>Not to discount or discredit anything (or anyone) here but we must understand that Feynman was no average person and that his advice on anything related to learning or problem-solving must be viewed through an optics that adequately adjusts for his intellect as well.

I wonder about this a little. Let's assume the premise, Feynman was "no average person". To what extent is this explained by the hardware, as it were, between his ears and to what extent the software he was running? The way he approached puzzles, problems and so on throughout his life from a very early age influencing the functioning of that hardware? It seems to me he had some impressive sounding intellectual programming going on, much of which he was doing himself, when I listen to his stories of his childhood.

Michael Jordan was pretty good at a particular sport. He was "no ordinary person" and obviously so - he's 6 ft 7 or so which makes him an outlier in just that one dimension of his genetics, ie his hardware (and no doubt some others too, just that one is measurable in a clear and obvious way). If I wanted to play "like Mike" I can forget about it and there was nothing I could have done or that could have been done for me, or to me while I was growing up and after that would make any meaningful difference. Is that statement true of every single person reading this comment? I am in no way discounting Michael Jordan's work ethic, competitive drive & basketball decision making study and genius, I'm just noting if I had all those and had them to a greater extent that Jordan (if such a thing is possible - I have no clue) I still would not play like him, I had literally zero chance.

Is the same true of Feynman? I don't think it's a question that can be answered with anything much more than "belief" and prejudice. Psychology is probably the academic field that might address this and the question is too complex & sophisticated to get a good answer so much so that we have seen rather a lot of utterly discredited, appallingly bad answers that have gained traction over the years. Too many factors that cannot be controlled for. Too much that cannot be measured. Given that, if we believe Feynman had the genetics the way Jordan did as a necessary condition of whatever we're calling success, and it's reasonable to believe that, we still must have a doubt about it.

Beyond that, we don't know how many other humans have or had a "Jordan like" body who did not go on to his levels of achievement and if there are any or many, why they did not which would tell us something about the worth of potentially controllable factors - eg training & study. And yet when we try to achieve something with our physical strength, stamina and so on, listening to Jordan on his training regime is probably useful - unless you're getting something equally good, somewhere else (which is very readily available). Physical training regimes seem to have had a lot of work put into their analysis and we can probably all talk meaningfully about some aspects of achieving better physical fitness than we currently have. Is the same true for training our brains? Listening to anyone who has done impressive things with their brain on the topic of how they prepared seems quite worthwhile to me. Contextualizing their thoughts also seems worthwhile. We genuinely do not /know/ what makes a person into someone with Feynman's intellectual abilities. So as far as listening and trying what he recommends? What else do you have? Why do you think it's better? What is he recommending that would only work for someone with better hardware between their ears that we have? How could we get meaningful metrics on any of it if we can at all?