EINSTSTEIN Q&A SOCIAL

1
Dear Dr.Einstein:
My friends tease me about my crazy hair. I’m worried I won’t get a job. Did you ever get in trouble because of your hair?

Dear Belle:
I’m probably not the best person to ask about hair because I mostly ignore my own. “If I were to start taking care of my grooming, I would no longer be my own self… so to hell with it. I have reached an age when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don’t have to. When I was young I found out the big toe always ends up making a hole in a sock. So I stopped wearing socks.” Even when I met with President Roosevelt at the White House. But I sympathize with your concern. Wait until you’re settled in a fire-proof job before you start experimenting with your appearance. That’s what I did. Always be yourself—unless you’re a fool. In that case, you should be someone else.

****

3
Dear Dr. Einstein:
What is the greatest invention of all time?

Dear “invention”:
I wish I had said it. People attribute witty or wise sayings to me as a form of flattery, or as a way of exaggerating my fame and enhancing my already unearned reputation for doing what comes natural to me. People quote me as saying that the most powerful force in the Universe, the greatest invention of all time, is “compound interest”. I’m not sure I actually said this. But as the Italians say: “If it’s not true then it’s well-invented”.

****

5
Dear Dr. Einstein:
Did you like being famous?

Dear Cosmo:
No. At first it was amusing. Being a celebrity quickly became a nuisance. I call it “celebrity fatigue”. Reporters asked to interview me. I told them I was not Dr. Einstein. They said, “Yes, you are. We recognize you from your newspaper photos”. I said: “Who should know better…me, or you?” Or I told interviewers “People tell me that I resemble Dr. Einstein”. I also avoided reporters by dressing sloppily, and letting my hair grow wild.

Here’s a picture of me wearing a Hopi Indian head-dress! Now, why should I be honored for doing what comes easily and naturally to me? I’m not an Indian Chief — but according to Hopi folk-lore and culture, I am. Who told them about me? Why did they believe it? I’m sure the Indian Chief had to earn his head-dress. Just imagine what he had to do. But I did nothing to earn this honor.

And of course anyone who is sufficiently popular or notorious as I am can become victimized by such deceptive zealous interviewers.

Here’s an example…
One day, a gentleman of the press comes to me and asks me to give him a few details concerning my best friend, a Mr. X. Amazed, and maybe a bit annoyed by the intrusion on my privacy, I say: “My dear friend Mr. X is a cheerful straight-forward man, much liked by all his friends. He can find a bright side to any situation. His enterprise and industry know no bounds; his job takes up his entire energies. He is devoted to his family, and lays everything he possesses at his wife’s feet.”

And here’s what this excitable sensationalist reporter writes for his newspaper:

“Mr. X takes nothing seriously. He has the knack of making people like him, chiefly because he flatters everyone. He is such a slave to his profession that he has no time – doubtless no inclination – for intellectual pursuits. He is weakly indulgent to his wife; in fact he is entirely under her thumb, mere putty in her hands.”

So how do you think I felt about this cheap parody of what I said? I took the reporter’s question seriously, and I end up looking like a buffoon. I can assure you: I’m not a buffoon. I’m a seeker after cosmic beauty, an appreciator of the orderly laws of the Universe. Just look at this cartoon from a century ago. It shows newspaper reporters peddling fake news, cheap sensation, humbug news! That’s what they’re really like! Prevaricators! Maybe they flatter you to get your attention… But watch out! They’re slimy phonies. And all because of the fame game. That’s why I say my secret of happiness is “read no newspapers!”

A good day, for me, is spent at the black-board or at my desk, smoking my pipe, and pondering the mysteries and meanings of life… the harmonies of the spheres, cosmology, the physics of black holes, gravitational waves, and so on. I’ve often thought that the hurly-burley of every-day life is so stressful. “I have always loved my solitude, a trait which tends to increase with age. The monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” What’s unpredictable and changeable is often the least important in my life. But what is most important in life is what does not change: the eternal verities…the laws of nature, love, justice, truth, beauty.

****

7
Dear Dr.Einstein:
Friends call me the “class clown”. I love making people laugh. I say or do dumb things spontaneously. But now when I want people to take me seriously, they won’t. Help!

