Feynman’s science lesson for entrepreneurs: Challenge authority.

I'm not sure if Feynman would endorse the scientific framing that is being applied, in that article, to the haphazard process by which society evolves.<p>Science experiments should try and be, at least to some extent, repeatable.<p>When the article starts talking about 'social experiments', e.g.: "He’s referring to laws of nature of course, but let’s take a step back and imagine that society is a scientific enterprise. Discovering good legal rules, good regulations, or good constitutions is hard — they are not ‘given’ to us. They evolved. They appeared through different experiments in different places at different times, by different people. They will continue to change."<p>I think that's stretching it, and going towards the dangerous territory of framing social debate as if it were a science, and as if the 'disruptive innovation by entrepreneurs' was scientific experiment.<p>I think Feynman was exacting about what could be considered an experiment. From his commencement address, on 'cargo cult science', which covers this general area: "I explained to her that it was necessary first to repeat in her laboratory the experiment of the other person--to do it under condition X to see if she could also get result A, and then change to Y and see if A changed. Then she would know the the real difference was the thing she thought she had under control."<p>He also points out that it can be bad to use the language of science, if you aren't really doing science: "Another example is how to treat criminals. We obviously have made no progress--lots of theory, but no progress--in decreasing the amount of crime by the method that we use to handle criminals. Yet these things are said to be scientific. We study them. And I think ordinary people with commonsense ideas are intimidated by this pseudoscience. A teacher who has some good idea of how to teach her children to read is forced by the school system to do it some other way--or is even fooled by the school system into thinking that her method is not necessarily a good one. Or a parent of bad boys, after disciplining them in one way or another, feels guilty for the rest of her life because she didn't do "the right thing," according to the experts." <a href="http://www.physics.brocku.ca/etc/cargo_cult_science.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.physics.brocku.ca/etc/cargo_cult_science.php</a><p>I'm not saying the article is making the mistake of cargo cult science; but just that it seems to be skirting a little close to that territory, by applying the language of science to situations in which people are not trying for rigorous experiments, and where isolating variables is particularly hard.<p>I don't think that disruptive innovation by entrepreneurs would meet Feynman's definition of science. I like the framing of a startup as a company set up to test a hypothesis about a business model, but I think there's a distance between entrepreneurship and science.

Eugenics in this context is a bad example, because in this case controlled breeding definitely gets results, i.e. the theory (sort of) agrees with the theory, at least in the case of animals. You should thank such manipulative practices when you are enjoying a seedless banana.<p>Of course, the practice is abhorrent! But, and I think this is important, the ethical part has nothing to do with the science part. Consider the piece from NYT that reported Robert Spitzer's apology (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/health/dr-robert-l-spitzer-noted-psychiatrist-apologizes-for-study-on-gay-cure.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/health/dr-robert-l-spitzer...</a>) for defining homosexuality as a "disease" and trying to cure it. When he published his study one commentary:<p>"...cited the Nuremberg Code of ethics to denounce the study as not only flawed but morally wrong. “We fear the repercussions of this study, including an increase in suffering, prejudice, and discrimination,” concluded a group of 15 researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where Dr. Spitzer was affiliated."<p>I think that a scientific theory can we wrong or right (or currently undecided) but it cannot be morally wrong. The way you perform the experiments to test it may be morally wrong, though. There were significant faults with Spitzer's research, these should be pointed out rather than its moral wrongness.<p>Similarly eugenics should be attacked for its unintended consequences (e.g. extinction of Cavendish bananas <a href="http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/bananas.asp" rel="nofollow">http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/bananas.asp</a>) and its nineteenth-century simplistic approach to the human genetic-psychological relationship which, as we now, is vastly complex.

1) The article writer completely missed Feynman's point. Feynman is talking about the nature of reality, not about society and its actions. If I say "bricks are nutritious" and the government forces everyone to eat nothing but powdered bricks, that doesn't change the fact that bricks are not nutritious.<p>2) There is a slight caveat to Feynman's point -- if a theory disagrees with experiment, it's possible that the theory is correct but the experiment / data interpretation / etc was flawed.

Would the analogous lesson for entrepreneurs be that if the market doesn't want it, it's wrong? I'd think there's some cases where products are ahead of their time, i.e. they're right at the wrong time.

Democracy itself is supposed to be a method of experimenting with governance. Try making a law; if it doesn't work, repeal it and try another, or else tweak it until it is right. The federal system is the same way; try one set of laws in California, another in Texas, and see which set works out better.<p>I do think we could go further along these lines. Wiki and Github style "let the people edit the laws before voting on them" may not be the right answer, but our current system is definitely not ideal. Finding a way to tighten the feedback loop will be tough, especially when a constitutional set of ground rules seems necessary.<p>Other commenters are right though, no matter how we frame it, society is not science. It's just that we feel benefits could be had by applying something like the scientific method to the laws which govern us.

This is not a new video, it's part of his Messenger series lectures from 1964: <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/" rel="nofollow">http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/</a>

I agree with the OP about special interests misleading people into thinking that a claim is valid because there are studies backing it up.<p>However, I think the OP is wrong about Feynman. Feynman was not one to blindly believe in other people's studies. In fact, as he learned from his dad as a youth who used to make wrong interpretations of birds, etc., people are fallible, and so are their assumptions. What he was saying is that you can't argue with validly collected data and valid mathmatical proof. You can obviously argue with their interpretation.