A BBC interviewer asked a Nobel physicist the simplest question in the world: why do two magnets push each other apart. He refused to answer it. What he did instead is the best seven minutes on thinking ever filmed. The man is Richard Feynman, at home in 1983, no... blackboard, no notes, sitting in an armchair. He does not dodge because he cannot answer. He dodges because he wants you to see what the question is actually asking. So he takes an ordinary sentence, that a woman slipped on the ice and broke her hip, and starts asking why, and every answer opens another why, until the ground gives way. Then he turns it around on the interviewer with a question about ice that sounds trivial and is not. The point he arrives at is the uncomfortable one. Every explanation is only a translation into something you already accept without explanation. Magnets have no such translation. There is nothing more familiar than magnetism to reduce magnetism to, which is why every answer you were given at school was a picture, not a reason. It matters more now than it did in 1983. Any tool will hand you a fluent answer in a second. Knowing which questions actually have a bottom is the part that is still yours. One question. Seven minutes. It is in the video.show more

Me, when my wife asks why I didn't complete a house project.

Here is the whole video, 1 hour, 6 minutes, all excellent.

Feynman couldn't bring himself to say "because." 🤭 Not only was he a brilliant physicist, he was an exceptional teacher. And that is a very rare combination.

Feynman didn’t refuse to answer. He refused to give the fake kind of answer most people want.

The smarter you are, the more difficult it is to answer a question. Because you know so many different answers that all apply, that you are not sure which to give to satisfy the source of the question. Puts “ignorance is bliss” into perspective.

me when my girlfriend asks why we can't buy the latest hermes bag

In other words "you wouldn't understand a complete explanation, so I can't explain it to you; the best I could do is give you a crude analogy". However, it's good to keep asking "why" until you get to a "don't know" & everyone should be intellectually curious enough to do so.

Basically what he's telling you is he doesn't have a fucking clue

I’ve always enjoyed reading Feynman. Listening to him is even better.

Anyone who has kids is familiar with the endless drilldown questions. Turns out it's even more annoying when an adult does it.

It would have been simpler - and more honest - to admit that science doesn’t understand magnetic force.

Excellent little video. The comments unwittingly illustrate the very point of what he was attempting to explain…….that they are unable to understand at their current level of understanding.

Years ago I contacted Christopher Sykes, the man who filmed and produced "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" where this clip is from. We had a very long chat about Feynman. Christopher very kindly archived all the footage he had of Feynman on DVD and sent it to me.

A long-winded way of saying “We don’t know”.

This applies not only to magnetism, but to virtually everything. Scientists do not know why particular fundamental interactions exist. They do not even know what an electron actually is. Essentially, all we know is that there are certain observable, repeatable effects that we have agreed to describe using specific terms. But it is impossible to say what truly lies behind them.

At 2:01 he gives the answer. All of the electrons are spinning in the same direction, which creates the force.

Fucking magnets, how do they work?

He is nothing but a pompous arrogant asshat. Belittling an interviewer simply for asking a basic fundamental question that anyone who fully understands could answer so that a child could comprehend, tells me that he himself is a hoax of a man with no ability to defend his stance

This man was my hero growing up. Pure class and a deep and singular intelligence …

Didn’t he also say “if you can’t explain something simply you simply don’t understand it?”

Funny this video popped up on my feed this morning. Last night reading a book to my 3 year old daughter she asked why probably 100 times. I kept answering, even my wife laughed at how patient I was answering each question. His point here that "you have to be in a framework that allows something to be true" strikes me about the innocence of children & why they constantly ask why. They have no framework yet, answering each question is building that framework teaching them things about the world that we as adults take so easily for granted. She also asks the most questions when we're reading. If you're a parent of young kids, I can't emphasize enough that you can't read too many books to your kids. Let them be inquisitive & be patient answering their questions, it's a beautiful thing watching them learn and try to process the world.

He hated this question. He hated it because the answer, the only answer, is this: Because God said so. People literally spend their lives trying to disprove God even as He surrounds us with the Truth of His being. Then, at death, they learn how expensive it was to try that.

