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The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

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Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#151

Post by kragen »

calhoun137 wrote: post #125
kragen wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Von Nueman is on the record as saying he believed computers were a sub field of self replicating machines. I believe they will be very important in the future and will have many applications. Not really, unfortunately. I think it would be fun to build a 3d printer that can replicate itself, but have not tried building any prototypes because besides being too expensive I also havent taken my research into that far eno…

I'm interested to hear what you think; my notes talk a lot about how to make things less expensive.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#152

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

failrate wrote: post #118
x220 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taken a medication that occasionally makes me feel stupid. For a day I might be unable to continue reading a book without re-reading each sentence a few times. I might not be able to talk to people about a complicated or technical subject without stumbling over my words. I will find it difficult to think in the abstract terms, and when I listen to others who talk about abstract values and concepts I have to cont…

The sad reality is that cognitive decline over age is more likely than not. I have prebuilt a set of habits that I hope will serve me for when I need to rely on them to get me through the day.

I had a conversation with an elderly neurologist at a wedding on this topic. His top item of advice was to do things that put your awareness into your moving body as much as possible, as a daily habit. No surprise he and his wife were the only folks in their age bracket rocking out on the dance floor later.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#153

Post by sooheon »

anongraddebt wrote: post #106
chalst wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the most charitable, Kripke was not generous in acknowledging influences. http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/Archive/whose.html

This is interesting. I hadn't heard of this dispute. I just read the Marcus paper from 1961 that is essential to Smith's thesis. I also read the back-and-forth rebuttals between Smith and Soames. I read the Marcus paper before reading the Smith and Soames papers. I don't really see how Soames' primary claim is not likely true. He says: "Marcus, along with certain other philosophers, do deserve credit for anticipating…

> He came up and provided a water tight refutation of it. Everyone in the room was taken back by this.

His name? Albert Einstein.

Just kidding. But do you have any text of this exchange?

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#154

Post by okareaman »

quomopete wrote: post #132
okareaman wrote: post #89

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.

Medium really botched the paywall approach and I couldn't possibly agree with you more. It is so inconsistently applied and quite honestly I can't justify spending 5 dollars a month on a "publisher" whose content is so variable. Some Medium articles are really good, others are baseless clickbait, it's hard to tell until you read the article and already sunk the time and the money.

I'm thinking of writing an extension that would go grab the first page of each link and tell me if they want me to pay. The extension would turn the link red if so. How consistently can I get this right though? I can't just go by domain name because sometimes I have free articles left, on New Yorker for example. I agree with you on Medium. I was more angry until I found out it is up to the individual authors to turn on the paywall for their article so they can get paid. 60 dollars a year for hit or miss medium content is a bit rich. They must think they are in the same league as NYT or WAPO

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#155

Post by john-radio »

lqet wrote: post #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…

I enjoyed your video [0], also yeesh. 90 seconds in or so, "For the moment we'll leave the General Dynamics exhibit and come over here to an exhibit we have here; this is the electronics exhibit, whereby, as you see, they have a number of, uh, gadgets, I guess you might call them that... Or is that the wrong word?"

That young man who wants to be a lawyer was actually a lot better prepared for this interview than the guy with the microphone!

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#156

Post by abecedarius »

kragen wrote: post #150
abecedarius wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wish we had much of a clue -- we're lucky even as much of his own work survived as did. There seems to be a strong tendency to overestimate surviving authors and underestimate their civilization. (Saying this although he's a hero of mine.) I guess Einstein was no von Neumann, but gosh what a beautiful mind -- even with so much I didn't understand in "Subtle is the Lord...", it's worth a read.

I should read it! I guess it's possible that Archimedes invented the integral calculus a hundred generations before Newton and Leibniz because Syracuse was teeming with calculus-like ideas that didn't get written down, and things like the Antikythera Mechanism suggest that there were a lot of important intellectual achievements refined through broad communities of practice that didn't survive. But it seems just as li…

Some known background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudoxus_of_Cnidus#Mathematics

(A tidbit about that Definition 5 there: I read in Russo that Galileo could not see the point of it. To him a ratio was a concrete thing, a number you got by dividing two other numbers. His civilization, says Russo, had lost the concept of freely invented axiomatic definitions and didn't really recover it till the 19th C.)

I like to think of Archimedes as the first mathematical physicist. Of course Euclidean geometry itself is a physical theory, so there's one ground to disagree.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#157

Post by spookthesunset »

x220 wrote: post #95
lqet wrote: post #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…

I've taken a medication that occasionally makes me feel stupid. For a day I might be unable to continue reading a book without re-reading each sentence a few times. I might not be able to talk to people about a complicated or technical subject without stumbling over my words. I will find it difficult to think in the abstract terms, and when I listen to others who talk about abstract values and concepts I have to cont…

> If you're intellectually gifted (many programmers are)

Lets not jerk each other off too hard, eh? Just like everybody in life, in any trade or profession, most programmers are just average people like everybody else. They just happened to luck out and be good at a talent that pays well.

Odds are incredibly high you aren't any smarter than somebody who paints houses for a living, fills your prescription, or plays football for the NFL. We are all just people trying to make a living -- don't ever forget that.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#158

Post by GhettoMaestro »

Merrill wrote: post #52
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…

>He died at age 53 on February 8, 1957, at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., under military security lest he reveal military secrets while heavily medicated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Illness_and_d...

Makes you wonder what secrets he took to the grave. Thus the military security right up to the very end.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#159

Post by failrate »

saganus wrote: post #128
failrate wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad reality is that cognitive decline over age is more likely than not. I have prebuilt a set of habits that I hope will serve me for when I need to rely on them to get me through the day.

Interesting. What kind of habits?

Glasses and ID together. Car keys on top of work items like laptop and badge. White board next to front door with dates and reminders and mail to drop off. Arrange things like you would for a Sims character.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#160

Post by skavi »

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?

While you were aware of the context, many others reading your quote (like me) were not. I definitely appreciated having more of the full story.
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