Generative AI and Pseudographic Feynmans

The ability to train generative AI to impersonate humans is an example of something that can be done now because of new technology but which perhaps should never be done. 

I watched part of a video that is allegedly a lecture by Richard Feynman on why it will be impossible for explorers to Mars to return to Earth. In fact, there are many of these fake Feynman lectures on YouTube. They apparently do identify in the first seconds that they are an AI generated voice or graphic. They also match Feynman’s spoken delivery style, his turns of phrase and lecture pacing. I now appreciate the problem in textual forensics that confronted medieval scholars when they sorted out Pseudo-Aristotle and Pseudo-Dionysius.

By Greg Alleman from LinkedIn to YouTube.
Alleman has a career as an aerospace engineer.

These fake videos are intentional falsehoods which by their nature will replicate themselves particularly and others in general by creating an ecosystem that supports those lifeforms. Based on what I know about the evolution of life on Earth, I can only say that while some generative AI may be beneficial and others neutral, the impersonation of real humans is toxic. Videos from writers using generative AI will thrive creating and nourishing populations of pseudographia. It is inevitable that students who want to learn from The Feynman Lectures on Physics will land on one of these pseudo-Feynman lectures.

Two More Fake Feynmans

Yet Another Pair of Fake Feynmans

It is also true that each of us is responsible for determining the truth or falsehood of any assertion, even of our own assumptions. I never saw a P. F. Chang’s until I moved to Austin in 2011. I thought that it was local. I first saw a parody of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks as a hip or campy wall poster back in the late 1960s before I learned the original in an art history class at Case-Western Reserve University in the summer of 1969. The first YouTube video I saw was Weird Al Yankovic’s “White and Nerdy” in 2005. A classmate in a criminal justice class at Washtenaw Community College showed it to me and I really identified with it. The kids in the class explained the other half of it. 

One Archive of Genuine Old Feynman Videos

I enjoy surfing YouTube videos because I like to admire the creative works of others and I learn a lot from them. Looking for printing and typography, I found Elle Cordova’s “Fonts Hanging Out” and “Punctuation Marks Hanging Out.” I also watch Mathologer and Numberphile and I have been going to sleep with David Miller’s series, Quantum Mechanics for Scientists and Engineers in my earphones. (I am testing hypnopedia. I will post here when I can speak the vocabulary.) I also subscribe to Rob Words, Audiomachine, Microbe Hunter, Jordan B. Peterson, and to Dwarkesh Patel interviewing Sarah Paine, among a dozen others.  

A friend who got tired of the AI-created misrepresentations of historical fact warned me about YouTube. Now I understand.

Granted the warning, these simulacrae could prove valuable. Perhaps we cannot have too many copies or reconstructions. Civilization is fragile and literacy is even more delicate. 

Aristotle’s own library was regarded as a royal treasure by the Macedonian ruling family. When they fell out amongst themselves, the scrolls were buried to keep them from competing claimants to the throne. When they were recovered, they were found to have been eaten through. Later scholars reconstructed them, but not well. Fortunately, those were not the only copies; Christian monasteries had preserved others. The Renaissance began when Petrarch and Dante visited those scriptoria to recover the lost writings of antiquity. However, they started with Latin, which they could read. Greek texts did not reblossom until the Renaissance took root in Venice, where Greek was known. Since then, scholars have improved the correctness of our reconstructions. In addition, other works have been unearthed. Aristotle’s lecture “On the Athenian Constitution” was rediscovered among the Oxyrhyncus Papyri. Similarly, in our time The Archimedes Palimpsest was recovered and lately one more page was found astray. But all of that only provides more evidence about what we know to be a huge body of lost works. “Oxyrhynchus yielded a huge random mass of everyday papers — private letters and shopping lists, tax returns and government circulars ... maybe 50,000 in all.” — https://oxyrhynchus.web.ox.ac.uk/waste-paper-city The Archimedes Palimpsest is another recovery with story of several losses and rescues**. 

(https://archimedespalimpsest.org/). So, these AI simulations could prove valuable.

