[HN Gopher] A new biography of John von Neumann
___________________________________________________________________
A new biography of John von Neumann
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 170 points
Date : 2021-10-09 10:26 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| photochemsyn wrote:
| John von Neumann was certainly involved in a lot of scientific
| discoveries, but from the review this looks more like a
| hagiography with a goal of rehabilitating the reputation of an
| incredibly gifted scientist/mathematician whose coziness with the
| military-industrial complex remains controversial to this day.
| 'John von Neumann, the theorist of mutual assured destruction',
| is how many still view his record.
|
| John von Neumann's record illustrates why brilliant scientists
| may not be the best architects of foreign policy. In particular,
| von Neumann's belief in the inevitability of nuclear war led him
| to call for a first strike against Soviet cities before they
| could develop a nuclear arsenal. This is a rather difficult
| political-moral-ethical position to rehabilitate. One also gets
| the sense that a JvN was a bit stingy with sharing credit on
| major breakthroughs in computing.
|
| Generally I find these 'heroic genius' books about scientific
| personalities to get stale over time, while books that focus on
| the discoveries themselves and the many people who contributed
| are far more interesting and historically accurate. Richard
| Rhodes's excellent work on the American and Soviet nuclear
| weapons programs is an example of the latter approach.
| sershe wrote:
| Why does the first part need to be rehabilitated? With whom is
| it controversial? I've never heard of this controversy before.
|
| First, a decapitating strike against Soviet Union /could/ have
| made sense given the information at the time - imagine you
| could decapitate Germany in 1935, how many lives would that
| have saved? Hindsight is 20/20, before that you couldn't be
| 100% sure that one of the two architects of WWII was not going
| to try again.
|
| Second, I personally really like Feynman's quote on von Neumann
| "von Neumann gave me an interesting idea: that you don't have
| to be responsible for the world that you're in. So I have
| developed a very powerful sense of social irresponsibility as a
| result of von Neumann's advice.". I think it's one of the best
| takes on these issues in most cases.
| slibhb wrote:
| > John von Neumann's record illustrates why brilliant
| scientists may not be the best architects of foreign policy. In
| particular, von Neumann's belief in the inevitability of
| nuclear war led him to call for a first strike against Soviet
| cities before they could develop a nuclear arsenal. This is a
| rather difficult political-moral-ethical position to
| rehabilitate. One also gets the sense that a JvN was a bit
| stingy with sharing credit on major breakthroughs in computing.
|
| I don't think it's a hard position to rehabilitate. What people
| find so outrageous are not von Neumann's views about
| geopolitics and nuclear weapons but his attitude. They object
| to the cheerful terms in which he advocated for the use of
| nuclear weapons.
|
| And fair enough. But, attitude aside, there's nothing obviously
| wrong with arguing that the US should have used its nuclear
| monopoly to secure the independence of Eastern Europe or even
| to end the Soviet regime.
| [deleted]
| random3 wrote:
| Curious to learn more book recommendations. I enjoyed The Idea
| Factory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory), A
| mind at play (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mind_at_Play)
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| > whose coziness with the military-industrial complex remains
| controversial to this day.
|
| Why is it controversial? I know nothing of Von Neumann, but it
| doesn't seem like a bad thing. "Coziness" could mean a lot of
| things, but personally even if Von Neumann was taking the
| military industrial complex out on a date every Tuesday, I
| wouldn't see a problem with it.
|
| Is the implication that the military was influencing his
| integrity as a scientist?
|
| The bigger criticism of Von Neumann is that he set back quantum
| mechanics for a few decades:
| https://twitter.com/orzelc/status/1446414513465696256
|
| EDIT: There's a shocking comment further downthread.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28811713
|
| I retract my claim that the bigger criticism was his treatment
| of QM. The bigger criticism is that Von Neumann was a lunatic -
| I try not to call names, but advocating the extermination of a
| population is the dealbreaker threshold of niceness for me.
| leephillips wrote:
| I think this is an overstatement. I don't think his mistake
| came close to delaying the development of QM for a "few
| decades". On the contrary, he was a major contributor to the
| mathematical foundations of QM, and, on balance, certainly
| advanced the field more than he retarded it, even considering
| his blunder.