Dear Horatio:
Well, hello “class clown”. I have a soft spot in my heart for your ‘problem’…if it is a problem. I see humor as a great gift. A joke is the shortest path from the boredom of here and now to an instant vacation. “Once you understand that the Universe is matter expanding into nothingness, wearing stripes with plaid becomes easy.”

When my sister Maja was born, I was two and a half years old. I was told I would have a new toy to play with. Upon seeing her for the first time, I said: “Yes. But where are the wheels?”

So you see, I myself was something of a “smart-aleck” or “wise-guy”. In school, I remember once a teacher made a mistake in counting, so I said, “There are three kinds of teachers: those who can count…and those who can’t.” For this I was sent to the headmaster to learn respect. It didn’t help. Eventually, “to punish me for challenging authority, the Fates made me an authority.”

****

9
Dear Dr. Einstein:
How hard is it to be a theoretical physicist?

Dear ‘theoretical physicist’:
Is that what you want to be? “The scientific theorist is not to be envied. Because ‘Nature’, or more precisely ‘Experiment’, is not a very friendly judge of a theorist’s work. In fact, it often seems to be your Enemy. It never says “Yes” to a theory. In most favorable cases, it says “Maybe”, which often really means “No”. And in the great majority of cases it says, simply, “No”. Think twice before you decide to become a theorist! How wretchedly inadequate a theoretical physicist as he stands before Nature—and before his students!” If I had to choose my career all over again, I would probably be a musician, since I get great pleasure from playing the violin.

****

11
Dear Dr.Einstein:
Do you ever worry about what people say or think or write about you?

Dear ‘worrier’:
“Since the light deflection result became public, such a cult has been made out of me that I feel like a pagan idol. There have also been a bucketful of such brazen lies and utter fictions published about me that I would long since have gone to my grave if I had let myself pay attention to them. I console myself the Time has a sieve, through which these foolish remarks will run into the ocean of oblivion. It never occurred to me that every casual remark of mine would be snatched up and recorded. So another reason to crawl into my shell. Despite being an old gypsy, nevertheless, I still have a tendency to respectability inherent in old age.”

As I told my good friend Elisabeth, the Queen Mother of Belgium: “Because of a peculiar property I have acquired, anything I do is likely to develop into a ridiculous comedy”. “Yesterday idolized, today hated, tomorrow forgotten, and the day after tomorrow promoted to Jewish sainthood.” This seems to be my destiny, my bashert as we say in Yiddish.

“With fame I became more and more stupid.” People always wanted a piece of me. Advice. On any topic: politics, international relations, philosophy, art. I kept getting invited to dinners and for interviews. “You can’t go wrong quoting Einstein”, reporters said. I developed a strange sort of King Midas touch. Everything he touched turned into gold. Everything I said turned into print.

“An awareness of my limitations pervades me all the more keenly because my faculties have been quite overrated since a few consequences of general relativity theory have stood the test.”

****
13
Dear Dr. Einstein:
I never know what to do or say in public situations. I’m anxious figuring out how the other person is seeing me, what they think of me, instead of just being myself.

Dear Linus:
I have put my foot in my mouth in public because I was interviewed so many times. For example, when asked about Americans I foolishly said, “American men, though they are hard-working, are nothing more than toy dogs of their women, who like to spend money and wrap themselves in veils of excess.” This insult was not forgotten for a long time. However, I also said that “smiles on the faces of Americans are symbolic of their greatest assets: friendliness, self-confidence, optimism!”

When I was in my twenties, I worried and wondered what people thought of me. When I was in my forties, I didn’t care what they said or thought about me. When I reached my sixties, I discovered they were not always talking or thinking of me at all. In my seventies, I cannot hear what they are saying at all. So maybe you just wait until the problem solves itself by fatigue, death, or “benign neglect”.

****

15
Dear Dr.Einstein:
Are you religious? Do you believe in God?

Dear ‘religious”:
“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe…a spirit vastly superior to that of humans.” With our modest powers, we must feel humble in the face of this mystery. I believe in a cosmic beauty and the experience of the mysterious.

“In my opinion, to know that what is impenetrable really exists, revealing itself as the highest wisdom and most radiant beauty…this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.” I do not believe in actual physical immortality, despite the notion that some individuals (like Dr. Rosen) consider me spiritually immortal. * *(People go to houses of worship for different reasons: Cohen goes to synagogue to talk to God; Schwartz goes to synagogue to talk to Cohen.)

