How to deal with artists and creatives?

How to pass, fit in, eventually set an example, and ultimately lead the way.
Campitor
Posts: 1227
Joined: Thu Aug 20, 2015 11:49 am

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by Campitor »

I can assure you from personal interaction that Feynman was much more professor than prankster, and was usually every bit the arrogant nerd that typified the position he occupied -- just a lot better at social interaction than most. But he has become much more of a prankster since his death through the power of the internet.
I didn't mean to impugn his character but my opinion of his pranking, and brilliance, was formulated by his public interviews, the book he wrote about himself, his lectures on physics and electromagnetism, and the interviews from his Los Alamos coworkers. For the record, I admire the man immensely for his intelligence and his contribution to science. I use his "Feynman technique" when learning new subjects (it has served me well), and I'm envious that you were able to interact with him personally.

User avatar
C40
Posts: 2748
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2011 4:30 am

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by C40 »

Dragline wrote:
Riggerjack wrote:
I have a friend, so regularly late, we all know he operates on "Gregtime".....
This is exactly what I am talking about. Accepting people the way they are but not rearranging your life to accommodate their problematic behaviors. If it comes together at a particular time and place for a time, great. If not, so be it.

Reminds me of one of Thomas Jefferson's Canons of Conduct: (many of which are taken from the Enchiridion) "Take things always by their smooth handle"

Dragline
Posts: 4436
Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:50 am

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by Dragline »

Smashter wrote:
Dragline wrote:
I can assure you from personal interaction that Feynman was much more professor than prankster
Fascinating, care to elaborate? Count me as one of the many who thought he was all about picking locks and thinking of silly ways to get coded messages out of Los Alamos. Those are the stories he likes to tell in his books, at least.
I was at Caltech for the last four years of Feynman's life (and actually remember where I was when I learned he had died.)

He had had some serious health issues starting around 1980 and seemed to be more of shell of his former self (at least what I knew about it). I first met him as a freshman on the orientation where they took everyone to Catalina Island for a couple days and later attended some of his lectures. He really wasn't doing much teaching anymore, although he "taught" an informal class called "Phys X" where people could just ask him stuff. Most of it was trivialities. In general, he was so brilliant he was difficult to understand unless he was really prepared to "perform", which is what you see now from the video archives that had been saved. But he loved performing much to the consternation and/or jealousy of some of his colleagues.

Freeman Dyson's observations about Feynman were accurate:

"Then you met Richard Feynman and you ended up working with him on quantum electrodynamics.

I never worked with Feynman, but I learned a tremendous lot from him. He was a young professor and I was just a student, so I listened to Feynman, and of course he was a genius. He was also a clown and loved to perform, so he always needed an audience. I was very happy to be the audience.

What made Feynman different from other scientists?

He was extremely original. He had his own way of doing science, which was different from everybody else. That’s why he had a hard time communicating. He never wrote down equations. Most people in physics write down an equation and then find the solutions, but that wasn’t the way Feynman did it. Feynman would just write down the solutions without ever writing the equations. It seemed like a sort of magic because he thought in terms of pictures instead of equations. He had these little pictures in his head and he scribbled little pictures on paper and nobody understood what they meant. My job was to translate Feynman into language other people could understand."

Feynman also had a very bad reputation as far as his interpersonal relationships and treatment of women was concerned. But this was common for male scientists of his generation. As another odd quirk, he refused to brush his teeth.