| alecst wrote:
| > The bigger criticism of Von Neumann is that he set back
| quantum mechanics for a few decades:
| https://twitter.com/orzelc/status/1446414513465696256
|
| Really skeptical of this. Not only did he write a famous
| "little book" on QM (which is still readable to this day),
| but hidden variable theories are pretty much disproved in QM.
| So even if he was wrong about the theorem, he was still right
| about the principle. There's a wikipedia on it here.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory
|
| I spent a long time studying QM and never heard of anyone
| taking hidden-variable theories seriously so I don't know
| what this tweet is about.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Do you think that enthusiastically egging on the nuclear
| holocaust of tens of million of people for ultimately no good
| reason (and that's the best case scenario of his proposal, it
| could have been even worse as he _seriously_ underestimated
| the Soviet Union) is not a bad thing?
|
| Had he managed to convince the president, he would have been
| one of the people with the worst impact on humanity (and
| science incidentally) of all history, perhaps even dooming us
| all.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| As I already said, I know nothing about Von Neumann's
| history. You'll have to fill me in before I can answer that
| question, since you didn't really say what happened.
|
| My criticism had a source which clearly explained what he
| did and why it had a negative impact. You may want to do
| the same thing, or I think no one will be impressed with
| your claim that Neumann personally was the decisive factor
| in killing a bunch of people that would've been dead a
| century later anyway. (Just a little joke.)
| sudosysgen wrote:
| He ended up not being the decisive factor, but as the
| above said, he advocated for a nuclear first strike on
| the Soviet Union, and was already part of the nuclear
| decision-making process - he was invited to participate
| in the decision for which cities to strike in Japan but
| was ultimately overruled because he suggested to hit
| target with no military importance and high
| concentrations of civilians. He thought (very wrongly)
| that coexistence with the Soviets was impossible and that
| they had to be eliminated as soon as possible.
|
| Here are sources if you want:
|
| "Von Neumann, four other scientists, and various military
| personnel were included in the target selection committee
| that was responsible for choosing the Japanese cities of
| Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the first targets of the atomic
| bomb. [...] The cultural capital Kyoto, which had been
| spared the bombing inflicted upon militarily significant
| cities, was von Neumann's first choice"
|
| "He was quoted in 1950 remarking, "During a Senate
| committee hearing he described his political ideology as
| "violently anti-communist, and much more militaristic
| than the norm". If you say why not bomb [the Soviets]
| tomorrow, I say, why not today? If you say today at five
| o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?"
|
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Nuclear_w
| eapo...)
|
| I don't think that I need to give sources as to why
| nuking the USSR would have had a huge negative impact.
| philwelch wrote:
| When he made those comments, Stalin was still alive. You
| have the benefit of 70 years of hindsight and the
| knowledge that the Soviet Union moderated after Stalin's
| death and collapsed entirely of its own accord a few
| decades later.
|
| Additionally, H-bombs didn't even exist in 1950. A
| nuclear strike on the Soviet Union in 1950 would have
| been devastating but not as catastrophic as you would
| imagine today. It would have been closer to the Second
| World War--a bloody and devastating piece of business to
| be sure, but once it was all over, most of the people
| involved agreed that it had been worth fighting.
|
| If the Nazis won WWII, don't you think it would be worth
| at least considering using nuclear weapons in a war to
| destroy their regime before they developed a competitive
| nuclear arsenal of their own? Or would you have argued
| for coexistence with them? The Soviet Union in 1950 was
| very much the moral equivalent of that situation.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Stalin is the guy who executed people who didn't abandon
| the idea of worldwide communism. He moderated the foreign
| policy of the USSR. He was also the guy who expended a
| lot of political capital and burned quite a few bridges
| to propose defensive alliances with Western countries,
| betraying those who wanted to plunge them into
| revolution.
|
| He was pretty evil, but Stalin was much more moderate on
| exporting communism by military force than the norm - his
| invasions were mostly about maintaining the national
| security of the USSR.
