A non technical client of mine one time asked me for some kind of formal verification that if we picked a certain javascript framework, that we would be able to put bar graphs on the page. I tried to explain that any framework that allows me to have javascript, html, and css on a page will allow bar graphs. And he responded "how are you sure?".
I played this video for him as an explanation of why it was difficult to answer that question to someone who didn't know what javascript was. The project didn't last much longer. To be fair by the time I was willing to show him this video, I wasn't particularly interested in keeping the engagement going.
He also was a neuroscientist who didn't know who Feynman was which kind of bugged me.
I'll preface this comment by saying that whilst I've always worked in technical fields I've always thought of myself as just one of the pack and nothing special so my comment comes from this perspective.
It's interesting you juxtaposed your first words 'non technical client' with your last sentence given that a neuroscientist is a highly technical field so I sense your frustration with your client. I've experienced similar situations throughout my career and I'm always taken aback when it happens. Often these people are more highly trained than me, they often have higher paying jobs with seemingly more responsibility but somehow they're essentially clueless outside their specific area of expertise.
It seems to me their true expertise comes their ability to learn their specific profession rather than having an a priori interest in science and tech per se, thus they don't instinctively pick up ideas or nuances from other technical professions. As a neuroscientist, your client would have had both high school and some undergraduate physics behind him, so from my perspective it takes a bit of imagining to figure out how he could not have heard of Feynman somewhere along the way. Similarly, even if he didn't know much about JavaScript, it's rather odd that he couldn't have extrapolated concepts from other languages which he must have come across in the pursuit of his profession.
I'm not saying for a moment that as a rule someone skilled in one profession should have a wide knowledge of another (I only have to look at my own limitations in this regard), but your client's limited knowledge does seems strange to me. Almost by definition, a neuroscientist should have a broad interest in other areas of science simply because neuroscience involves so many other scientific disciplines. That's what makes the point of your post all the more interesting. (BTW, it seems to me you were correct in screening the video so I'm not surprised you were kind of bugged off—knowing your client's profession.)
Nevertheless, Feynman is right, sometimes explaining some process or idea to someone who has so little notion or understanding of even conceptually similar ideas means that one cannot fall back to analogies, thus providing a simplified explanation is nigh on impossible. A trite example would be a pianist trying to explain how he/she plays the piano to someone who'd never seen the instrument beforehand.
Your post got me thinking about whether people like your client are more common in professions than I'd have previously thought.
Incidentally, I mentioned in my earlier post that I'd not previously seen this Feynman video as over the years I'd thought I'd seen most of them (and I'm glad to have seen it). Whilst I didn't mention it in my post, I couldn't help but compare Feynman's expansive flamboyant explanation with that of Wilczek's almost dismissive one-liner that a 'field is type of matrix'. Given the complexity of subject matter, perhaps both approaches are apt in the circumstances.
Yeah I think you hit the nail on the head. This guy was clearly smart, but he really had no broad interest in science. He was climbing the neuroscience ladder in exactly like someone would climb any corporate ladder.it was just the career he had happened to choose. He was definitely serious about it.
Non technical probably isn't the right term here, he clearly possessed a lot of technical knowledge. But he was non technical in regards to the project he engaged me on which was to build a a web app for his lab.
Either way it was a dissapointing experience. I was more excited to take that project than any other in my life but by the end I was happy to walk away from it because it wasn't productive.
I think another part of the problem was that this guy had a lot of money to throw around via grants but I don't think it particularly felt like real money to him. I think it was a use it or lose it situation, but he didn't seem very serious about getting return on the investment. Once he realized the project was going to take real effort to manage on his end, he was seemed immediately ready to abandon his sunk cost and move on.
I've not seen that video before and it's a beauty. Here Feynman lives up to his reputation as a showman, as that has to the greatest non-answer of all time to that question. It would be interesting to know how much physics the interviewer actually knew, as it's the same question I ask professional physicists whenever I get a chance.
The trouble with that question is it's just about simplest, most obvious question a layperson can ask yet it is one of the most profound and difficult in physics to answer at any level. QED gives us some wonderfully useful answers, we've the Master himself along with Schwinger, and Tomonaga to thank for that but it still doesn't tell me exactly what that field actually is to my satisfaction.
The matter of static fields, potentials and virtual particles is a vexed and complicated issue and one doesn't have to look much deeper to be at the cutting edge. For instance, I'm still waiting for some genius to give me a full explanation of the Aharonov-Bohm effect (here, it seems we've everything in the mix—charged particles, phase shift, zero electric field, the potentials/fields argument that Feynman mentions, even 'locality' is important—yet it's still not fully resolved to everyone's satisfaction).
I would have loved to hear Feynman's answer if the interviewer had raised the candle and the fridge magnet question, as it's one rung up from the magnetic field question. To remind you, 'why doesn't the fridge magnet's magnetic 'battery' go flat and it can stay indefinitely where it's put, whereas a candle radiates energy and after some hours it runs out?' It's obvious the candle radiates energy away at speed c and soon there's no energy left, but we're also told magnetic fields also radiate at speed c so what gives?
Right, now we're at the crux of the problem—in the thick of it so to speak. We really cannot answer this question without resorting to the depths of magnetostatics—QED and all that that encompasses, near and far fields, static magnetic fields, potentials, virtual particles, permeability, etc. It even raises the question of why c, vacuum permeability, μ, vacuum permittivity, ε, are the values that they are and no one yet knows.
Incidentally, I recall a while ago in the pages of New Scientist a similar question being asked of physicist Frank Wilczek about what actually is a field. His reply was to the effect that it's a 'type of matrix'. At the time, I thought surely he could do better than that. The fact is that at the most fundamental level it's not entirely clear.
Reading Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman! I got the distinct impression that Feynman was smart, dedicated, insightful, and also an insufferable prick. The book was dripping with arrogance.
There's an irony here, too. The performative liberals on Reddit (you know, the "I BELIEVE in SCIENCE!!!" types) will post an article titled "The Toxic Myth of the 10x Engineer", or maybe "Why Nuclear Weapons are Immoral", or even "The American Military Sucks and I Hate It". They will then gleefully dive into a comment thread to join into the cult of personality surrounding an American who worked on nuclear weapons.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. But I never understood it.
I played this video for him as an explanation of why it was difficult to answer that question to someone who didn't know what javascript was. The project didn't last much longer. To be fair by the time I was willing to show him this video, I wasn't particularly interested in keeping the engagement going.
He also was a neuroscientist who didn't know who Feynman was which kind of bugged me.