The best lecturer at Caltech around that time was physicist David Goodstein, who created a program called "The Mechanical Universe" and also put together "Feynman's Lost Lecture" in 2000. But my most memorable teachers there were Hans Liepmann, who taught me thermodynamics and dimensional analysis, and Thomas Apostol, who taught calculus and wrote the books we knew as "The Tommy 1 and The Tommy 2". A phrase I still use to this day from Apostol is "Nobody can stop me from . . ." And then he would assume a particular variable was pi or e or something and end up with some Euler equation or number. But I use it more as a generic rallying cry for taking action or breaking conventions.

jacob
Site Admin
Posts: 15908
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:38 pm
Location: USA, Zone 5b, Koppen Dfa, Elev. 620ft, Walkscore 77
Contact:

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by jacob »

@Dragline - I wonder whether that Dyson observation was strictly about QED? The general process for that is to write out the pictures for particle interactions and then realize that each part of the picture (e.g. electron transmits photon) corresponds to a term under an integral. It's these integrals that are then integrated to get reaction cross sections. Today, one can get mathematica packages that do this automagically. What was so impressive about Feynman's method at the time was that these integrals are really hard to construct without having some visual idea of what's going on. Other physicists would frequently miss some of the partial cross sections when summing up all of them because certain interactions didn't occur to them (whereas it's more clear in pictures). Also ... the first time this way of deriving the answer is introduced, it's almost unbelievable (because people are so used to doing things algebraically).

So I guess my question is ... whether this thinking in pictures and writing the solution down was a more general thing or it was "just" QED. Most physicists with some years of experience tend to become very visually intuitive ... but few will be able to construct solutions in equation form directly from that.

Dragline
Posts: 4436
Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:50 am

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by Dragline »

Dyson's comments are from this interview: http://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/my-lif ... dream-team

All I was trying to say was that Feynman's reputation for being this "Great Communicator" is a little overblown and is based on his best performances, although its not that hard to gain that rep among that peer group, because most great scientists are not great communicators. He was a great self-promoter for sure, and his legacy reflects those efforts.

TopHatFox
Posts: 2322
Joined: Thu Oct 17, 2013 10:07 pm
Location: FL; 25

Re: How to deal with "artists and creatives?"

Post by TopHatFox »

[quote="JasonR"

Yeah, I have contempt for the set of values I described at the moment, not the people--of which there are only two--nor artists or creatives. Very small sample size. The "artists and creatives" is indeed arbitry and damaging, a short hand to help me figure out a more accurate classifier for the philosophy/personality later, such as the ISFP v. my INFJ-A suggested. I think that makes more sense. In any case, the two people were making fun of my 10 year plan after a particularly turbulent weekend, so I got very angry and defensive and posted here in a highly generalized/dismissive half-venting, half-trying to understand difference sort of way. On top of that, I had been trying to meet with them for the past two weeks in what seemed to me to be a rather one-sided connection.

Please don't think that I am perfect all the time, for that is too high a standard. I am human and sometimes do not think things all the way through, or at least the point of a post might be to refine or test an idea with smart, critical, and kind people.
Last edited by TopHatFox on Tue Feb 21, 2017 5:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.

User avatar
Sclass
Posts: 2791
Joined: Tue Jul 10, 2012 5:15 pm
Location: Orange County, CA

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by Sclass »

Dragline wrote:
Campitor wrote: Feynmann was a bongo playing prankster who loved ant watching but his contributions to quantum electromagnetism were very important. The artist, like everyone else, exist on a curve; most are harmless, some are dangerous, and a few of them are indispensable. INTJ's fall within similar curve comparisons.
I can assure you from personal interaction that Feynman was much more professor than prankster, and was usually every bit the arrogant nerd that typified the position he occupied -- just a lot better at social interaction than most. But he has become much more of a prankster since his death through the power of the internet.
I grew up a block from their home in Altadena. He was also a great sketch artist. He drew a lot of people in the town.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9372
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

edith Keeler said: And I think asking someone if you can put your arm around them is just weird. I've read about all that asking for permission stuff on college campuses. Seems super odd to me. But i know times have changed since the dark ages of the 80's. (Oh, what fun they were!!).
lol- Corporate-admonished men in their 50s do this now too. Took me more than a minute after I started dating again in my 40s to wrap my head around, because what it initially signals is something like "I don't know how to straight-up f*ck, and I am likely to go all butterfly kisses on you, my precious china doll."(blech) Worst case scenario being the time a man smiled brightly and said "...and then you can tie ME up." and I couldn't for the life of me tell if he was being politically correct or switchy.