|
| The US by 1950 had hundreds of nuclear bombs. It would
| have been devastatig, the fallout would have been
| horrifying, and the famines that would follow would be
| the largest in the history of humanity.
|
| >If the Nazis won WWII, don't you think it would be worth
| at least considering using nuclear weapons in a war to
| destroy their regime before they developed a competitive
| nuclear arsenal of their own? Or would you have argued
| for coexistence with them? The Soviet Union in 1950 was
| very much the moral equivalent of that situation.
|
| If it was the Nazis, I would, because there plan after
| winning WW2 involved killing 200+ million people. Say
| what you will about Stalin and he truly was evil, he had
| no plans of world conquest, much less of genociding
| hundreds of millions and literally enslaving a billion
| people.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| > He thought (very wrongly) that coexistence with the
| Soviets was impossible and that they had to be eliminated
| as soon as possible.
|
| Jeez. To drop all jokes, this guy is a lunatic. I'm not
| sure why people aren't pointing to _this_ as a decisive
| criticism, since no amount of genius can excuse the idea
| that civilians need to be attacked or that populations
| can 't coexist and need to be exterminated.
|
| This is the first I've heard of any of this. My
| "coziness" with the military industrial complex would be
| to help design weapons using AI. I'm simply fine with
| that. I wouldn't be advocating for the extermination of a
| population! That's not military-industrial coziness,
| that's psychopathy.
|
| The whole point of joining the military industrial
| complex is _to advocate the opposite_ of what is
| represented here. That 's the only way that real change
| can be made. Focus on military targets, not civilian
| populations. Remind people that although the goal is
| victory, the war will end one day (i.e. coexistence is
| never impossible). And so on.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| Do you think Lincoln was a lunatic?
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I think Lincoln didn't have access to an arsenal that
| could end humanity if used in the wrong way, so I don't
| know if the comparison is warranted.
|
| In general, if someone is trying to exterminate a
| population, then I believe that they fall under the
| lunatic umbrella, and that the umbrella should come down
| like a Venus fly trap and gobble all of them up. On
| balance, if we did this to every such person throughout
| history, then history may have fared better. There are
| zero populations of humans that need an exterminator (at
| least, an exterminator of humans).
| philwelch wrote:
| > I think Lincoln didn't have access to an arsenal that
| could end humanity if used in the wrong way, so I don't
| know if the comparison is warranted.
|
| Neither did the US in 1950. You're thinking of H-bombs,
| which didn't exist until 1952.
|
| > In general, if someone is trying to exterminate a
| population
|
| Which is not, in the context of 1950, what von Neumann
| was advocating. He was advocating for the use of
| strategic bombing in a campaign to topple a totalitarian
| regime that murdered tens of millions of people anyway.
| Which is what most people agreed was a good idea with the
| Nazis five years previous.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| This is quite wrong. The plans were to drop hundreds of
| nukes. Those were definitely in the right order of
| magnitude to potentially end humanity. Certainly enough
| to kill the vast majority of the USSR.
|
| There is no strategic use of nuclear weapons against a
| nuclear armed country. The plan was a war of
| extermination. Strategically at the time the majority of
| the military was in the GDR, not even in the USSR.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| Lincoln refused to coexist with the Confederates.
|
| I'd put refusing to coexist with Communists on that
| level, and they actually took over von Neumann's home
| country.
| luke0016 wrote:
| The United States of America is preserved today - intact
| - specifically because Lincoln valued coexisting with the
| confederates above almost all else. He made clear even in
| his first inaugural address that the preservation of the
| Union was paramount.
|
| There is an incredibly important distinction between
| fighting against the ignorant temper tantrum of your
| brothers and sisters and exterminating them all.
| chillwaves wrote:
| What makes Lincoln a lunatic?
|
| It's not sporting to only present bait as your argument.
| Just go ahead and outline what you are trying to say.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| I don't think he was one.
| [deleted]
| misbyrming wrote:
| > My "coziness" with the military industrial complex
| would be to help design weapons using AI. I'm simply fine
| with that. I wouldn't be advocating for the extermination
| of a population!
