can't say much about his work as a physicist. I know one thing: if a "thousand have lived and died like him in that regard since" is largely due to Feynman's example of how to be a good teacher - example teachers carry in their hearts to this day and all over the world. Oh ... he also proposed quantum computing and helped create massive parallel computers. Gamers of the world, unite and hail the great Richard Feynman for nVidia would not exist without him! (no an entirely correct statement since someone was bound to do what he did - and he only did it because his son was a partner at Thinking Machines and Computer Programmers are not known for being good with Calculus and Differential Equations)

[@grandeau3802]

Simply wrong. Feynman is indeed important because of his physics contribution.

[@angrymeowngi]

Then better not call him a physicist. Call him an inspirational speaker, an influencer. If that is the case, then this guy is correct.

[@elbapo7]

I find it hard to buy a lecture on feynman being illegitimate which at least half consists of his own takes on his own theories limitations and questions. ...and communicated extremely well! Which is exaclty what a great physicist would behave like, as well as a great communicator which he was.

[@richardgreen7225]

"Shut up and calculate" ... Feynman gave up on creating a coherent theory. He was willing to accept (for the time being) an algorithm that could predict / reproduce experimental results. This is an engineer's empirical method - It might not be a good theory, but if it makes good-enough predictions, it is better than nothing and better than a theory which makes none.

[@TheMachian]

I disagree. The big merit of Consa's paper is to have shown that these "predictions" were rather post-dictions, often tinkered. Besides that, there is a philosophical issue here how to approach physics: either you aim for true understanding (which goes along with real results, such as Maxwell/Weber's eps0 mu0= 1/c2) or you are content yourself with muddying the waters with newparameters, geocentric-astronomy style.

[@joshuascholar3220]

@@TheMachian this is NUTS. Ok a few early calculation by hand weren't to enough precision to be meaningful and people stopped adding terms when they got the answer they were expecting - did I guess right? I couldn't stand to watch you drip contempt while missing the bigger picture so I made an educated guess. Let me throw some of the obvious bigger picture at you. No one is calculating a small number of terms by hand anymore. In 2021, a $10 toy computer has exactly the computing power of a Cray 1 from 1978. Hell, the graphics card in my game computer has the computing power of what was IBM's new supercomputer at Laurence Livermore Lab in 2000 - that took up a gymnasium sized room to do nuclear calculations. They're not calculating a few diagrams and stopping when they get tired. We've come a _long_ _way._ And if there were mistakes 75 years ago, there have been trillions of calculations since then, and they weren't failures!

[@TheMachian]

You are just pretending that you understand what is going on in these computer codes. Literally nobody checks.

[@joshuascholar3220]

@@TheMachian Oh we're down the the international scientist conspiracy where every scientist, every professor, every student, every researcher, every software developer is lying except you? Get help!

[@DistortedV12]

@@TheMachian I don't know if Feynman himself would disagree with Consa here. See his talk "Knowing versus Understanding" where he argues against or at least satirizes "geocentric-astronomy."

[@brettwilson5774]

Feynman is probably a typical example of the overhyped scientist, of which we are now talking about two generations. The overriding characteristic of these physicists is the need for status, and hence a strong reason for choosing physics which has 'commanded' other sciences for centuries. Physics is an example of a 'Royal' science which is typified by the production of hypothetico-deductive models, where it's easier to leave the data behind and look clever. Other sciences, for example chemistry, are more driven by data, where anomalies appear faster than HDMs. It also doesn't help that large organisations tend to reinforce power structures which includes intellectual hierarchies, just as much as hierarchies of political power and wealth. It's a pity that we have lost so much because of this - and these losses never appear on the balance sheet, until we are reminded of them.

[@JosephStern]

Hello, thank you for making this video. A healthy skepticism is always the right attitude in science, so I applaud you for your critical treatment of QED. However, I think you may wish to look into a few things. I should preface this by admitting that I am as far as one could be from an expert in these matters. I’m just an interested observer who has done some reading in search of something mathematically solid in quantum field theory. However, if I may offer some thoughts. First, the problem of infinities in Feynman loop integrals and the like was solved by Bogoliubov, Epstein, Glaser, and others in the mid-70s, when they showed how time-ordered products of free quantum fields could be defined rigorously by a recursive scheme. Their form of renormalization is necessary in order to split operator-valued distributions into advanced and retarded parts without multiplying any distributions by discontinuous step functions in the usual manner for time-ordering. This is where power-counting asymptotics of distributions comes in, and there is a rigorous mathematical theory of it, to the best of my understanding. The likely failure of convergence of the Dyson series for the S-matrix was not proved by Dyson in the critical paper you cited, but merely argued for informally (and very cleverly) by means of a thought experiment that posited an alternate reality in which like charges attract rather than repel. However, the likely failure of convergence isn’t necessarily the end of the story. There are situations in which the first few terms of an asymptotic series give accurate estimates while including further terms reduces the accuracy (the overall series being divergent). Essentially this happens when contributions from far away singularities are strongly exponentially damped up to a certain order in the summation. Is this what accounts for the first few terms of the Dyson series giving accurate experimental predictions in QED? As far as I’m aware, no one really knows. But it is certainly possible. Standard textbook QED with its subtraction of infinities and ad hoc ultraviolet cutoffs is certainly open to sharp criticism. But let’s not forget that a random hodgepodge of nonsense wouldn’t give ANY good experimental predictions, with probability ~ 1. Certainly nothing like the 12 decimal places of accuracy in the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron, or whatever. That has to be coming from somewhere close to what physicists are doing. I agree that there’s a lot of nonsense that physicists tolerate. And many embarrassing problems have yet to be solved (for instance, though free quantum fields can be understood as operator-valued distributions on dense subspaces of Fock space, no one really knows what interacting quantum fields are supposed to be mathematically, other than some kind of formal power series in the free fields - note however that the S-matrix as a formal power series still makes sense if smeared with a test function that can be sent to 1 identically at the end in the calculation of observable quantities). Anyway, thanks again for the interesting and amusing video! Cheers.

