This seems rather generous given that he was just a physics major. There's lots of physics majors who understand very little about physics and, crucially, nothing about physics education.
I was talking about how physicists will understate how difficult things can be.
'Feels tractable' is physics-speak for: a possibility exists to get there though it may require more teachers than there exist on the earth and more compute time per student than there are transistors in the solar system for the next 1000 years.
Anti-gravity would be 'tractable' too as we can see there must exist some form of it via Hubble expansion and then it's only a matter of time until a physicist figures it out. Making it commercially viable is left to icky engineers.
Things that a physicist don't think are 'tractable' would be time-travel and completing your thesis.
To be very very clear: I am somewhat poking fun at physicists. Due to the golden age of physics, the whole field is kinda warped a bit about what they think is a doable thing/tractable. They think that a path may exist, and suddenly the problem is no longer really all that much of a problem, or rather 'real' problems are in figuring out if you can even do something at all. 'Tractable' problems are just all the 'stamp collecting' that goes into actually doing it.
It's legitimate to call it a background in physics, but given the particular level of background and the context of this particular issue, its relevance is indistinguishable from zero.
Has he ever demonstrated any particular insight or understanding of physics or - more importantly - of physics education? As far as I've been able to find, the answer is no. Not that there's anything wrong with that. At worst it just makes him a typical physics major.
One of the things Karpathy is most famous for, perhaps the thing depending on who you ask are his instructional materials on Deep Learning and Neural Networks, of which at least hundreds of thousands have benefitted.
That's far more tangible than whatever "background" it is you're looking for. He's a good teacher. He stands out for that and that's not an easy thing to do.
Of all the things background doesn't mean much in, being a good educator is at the top of the list. Most Educators including those who've been at it for years are mediocre at best.
The people who educate at the highest level (College/University Professors) are not even remotely hired based on ability to educate so this really isn't a surprise.
Genuinely and I mean no offense, your expectations just feel rather comical. People like Sal Khan and Luis von Ahn would be laughed out of the room looking for your "background".
Sure, Sal is an educator now but he quit being a financial analyst to pursue Khan Academy full time.
The real problem here is that you don't believe what Karpathy has in mind is tractable and not that there's some elusive background he needs to have. His background is as good as any to take this on.
I think you've misread this conversation. I was responding to someone who suggested that Karpathy's "background in physics" indicated some insight into whether this venture, particularly as regards physics education, will effectively give guidance by subject matter experts like Feynman.
If they had cited some other background, like his courses on AI, I would have responded differently.
This seems rather generous given that he was just a physics major. There's lots of physics majors who understand very little about physics and, crucially, nothing about physics education.