|
| So you'd be fine helping them design weapons that could
| exterminate a populace but you wouldn't advocate actually
| using them?
| emmelaich wrote:
| I would love to hear of any exchange between Einstein and
| Von Neumann. Einstein was famously contemptuous of
| soldiers.
| emmelaich wrote:
| > _...as to why nuking the USSR would have had a huge
| negative impact._
|
| Japan has done ok.
| leephillips wrote:
| Your "source" is a tweet that makes a claim with almost
| no justification.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| It's not controversial during WWII, the pinnacle of human
| conflict. The war effort was a goal of almost everyone
| active. The nuclear race was on and many had to flee Europe.
| Even in normal circumstances, culturally people just didn't
| care as much about human life back then.
|
| Criticizing that from the comfortable perspective of today or
| even halfway to the sixties, doesn't make a whole lot of
| sense. Also being smart apparently doesn't help much in
| predicting the future.
| rrsmtz wrote:
| > Criticizing that from the comfortable perspective of
| today... doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
|
| There's a difference between criticism and understanding.
| We can understand why people felt and acted the way they
| did in a given time period, but that doesn't mean that we
| need to sympathize with them or that they are somehow
| immune from criticism.
|
| Individuals are not just a victim of our circumstances, and
| morals about the sanctity of human life are far older than
| the 20th century and appear in times of deep discomfort as
| well as times of comfort.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Sanctity of life occurred gradually, and is in part a
| luxury of abundance.
|
| If you want to criticize, imho, criticize someone who
| actually did wrong. Those who expressed an opinion found
| to be a bad call almost a century in the future aren't
| worth the bother in my opinion.
|
| We were incredibly lucky to have JvN.
| rrsmtz wrote:
| > Sanctity of life occurred gradually, and is in part a
| luxury of abundance.
|
| "Thou Shalt Not Kill" was not a product of an abundant,
| decadent society, and I promise you that Neumann had
| heard of it.
|
| I agree that Neumann gave humanity great scientific and
| technological gifts that brought us into the modern era,
| but so did Wernher von Braun. Both also used their gifts
| to cause suffering and destruction on a massive scale.
|
| We can't just whitewash their history; given their
| intelligence we must admit that they knew what they were
| doing and what they were angling for. And it still
| matters, because very intelligent and clever people in
| today's world are building weapons and killing machines,
| and hiding behind the same excuses.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Indeed. Von Neumann was an incredibly prolific scientist, and
| definitely one of the greatest geniuses in history, but that
| doesn't mean that he was always justified or right - he was
| still human, and had biases, and made mistakes. His work was
| still built upon by others who managed to gain understanding of
| the subject beyond what Neumann did, though certainly much more
| slowly, and he himself built upon the works of others. He was
| definitely a class or five above anyone that is likely reading
| this and probably even more above my own, but he was still a
| human.
| wayeq wrote:
| "For progress," he wrote, "there is no cure."
|
| that pretty much sums things up, doesn't it.
| rrwright wrote:
| So far, "Turing's Cathedral" by George Dyson is the best von
| Neumann biography I've found--though it's not explicitly a
| biography of him, but of the development of the computer (and the
| Princeton IAS). It includes lots of other characters who played
| their parts, but von Neumann is clearly at the center.
| bumbledraven wrote:
| https://archive.is/iZDKm
| jcmontx wrote:
| IMO Mr von Neumann was the most brilliant person of the 20th
| century
| 1cvmask wrote:
| The alien rat pack of STEM:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)
|
| -
|
| My favorite interaction is of von Neumann with Shannon regarding
| the coining of entropy:
|
| What von Neumann Said to Shannon When Shannon first derived his
| famous formula for information, he asked von Neumann what he
| should call it and von Neumann replied "You should call it
| entropy for two reasons: first because that is what the formula
| is in statistical mechanises but second and more important, as
| nobody knows what entropy is, whenever you use the term you will
| always be at an advantage!
|
| http://www.spatialcomplexity.info/what-von-neumann-said-to-s...