****

17
Dear Dr. Einstein:
Is it true what you said about the wireless telegraph?

Dear “telegraph”:
You mean this? “The wireless telegraph is very similar to a very long cat, where you pull its tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is exactly the same — only there is no cat.” Well, as I said before, if it’s not true, it’s well-invented. Sounds like something I could have said. People attribute lots of wise sayings to me I never said, or forgot I said.

For example, my so called ‘rules of work’: “1. Out of clutter, find simplicity; 2. Out of discord, find harmony; 3. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” Maybe I said this and forgot. There were 897 books about me and relativity in the U.S. Library of Congress, 19 of them by yours truly. You think I remember everything I said or wrote?

19
Dear Dr. Einstein:
Do you see connections between art and science?

Dear ‘connections’:
“Science is conveyed in the language of logic. Art is portrayed through connections not accessible to the conscious mind and recognized intuitively as meaningful. Common to both is the loving devotion to whatever transcends our personal concerns. I have just enough intelligence to see how inadequate my intelligence is when confronted with the transcendence of art and science and what exists.” “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility… The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.”

****

21
Dear Dr. Einstein:
I like to read science fiction. Do you?

Dear “science fiction”:
I believe that people should not read science fiction because it distorts science and gives people the illusion of understanding science. Facts are stranger than fiction. For example: “Mass tells space-time how to curve, and space-time tells mass how to move.”

****

23
Dear Dr. Einstein:
How do I walk my own path in life?

Dear ‘path’:
“The life of an individual has meaning only insofar as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful. Life is sacred…it is the supreme value. Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”

****

25
Dear Dr. Einstein:
How do I get people to take my ideas seriously? To treat me as a person? To maintain my own self-esteem?

Dear ‘seriously’:
“Anyone who reads too much and uses her brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.” Vicarious living through others’ ideas is not as engaging as developing one’s own authentic “voice”, one’s own worldview, one’s own set of opinions. I remember hearing someone say “Oh, New York City: That’s the place where they quote the New York Times back and forth to each other every day and call it ’conversation’”.

****

27
Dear Dr. Einstein:
Are you afraid of dying? Should I be?

Dear “afraid”:
“I wish to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share. When it is time to go, I will do it elegantly”. But I am at an advanced age when almost everything I wanted to do I did. “I lived long enough to learn to be happy through the good fortunes and joys of my friends.” I hope and pray that you have accomplished all you set out to do. And that you’ll live a long and productive life. “A simple and unassuming life is good both physically and mentally for everybody.”

The ingredients of success are “work” plus “play” plus “keeping your mouth shut”. However, “becoming a person of value is more important than becoming a success.” If arrange your life so that your work has given substance to your life and the lives of others, then you can leave life gracefully. “I have firmly resolved to bite the dust, when my time comes, with a minimum of medical assistance, and up to then I will sin to my wicked heart’s content.”

****

29
Dear Dr. Einstein:
Do you have any advice about dealing with intimacy and the opposite sex? And sex education?

Dear “intimacy”:
The Japanese characters for “relativity principle” are very similar to those for “love” and “sex”. Hence I was received with great enthusiasm when I visited Japan. I have been married twice. I conclude that “marriage is the unsuccessful attempt to make something lasting out of an incident”. When I was rejected by the opposite sex, “I decided to seek in the stars that which was denied to me on Earth.” I have had some personal experience in these matters. I am not an expert, however. ACTUALLY, I WAS SO FOCUSED ON MY WORK THAT I WAS PROBABLY NOT ATTENTIVE ENOUGH TO MY WIFE AND TO MY CHILDREN. Gravitation cannot be held responsible for falling in love. I would say that the most important attitude to adopt is “no secrets!”.

***

31
Dear Dr.Einstein:
How do you think? Do you have any pointers that might help us think smarter?

Dear “thinker”:
I find it hard to explain my thought patterns. They are often unconscious and spontaneous. “The words of the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought.”

“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of imagination has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing absolute knowledge.” Maybe sometimes I think in images.  Maybe sometimes I think in equations.  Sometimes in both.  I am not sure that my mechanism is transferrable. “All my life I have been a friend of well-chosen, sober words and of concise presentation. Pompous phrases and words give me goose bumps when they deal with the theory of relativity or with anything else.”