He could have saved some time and just shrugged.

Just Brilliant. The thought process. I wish the school science teachers watch this. My school science teachers (alleged teachers) killed whatever was asked outside of the narrow confines of a horrible text book. Puke.

I've watched this exact clip many times over the years, and at first I found it irritating and evasive, even condescending. But I've changed my opinion over time. He left all of us knowing more about the world than we did coming in. Really powerful.

With English captions:

Brilliantly explained.

I think much of the disagreement comes from confusing what science is with what we expect it to be. Science is, above all, a method of inquiry. It is arguably the most successful framework we've developed for understanding nature. At its core, however, it is descriptive rather than ultimate. It builds models that explain observations, make predictions, and can be tested and refined through evidence. That doesn't make science "just" descriptive. Those models have allowed us to uncover remarkably consistent patterns in nature and formulate laws that describe the universe with extraordinary accuracy. But science is not infallible, nor does it claim to be. Genuine science requires us to question every conclusion continuously. Every model remains provisional, open to revision if better evidence or a better explanation emerges. So when someone asks why magnets repel, science can describe the mechanisms involved with great precision. Whether that is the final "why" or simply the deepest explanation currently available is another question entirely. Newtonian mechanics, relativity, and quantum physics are not immutable truths; they are our best descriptions so far. Tomorrow, a deeper theory may unify or even replace parts of them. That is not a weakness of science—it is its greatest strength. Unlike dogma, science is willing to improve itself.

He was a Genius. He actually gained a different side of understanding while he was describing repulsion. He wanted to go deeper, you can almost see him reaching for a piece of chalk….he would then go looking for a blackboard. He wants to write equations. We need Him now.

It makes perfect sense though like he did answer the question iron molecules run a certain direction so when you line them up like we have devices that create magnets by lining up all the particles in a certain direction, does that make sense perfectly answered the question he reminds me a lot of reading Crowley… many of the questions he asks are some of the greatest is extremely intelligent and understands his audience… he’s like I can’t get into advanced mechanics with you because we ultimately don’t understand the answer to these questions so if you were a student, I’d explain that to you but there’s no way I can explain if you like as a common language and understanding For example, Crowley uses a reference where he says that like if you ask a scientific person like what temperature does water boil like we would say it depends on like atmospheric pressure on other circumstances we could be sitting in a chair and say that we’re sitting still and we haven’t moved in three hours, but ultimately like we’re on the spinning ball it’s moving through space or reading a sun so we’ve moved like thousands of miles it’s perspective… Why is a question… the word quest is in the word question for a reason like you’re trying to discover something you’re going on a journey. You’re on a quest. You’re on the path up the tree of life… How many people go through life just unquestioning except what is given to them were perceiving reality from their experiences and then equator their perspective with everyone else’s Gravity and magnetic fields are not understood there are entire portions of the Milky Way galaxy that when looked at in different spectrums it’s like everything is perspective. He explains perfectly well imo the reason why magnets repel… … because the do that’s “why”.. What do you mean “why” 93. 93/93 666

Yah but the interviewer never asked why. He simply asked what is going on.

WTF is he talking about? Essentially he's just saying, you're too stupid to hear my answer

This actually is a good reframe on how to build up to the why questions. Why questions, require either knowledge or an understanding of your prior experiences in order to answer.

This is more about the frustration of explanation itself than it is about the issue at hand. It took him a few seconds to actually answer the question when he explained why your hand can't go through your arm, and a magnet just magnifies that effect further from its surface. Like anything else, one can further ask why does the mechanic of the explanation exist. But it's a non-issue. It's not that we blindly accept certain things, it's that we understand them already. All these things can be reduced down to the laws of physics at which point we ask why the laws of physics exist, at which point we get into theology or simply saying we can't and do not know.

he refused to answer it because he didnt know the answer....nobody but ken wheeler has a clue whats going on with magnetism. fact checked and verified