| kqr2 wrote:
| Recent HN discussion on the Martians of Budapest :
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28726489
| raincom wrote:
| When one uses an existing word, it carries a lot of epistemic
| and ontological baggage, thereby causing trouble to those who
| are new to the domain. That's why scientists go for a
| linguistic reform: invent a new word during a conceptual or
| scientific revolution. That's how the word "Oxygen" replaced
| the old "Phlogiston".
| n4r9 wrote:
| When defining statistical entropy in his Cambridge lecture
| course on Coding and Cryptography, Thomas Korner adds the
| following footnote:
|
| "It is unwise for the beginner and may or may not be
| fruitless for the expert to seek a link with entropy in
| physics."
|
| https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~twk/Shan.pdf
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Does Landauer's principle not already create a very strong
| link between the two?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle
|
| It even predicts a direct equivalence between the unit of
| bit and Joules per Kelvin with the entropy produced in the
| erasure of a bit being equal to 9.6e-24 J/K
|
| Unless I'm making some mistake, you can even use computer
| science principles combined with Landauer's limit to solve
| Maxwell's Demon.
| kgwgk wrote:
| The link was established quite early and it wasn't
| fruitless:
|
| https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/theory.1.pdf
| est31 wrote:
| The release of a new biography explains the recent surge of
| threads about him:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28726489
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28673376
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Coincidentally today is the saint day of the famous British
| theologian John Henry Newman who died in 1890.
| https://angelusnews.com/faith/saint-of-the-day/john-henry-ne...
| jimmyed wrote:
| Ah, the genius of being at the right time among the right people,
| and having an all-too-helpful assistant...
| rg111 wrote:
| > _Von Neumann was a child prodigy. When he was six years old,
| he could divide two eight-digit numbers in his head and could
| converse in Ancient Greek._
|
| > _By the age of eight, von Neumann was familiar with
| differential and integral calculus_
|
| > _At the age of 15, he began to study advanced calculus under
| the renowned analyst Gabor Szego. On their first meeting, Szego
| was so astounded with the boy 's mathematical talent that he
| was brought to tears._
|
| > _By the age of 19, von Neumann had published two major
| mathematical papers, the second of which gave the modern
| definition of ordinal numbers, which superseded Georg Cantor 's
| definition._
|
| Yeah right.
|
| Sure his privilege helped. But a lot of people all through the
| world had that amount of privilege or more.
|
| How many von Neumans are there?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Really? A lot of people all throughout the world have had
| people outside the school system to teach them integer
| factorization, Ancient greek, and integral calculus as soon
| as they could?
|
| In the real world 99% of parents don't have the time to teach
| their child anything beyond how to speak and walk and answer
| their questions. 90%+ of parent's don't even remember how to
| efficiently factor integers or any math beyond arithmetic.
|
| Certainly very few people have this level of genius, but if
| Von Neumann were to be born to an average milieu it is
| impossible he would have been able to reach those milestones.
| yuy910616 wrote:
| I think this is a question of what your definition of "a
| lot" is. If you use percentage - for example, 1% of
| parents, of maybe even less - 0.01%, 0.01%*7.7 billion =
| about a million people.
|
| Does percentage make more sense here or absolute number? It
| depends on your context. I would say in this argument, it
| seems more certain that Von Neumann's success, which is
| always a function of both nature and nurture, can probably
| be attributed more to nature. Or, perhaps most likely, it's
| a rare event of talent meets incredible luck.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Von Neumann was raised in the absolute best possible
| environment for intellectual development.
|
| It's certainly a meeting of nature and nurture.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| No one denies the importance of nurture.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| > In the real world 99% of parents don't have the time to
| teach their child anything beyond how to speak and walk and
| answer their questions.
|
| Yeah, they're too busy coaching their kids' sports teams.
| rg111 wrote:
| Yes, culture comes into play significantly.
|
| I have seen parents buying their kids Playstations and
| taking them to expensive vacations in 5/7 star hotels and
| are content about "doing a lot" for their kids.
|
| I have also seen parents really investing time in their
| kids' future. Teaching them programming, foreign
| languages, advanced (for their age as per some regulatory
| bodies) math, etc.