The reason that I listen to Prof. David A. B. Miller’s lectures on quantum mechanics is that I found the textbook in the stacks at the Kuehn Math, Physics, and Astronomy Library when I was working at the University of Texas. It was perfect for me, a good midrange guide for college sophomores with clear narratives that are integrated with the relevant and necessary mathematics and instructive problems. I looked for a video and found the series. 

Image from Amazon. The book is no longer available
from Cambridge Press. Miller has a new volume out,
Modern Physics for Engineers and Scientists 
https://purl.stanford.edu/hr256mp8317

On that basis, imagine that some catastrophe has erased much of our collective electronic memory. Disastrous as the losses would be, they could not be complete. A later generation could scan the books and other printed media and also use AI to rebuild  the videos from fragments. The future could enjoy reconstructions of significant portions of our achievements while inevitably deploring the losses which they know only from inferences. 

** On 6 March 2026, the Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik reported the discovery of a lost page of the manuscript, now held by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Blois. The text corresponds to page 123 of the Palimpset's version of the On The Sphere and Cylinder, Book 1, Proposition 39-41. The reverse depicts a painting of Daniel surrounded by two lions.— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

About Richard P. Feynman

Genius by James Gleick 

Feynman's Rainbow by Leonard Mlodinow 

Observable Genius 

Merry Newtonmas 2019 

About Generative Artificial Intelligence

All Volitional Beings Deserve Rights

ArmadilloCon versus Artificial Intelligence

Invisible Cheating and Visible Rights

Digital Literacy and Artificial Intelligence

Feynman’s Rainbow by Leonard Mlodinow

Who gave the first correct explanation of the rainbow? Descartes.  Why did he? Because he perceived its beauty.

Feynman’s Rainbow:
A Search for Beauty in Physics
and Life
by Leonard Mlodinow  (Warner Books, 2003).

Sandwiched between layers of cute Feynman stories are Mlodinow’s own reflections on his path to increased self-awareness.  He seems to have been pretty self-aware all along, but he ran into a couple of hard edges in the dark living room of life: having achieved a professorship at Caltech, he was not sure that he could live up to the achievements that took him there; then there was the collision with cancer.  Through it all, he had obtained permission to tape record some of his time with Richard Feynman. 

"The myth of the finches obscures the qualities that were really responsible for Darwin’s success: the grit to formulate his theory and gather evidence for it; the creativity to seek signs of evolution in existing animals, rather than, as others did, in the fossil record; and the open-mindedness to drop his belief in creationism when the evidence against it piled up.

"The mythical stories we tell about our heroes are always more romantic and often more palatable than the truth. But in science, at least, they are destructive, in that they promote false conceptions of the evolution of scientific thought.Of the tale of Newton and the apple, the historian Richard S. Westfall wrote, “The story vulgarizes universal gravitation by treating it as a bright idea ... A bright idea cannot shape a scientific tradition.” Science is just not that simple and it is not that easy." "It is, In Fact, Rocket Science" by Leonard Mlodinow New York Times, May 15, 2015, here.

http://leonardmlodinow.com

In this running monologue, Mlodinow also explains some physics. He elucidates string theory better than he does quantum chromodynamics, though only because he says more about the former. Other paragraphs open windows to the failed S-Matrix theory, and the more successful quantum optics. You can crawl through those windows (or find doors) via textbooks, articles, and online content, if you wish. I have not. But they are interesting here because they illuminate aspects of Leonard Mlodinow.

In Fahrenheit 451, Montag attempts to explain literature by saying, “Inside each book is a man.”  Herein you will find Richard P. Feynman (of course), but as experienced by Leonard Mlodinow. And, indeed, this book is a long evening or several lunches with someone who is as fascinated with the internal world of atoms as he is with his own internality.  It goes on my physics shelf with the Feynman books.

Books by Leonard Mlodinow

• Subliminal: how your unconscious mind rules your behavior (2012),
• War of The Worldviews: science vs. spirituality (2011), co-authored with Deepak Chopra.
• The Grand Design (2010), co-authored with Stephen Hawking.
• The Drunkard’s Walk: the story of randomness and its role in our lives (2008)
• A Briefer History of Time (2005), as co-author with Stephen Hawking.
• Feynman’s Rainbow: a search for beauty in physics and in life (2003)
• Euclid’s Window: The story of geometry from parallel lines to hyperspace (2001)
• The Last Dinosaur (2004), co-authored with Matt Costello
• Titanic Cat (2004), co-authored with Matt Costello

"Leonard Mlodinow (born 1954) from Chicago, Illinois is an author and physicist who wrote the Star Trek: The Next Generation second season episode "The Dauphin" with writing partner Scott Rubenstein. He also worked as story editor on the episodes from "The Outrageous Okona" to "The Royale" with Rubenstein.

