A new biography of John von Neumann • Hacker News Board

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#41

Post by sudosysgen » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

n4r9 wrote: post #36

raincom wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

When defining statistical entropy in his Cambridge lecture course on Coding and Cryptography, Thomas Korner adds the following footnote: "It is unwise for the beginner and may or may not be fruitless for the expert to seek a link with entropy in physics." https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~twk/Shan.pdf

Does Landauer's principle not already create a very strong link between the two? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle

It even predicts a direct equivalence between the unit of bit and Joules per Kelvin with the entropy produced in the erasure of a bit being equal to 9.6e-24 J/K

Unless I'm making some mistake, you can even use computer science principles combined with Landauer's limit to solve Maxwell's Demon.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#42

Post by sudosysgen » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

yuuu wrote: post #40

sudosysgen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many more Von Neumanns would we have if more people had a similar environment? Beyond that, yes he was incredibly accomplished, very prolific, and supremely intelligent, but it is important to remember that he was still human and not some kind of transcendant being outside of earthly considerations.

I don't see anyone in this comment thread implying that he's inhuman or a supreme being. It seems like you may be projecting the insecurities of your own background into the discussion. I'm occasionally envious of people with great achievements who had a "privileged" background, but it's certainly not the first thing I point out when their names are brought up.

I didn't point it out as the first thing when his name was brought up. But apparently being Von Neumann is sufficient for your upbringing not to matter, hence why I replied.

There are no shortages of people in these threads who genuinely believe that Neumann was supremely intelligent, beyond the conception of regular people. I'm sure you'll find them. It's not even unique to Neumann.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#43

Post by rrwright » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

So far, “Turing’s Cathedral” by George Dyson is the best von Neumann biography I’ve found—though it’s not explicitly a biography of him, but of the development of the computer (and the Princeton IAS). It includes lots of other characters who played their parts, but von Neumann is clearly at the center.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#44

Post by sillysaurusx » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #39

sillysaurusx wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whose coziness with the military-industrial complex remains controversial to this day. Why is it controversial? I know nothing of Von Neumann, but it doesn't seem like a bad thing. "Coziness" could mean a lot of things, but personally even if Von Neumann was taking the military industrial complex out on a date every Tuesday, I wouldn't see a problem with it. Is the implication that the military was influencing his…

Do you think that enthusiastically egging on the nuclear holocaust of tens of million of people for ultimately no good reason (and that's the best case scenario of his proposal, it could have been even worse as he seriously underestimated the Soviet Union) is not a bad thing? Had he managed to convince the president, he would have been one of the people with the worst impact on humanity (and science incidentally) of…

As I already said, I know nothing about Von Neumann's history. You'll have to fill me in before I can answer that question, since you didn't really say what happened.

My criticism had a source which clearly explained what he did and why it had a negative impact. You may want to do the same thing, or I think no one will be impressed with your claim that Neumann personally was the decisive factor in killing a bunch of people that would've been dead a century later anyway. (Just a little joke.)

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#45

Post by fighterpilot » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #22

fighterpilot wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 avera…

This was one of the world's foremost mathematicians, an unprecedented genius who was born into relatively poor circumstances (by Western standards and by modern standards) and who was completely self-made. There's footage of his very modest family home, so if you're going to try to claim he's somehow "privileged" above and beyond an extremely poor person in the US today, that would be laughable. It's true he wasn't a child prodigy, but so what? You're trying to crap on Von Neumann's adult accomplishments, which is what's impressive here (there's loads of child prodigies that flop as adults), by claiming without any basis that they're a product of his parent's success when Ramanujan is conclusive proof that this isn't a necessary condition for a Von Neumann calibre genius to arise. Another thing your analysis ignores is that intelligence is partly genetic, so of course smart kids are going to often have richer parents. If their parents are extremely smart then most likely they've figured out a way to make some money. No surprise there.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#46

Post by leephillips » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #37

photochemsyn wrote: post #24

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 N…

> whose coziness with the military-industrial complex remains controversial to this day. Why is it controversial? I know nothing of Von Neumann, but it doesn't seem like a bad thing. "Coziness" could mean a lot of things, but personally even if Von Neumann was taking the military industrial complex out on a date every Tuesday, I wouldn't see a problem with it. Is the implication that the military was influencing his…