|
| Any wonder why the kids from the next group will turn out
| to be more successful statistically?
|
| There is also nuance in this. Almost nobody
| (statistically) grows up to be geniuses from these
| families. But they certainly tend to have more
| accomplished lives.
| rg111 wrote:
| You clearly don't have much exposure to the outside world.
|
| I know a lot of parents, basically almost all parents that
| I know of, enroll their kids in all sorts of things.
|
| They are admitted into schools where you speak only
| English, they are admitted into swimming school, karate,
| painting, singing, dance class, you name it.
|
| My cousin's kid is enrolled into _five_ extra-curricular
| classes. She is 7.
|
| I have been seeing this for decades now. Despite being born
| into upper middle class homes, and having their parents
| shower money on stuff, most kids grow up to be vastly
| uninteresting individuals.
|
| - Most of them speak grammatically incorrect, Indian-style
| English.
|
| - Many struggle to find jobs even in the low-paying strata
| of the private sector.
|
| - Most of them don't go to top schools since almost any
| college that matters takes admission through meritocratic
| channels (academic test scores and/or admission tests)
|
| I have seen a lot of these rich babies fail in life.
|
| Privilege never equals achievement.
|
| There is always some element of genetics involved.
|
| Hard work matters more than genetics, I believe so. But the
| influence of genes is not trivial.
|
| Genes + extreme hard work + good environment provide a
| baseline for true genius.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| "if Von Neumann were to be born to an average milieu it is
| impossible he would have been able to reach those
| milestones."
|
| False. Ramanujan disproves that statement.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Ramanujan learnt calculus at the age of 8 and was able to
| rapidly factor large numbers by the age of 6?
|
| Come on now. Ramanujan was still doing arithmetic by the
| age of 10.
|
| Unarguably Ramanujan was held back as his mathematical
| progress very strongly, and was not too far above that of
| his peers until he attended High School.
|
| And the worst is that Ramanujan himself was incredibly
| privileged compared to the Indian average, being able to
| live in an urban milieu. Were he in an average rural,
| peasant context he would have been held back even more.
| Not to mention, he was a Brahmin, the highest caste in
| India.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| This was one of the world's foremost mathematicians, an
| unprecedented genius who was born into relatively poor
| circumstances (by Western standards and by modern
| standards) and who was completely self-made. There's
| footage of his very modest family home, so if you're
| going to try to claim he's somehow "privileged" above and
| beyond an extremely poor person in the US today, that
| would be laughable. It's true he wasn't a child prodigy,
| but so what? You're trying to crap on Von Neumann's adult
| accomplishments, which is what's impressive here (there's
| loads of child prodigies that flop as adults), by
| claiming without any basis that they're a product of his
| parent's success when Ramanujan is conclusive proof that
| this isn't a necessary condition for a Von Neumann
| calibre genius to arise. Another thing your analysis
| ignores is that intelligence is partly genetic, so of
| course smart kids are going to often have richer parents.
| If their parents are extremely smart then most likely
| they've figured out a way to make some money. No surprise
| there.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It's not really arguable that without his early advantage
| Von Neumann would not have been able to achieve what he
| did. Something can be the product of many things, as I'm
| sure you've learnt in elementary school.
|
| As far as Ramanujan, it's not arguable either that if he
| had been recognized early and given proper opportunities,
| he would have been even more prolific and have made even
| greater contributions. It took him 10 years for his
| genius to be recognized locally! And that was as a
| Brahmin to an urban family, imagine how hard it would
| have been if he was a Vaishiya born to farmers - he might
| have never been recognized, and we would have lost his
| contributions.
|
| If you believe that without being 100% self-made you're
| crap, that's your point of view, not mine.
|
| As for your edit, extreme intelligence is not really
| correlated to income. In fact, once you leave the median
| by a standard deviation, there is almost no impact
| anymore, and even less when you start controlling for
| social factors. What is moreso correlated is low
| intelligence and low income. Descendance is a much, much
| stronger impact.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| If you think that a very poor person can rise to a Von
| Neumann calibre genius, then we have no disagreement. I
| agree with you that having successful parents can only
| help the situation. "As for your edit,
| extreme intelligence is not really correlated to income."
