fiefoe

Feynman continues with great anecdotes:

They didn't believe-like the time we got into an argument as to whether urine just ran out of you by gravity, and I had to demonstrate that that wasn't the case by showing them that you can pee standing on your head.
And Von Neumann gave me an interesting idea: that you don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in. So I have developed a very powerful sense of social irresponsibility as a result of Von Neumann's advice. It's made me a very happy man ever since.
There were all kinds of factions there (in the dormitories for the Manhattan Project), of course - the housewives' faction, the mechanics' faction, the technical peoples' faction, and so on.

Even more interesting is the way he learned things:

They don't learn by understanding; they learn by some other way - by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!
That was a very good way to get educated, working on the senior problems and learning how to pronounce things.
"A map of the cat, sir?" she asked, horrified. "You mean a zoological chart!"
What I saw was an ant and an aphid... Then the juice came out of the back of the aphid. And because it was magnified, it looked like a big, beautiful, glistening ball, like a balloon, because of the surface tension. Because the microscope wasn't very good, the drop was colored a little bit from chromatic aberration in the lens - it was a gorgeous thing! <> The ant took this ball in its two front feet, lifted it off the aphid, and held it. The world is so different at that scale that you can pick up water and hold it!

""Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"" (Reply)