In 2009, Mlodinow penned an essay for Newsweek entitled "Confessions of a Star Trek Writer," which discussed his work on Star Trek, his co-workers in the writer's room (like former police officer Burton Armus), and the "culture of free thinking" which has driven Star Trek to four decades of success.  --  Memory Alpha here. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Genius by James Gleick 
The First Newtonmas

ELI the ICE Man

Science in the Middle Ages

Is Physics a Science?

Nerd Nation (5)

The Scientific Method

On the Galt’s Gulch Online discussion board, I went around with one of my Objectivist comrades on whether or not publication is required. I understand the “Crusoe Concept” – you do not need other people to engage in reasoned discovery.  That is why I assert that “publication” begins with your own notebook. More to the point, it should not end there. Sir Robert Boyle argued for publicity as the avenue of replication over 350 years ago in The Sceptical Chymist.

May-Britt Moser
Nobel Prize in
Physiology /Medicine
2014

However you formulate it, the goal is to discover truth. It requires curiosity, insight, and bravery – the willingness to be wrong.  Richard P. Feynman was adamant about not fooling yourself. His commencement address, Cargo Cult Science, is a classic admonition against creating pseudo-science.

These statements of the scientific method show a range of expression, from astute to concrete-bound.  Some are from universities, one is  from a business, and the rest are from interested amateurs. It is most succinctly stated in three steps by the biology department of the University of Cincinnati.  The last presentation from an environmental action group is a bit on the "Zen" side, but can be useful as a guide. 

"Science Buddies" 

§  Ask a Question

§  Do Background Research

§  Construct a Hypothesis

§  Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment

§  Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion

§  Communicate Your Results

www.sciencebuddies.org/mentoring/project_scientific_method.shtml

University of Rochester (New York)

Marie Curie
Nobel Prizes in
Physics (1903)
and
Chemistry (1911)

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.

2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.

3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.

4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/phy_labs/AppendixE/AppendixE.html

University of California Riverside

 1. Observe some aspect of the universe.

2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed.

3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions.

4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between theory and experiment and/or observation.

http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node6.html

Clermont College, University of Cincinnati

• Observe 
• Question 
• Test

http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio104/sci_meth.htm

Biology-4-Kids

• Hypothesis
• Experimentation
• Refine the Idea
• Experimentation
• Final Statement

http://www.biology4kids.com/files/studies_scimethod.html

From Norman Wilson Edmund, the founder of Edmund Scientific, arguably the premier mail order retailer of scientific supplies to the general public.

Steps or Stages of the Scientific Method

1. Curious Observation

2. Is There a Problem?

3. Goals & Planning

4. Search, Explore, & Gather the Evidence

5. Generate Creative & Logical Alternative Solutions

Carol W. Greider (L) and Elizabeth H. Blackburn (R)
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014

6. Evaluate the Evidence

7. Make the Educated Guess (Hypothesis)

8. Challenge the Hypothesis

9. Reach a Conclusion

10. Suspend Judgment

11.Take Action

Supporting Ingredients

 12. Creative, Non-Logical, Logical & Technical Methods

 13. Procedural Principals & Theories

 14. Attributes & Thinking Skills
www.scientificmethod.com

http://scientificmethod.com/index2.html

Edmund Scientific Corporation was a company based in Barrington, New Jersey, USA that specialized in supplying surplus optics and other items via its mail order catalog and Factory Store. During four decades from the 1940's to the 1970's Edmund Scientific was virtually unique in its offerings to scientific hobbyists.
-- Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Scientific_Corporation

Southeastern Louisiana University 

1. identification of problem

2. hypothesis

3. deductive reasoning- decide on procedure: what would be observed if hypothesis was true? how can it be tested?

