Creating and Understanding

The following line was found scrawled on Richard Feynman’s blackboard after he died:

“What I cannot create, I do not understand.”

It would be a fitting gravestone epitaph, coming from someone who was so fanatical about understanding things.

Feynman’s blackboard at Caltech

Unfortunately, the corollary, “What I can create, I do understand” is not always true. We only need to turn to modern developments in Artificial Intelligence to find an important example of this. Continue reading →