Anyways, since I am an ENTP (promoter, enthusiast) one of my natural professions or roles is any possible generalist variation on the theme of "entrepreneurial art gallery owner" or "manager of circus", so although I am definitely not an artist myself, I am often the person in the position of trying to promote Art or Artist. It is also the role of the ENTP to help and promote Science, although we usually can't be scientists ourselves due to easily distracted. Therefore, Artists and Scientists seem like very similar introverted, disciplined, dedicated, dark (hot vs. cold)abyss peering types to me. On the model of the Enneagram, the cusp of the Scientist and the Artist is known as the Bohemian. However, I have dated/mated/married too many musicians to ever rationally choose to do that again, although I still live in some fear of the day when I may meet a devilishly attractive, terrifically talented, thoroughly alcoholic writer and fall into a bright light life energy sucking vortex (I just reflexively made the sign of the cross although I last practiced the Catholic faith at age 8. ) Scary!

User avatar
Sclass
Posts: 2791
Joined: Tue Jul 10, 2012 5:15 pm
Location: Orange County, CA

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by Sclass »

Dragline, I had no idea you were a Techer. Your description of Feynman is spot on. Especially towards the end of his life. He changed a lot I take it.

I knew him mostly through his kids. We went to the same school.

Tom Apostol's kid went through my junior high a year before me. My math teacher got in an argument with him when his kid said "my daddy says this isn't the way we solve this." The teacher said "well who the heck is your daddy, maybe he can come in and explain it to me." The legend is he got a first class drubbing at the chalkboard when Apostol showed up.

Tom Apostol showed me the Euler expansion by summing the sine and cosine series when I was a teenager. I was blown away. (Aww man it's coming back...he went off telling me there was no Ln(x) just log(x). Not log10(x). And then expanded that in series).

The town is full of the legends. Altadena was the company town for Tech and JPL. Feynman was apparently quite a womanizer up there. The moms didn't speak well of him. He had a not so good reputation among them.

For me he was the dad of our really smart classmates. And yes, Michelle indeed became an artist even though she would have made an awesome scientist. Her dad really got into art at the end. I think he spent more time at the Zorthian Ranch (http://www.zorthianranch.com) than at the campus by then.

Dragline
Posts: 4436
Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:50 am

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by Dragline »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
edith Keeler said: And I think asking someone if you can put your arm around them is just weird. I've read about all that asking for permission stuff on college campuses. Seems super odd to me. But i know times have changed since the dark ages of the 80's. (Oh, what fun they were!!).
and I couldn't for the life of me tell if he was being politically correct or switchy.
I've read this about six times and I can't stop laughing. :lol:

Dragline
Posts: 4436
Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:50 am

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by Dragline »

Sclass wrote:
Tom Apostol showed me the Euler expansion by summing the sine and cosine series when I was a teenager. I was blown away. (Aww man it's coming back...he went off telling me there was no Ln(x) just log(x). Not log10(x). And then expanded that in series).
"Nobody can stop us . . ." ;)

Dragline
Posts: 4436
Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:50 am

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by Dragline »

Sclass wrote:Dragline, I had no idea you were a Techer. Your description of Feynman is spot on. Especially towards the end of his life. He changed a lot I take it.
OT, but in my in-box just now (and yes that Munger is Charlie, although he has not practiced law since about 1970):

To: The Caltech Community
From: Thomas F. Rosenbaum, President
Edward M. Stolper, Provost
In re: Immigration Update

The success of America and, in particular, American higher education has been our ability to attract extraordinary talent from around the world. We welcome diverse perspectives and new approaches to problems as the surest means to create knowledge and improve society. Whether we are the immigrants, or our parents or our grandparents, the opportunity to contribute to the success of our country – through the arts, through science, through technology, through business – has been an animating principle of the American ideal.

