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A new biography of John von Neumann

economist.com

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Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#21

Post by fighterpilot »

sudosysgen wrote: post #13
rg111 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Von Neumann was a child prodigy. When he was six years old, he could divide two eight-digit numbers in his head and could converse in Ancient Greek. > By the age of eight, von Neumann was familiar with differential and integral calculus > At the age of 15, he began to study advanced calculus under the renowned analyst Gábor Szegő. On their first meeting, Szegő was so astounded with the boy's mathematical talent tha…

Really? A lot of people all throughout the world have had people outside the school system to teach them integer factorization, Ancient greek, and integral calculus as soon as they could? In the real world 99% of parents don't have the time to teach their child anything beyond how to speak and walk and answer their questions. 90%+ of parent's don't even remember how to efficiently factor integers or any math beyond a…

  "if Von Neumann were to be born to an average milieu it is impossible he would have been able to reach those milestones."
False. Ramanujan disproves that statement.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#22

Post by sudosysgen »

fighterpilot wrote: post #21
sudosysgen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? A lot of people all throughout the world have had people outside the school system to teach them integer factorization, Ancient greek, and integral calculus as soon as they could? In the real world 99% of parents don't have the time to teach their child anything beyond how to speak and walk and answer their questions. 90%+ of parent's don't even remember how to efficiently factor integers or any math beyond a…

"if Von Neumann were to be born to an average milieu it is impossible he would have been able to reach those milestones." False. Ramanujan disproves that statement.

Ramanujan learnt calculus at the age of 8 and was able to rapidly factor large numbers by the age of 6?

Come on now. Ramanujan was still doing arithmetic by the age of 10.

Unarguably Ramanujan was held back as his mathematical progress very strongly, and was not too far above that of his peers until he attended High School.

And the worst is that Ramanujan himself was incredibly privileged compared to the Indian average, being able to live in an urban milieu. Were he in an average rural, peasant context he would have been held back even more. Not to mention, he was a Brahmin, the highest caste in India.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#23

Post by yuuu »

sudosysgen wrote: post #18
yuuu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my god, give me a break. It's von Neumann.

Yeah I'm sure being born to nobility and being surrounded by multiple governesses and tutors with advanced education had absolutely no impact on his ability to reach his potential and that if he was born to a slum he would be just as capable as otherwise.

What's your point? That everyone who is born into a position of privilege should be shit on, no matter their contribution to society?

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#24

Post by photochemsyn »

John von Neumann was certainly involved in a lot of scientific discoveries, but from the review this looks more like a hagiography with a goal of rehabilitating the reputation of an incredibly gifted scientist/mathematician whose coziness with the military-industrial complex remains controversial to this day. 'John von Neumann, the theorist of mutual assured destruction', is how many still view his record.

John von Neumann's record illustrates why brilliant scientists may not be the best architects of foreign policy. In particular, von Neumann's belief in the inevitability of nuclear war led him to call for a first strike against Soviet cities before they could develop a nuclear arsenal. This is a rather difficult political-moral-ethical position to rehabilitate. One also gets the sense that a JvN was a bit stingy with sharing credit on major breakthroughs in computing.

Generally I find these 'heroic genius' books about scientific personalities to get stale over time, while books that focus on the discoveries themselves and the many people who contributed are far more interesting and historically accurate. Richard Rhodes's excellent work on the American and Soviet nuclear weapons programs is an example of the latter approach.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#25

Post by oingodoingo »

rg111 wrote: post #8
Rijek33 wrote: post #5

Sometimes I have the nagging feeling that everyone I idolize would leave me disappointed if I knew them personally. The further back a person is in history the more mythical he becomes

I used to think this way once. But not any more. Some people might do or were something that I won't like. I have learned to not let that influence me in way, and be comfortably ambivalent. I especially felt bad after I came to know that Richard Feynman slept with many of his friends' wives and tried to sleep with even more of them. He burnt a lot of bridges this way. One Physicist had told me that Feynman hit on his…

I mean you could appreciate his achievements but it does seem weird to have a photo of him on the wall, for some women it might be a red flag

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#26

Post by sudosysgen »

yuuu wrote: post #23
sudosysgen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm sure being born to nobility and being surrounded by multiple governesses and tutors with advanced education had absolutely no impact on his ability to reach his potential and that if he was born to a slum he would be just as capable as otherwise.

What's your point? That everyone who is born into a position of privilege should be shit on, no matter their contribution to society?

I don't see how I'm being derogatory. It's a simple matter of fact that Neumann, being human and not some sort of Ubermensch, greatly benefitted from the best possible environment and education which unarguably contributed to his genius.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#27

Post by ArnoVW »

rsiqueira wrote: post #10
ArnoVW wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently bumped into this Arte documentary about his life. I believe in the first 5 minutes they list his achievements and what he was like as a kid. I don't think you would have been disappointed :-) Documentary (with English subtitles ) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RuwnywSpl40 Documentary (in French) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QQui90ZGobo

Thanks. The video description states that "If, one day, an artificial consciousness supplants human intelligence, it will be largely due to him." ( Si, un jour, une conscience artificielle supplante l’intelligence humaine, ce sera en grande partie de son fait. ). In fact, his last work is an unfinished book "The Computer and the Brain". Now is the best time for us to continue this work.

Oops. Copy pasted the French link. It's corrected now.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#28

Post by oingodoingo »

yuuu wrote: post #23
sudosysgen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm sure being born to nobility and being surrounded by multiple governesses and tutors with advanced education had absolutely no impact on his ability to reach his potential and that if he was born to a slum he would be just as capable as otherwise.

What's your point? That everyone who is born into a position of privilege should be shit on, no matter their contribution to society?

the point is that genius doesn’t come out of a vacuum, people tend to act like he was a miracle… he was highly intelligent AND highly privileged… he was who he was because of both

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#29

Post by raincom »

1cvmask wrote: post #2

The alien rat pack of STEM: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) - My favorite interaction is of von Neumann with Shannon regarding the coining of entropy: What von Neumann Said to Shannon When Shannon first derived his famous formula for information, he asked von Neumann what he should call it and von Neumann replied “You should call it entropy for two reasons: first because that is what the for…

When one uses an existing word, it carries a lot of epistemic and ontological baggage, thereby causing trouble to those who are new to the domain. That’s why scientists go for a linguistic reform: invent a new word during a conceptual or scientific revolution. That’s how the word “Oxygen” replaced the old “Phlogiston”.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#30

Post by booleandilemma »

Rijek33 wrote: post #5

Sometimes I have the nagging feeling that everyone I idolize would leave me disappointed if I knew them personally. The further back a person is in history the more mythical he becomes

It's worse than that. A lot of these historical people that we idolize would probably find us dull and boring.

What kind of conversations could we hope to have with someone like von Neumann or Turing?

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