Thursday, December 20, 2007

At 71, Physics Professor Is a Web Star

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This article relates to Charlie Munger's Mental Model approach to life and learning, of course. From Mr. Munger's 1994 speech:
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You've got to have models in your head. And you've got to array your experience - both vicarious and direct - o­n this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You've got to hang experience o­n a latticework of models in your head.
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What are the models? Well, the first rule is that you've got to have multiple models - because if you just have o­ne or two that you're using, the nature of human psychology is such that you'll torture reality so that it fits your models, or at least you'll think it does. You become the equivalent of a chiropractor who, of course, is the great boob in medicine.
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It's like the old saying, "To the man with o­nly a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." And of course, that's the way the chiropractor goes about practicing medicine. But that's a perfectly disastrous way to think and a perfectly disastrous way to operate in the world. So you've got to have multiple models.
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And the models have to come from multiple disciplines - because all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in o­ne little academic department. That's why poetry professors, by and large, are so unwise in a worldly sense. They don't have enough models in their heads. So you've got to have models across a fair array of disciplines.
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You may say, "My God, this is already getting way too tough. "But, fortunately, it isn't that tough - because 80 or 90 important models will carry about 90% of the freight in making you a worldly-wise person. And, of those, o­nly a mere handful really carry very heavy freight.
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Books Related to Physics:
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Mr Tompkins in Paperback
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Einstein: His Life and Universe
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Isaac Newton
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Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
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What Do You Care What Other People Think?
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Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
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Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
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Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time

In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality
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The Martians of Science: Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century