But what is transferrable and irreplaceable is persistence and determination. Nothing, not even genius or education or talent, will take the place of persistence and determination! Stay with the problem until you conquer it. “Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master.”

****

33
Dear Dr. Einstein:
Many friends and I get stressed out about finding a balance between school and outside of school. Juggling our work, family, and self. It seems an ongoing struggle. Was it like that for you?

Dear Calliope:
I’m sorry to say I was not great at balancing my life, my family, my work. I enjoyed a mixture of activities… hiking, sailing, playing my violin.  But the obsessive hard-won focus on my work was paramount.  Because of this, I was not a great husband or father. Perhaps you should ask someone else?

“I am truly a ‘lone traveler’ and have never belonged to my country, my home, or even my immediate family with my whole heart. In the face of this, I have never lost the need for solitude.”

“A hundred times a day I remind myself that my inner and outer lives are based on the labors of other people, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received.”

“There is no greater satisfaction for a well-meaning person than the knowledge that she has devoted her best energies to the service of a good cause.”

****

35
Dear Dr. Einstein:
What is the MEANING OF LIFE?

Dear Talullah:

****

37
Dear Dr. Einstein:
Do you believe in “luck”?  Are you lucky?

Dear Miles:
I may have been lucky in discovering E=mc and in stumbling upon curved space as the source of gravitation.  My insight into the nature of gravity came about because when I was working at the Swiss patent office, I looked out my window whilst daydreaming and saw a workman fall off the roof, and at that moment I realized he would experience no gravitation during his fall. Thus his acceleration erased gravity and were therefore equivalent!

It was Louis Pasteur who said, in referring to his discoveries, that “Chance favors the prepared mind.” He meant that sudden flashes of insight don’t merely happen by themselves. They are the result of deep and thorough preparation, which is the key to success in science, and many other careers. Not luck. So my mind was “prepared” to be “lucky” to discover equivalence. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, thought I was very lucky because he said very few people are capable of judging my work – since it required deep knowledge of physics to criticize it. But Freud’s own work was subject to scrutiny by everybody – even if they did not know anything about psychology. He was unlucky and brilliant, and most of his ideas were nonsense.

But I was also unlucky. “It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few individuals for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them. Why is it that nobody understands me, yet everybody likes me? It is a strange thing to be so widely known, and to be so lonely. I’m also a magnet for all the crackpots in the world.”

****

39
Dear Dr. Einstein:
I read that you were kicked out of school or asked to leave certain classrooms because you made wisecracks about your teachers. What did you think of school in general?

Dear Isidore:
Mature wisdom is not the product of schooling, but of a lifelong attempt to acquire mature wisdom.  It is an immature thought in itself to believe that mature wisdom depends on chronological age. Some of my teachers were imperfect beings, and I made fun of their failings. Later in life, I would have ‘cut them some slack’ so to speak (as Americans say), and not embarrassed them in front of their students.

****

41
Dear Dr. Einstein:
Did you ever make a mistake, or regret anything you said or did?

Dear Rufus:
In my professional life I made two serious blunders. One is signing the letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt suggesting that the Nazis might be ahead of the U.S. in weaponizing nuclear fission. I believed at the time that if Hitler developed the atomic bomb before us, he might have ruled the world. As it turned out, we were mistaken. The Nazis were behind us. I regretted the loss of life at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the bomb shortened World War II. And changed history. “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I never would have lifted a finger.”

The second is the cosmological constant. I added this constant to my gravitational field equations to account for the observation at the time that the Universe appeared to be neither expanding nor contracting. It was thought to be in a “steady state” in 1915, which meant that ordinary gravity was attractive (objects fell to Earth; they didn’t fall up!)
I added a term in my equation to produce some kind of repulsive gravitational force to keep everything in a steady state. Ironically, once Hubble discovered that the Universe is expanding, we found that the constant added as a “blunder” at the time turned out to be prescient, in that it became needed to produce what is now called “dark energy” of repulsion which makes up about 85 percent of the observable mass-energy of the Universe! So what I thought was a blunder turns out to be profound. The joke is “I was wrong once; on that occasion I said I was wrong and I was right”.I have made some other blunders of a personal nature, but I prefer to leave these in the dark.