Feynman Computer Science Lecture – Hardware, Software, Heuristics (1985) [video]

At 1:08:35 Feynman tries to put his glasses in his t-shirt, thinking he has on a dress shirt with a pocket. He plays it off by rubbing the glasses against his t-shirt. Pretty awesome how he's still making me smile and chuckle from the grave. Hats off to you Mr. Feynman. Your output may have been finite, but its effect is limitless. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWGGDXe5MA&t=1h8m35s

Happy to see these videos posted, they are exceptional. He clearly understood this stuff at a very deep level. I recall reading a story somewhere about his collaboration with Danny Hillis at Thinking Machines (I think?) and applying his unique problem solving skills to the issue of coordinating so many individual processors to perform a job. He wasn't a "computer scientist" but he apparently applied some unique ideas that helped significantly. Edit: Here's the link…

Watched this the other day, good layman's introduction to what computers actually do. Feynman has a serious skill at explaining complex topics in simple terms that anyone can understand. love to watch Feynman's lectures even if I have a fairly good understanding of the topic, such an entertaining lecturer.

The comments about the war games is interesting, because I have heard of these same results from defense blogs, and there the opinions are not usually so dismissive (though of course they're citing them to advance their point), in that a lot of people find the idea of small attack boats with a single gun a compelling strategy that the US could never use (for PR/morale reasons), but posit that these are the exact sort of tactics that others like…