4. data collection and analysis

5. derive conclusion: never prove a hypothesis-- confirm or fail to confirm

http://www2.selu.edu/Academics/Education/EDF600/Mod3/sld001.htm

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
1964

From the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair

• Be curious, choose a limited subject, ask a question; identify or originate/define a problem. It is important that this question be a 'testable' question - one in which data is taken and used to find the answer. A testable question can further be identified as one in which one or more variables can be identified and tested to see the impact of that variable on the original set of conditions. The question should not merely be an 'information' question where the answer is obtainable through literature research.
• Review published materials related to your problem or question. This is called background research.
• Evaluate possible solutions and guess why you think it will happen (hypothesis).
• Experimental design (procedure). In designing the experiment, it is critical that only one variable - a condition that may effect the results of the experiment - is changed at a time. This makes the experiment a 'controlled' experiment.
• Challenge and test your hypothesis through your procedure of experimentation (data collection) and analysis of your data. Use graphs to help see patterns in the data.
• Draw conclusions based on empirical evidence from the experiment.
• Prepare your report and exhibit.
• Review and discuss the findings with peer group/ professional scientists
• New question(s)may arise from your discussions.

http://www.sciserv.org/isef/students/scientific_method.asp

National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis 

• Make a guess.  Hypothesis.
• Take a look.  Observations.
• Write it down. Data.
• Make it a picture.  Graphs.
• Decide what it means. Conclusions.

http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Genius 

ELI the ICE Man: Science and Technology 

George Boole's Laws of Thought 

De Magnete by William Gilbert 

Is Physics a Science? 

Genius

“Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those which are there.” – Richard Feynman

James Gleick’s biography begins by correcting some of the myths about Feynman.  Feynman created some of them himself, of course.  Overall, the book is yet another tribute.  Gleick fills in the narrative that Feynman left out of the two popularizations of his life, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think? 

Underlying and beyond the stories Gleick explains the physics, as best as can be done, in colloquial English.  Motivated, I browsed the stacks at the Austin Public Library and checked out Quantum Field Theory Demystified by David McMahon and Understanding Quantum Mechanics by Roland Omnès.  Both were approximately the kind of book a physics major would read over the summer before the sophomore year.  Though I renewed the check-out, after five weeks, I still did not get much, but gleaned what I could.  Relevant here is the fact that just as the Pythagorean Theorem can be shown synthetically and analytically, the truths in quantum mechanics can be expressed with three different methods: wave equations, statistical equations, and Feynman path integrals.  Gleick devotes considerable effort to explaining Feynman’s work, given that the intended audience is people who like physics, but really do not understand it. 

Feynman’s influence on the wider culture can be measured by the Austin Public Library’s catalog of 30 entries (granted that several are both books and talking books). (Alphabetical ignoring leading articles: The Meaning of It All under M.)

• The Beat of A Different Drum: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by Jagdish Mehra
• The Best Mind since Einstein DVD 530.092 F435B
• Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of A Curious Character
• The Character of Physical Law by Richard P. Feynman
• Feynman (Graphic Novel - 2011) by Jim Ottaviani
• Feynman Lectures on Physics: Vol. 1, Mainly Mechanics, Radiation, and Heat
• Feynman Lectures on Physics: Vol. 2, Mainly Electromagnetism and Matter
• Feynman Lectures on Physics: Vol. 3, Quantum Mechanics
• Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets around the Sun by David L. Goodstein
• The Feynman Processor: Quantum Entanglement and the Computing Revolution by G. J. Milburn
• Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick
• The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of A Citizen Scientist by Richard P. Feynman
• No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman
• Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Collected Letters of Richard P. Feynman
• The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman
• QED : the Strange Theory of Light and Matter  by Richard P. Feynman
• QED: A Play by Peter Parnell
• Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science by Lawrence Maxwell Krauss
• Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science CD 530.092 F435K
• Richard Feynman: A Life in Science by John R. Gribbin
• A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life by Leonard Mlodinow
• Six Easy Pieces: CD 530 FE
• Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics, Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
• Six Not-so-easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-time by Richard P. Feynman
• "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" (CD 530.092 F435F) (All copies in use)
• "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of A Curious Character (All copies in use)
• Tuva or Bust! Richard Feynman's Last Journey by Ralph Leighton
• What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of A Curious Character

 The Character of Physical Law came from a series of lectures for a general audience at Cornell.  But if you read the narrative in The Feynman Lectures on Physics, you hear the same tone of voice.  His graduation address on “Cargo Cult Science” is another example of subtle ideas presented unequivocally for a general audience. Videos of Feynman are on YouTube. 

