i always find it quite strange that for some reason, norbert weiner, is generally excluded from such paeans...
The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann
41–50 of 324 posts
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
This quote perfectly illustrates the unparalleled absurdity of contemplating nuclear warfare.
He was hardly alone if favouring a "preventative war" - Curtis LeMay was another advocate - they thought it was the rational thing to do. How someone can rationally advocate the cold blooded killing of millions is, frankly, completely beyond me.
Maybe you should study game theory
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann
#43von Neumann, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Einstein, Rutherford, Turing, Teller, Szilard, Wigner, Meitner... the list goes on... -- how did that time produce so many people of colossal intellect? War certainly can't be the primary factor, given that many of them were brilliant/productive even before WWI
There is no reason to think we are no longer producing people with colossal intellect. They are probably now collaborators on a large project, since that is what math and science have become.
Plus we haven’t had enough time to make myths about the recent times. Of course the 20th century was incredible for physics, but we don’t know yet what will make the recent years special. We may, for example, in 80 years wonder about how it was that the early 21st century produced so many ambitious, large-scale experiments.
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann
#44von Neumann, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Einstein, Rutherford, Turing, Teller, Szilard, Wigner, Meitner... the list goes on... -- how did that time produce so many people of colossal intellect? War certainly can't be the primary factor, given that many of them were brilliant/productive even before WWI
4 on your list are Hungarian, and 3 of them went to the same high school: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasori_Gimn%C3%A1zium Hungary had a great education system at the time.
> Hungary had a great education system at the time.
I seriously doubt you could back this. You are generalizing from a single school. Might as well argue that socialist Hungary had a great education system because of Fazekas. Neither are true. I happen to have a maths teacher degree from a Hungarian university and we studied Hungarian education history and I learned much more about education systems later on my own (and this is not to say this university maths teacher course was a good one, quite the opposite). If you want to know what great education at the time looked like, read up on Summerhill -- it was founded in 1921 but humanistic education has been around for centuries.
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann
#45von Neumann, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Einstein, Rutherford, Turing, Teller, Szilard, Wigner, Meitner... the list goes on... -- how did that time produce so many people of colossal intellect? War certainly can't be the primary factor, given that many of them were brilliant/productive even before WWI
4 on your list are Hungarian, and 3 of them went to the same high school: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasori_Gimn%C3%A1zium Hungary had a great education system at the time.
Sadly, not anymore. The government is doing everything to dumb down education and research in academia. It's really pathetic. We are doomed for generations thanks to this.
Just a recent example: a Prezi.com founder decided to create an alternative private school to show and lead by example. They didn't get the accreditation this year. If you stick out, they shut you down.
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
He was hardly alone if favouring a "preventative war" - Curtis LeMay was another advocate - they thought it was the rational thing to do. How someone can rationally advocate the cold blooded killing of millions is, frankly, completely beyond me.
Maybe you should study game theory
Their reasoning was based on the idea that a war with the Soviets was inevitable and that the US should attack before it lost the strategic advantage - given that there was no war are you actually arguing that they were correct?
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann
#47"Von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us." - Edward Teller
See [0] for a demonstration.
I watched a documentary from the 80ies a long time ago. A mathematician (can't remember his name) who worked with von Neumann in Los Alamanos was interviewed. He described von Neumann's last weeks in the hospital - the cancer had already metastasized into his brain. The mathematician said something along this lines (I am citing from memory): "von Neumann was constantly visited by colleagues, who wanted to discuss their latest work with him. He tried to keep up, struggling, like in old times. But he couldn't. Try to imagine having one of the greatest minds maybe in the history of mankind. And then try to imagine losing this gift. I was terrible. I have never seen a man experience greater suffering."
Marina von Neumann (his daughter) later wrote this about his final weeks:
"After only a few minutes, my father made what seemed to be a very peculiar and frightening request from a man who was widely regarded as one of the greatest - if not the greatest - mathematician of the 20th century. He wanted me to give him two numbers, like 7 and 6 or 10 and 3, and ask him to tell me their sum. For as long as I can remember, I had always known that my father's major source of self-regard, what he felt to be the very essence of his being, was his incredible mental capacity. In this late stage of his illness, he must have been aware that this capacity was deteriorating rapidly, and the panic that caused was worse than any physical pain. In demanding that I test him on these elementary sums, he was seeking reassurance that at least a small fragment of this intellectual powers remained." [1]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLbllFHBQM4
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Martians-Daughter-Memoir-Marina-Whitm...
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann
#48Can anyone recommend readings on von Neumann that highlight his non-mathematical achievements? Obviously he was primarily a physicist and mathematician, but for a non-mathematician, the long list of academic publications is hard to interpret and appreciate. For example, more in the vein of these: - Reportedly, von Neumann possessed an eidetic memory, and so was able to recall complete novels and pages of the phone di…
This one is pretty good
https://www.amazon.com/John-von-Neumann-Norbert-Wiener/dp/02...
(mentioned briefly in the article as "Heims's book") and maybe this one but I haven't read it.
https://www.amazon.com/Martians-Daughter-Memoir-Marina-Whitm...
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann
#49Love it!
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann
#50i always find it quite strange that for some reason, norbert weiner, is generally excluded from such paeans...
I think he will be popular in the future as cybernetic theory provides much a much more reliable design viewpoint than "artificial intelligence"