Tuesday, July 29, 2008

feynman: cargo cult science

Richard Feynman's talk on Cargo Cult Science (found here) was adapted from a Caltech commencement address given in 1974 and is excerpted from Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character).

Here's the payoff:

But this long history of learning how to not fool ourselves -- of having utter integrity -- is, I'm sorry to say, something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you've caught on by osmosis.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool others. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

How do we fool ourselves as product managers? How do we learn not to?

(Thanks to Luboš Motl for the link)

No comments: