Orange Juice and Doubt

Richard Feynman was a rather amusing guy, and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965. I am busy reading his book called 'What Do You Care What Other People Think?'.

In it he both underplays his intelligence in areas other than his area of core competence, but also says you should be too reverent for the opinions of others if they don't make sense.

It is a bit of a balancing act. There is absolutely no way we can be competent in all areas, and we need to rely on experts. There just isn't enough time to fully understand everything. We can't trust blindly though.

A further problem is that so many people have very strong views on things outside there area of competence. They may very well be experts in some areas, but you can't assume that they have put as much thought into other areas they may well speak very confidently about.

At the end of the day though, we can't be paralyzed because we don't have the time (or ability) to find out everything for ourselves and we can't trust everything experts say. We have to muddle on. So perhaps (in addition to an inquisitive mind)... the best thing Feynman's life suggests is a bit of a sense of humour.

Give the man some orange juice.