I think this is an overstatement. I don't think his mistake came close to delaying the development of QM for a "few decades". On the contrary, he was a major contributor to the mathematical foundations of QM, and, on balance, certainly advanced the field more than he retarded it, even considering his blunder.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#47

Post by sudosysgen » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #44

sudosysgen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that enthusiastically egging on the nuclear holocaust of tens of million of people for ultimately no good reason (and that's the best case scenario of his proposal, it could have been even worse as he seriously underestimated the Soviet Union) is not a bad thing? Had he managed to convince the president, he would have been one of the people with the worst impact on humanity (and science incidentally) of…

As I already said, I know nothing about Von Neumann's history. You'll have to fill me in before I can answer that question, since you didn't really say what happened. My criticism had a source which clearly explained what he did and why it had a negative impact. You may want to do the same thing, or I think no one will be impressed with your claim that Neumann personally was the decisive factor in killing a bunch of…

He ended up not being the decisive factor, but as the above said, he advocated for a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union, and was already part of the nuclear decision-making process - he was invited to participate in the decision for which cities to strike in Japan but was ultimately overruled because he suggested to hit target with no military importance and high concentrations of civilians. He thought (very wrongly) that coexistence with the Soviets was impossible and that they had to be eliminated as soon as possible.

Here are sources if you want:

"Von Neumann, four other scientists, and various military personnel were included in the target selection committee that was responsible for choosing the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the first targets of the atomic bomb. [...] The cultural capital Kyoto, which had been spared the bombing inflicted upon militarily significant cities, was von Neumann's first choice"

"He was quoted in 1950 remarking, "During a Senate committee hearing he described his political ideology as "violently anti-communist, and much more militaristic than the norm". If you say why not bomb [the Soviets] tomorrow, I say, why not today? If you say today at five o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?"

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Nuclear_weapo...)

I don't think that I need to give sources as to why nuking the USSR would have had a huge negative impact.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#48

Post by alecst » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 5:38 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #37

photochemsyn wrote: post #24

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 N…

> whose coziness with the military-industrial complex remains controversial to this day. Why is it controversial? I know nothing of Von Neumann, but it doesn't seem like a bad thing. "Coziness" could mean a lot of things, but personally even if Von Neumann was taking the military industrial complex out on a date every Tuesday, I wouldn't see a problem with it. Is the implication that the military was influencing his…

> The bigger criticism of Von Neumann is that he set back quantum mechanics for a few decades: https://twitter.com/orzelc/status/1446414513465696256

Really skeptical of this. Not only did he write a famous "little book" on QM (which is still readable to this day), but hidden variable theories are pretty much disproved in QM. So even if he was wrong about the theorem, he was still right about the principle. There's a wikipedia on it here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory

I spent a long time studying QM and never heard of anyone taking hidden-variable theories seriously so I don't know what this tweet is about.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#49

Post by leephillips » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #44

sudosysgen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that enthusiastically egging on the nuclear holocaust of tens of million of people for ultimately no good reason (and that's the best case scenario of his proposal, it could have been even worse as he seriously underestimated the Soviet Union) is not a bad thing? Had he managed to convince the president, he would have been one of the people with the worst impact on humanity (and science incidentally) of…

As I already said, I know nothing about Von Neumann's history. You'll have to fill me in before I can answer that question, since you didn't really say what happened. My criticism had a source which clearly explained what he did and why it had a negative impact. You may want to do the same thing, or I think no one will be impressed with your claim that Neumann personally was the decisive factor in killing a bunch of…

Your "source" is a tweet that makes a claim with almost no justification.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#50

Post by throwaway81523 » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

The earlier book-length biography by Norman Macrae is quite terrible imho. This new one (per photochemyn's comment in this thread) doesn't sound that promising either, unfortunately, and few of von Neumann's contemporaries are still around to talk to.

There is a German guy (Ulf Hashagen) who has done some excellent biographical research about von Neumann. I hope he writes a full length biography some day, since there doesn't seem to be one now. Meanwhile, the best overview article I know of is Stanislaw Ulam's profile in the AMS Bulletin published shortly after von Neumann's death, in the special issue devoted to him:

https://projecteuclid.org/journals/bulletin-of-the-american-...