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The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

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Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#81

Post by arethuza »

johngalt wrote: post #79
arethuza wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"“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?” Hardly surprising that he was one of the influences on the character of Dr Strangelove. Was he a remarkable genius, absolutely - was he right about everything, definitely not.

Context is crucial when reading this quote now rather than the 1950s. JVN said this before a nuclear war would have been 'world ending'. Consider that several nations had avoided war as hard as possible prior to WW2. Standing by as entire countries we absorbed by a hostile power. In the end it only resulted in much greater destruction. Many people like JVN saw the same theme playing out with the iron curtain, and the…

I am aware of the context - doesn't make it any less terrifying.

Edit: I'm going to ask you the same question I asked another commenter - do you think it would have been better for the US to have attacked the Soviets as Von Neumann and others wanted?

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#82

Post by eigenvalue »

signa11 wrote: post #41

i always find it quite strange that for some reason, norbert weiner, is generally excluded from such paeans...

I think some of it has to do with his famously difficult personality. Colleagues found him unbearably arrogant, and he seemed to have a chip on his shoulder, probably arising from his highly contentious relationship with his father. Von Neumann on the other hand was reportedly extremely charming and funny, and great fun to have at parties.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#83

Post by whatshisface »

criddell wrote: post #62
dmazin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It would take people like us (anyone who doesn't already know the big projects in math are) years of study to resolve that list in to anything more than names. However if you're looking for a modern math celebrity I'd volunteer Terrence Tao. Although only a mathematician could understand what he's working on it's clear from how he's talked about that in eighty years people will be saying, "I wonder if there will be any people like Tao in my lifetime."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#84

Post by johngalt »

arethuza wrote: post #81
johngalt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context is crucial when reading this quote now rather than the 1950s. JVN said this before a nuclear war would have been 'world ending'. Consider that several nations had avoided war as hard as possible prior to WW2. Standing by as entire countries we absorbed by a hostile power. In the end it only resulted in much greater destruction. Many people like JVN saw the same theme playing out with the iron curtain, and the…

I am aware of the context - doesn't make it any less terrifying. Edit: I'm going to ask you the same question I asked another commenter - do you think it would have been better for the US to have attacked the Soviets as Von Neumann and others wanted?

Of course not, but only because we already know how the story ends. If they had been correct, we wouldn't be here to say that we should have listened.

Their predictions on nuclear arsenals were correct. A nuclear war in 1965 would have been vastly worse than one in 1950.

What they got wrong is that great powers would successfully avoid war over the long term. Which at the time was a bet with very poor odds.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#85

Post by rpmisms »

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

Elon Musk will be this generations' Edison. Some current nobody in ML or AI research will be the Turing of our time. They're here, we just don't know it yet.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#86

Post by darkmighty »

grabbalacious wrote: post #71
danieltillett wrote: post #10

I have always wondered how close von Neumann was to the maximum human potential. Does he sit close the outer edge of possible human potential, or can greater geniuses be created? Is there anyone alive who even comes close to Johnny?

Motivation is key here. It seems that von Neumann became too fond of prestige and spy stuff. So he was less creative. Smarter than Gödel, able to recognise the importance of Gödel's work, but unable to produce anything of similar moment.

One could call it a feeling of responsibility maybe. The ongoing conflicts were defining the world and scientists (and he individually) could change the course of history. I think vNM's work is equally impressive (or even more; it's difficult to compare), maybe his main contribution is starting Game Theory[1]; but because it is spread across so many fields it doesn't look as groundbreaking.

[1]: Indeed he was so confident in his work he believed he was "Starting and ending" game theory, that there would be little else to work on after his monumental work that is OTGEB. He was very wrong of course, but like other theories of the kind (Information Theory comes to mind), this early lead is very significant to the creation of a coherent field.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#87

Post by chalst »

anongraddebt wrote: post #22
danieltillett wrote: post #10

I have always wondered how close von Neumann was to the maximum human potential. Does he sit close the outer edge of possible human potential, or can greater geniuses be created? Is there anyone alive who even comes close to Johnny?

My guess is that each relatively difficult field (fields that require substantial thought... I guess you know it when you see it) has its freaks of nature: genetic anomalies that, for at least a brief moment, seem to transcend the other participants. In the 20th century, philosophy had Saul Kripke. Among other things, he published one of the seminal papers in the (at that time) nascent area of modal logic when he was…

At the most charitable, Kripke was not generous in acknowledging influences.

http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/Archive/whose.html

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#88

Post by kragen »

calhoun137 wrote: post #63

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 consid…

That's interesting! Have you made progress on self-replication? I think it's a very important problem. I've made some notes categorized under topics/self-replication.html in http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano-20191110.tar.gz, but of course I'm no Johnny von Neumann.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#89

Post by okareaman »

I think moderators should mark articles behind paywalls as such, I already don't click on wapo or nytimes links but you never can tell with medium. I'm retired on a fixed income and I can't justify in my budget subscribing to these places. It makes me sad when I can't read an article that might otherwise fascinate me. One solution would be to never click on medium links, but then I'd miss the ones that are free.
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