About the creative tension between wanting to see it all, and simply not being able to:
“What do we mean by ‘understanding’ something? We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes ‘the world’ is something like a great game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics. Even if we knew every rule, however, we might not be able to understand why a particular move is made in the game, merely because it is too complicated and our minds are limited. If you play you must know that it is easy to learn all the rules, and yet it is often very hard to select the best move or to understand why a player moves as he does. So it is in Nature, only much more so.“
— Richard Feynman, Feynman Lectures on Physics
Connie
npub146…tvgjn
2026-04-19 16:11:11 UTC
Author Public Key
npub1468024mrwz6uhywjvt8s6vw4e604egnv8tfd2m2utrmqyd3nu3fsutvgjnPublished at
2026-04-19 16:11:11 UTCEvent JSON
{
"id": "f9cf4df1cd6c661d3b06a8a8edb5bc6cbcdc9ece476b3b8177930686a09526ff",
"pubkey": "ae8ef5576370b5cb91d262cf0d31d5ce9f5ca26c3ad2d56d5c58f6023633e453",
"created_at": 1776615071,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [],
"content": "About the creative tension between wanting to see it all, and simply not being able to: \n\n“What do we mean by ‘understanding’ something? We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes ‘the world’ is something like a great game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics. Even if we knew every rule, however, we might not be able to understand why a particular move is made in the game, merely because it is too complicated and our minds are limited. If you play you must know that it is easy to learn all the rules, and yet it is often very hard to select the best move or to understand why a player moves as he does. So it is in Nature, only much more so.“\n\n— Richard Feynman, Feynman Lectures on Physics",
"sig": "6de42a050c161d0d3d6b1da8574b4b60e01e76c17dee93a956a0c0019f77d295be80c0662aaf508c0d60d29cf85a558f8a298677dca415f30557e7658dc73244"
}