[chrismatic]

Not entirely without reason though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKpj2ISQAc

[ecshafer]

That video is such an extremely weak argument. Sure Feynman probably has more fame than he is merited. But he is still one of the most influential physicists. He just also happened to be entertaining and wrote some books. Personality and self-marketing makes a difference, welcome to society.

[chrismatic]

I'd recommend that you watch the entire video, because the point is that he did not even write any of those books.

[poulpy123]

I cannot take seriously someone pretending that Feynman was a sham

[cduzz]

Feynman did physics and told stories.

He was very serious about his physics and wrote that stuff down.

Someone else wrote down his stories. His stories were probably often not entirely accurate, and whomever wrote down his stories also probably had an agenda. So books "by feynman" should be treated with some caution since they're written not by feynman.

His physics and science are obviously not "a sham". It is in fact possible for someone to be great and awful at the same time.

[chrismatic]

The video points out that the legacy not the man is a sham.

[ecshafer]

There is just a big market for "X great person of the past was actually awful" and "what you learned in school is actually a conspiracy". That these things get spread like wildfire whenever they are brought up, because some people thinks it make them seem smarter I assume. They also drop all introspection or skepticism about it. I would put "Feynman is actually awful" in the same bucket as the "Mercator project is a racist conspiracy" (No one owns a globe apparently) or the multitude of "actually x woman is responsible for scientific advancement, not the man" stories that get spread around. They all fail at any real analysis.