|
| Ok, the marginal correlation breaks down at the extremes.
| But it's still the case that intelligence and income are
| correlated, so smarter kids are more likely from higher
| income parents.
| yuy910616 wrote:
| I think any argument that tries to boil down success into
| either nature or nurture is a bit of a futile exercise - the
| boring and non-controversial answer is always that it is a
| combination of both.
|
| No need to get all riled up about fairness.
| yuuu wrote:
| Oh my god, give me a break. It's von Neumann.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Yeah I'm sure being born to nobility and being surrounded by
| multiple governesses and tutors with advanced education had
| absolutely no impact on his ability to reach his potential
| and that if he was born to a slum he would be just as capable
| as otherwise.
| yuuu wrote:
| What's your point? That everyone who is born into a
| position of privilege should be shit on, no matter their
| contribution to society?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I don't see how I'm being derogatory. It's a simple
| matter of fact that Neumann, being human and not some
| sort of Ubermensch, greatly benefitted from the best
| possible environment and education which unarguably
| contributed to his genius.
| yuuu wrote:
| You're just stating obvious truths. The context makes it
| clear that you're attempting to diminish his
| accomplishments because he was born into privilege. I
| think they're still impressive, no matter his background.
| Not every discussion of a historical person needs to turn
| into a battle for equity.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| How many more Von Neumanns would we have if more people
| had a similar environment?
|
| Beyond that, yes he was incredibly accomplished, very
| prolific, and supremely intelligent, but it is important
| to remember that he was still human and not some kind of
| transcendant being outside of earthly considerations.
| yuuu wrote:
| I don't see anyone in this comment thread implying that
| he's inhuman or a supreme being. It seems like you may be
| projecting the insecurities of your own background into
| the discussion. I'm occasionally envious of people with
| great achievements who had a "privileged" background, but
| it's certainly not the first thing I point out when their
| names are brought up.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I didn't point it out as the first thing when his name
| was brought up. But apparently being Von Neumann is
| sufficient for your upbringing not to matter, hence why I
| replied.
|
| There are no shortages of people in these threads who
| genuinely believe that Neumann was supremely intelligent,
| beyond the conception of regular people. I'm sure you'll
| find them. It's not even unique to Neumann.
| oingodoingo wrote:
| the point is that genius doesn't come out of a vacuum,
| people tend to act like he was a miracle... he was highly
| intelligent AND highly privileged... he was who he was
| because of both
| gjkood wrote:
| One of the most interesting non-fiction books I have read is
| Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". It talks about
| how the majority of the brains behind the Manhattan Project came
| from one school in Budapest, Hungary called the 'Minta School'.
| John von Neumann being one of those geniuses.
|
| [1] The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes
| https://www.amazon.com/Making-of-Atomic-Bomb-audiobook/dp/B0...
| melling wrote:
| Have this book on my shelf waiting to be read. It's frequently
| mentioned.
|
| The author also has a book about the hydrogen bomb too:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/0684...
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I heard lots of good things about this book. But I gave up
| after a few chapters. I just didn't get on with the author's
| writing style.
| pribalta wrote:
| To be completely honest, the beginning is a bit tough. IIRC
| it focuses mostly on Niels Bohr, his life, and his
| philosophical approach to quantum physics.
|
| Once the book centers itself around Leo Szilard, things start
| to pick up. Having said this, I agree with the previous
| comment. The book is amazing. Disclaimer: I listened to it in
| audiobook format through Audible
| [deleted]
| Rijek33 wrote:
| Sometimes I have the nagging feeling that everyone I idolize
| would leave me disappointed if I knew them personally. The
| further back a person is in history the more mythical he becomes
| rg111 wrote:
| I used to think this way once. But not any more.
|
| Some people might do or were something that I won't like. I
| have learned to not let that influence me in way, and be
| comfortably ambivalent.
