Lets speculate this is entirely nurture. How do you get as smart as von Neumann? Zettelkasten?
The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)
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Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)
#112Lets speculate this is entirely nurture. How do you get as smart as von Neumann? Zettelkasten?
Von Neumann did it by watching loads of Khan Academy videos on YouTube, taking regular Vitamin D supplements, using Anki cards and practicing mindfulness meditation.
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)
#113Always in awe to read about assemblies of great minds like at Princeton's IAS. Does another such assembly exist today? I don't think it does but want to know if others can point to one. Did it happen then because the discoveries were "low hanging" enough that they would be found eventually, such that today we've basically exhausted the major discoverable parts of nature given human limitations, like a depleting orebo…
>(or even specifically the Habsburgs's HRE where von Neumann was from) It is not a coincidence that the "Martians" of Budapest, of which von Neumann was one, were all Ashkenazi Jewish. Societal and genetic pressures over centuries produced unusually high IQs (and some associated genetic problems). https://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jb...
Can someone please explain why this is being downvoted?
That is true, “martians” were all Jewish and Ashkenazi Jews have high percentage of high IQ representatives compared to other ethnic groups.
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)
#114First the article about Dirac and Feynman, and now this article about von Neumann. Cantor's Paradise has been a revelation to me. It reminds me of my teenage years when I was a young student of mathematics and voraciously devoured the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive: https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Thank you, Jorgen Veisdal. My only appeal to you is that you not put these articles behind the Medium pay…
“Voraciously devoured” induces in me a mental image of some existential situation forcing you to physically eat a book for survival.
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
True but on the other hand, he kind of made computers 'open source'
> he kind of made computers 'open source' The only "positive" (depeding on perspective) effect of his illegal and morally questionable action was that the patent was declared null and void due to the novelty-damaging effect of his report, among other issues supporting this outcome. The computers however did not become more "open source" because of this, just cheaper.
Declaring a patent null and void seems like a positive outcome.
Patents are legally enforced monopolies after all.
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)
#116First the article about Dirac and Feynman, and now this article about von Neumann. Cantor's Paradise has been a revelation to me. It reminds me of my teenage years when I was a young student of mathematics and voraciously devoured the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive: https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Thank you, Jorgen Veisdal. My only appeal to you is that you not put these articles behind the Medium pay…
“Voraciously devoured” induces in me a mental image of some existential situation forcing you to physically eat a book for survival.
Haha, it felt like it. I read those biographies obsessively. :)
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't really true. There was no existing architecture and even if there was, Eckert and Mauchly weren't the only ones involved. ENIAC itself encapsulated almost none of the Von Neumann architecture principles. While it's true Von Neumann's paper started as a summary of ongoing discussions on computer architecture for the EDVAC with a group that included Eckert, Mauchly, Arthur Burks, and others, Von Neumann's pr…
Fascinating when individuals of such advanced intelligence are not obsessed with immortality. Either They believe it is not possible or they are secretly a god trying to escape the boredom of already having long since achieved it.
Sometimes I wish von Neumann had gone into another field, such as genetics.
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow... How is this not more well known? It's not like von Neumann doesn't have plenty of other important contributions to his name.
Most people who have a lot of things named after then wanted to have a lot of things named after them. Consider: why is more named after von Neumann then Erdos?
Compared https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Joh... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Pau...
Seems more or less a tie to me. [0] Especially compared to this chap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Car...
[0] Actually, it's not a tie: If you add the entries on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conjectures_by_Paul_Er... you get a clear winner.
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't really true. There was no existing architecture and even if there was, Eckert and Mauchly weren't the only ones involved. ENIAC itself encapsulated almost none of the Von Neumann architecture principles. While it's true Von Neumann's paper started as a summary of ongoing discussions on computer architecture for the EDVAC with a group that included Eckert, Mauchly, Arthur Burks, and others, Von Neumann's pr…
Fascinating when individuals of such advanced intelligence are not obsessed with immortality. Either They believe it is not possible or they are secretly a god trying to escape the boredom of already having long since achieved it.
Or they have realized that immortality is actually a dumb idea. Either you talk about real immortality where you live forever. And forever is a really long time. Or you talk about being able to decide when to die. In which case dying accidentally today becomes much more expensive so you become obsessed about avoiding accidental death today and miss the whole point of living a longer life...
Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)
#120Discussed at the time (of the article, not of von Neumann):
The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21542753 - Nov 2019 (319 comments)