Richard Feynman: "What's the name of a bird?"
Why Hacker News recommends it
Reached for whenever a thread touches on naming versus actually understanding something.
What it is
A short clip from a 1973 NOVA episode in which Richard Feynman recalls his father teaching him that knowing the name of a bird in many languages tells you nothing about the bird.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2016 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends Quai · 2020-08 · on “Joan Feynman has died”
If you dont mind listening to Richard himself, you can watch this pre-historic 4:3 videos on youtube; [this video] [LINK]
Cites yati · 2016-03 · on “Randall Munroe, XKCD Creator, Goes Back to High School”
Totally agreed. However, I've found that learning something new without regards for the actual name for it helps me build a solid, abstract representation in the mind. But like you say, communicating these ideas becomes cumbersome when you don't speak the common language :) And here's Feynman on the same topic: [this video]
Cites braveo · 2017-02 · on “Man jailed 16 months, and counting, for refusing to decrypt hard drives”
ooooh, I guess God was ok with killing people as long as it was mass killings so you could call it something besides murder. Because apparently the exact name somehow makes the act better (or worse?) in God's eyes. [this video] We should go tell Feynman he's nuts...
Cites anotheryou · 2017-02 · on “27 Jobs with Unbelievably Tough Interview Questions”
Why do they ask about capitals? Relevant Feynman: [this video] And nowadays we have google for some added prosthetic knowledge. It's becoming increasingly important to grasp concepts well enough to ask the right questions, but knowing simple unrelated facts by heart becomes irrelevant. At most you have to remember that there was something to remember so you can look it up. edit: can a native speaker guide me on where to set commas correctly :) ?
Cites cyphar · 2017-10 · on “Badger or Bulbasaur – have children lost touch with nature?”
Richard Feynman had a very good quote on this topic. Effectively, knowing the name of an animal is the least useful knowledge about that animal. [this video]
Cites incrudible · 2021-09 · on “Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom”
I suspect the joy for people versed in classic theory is sparked from being able to identify the name of a recurring concept in a segment of a classical music piece. On a related note: [this video]
Cites scythmic_waves · 2021-11 · on “They don't even know the fundamentals”
Though he does admit [1] > So I had learned already that names don't constitute knowledge... That's caused me a certain trouble since because I refuse to learn the name of anything... What [my father] forgot to tell me was that the knowing the names of things is useful if you wanna talk to somebody else. I think an interview might count :) [1] [this video]
Cites gnramires · 2023-12 · on “Vowels and Diphthongs in Sperm Whales”
It's not that simple. LLMs are great for predicting next word, but this needs a more unsupervised approach. Ultimately, you need to know the environment of whales. Sure, you know the next probable token, and even relationships between tokens, but how do they relate to what whales are doing? , in other words what does it mean? . It reminds me of the great quote by Feynman: "look at the bird"[1]. You can know the name of a bird in many different languages, but that tells you nothing about it. If you want to understand birds, you need to look at it and see what it's doing. If we want to communicate with another species, we need to understand what they're doing, why they're communicating, and fr