|
| I especially felt bad after I came to know that Richard Feynman
| slept with many of his friends' wives and tried to sleep with
| even more of them. He burnt a lot of bridges this way. One
| Physicist had told me that Feynman hit on his wife twice, and
| when discouraged by the wife, he let it go as a perfect
| gentleman.
|
| Despite this, Feynman remains one of my most revered icons and
| his picture still hangs on my wall.
|
| I don't overlook what he did or try to find some naive
| justification. I know he was this way and that does not make
| his mind less fascinating to me.
| oingodoingo wrote:
| I mean you could appreciate his achievements but it does seem
| weird to have a photo of him on the wall, for some women it
| might be a red flag
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Not doubting this, but can you point us to a source?
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Richard Feynman slept with many of his friends' wives and
| tried to sleep with even more of them.
|
| If you're going to indict people for having immoral sex,
| you'll have to indict probably 90%. If you include trying to
| have immoral sex, how many would pass your test?
| rg111 wrote:
| For me personally it's not sex or even immoral sex, it's
| betraying one's friends.
|
| I know the wives were equally guilty. He seduced but never
| ever forced to anyone's knowledge.
|
| He often committed these acts of adultery _when he was
| welcomed as a guest at someone 's home_.
|
| Having adventures on the bed with the wives of the people
| who invited you in their homes- pretty low to me.
|
| The women were adult and consenting, but it is still
| betraying the trust of people.
|
| If all these were to happen _with_ the consent of the
| husbands, although it would be extremely weird and
| unnatural, not to mention- immoral, by the standard of the
| stark majority of any society, I wouldn 't have given it
| any thought at all.
| WalterBright wrote:
| This kind of amoral sexual behavior among charismatic
| celebrities is commonplace.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| He probably would - he was incredibly warlike and had quite
| little regard for human life. Just like anyone else he had
| violently wrong opinions and predictions and had his biases -
| he was certainly a fallible mind though a genius.
|
| That being said, there are quite a few historical figures
| (Einstein, Penrose, Hawking, Ramanujan, Bertrand Russel,
| Grothendieck) that are nowhere as morally questionable as many,
| though they are all flawed people.
|
| On a purely intellectual level I doubt that you would be
| disappointed though they are all human in the end.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| It's worse than that. A lot of these historical people that we
| idolize would probably find us dull and boring.
|
| What kind of conversations could we hope to have with someone
| like von Neumann or Turing?
| ArnoVW wrote:
| I recently bumped into this Arte documentary about his life. I
| believe in the first 5 minutes they list his achievements and
| what he was like as a kid.
|
| I don't think you would have been disappointed :-)
|
| Documentary (with English subtitles )
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RuwnywSpl40
|
| Documentary (in French)
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QQui90ZGobo
| rsiqueira wrote:
| Thanks. The video description states that "If, one day, an
| artificial consciousness supplants human intelligence, it
| will be largely due to him." ( _Si, un jour, une conscience
| artificielle supplante l'intelligence humaine, ce sera en
| grande partie de son fait._ ). In fact, his last work is an
| unfinished book "The Computer and the Brain". Now is the best
| time for us to continue this work.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| Oops. Copy pasted the French link. It's corrected now.
| reddog wrote:
| Let me see what I can do...
|
| Early in the Cold War -- while the US had a nuclear monopoly --
| Von Neumann was a strong proponent of an all-out, surprise
| first strike against the USSR by the US. "With the Russians it
| is not a question of whether but of when. If you say why not
| bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5
| o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?"
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| The earlier book-length biography by Norman Macrae is quite
| terrible imho. This new one (per photochemyn's comment in this
| thread) doesn't sound that promising either, unfortunately, and
| few of von Neumann's contemporaries are still around to talk to.
|
| There is a German guy (Ulf Hashagen) who has done some excellent
| biographical research about von Neumann. I hope he writes a full
| length biography some day, since there doesn't seem to be one
| now. Meanwhile, the best overview article I know of is Stanislaw
| Ulam's profile in the AMS Bulletin published shortly after von
| Neumann's death, in the special issue devoted to him:
|
| https://projecteuclid.org/journals/bulletin-of-the-american-...
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