<story><title>When Jeff Bezos decided not to become a physicist [video]</title><url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFnV6EM-wzY</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zw123456</author><text>I love the Feynman Algo. I hold over 60 patents (not bragging) often times colleagues will ask me if I can teach them to be innovative.  After being asked this question a number of times and giving it a lot of thought, the answer I give now is the following:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No, no one can teach you to be innovative or creative, you already are. Humans are the most innovative creatures in the history of this planet, innately, look at all we have created. All you need to do is to un-learn to not be creative. We are all constantly taught, either in school, the military, by our family or by our peers, our company we work for, whatever...  to NOT be creative; to in effect comport. First un-learn that. It will unleash your creative&amp;#x2F;innovative abilities.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Jeff Bezos may not be a physicist but somewhere along his path he learned to stop NOT being innovative.</text></item><item><author>ken</author><text>Also known as: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wiki.c2.com&amp;#x2F;?FeynmanAlgorithm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wiki.c2.com&amp;#x2F;?FeynmanAlgorithm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;In this case, Bezos saw firsthand how a brain teaser could be answered by &amp;quot;seen something similar once before&amp;quot; much more easily than &amp;quot;worked on it on a team for several hours&amp;quot;.  Isn&amp;#x27;t this exactly the sort of brain teaser that we hate seeing in tech interviews?&lt;p&gt;This one was bad enough that Bezos &lt;i&gt;left the field&lt;/i&gt;, yet Amazon (like every other software company) still asks these style of questions of its engineering candidates.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tim333</author><text>The Feynman Algo relied on him putting a lot of work in. His wife&amp;#x27;s divorce complaint:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;He begins working calculus problems in his head as soon as he awakens. He did calculus while driving in his car, while sitting in the living room, and while lying in bed at night.</text></comment>
<story><title>When Jeff Bezos decided not to become a physicist [video]</title><url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFnV6EM-wzY</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zw123456</author><text>I love the Feynman Algo. I hold over 60 patents (not bragging) often times colleagues will ask me if I can teach them to be innovative.  After being asked this question a number of times and giving it a lot of thought, the answer I give now is the following:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No, no one can teach you to be innovative or creative, you already are. Humans are the most innovative creatures in the history of this planet, innately, look at all we have created. All you need to do is to un-learn to not be creative. We are all constantly taught, either in school, the military, by our family or by our peers, our company we work for, whatever...  to NOT be creative; to in effect comport. First un-learn that. It will unleash your creative&amp;#x2F;innovative abilities.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Jeff Bezos may not be a physicist but somewhere along his path he learned to stop NOT being innovative.</text></item><item><author>ken</author><text>Also known as: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wiki.c2.com&amp;#x2F;?FeynmanAlgorithm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wiki.c2.com&amp;#x2F;?FeynmanAlgorithm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;In this case, Bezos saw firsthand how a brain teaser could be answered by &amp;quot;seen something similar once before&amp;quot; much more easily than &amp;quot;worked on it on a team for several hours&amp;quot;.  Isn&amp;#x27;t this exactly the sort of brain teaser that we hate seeing in tech interviews?&lt;p&gt;This one was bad enough that Bezos &lt;i&gt;left the field&lt;/i&gt;, yet Amazon (like every other software company) still asks these style of questions of its engineering candidates.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>candiodari</author><text>I think what Bezos says in the interview is funny, but also very directly clarifies further what you&amp;#x27;re saying. The smartest guy at Princeton solved this problem ...&lt;p&gt;Not because he was actually smart (ok, perhaps a good memory). Not because he was able to do math really fast, or really accurate, or in his head. None of that. NOT EVEN because he figured out this problem on the spot. That was quite simply not it.&lt;p&gt;But because he had solved a metric fuckton of problems before, and then got lucky.&lt;p&gt;I agree with your statement (just got one patent to my name though), but a very important caveat is that you have to learn something (and preferably more than 1 thing) thoroughly before unlearning it. And learning first and then unlearning is vastly different from not learning it at all.</text></comment>