In Feynman’s Lost Lecture Feynman says that he wanted to show his class how Newton derived his proof of Kepler’s Laws.  He could not do it.  Feynman could not work out for himself, independently, the geometry that Newton knew.  Calculus makes everything so much easier – and so much more mathematics has been discovered – that we no longer learn geometry in such depth. 

Wikipedia provides the best explanation of the Unit Circle.  No trigonometry book today presents the expanse and detail that I learned 50 years ago.  Of course high school mathematics has been dumbed down by the Soviet agriculture model of education.  More to the point, perhaps, today’s crafts workers no longer compute slopes in 32nds of an inch. With calculators and computers we have other things to do with our time.

But Feynman did not.  He thought long and hard about physics, filling notebooks with ideas that should have been published.  Some were.  Other physicists made some of the same discoveries.  It was inevitable.  After constructing an animated narrative about Feynman, Gleick pauses to wonder about genius.  Other Nobel laureate physicists identified Feynman as special.  What does that mean?  What is genius?  Ultimately, Gleick has no answer, though he does offer answers (plural). 

The word genius as we understand it comes from the Enlightenment. Prior to that, a genius was only a jin or jinni, that is, a spirit; and it usually represented the Spirit of the People. (We know this, also, from old numismatic catalogs.)  Only through the latter 1700s as romanticism evolved did the word apply to the spirit of an individual.  Also, of course, at this time, that spirit was ineffable, not to be reduced to causal explanation.  Later, genius was associated, compared, and contrasted with madness.  Today, we have no objective measure of mere intelligence.   So, all we can say of genius is that you know it when you see it, the same test that differentiates pornography from art.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Observable Genius
Where All the Children are Above Average
The Sokal Affair
Patterns in Pi

Why Evidence is Not Enough

Generally, people rated authors as experts when the views coincided with their own. Kahan and his team created three authors and their books. All three had the same high level of academic standing. (Doctorates from major schools.) In every case, two different, opposing views were written for each author and randomly shown to subjects. The topics were gun control, nuclear power plants, and global warming.

Originally published by the Yale Law School as "Research Paper #205: Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus by Dan M. Kahan, Hank Jenkins-Smith and Donald Braman." The paper can be downloaded from the site of our comrades at Mother Jones who offer it here.

This is really just another arithmetic validation of what we know as the "confirmation bias" and the "attribution fallacy." Richard Feynman warned young scientists about the need for ruthless honesty in his famous speech on "Cargo Cult Science." (Available from the CalTech Engineering and Science Library here.)

In short, we tend to agree with and thereby validate experts who agree with us. When presented with facts opposed to our commitments, we denigrate the status of the provider. This ties in with another theme: The Big Sort by Bill Bishop. Over the past generation, Americans have come to socialize only with those who agree with them politically. In the 1960 Presidential election, Kennedy won over Nixon by about 1 vote per precinct, and largely, it was just that: a nation mostly divided narrowly near the middle. Now, precincts tend to be overwhelmingly Republican or Democrat.

It is not just gerrymandering (though there is that), but the fact that people choose to live among those whose political values already mirror their own. The research data show that this correlation is strongest among those with more education. The guys on the bowling team might disagree and still hang out; their bosses on the golf links do not.

Today, perhaps more than a third of working American adults hold bachelor degrees, with the master's being the new bachelor's. University education apparently failed to achieve the lofty goals of Karl Popper and Mark Van Doren two generations ago for a society open to ideas, whose participants benefited from a liberal education embracing literature, mathematics, science, and fine arts.

The blog OrgTheory is written by sociologists of economics, Brayden King, Fabio Rojas, and others. On April 11, 2011, Brayden King posted "When Evidence Isn't Convincing." It summarized research by Daniel Kahan and his colleagues.  Reading that and following the links to the original paper, I posted an earlier version of this blog article to the Objectivist site, Rebirth of Reason.

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