[@ilyasfarhan1802]

If you read the paper he mentions (by O. Conza) it states that the highly accurate preduction of anomalous magnetic resonance is based on calulation which is wrong. Now I am far from a physicst, so I cannot verify that claim. But can you provide calculation from the Bogoliubov et al of the peturbation? Maybe it can help people like me with more physics knowledge. Thanks before.

[@olivermilatovic9593]

Feynman is better known for his diagrams (Feynman Diagrams). However, these diagrams represent an ingenious way of describing a calculation: they do NOT describe the physics underlying the process. Quantum Electrodynamics describes the repulsion between the electrons in terms of the exchange of an infinite number of ‘virtual photons’. A Feynman diagram summarises the way the exchange of a single ‘virtual photon’. However, bear in mind that in all those seminal early papers of Quantum Mechanics (1920's) there was NO mention of exchange particles. Such as the photons that are said to mediate the linear and rotational electromagnetic forces between the electron and the proton in the hydrogen atom. Or the rotational electromagnetic force that makes an electron go round and round in circles in a uniform magnetic field. Or makes the moving electron take a curved path near the current in the wire, but does not affect the stationary electron, The exchange-particle idea began to work its way into Quantum Electrodynamics from the mid-to-late 1930s. And that Heisenberg’s importation of exchange forces into nuclear physics depended essentially on a model of the neutron that was later RETRACTED. The idea now taken as definitional of the concept of force for quantum field theory, the all-important idea of particle exchange was not in fact there from the start, but rather worked its way in from somewhere outside.

[@TheMachian]

If you are saying the particle exchange description is flawed, I wholeheartedly agree.

[@olivermilatovic9593]

@@TheMachian Thank you. The main problem with mainstream physics is that it assumes an empty, inert space, since the abolition of the all-pervading aether in 1905 “it is superfluous.” This is the reason of the major shortcomings of general relativity and the standard model. In fact, there is a list of the biggest unsolved mysteries in physics. On the other hand, fringe physicists contend that all forces must be transmitted point-to-point through the vacuum of space through the zero-point field (ZPF) a sort of aether. It is the energetic vacuum fluctuations that inhabit all of space. ZPF is the only thing that is found everywhere in space, the only thing that could be the medium for all force transmission. No need to invent the exchange particle gimmick. What is real is the ZPF. It is known from the existence of the Casimir effect that quantum fluctuations behave like quantum dipoles that are capable of interacting through van der Waals forces. These forces between quantum fluctuations also cause bodies of matter to move such as in the case of the original two-plate Casimir effect. ZPF vacuum energy fluctuations work to create fundamental forces and gravity, without the mess and shortcomings of the standard model. A little known branch of physics, Stochastic Electrodynamics (SED) is working on it.

[@PhysicsNative]

Feynman took most of the ideas named for him from existing work, and improved them for application to (statistical) quantum field theory. He was a great teacher and I recommend his many books. It is tough to be pedagogical in physics but he did a fine job. As for over-hyped physicists, imho he wasn’t one of them. There are presently alive quite a few though, in particle physics, string theory, relativity, astrophysics, cosmology. Plenty of what is considered “settled science” in these areas is far from it, black hole physics being a prime example. Feynman supposedly had “Unruh radiation” written on his blackboard when he died, I wish he had taken a look at that and weighed in as has been the case with several Russian theorists that have established its non-existence.

[@TheMachian]

Well, Feynman's scientific value obviously depends on how ome assesses QED...

[@PhysicsNative]

@@TheMachian I just gave a reasoned assessment in the comments above. Physicists make mistakes and just because historically (1950,1957) there were discrepancies between hand calculations of the second order contributions doesn’t make QED a “scandal” or “rotten”. You’d be better off questioning more egregious speculations that have become more or less accepted and settled physics, I mentioned a few in my first comment. Those have attracted way more money and power in the community at the expense of far better and correct concepts/theories, which may not sell as many books or movie screenplays, and are actually HARD physics problems (requiring physics that has been essentially ignored or thrown out since those involved can’t do that level of dynamical modeling based on correct ideas).

[@TheMachian]

Needless to say, I agree with you in criticising strings, particle physics, astrophysics, cosmology. Also in those fields, however, it is worthwhile to closely look at the history, which, in my opinion, tells a lot about the soundness of teh concepts.

[@timeformegaman]

Why would I trust someone with a bs in physics over a Nobel prize winner?

[@bluemonstrosity259]

@@timeformegaman well that isn't a very good argument in general. New ideas are being created and tested daily, most competent physicists today with a BS will know more than Wilhelm Röntgen, the first Nobel Physics prize winner

[@allmertalex]

I personally like the way he taught physics, I don't know as much as about his innovations.

[@robertschlesinger1342]

Interesting, but the two linked papers are not convincing, especially the second on from viXra.

[@TheMachian]

If you are more specific in your critique, I shall be happy to discuss.