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The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

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Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#191

Post by fahrixds »

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 directory on command. This enabled him to accumulate an almost encyclopedic knowledge of what ever he read, such as the history of the Peloponnesian Wars, the Trial Joan of Arc and Byzantine history (Leonard, 2010). A Princeton professor of the latter topic once stated that by the time he was in his thirties, Johnny had greater expertise in Byzantine history than he did (Blair, 1957).

- ...conversing in Ancient Greek at age six...

- On his deathbed, he reportedly entertained his brother by reciting the first few lines of each page from Goethe’s Faust, word-for-word, by heart (Blair, 1957).

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#192

Post by pas »

hgytr wrote: post #171
ironyman wrote: post #164

I've recently been engrossed by the question of how geniuses and highly intelligent people think. There's bits and pieces of information online. What I'd really like to see, though, is (a) geniuses describe their thought process and (b) a smart person voicing is interior monologue while attacking a problem. 1) Do you know of any information like this? Link? 2) Otherwise: do you think in a way that's different (better…

I heard that Tesla could effectively "run" experiments in his mind, not just visualize them. Another pointer is that some "schools of thought" divide the art of thought into ability to visualize and ability to analyze where the latter has to be built upon the former and only when the former is perfected. My personal belief is that being a genius is about the ability to keep in mind many things at a time without losin…

I read this about Edison.

Also he read very fast, the librarians though he did not like the books that's why he was returning all of them every next week.

Also what usually geniuses can do is process information a lot. Read and write many papers. Eg Terrence Tao. His blog is always going strong, the polymath projects, plus regular teaching, plus his own (other) research.

Alexander Grothendieck, wrote books full of brand new ideas about very abstract math. Amazing insights. Ability to work with unfamiliar cutting-edge things while keeping focus, while communicating them to others.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#193

Post by clickok »

cshimmin wrote: post #186
clickok wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposedly, yes-- during his final stay in the hospital, his brother read to him from a book they'd enjoyed during their childhood, Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities . When his brother had to turn the page, John would continue the narration from memory while his brother found his place on the subsequent page. Given that he could be occasionally absent minded, I suspect that it had to be something that piqued his interest…

Okay we get it, you blaze.

My word choice is more driven by exposure to the dataset that I'm working with. There's been some recent successes with autoencoders trained on virtual sensory input (i.e., video games) with surprising results, e.g., neural networks that can simulate the dynamics of these environments with surprising fidelity.

Of course, learning to play video games at a high level is trivially easy, as everyone in the field now knows. The next challenge is, naturally, to make money doing this. But how? After the traditional thirty seconds of research before undertaking a major project, I determined that the only way to make money from video games is to become a popular streamer.

So now I am training an agent to generate video of it playing and reacting to an imaginary game and equally fictitious Twitch viewers, with a dataset drawn from the top Fortnite streamers. The reward function is comprised of a blend of subscribers, donations, and (logarithmically scaled) misogyny in the chat. Thus far, I've only managed to create some sort of window into hell, where the "game" consists of unceasing violence, murder after murder after murder as towers of mismatched material swell and fall in ever transforming locations on the isle while the chat endlessly subscribes, spams, and emotes in cackling glee and the superimposed webcam video features a... thing with too many eyes and hands screaming incoherently.

At first I thought it was a problem with my dataset, so I started watching some of the streams myself. This has not yielded insight into the whole "nightmare vision" output of my model, but it has expanded my vocabulary on the twin subjects of combustibles and comestibles, which I feel is a reasonable trade-off for the sanity battering associated with this whole endeavour.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#194

Post by [deleted] »

monktastic1 wrote: post #122
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…

This is terribly sad. It's also a good lesson in why not to tie your well-being to your identity (or anything else that's impermanent -- which, actually, includes everything ). It's a lesson I'm still learning.

[deleted]

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#196

Post by ganzuul »

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?

We don't have any record of systems with more intelligence than humans, so the question to us is equivalent to asking what is the maximum potential of intelligence itself.

For this reason general AI may offer us great insight into our mortal coil.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#197

Post by acqq »

chasd00 wrote: post #92
arethuza wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can be thankful that the likes of Eisenhower and later Kennedy, who lived through the very same times, recoiled from the prospect of initiating a greater slaughter than WW2.

you can't attribute staying out of nuclear conflict to any head of state, morality, or even logic ( there was plenty of luck involved ). For example, after Kennedy resigned himself to striking the sites in Cuba during the missile crisis it was someone else who told him he was wrong and reconsider. (see the documentary Fog of War) To put a fine point on it, even after all the brinksmanship, analysis, diplomacy to reso…

> There are plenty of examples where, basically, a roll of the dice saved civilization during the cold war. The destruction of society during the cold war was prevented by luck as much as anything else.

The systems are still in place and even today the danger of "accidental" start of the complete destruction of the current civilization is completely real. I always recommend a book subtitled "Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner." I won't write the details so that this doesn't appear as an advertisement. It's worth reading the whole book to get the exact idea how fundamentally flawed the logic of those managing these systems is. Absurdly, they still think they will "win."

As the poet said "We will all go together when we go."

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#198

Post by pfdietz »

n4r9 wrote: post #187
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…

I wonder if you've read the novel "Flowers for Algernon"? If not I have a feeling you'd like it (although perhaps find some of it difficult going - I certainly did).

I suggest reading the short story version, which came first.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#199

Post by mirekrusin »

speedplane wrote: post #190
codingslave wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hypothesis that almost all of the greatest intellectual achievements come from a very small number of bloodlines. I really doubt the idea that people are born and some just end up as the smartest in generations, I think theres more to the story

> I have a hypothesis that almost all of the greatest intellectual achievements come from a very small number of bloodlines. Nice hypothesis, but not exactly backed up by history. So many different societies have made so many diverse contributions to innovation, I'd be pretty amazed if you could draw a cohesive line through all (or most) of them. Also, separately, it's pretty difficult to separate "bloodlines", which…

I think the underlying mechanism is simply natural selection, just like you can breed dogs, tulips or bacteria for traits, humans can be "breed" into intelectual performance. None of religions/cultures do it, with exception of Ashkenazi.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#200

Post by Gatsky »

codingslave wrote: post #188
mirekrusin wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He mentions Curie as non-Ashkenazi, but even with her I don't know, she was born Polish with full name "Maria Salomea Skłodowska"(-Curie), her middle name "Salomea", given after her grandmother sounds to me like Jewish origin. I wonder how percentage of Nobel price winners/etc. would look like if you'd really dig deeper few generations or did genetic tests.

I have a hypothesis that almost all of the greatest intellectual achievements come from a very small number of bloodlines. I really doubt the idea that people are born and some just end up as the smartest in generations, I think theres more to the story

I am not sure that a ‘bloodline’ is a valid genetic concept. It depends a lot who the partner is, after all they provide 50% of the offspring’s genetic material. Put another way, if you are a genius in some field, the chance of having a child with someone of equal or greater aptitude is effectively zero.

The ‘more to the story’ is possibly just affluence and family stability, which are also culturally embedded.

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