The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann • Hacker News Board

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#61

Post by calhoun137 » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 1:14 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #21

Can 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…

Turings Cathedral by George Dyson is fantastic https://books.google.com/books/about/Turing_s_Cathedral.html...

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#62

Post by criddell » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 1:18 PM UTC

dmazin wrote: post #43

yannis7 wrote: post #28

von 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…

I have no idea about the state of modern mathematics but I wouldn't have guessed that the idea of a lone mathematician has passed. What are the big projects in mathematics?

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#63

Post by calhoun137 » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 1:18 PM UTC

I am so happy to see this article about Von Neumann on HN!!! I have been posting about him on here for years, and have read all his books, but not as many of his papers as I would like, they are really hard! I have been working for many years now on continuing his theories of weather control technology and self-replicating machines. He is my absolute personal hero and the scientist who, far above all others, I consider to be the one in whose footsteps I want to follow.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#64

Post by calhoun137 » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 1:26 PM UTC

roca wrote: post #9

Awww, I was hoping they'd mention how Neumann was keen on launching a preemptive nuclear strike against the USSR.

Von Neumann was very smart, but I think he had poor judgement when it comes to politics. Perhaps not. I don't know tbh! When I learned about his political views many years ago it actually deeply changed strongly held opinions that I had about America. He was so smart, and I want so badly to follow in his footsteps, that I said to myself "If Von Neumann believed that only America can save the world from fascism, it is enough for me, I will go on as he begun, he must have had his reasons and knew what he was doing. But I will not abandon my principles! Only change the way I go about trying to achieve them."

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#65

Post by calhoun137 » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 1:30 PM UTC

chx wrote: post #36

> In 1945, von Neumann proposed a description for a computer architecture now known as the von Neumann architecture, Do note that he proposed a description but it wasn't his idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Draft_of_a_Report_on_the... > some on the EDVAC design team contended that the stored-program concept had evolved out of meetings at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering…

he also got the US military to pay for the R&D and to make the results of all the research in the public domain. he got into a big fight with Einstein over whether or not they would do experiments at IAS (Einstein only wanted to do math and theory there)

"Differences over individual contributions and patents divided the group at the Moore School. In keeping with the spirit of academic enquiry, von Neumann was determined that advances be kept in the public domain. ECP progress reports were widely disseminated. As a consequence, the project had widespread influence. Copies of the IAS machine appeared nationally"

from: https://www.ias.edu/electronic-computer-project

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#66

Post by arethuza » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 1:40 PM UTC

qnsi wrote: post #56

arethuza wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What you are doing is resulting, connecting result with decision under probability. I am not sure what was probability of a war but I don’t think that because war didn’t happen that it was unprobable.

So you think an attack would have been the right thing to do?

Edit: To be fair, in the event of an Able Archer '83 war we might have all have have wished that such an attack had happened (not me though, I'd be dead). So its not impossible to construct a timeline where it was the right thing to do. I'm just curious whether if you had been a decision maker back then whether you would actually choose to do that.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#67

Post by hyperpallium » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 1:41 PM UTC

0-_-0 wrote: post #31

yannis7 wrote: post #28

von 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.

What made the school great? Was it brilliant teachers, or some replicable system?

I have a theory that maths being taught as a skill, instead of an intuitive system, derivable from axioms as with Euclid may a cause.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#68

Post by hyperpallium » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

> Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#69

Post by 0-_-0 » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 2:04 PM UTC

_ugfj wrote: post #44

0-_-0 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

While having a much smaller population (10M), Hungary places 4th in worldwide medal rankings on the International Mathematics Olympiad [1] behind China (1.5B), USA (300M) and Russia (150M)

[1]: https://www.imo-official.org/results_country.aspx?column=awa...

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#70

Post by bloopernova » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 2:04 PM UTC

mikorym wrote: post #25

In an answer to the question of why there is no evidence of intelligent life beyond earth despite the high probability of it existing, Szilárd responded: "They are already here among us – they just call themselves Hungarians." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)

I went to Budapest on a day trip (hooray for Easyjet) back in the early 2000s, and can attest to this. I definitely felt like I was a stranger in a strange land.