Quotation
Last reviewed:
“After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.”
Richard Feynman · Thinkers beyond philosophy · Modern · 1974
What does it mean?
Ordinary honesty toward other scientists is, he says, the easy part, and it comes after the harder refusal to fool yourself. The mainstream reading is a ranking: self-deception first, conventional honesty second. A competing reading hears that social honesty does not matter, which the sentence does not say. It says that once the first principle is kept, the rest is ordinary honesty, the kind he thinks a conventional person can manage. The lines are in Cargo Cult Science, immediately after the principle. He is lowering the glamour of integrity, not cancelling it.
Did Richard Feynman really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. The sentences that follow the first principle in the same 1974 address. His English. Reprinted with the address in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Where it comes from
Cargo Cult Science, Caltech commencement address, 1974
Approximate date: 1974.
How to use it
A lab group, or a newsroom in London, that writes rules for how to treat colleagues and never asks how a person hides a bad result from himself has started at the second step. He thinks the second step is real. He thinks it is not first.
A mindset reading
Conventional honesty is praised here, not mocked. The mistake is to advertise it while the self-deception is still in place.
Understand the philosophy
Same address as the first principle, 1974. The key contrast is easy and first. Chapter 7 of The Character of Physical Law says what the honesty is answerable to: if the guess disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. The address is the ethic. The lecture is the test.
- knowledge
- ethics
- virtue
FAQ
What does it mean?
Ordinary honesty toward other scientists is, he says, the easy part, and it comes after the harder refusal to fool yourself. The mainstream reading is a ranking: self-deception first, conventional honesty second. A competing reading hears that social honesty does not matter, which the sentence does not say. It says that once the first principle is kept, the rest is ordinary honesty, the kind he thinks a conventional person can manage. The lines are in Cargo Cult Science, immediately after the principle. He is lowering the glamour of integrity, not cancelling it.
Did Richard Feynman really say this?
Well attested. The sentences that follow the first principle in the same 1974 address. His English. Reprinted with the address in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Which work is it in?
Cargo Cult Science, Caltech commencement address, 1974 Approximate date: 1974.