It is in this context that the executive orders on immigration are of such concern. Caltech and our sister colleges and universities will not thrive, nor will our country, if we do not remain a destination of choice. Four days after the inauguration, we hosted a forum of university presidents on our campus discussing “Politics and American Higher Education,” which raised a number of these issues and explored our responsibilities as moral leaders. When the immigration ban was announced, we were the first of our peers to declare publicly our unwavering commitment to welcoming and supporting people from around the world, followed by campus meetings addressing the particulars of the immigration restrictions. Caltech is a signatory to numerous letters on the subject, including the ACE letter to DHS Secretary Kelly, the AAAS multi-society statement, and the petition to President Trump in support of DACA. Most recently, Caltech joined an amicus brief to the courts through the AAU and Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP that argues against the immigration ban on the basis of harm to university communities.

In all these actions we have emphasized our fundamental values and eschewed the manifestly political. Caltech must support the ability of all members of our community to express freely their views and no institutional position should quench the debate. Moreover, we are making the commitment to our faculty, students, postdocs, and staff real, and not simply rhetorical, by providing legal advice and emergency funds to those affected directly or who have family members affected by the travel ban.

There are sure to be twists and turns in the road in the days to come. The Institute will stand firm in its support of freedom of movement and expression and the American ideal. As individual members of the Caltech community you have the opportunity to speak and to act, and we will protect those rights to the utmost of our ability.

User avatar
C40
Posts: 2748
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2011 4:30 am

Re: How to deal with "artists and creatives?"

Post by C40 »

Olaz wrote:
...the two people were making fun of my 10 year plan after a particularly turbulent weekend, so I got very angry and defensive...
It's likely that with some time and successes you will:
1 - Have more conviction in your own plans/efforts/ideas/etc, such that the approval of others matters less and less. (I don't mean ignoring people's input or automatically disregarding, but maybe after asking a "why do you think...." question, you'll quickly see whether their opinion is one that should be regarded or not.)
2 - More practice in Stoicism - the part about only judging/characterizing your own thoughts and actions
3 - Be more used to interacting with the different Myers Briggs types, with people who have cognitive dissonance, with people who are simply unfamiliar with what they're judging, etc...

... but not so much that things like this will stop bothering you entirely.. It's odd. I can allow most criticism to just float completely by me with absolutely no friction, and other times some little thing bothers me for hours.

Also, remember, the broader the group you share your personal plans with, the more certain it is there will be dissenters. In certain cases, sharing them will be seen as out of place and odd and that alone will bring criticism.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9372
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Dragline: Yup, it's a hot mess out there these-a-days. Consider yourself lucky to be happily married.

@Olaz: What I should have mentioned is that on the Enneagram, the vice of the Artist (Type 4, Introverted/Feeling) is Envy. It's hard to know somebody just from writing voice, but you seem like the Achiever (Type 3) on the cusp of the Helper (Type 2.)
Type Three with a Two Wing:

Type Threes want to succeed, while Type Twos want to be seen as helpful and liked by others. 3w2s, therefore, tend to be flashy achievers. They succeed and want everyone to know it. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are vain, but they place a premium on the respect and approval of others. Some 3w2s may be self-centered, but many are not, and can incorporate the aspect of “being helpful” into their image. The owners of many non-profit organizations are probably 3w2s.
So, there would be a good likelihood that conflict and bad feelings might develop when you are interacting with a 4 in a situation of stress or when either of you are low in functioning. Your tendency to want to "flash" success would trigger the button of Envy in an artist, and I VERY well know how they can then sometimes react in jackknife manner and critically stab and slash away at your balloon of happiness. I am a 7 (Enthusiast) on the cusp of 6 (Traditionalist) (Vice gluttony/excess stimulation seeking combined with bit of fear) and one of my metaphors for my marriage to a 4 (Artist) on the cusp of 3 (Achiever) (AKA the Critic) is that we were like a red rubber ball and a dagger. As in:

Me: "How do you like this great new recipe I came up with for dinner using only what was leftover in the fridge and 50 cents worth of tuna?!!"

