July pfp
July
@july
“After working on the Manhattan Project: I returned to civilization shortly after that and went to Cornell to teach, and my first impression was a very strange one. I can't understand it any more, but I felt very strongly then. I sat in a restaurant in New York, for example, and I looked out at the buildings and I began to think, you know, about how much the radius of the Hiroshima bomb damage was and so forth... How far from here was 34th street?... All those buildings, all smashed - and so on. And I would go along and I would see people building a bridge, or they'd be making a new road, and I thought, they're crazy, they just don't understand, they don't understand. Why are they making new things? It's so useless. But, fortunately, it's been useless for almost forty years now, hasn't it? So l've been wrong about it being useless making bridges and I'm glad those other people had the sense to go ahead." - Richard P. Feynman
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Jon Commstark pfp
Jon Commstark
@commstark
it’s interesting that the smarter people are, the closer they are to seeing the fragility of society, and often that pushes them to be pessimistic that it will all break instead of being optimistic that it held together at all
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Greg Robinson pfp
Greg Robinson
@gregrob.eth
“…I’m glad those other people had the sense to go ahead.” So good! Countless people in the world are probably feeling the way Feynman felt back then. But the builders are building.
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Alex pfp
Alex
@amado
I found a copy of his book when I was in India in 2004/2005 and read cover to cover.
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hyperbad pfp
hyperbad
@hyperbad
huh. i guess people have 2 very different reactions to seeing destruction at scale, up close and personal: nothing matters why bother if it all returns to dust or everything matters so much we should do everything we possibly can in the time we have to do it
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Tokenized Human pfp
Tokenized Human
@tokenizedhuman
Is this from surely you're joking?
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tldr (tim reilly) pfp
tldr (tim reilly)
@tldr
That humility and generosity in the last line is 🤌🤌
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torii.base.eth pfp
torii.base.eth
@torii-stories
imo this is a result of being too close to a problem and focusing on the side of the road instead of where you wanna go
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Slippage pfp
Slippage
@mikedcryptoguy
They kept building. He thought they were crazy. Turns out they were right
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