Ex: "Martha Stewart you ain't."

Smashter
Posts: 541
Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2016 8:05 am
Location: Midwest USA

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by Smashter »

Dragline wrote:As another odd quirk, he refused to brush his teeth.
This is hilarious. I've heard him talk about getting a root canal during an interview. It's interesting that someone so brilliant didn't seem to think there was any connection between oral hygiene and tooth decay.

User avatar
Sclass
Posts: 2791
Joined: Tue Jul 10, 2012 5:15 pm
Location: Orange County, CA

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by Sclass »

There are a lot of things about Feynman that are less than wonderful. The books are wonderful because Ralph Leighton was one of the wide eyed kids who worshipped the ground that the professor walked on. I was warned by faculty wives not to join up with Ralph and his friends like you're warned not to wander into the church of Scientology.

The books are very biased. The real man and his life in my town had a dark side. It really is sad because it is a stain on a really neat picture.

The Tech wives knew it and discouraged interaction. At least the smart ones.

Despite all that the guy had quite an entourage made up of many of my friends. I never bought into the whole thing. Probably because I was too close and my folks knew too much.

The stuff you read is primarily written by his biggest fan.

You know something funny? Of all the hang arounds at that home, only one graduated with a degree in physics. And the others became (drumroll)...artists.

The unbrushed teeth are just the tip of the iceberg.

Campitor
Posts: 1227
Joined: Thu Aug 20, 2015 11:49 am

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by Campitor »

@ Sclass - Anything you care to share? Sometimes I wonder if a certain level of intelligence breeds detachment of consequences or morals. It seems that so many of the best and brightest have a dark side.

User avatar
Sclass
Posts: 2791
Joined: Tue Jul 10, 2012 5:15 pm
Location: Orange County, CA

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by Sclass »

This is all town rumor. I'm a little uneasy about sharing details here. But in general...,

My mom and her friends complained about his womanizing. He was active in my town. He tried and succeeded on a lot of the local girls. It looked like a sport. It was so formulaic it was gross. The stories all seemed about the same just with different individuals. Not exactly my kind of hero material.

This wasn't some young single guy either. It was the dad of our friends.

On more than one occasion I met some random bimbo and when said I wanted to be a physicist she'd say "oh, you should meet my friend Dick." I'd literally finish her sentence "...he has a Nobel Prize you know."

Maybe this will be easier:

https://galileospendulum.org/2014/07/13 ... d-feynman/

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9372
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: How to deal with artists and creatives?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Sclass: It wasn't just a local "club." My sister's ex-bf's father was a physicist at a major university, so he grew up in the lab, and idolized Feynman. He owned a rambling old Victorian near the campus of another university, kept a giant Tesla coil in the front window, had income from a bunch of patents and associated with artists, and young strippers. After my sister dumped him for a semi-famous musician (who was also son/grandson/brother of paleontologists/glaciologist/primatologist and other semi-famous musicians), she talked me into moving in with him with carrot of extremely low rent. On one occasion, he actually informed me that it was my job (due to my superficially pleasant and conventional appearance/manner) to "keep away the villagers with their pitchforks."

My friend/housemate in college was engaged to the son of a very famous female scientist. She was known for smoking tons of pot and wandering around the house naked with her much younger second husband. Her son bred new strains of pot to please his mother, so that she would send him money. So, he turned his entire room into a grow space, so he was always camped out with us. So, when I was 20 I was eating groceries purchased with funds derived from supporting the drug habit of one of the scientists who actually discovered the opiate center in the brain. I also babysat for her younger child. So, being the relatively straight-edge "house-Mom" in a group of cuckoo-bananas- high-IQ-creatives is one of my frequent lifelong roles.

Anyways, I think it is kind of a known thing that the natural succession is that academics give birth to artists and/or individuals who get busted for engaging in dubious import/export business.

Post Reply