“For progress,” he wrote, “there is no cure.”
that pretty much sums things up, doesn't it.
A new biography of John von Neumann
71–80 of 132 posts
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#72Earlier 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…
> 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. Yeah, they’re too busy coaching their kids’ sports teams.
Yes, culture comes into play significantly.
I have seen parents buying their kids Playstations and taking them to expensive vacations in 5/7 star hotels and are content about "doing a lot" for their kids.
I have also seen parents really investing time in their kids' future. Teaching them programming, foreign languages, advanced (for their age as per some regulatory bodies) math, etc.
Any wonder why the kids from the next group will turn out to be more successful statistically?
There is also nuance in this. Almost nobody (statistically) grows up to be geniuses from these families. But they certainly tend to have more accomplished lives.
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 wr…
When he made those comments, Stalin was still alive. You have the benefit of 70 years of hindsight and the knowledge that the Soviet Union moderated after Stalin’s death and collapsed entirely of its own accord a few decades later.
Additionally, H-bombs didn’t even exist in 1950. A nuclear strike on the Soviet Union in 1950 would have been devastating but not as catastrophic as you would imagine today. It would have been closer to the Second World War—a bloody and devastating piece of business to be sure, but once it was all over, most of the people involved agreed that it had been worth fighting.
If the Nazis won WWII, don’t you think it would be worth at least considering using nuclear weapons in a war to destroy their regime before they developed a competitive nuclear arsenal of their own? Or would you have argued for coexistence with them? The Soviet Union in 1950 was very much the moral equivalent of that situation.
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think Lincoln was a lunatic?
I think Lincoln didn't have access to an arsenal that could end humanity if used in the wrong way, so I don't know if the comparison is warranted. In general, if someone is trying to exterminate a population, then I believe that they fall under the lunatic umbrella, and that the umbrella should come down like a Venus fly trap and gobble all of them up. On balance, if we did this to every such person throughout histor…
> I think Lincoln didn't have access to an arsenal that could end humanity if used in the wrong way, so I don't know if the comparison is warranted.
Neither did the US in 1950. You’re thinking of H-bombs, which didn’t exist until 1952.
> In general, if someone is trying to exterminate a population
Which is not, in the context of 1950, what von Neumann was advocating. He was advocating for the use of strategic bombing in a campaign to topple a totalitarian regime that murdered tens of millions of people anyway. Which is what most people agreed was a good idea with the Nazis five years previous.
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#75John 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…
Why does the first part need to be rehabilitated? With whom is it controversial? I've never heard of this controversy before.
First, a decapitating strike against Soviet Union /could/ have made sense given the information at the time - imagine you could decapitate Germany in 1935, how many lives would that have saved? Hindsight is 20/20, before that you couldn't be 100% sure that one of the two architects of WWII was not going to try again.
Second, I personally really like Feynman's quote on von Neumann "von Neumann gave me an interesting idea: that you don’t have to be responsible for the world that you’re in. So I have developed a very powerful sense of social irresponsibility as a result of von Neumann’s advice.". I think it's one of the best takes on these issues in most cases.
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#76John 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…
> 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.
I don't think it's a hard position to rehabilitate. What people find so outrageous are not von Neumann's views about geopolitics and nuclear weapons but his attitude. They object to the cheerful terms in which he advocated for the use of nuclear weapons.
And fair enough. But, attitude aside, there's nothing obviously wrong with arguing that the US should have used its nuclear monopoly to secure the independence of Eastern Europe or even to end the Soviet regime.
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#77Earlier 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…
You clearly don't have much exposure to the outside world.
I know a lot of parents, basically almost all parents that I know of, enroll their kids in all sorts of things.
They are admitted into schools where you speak only English, they are admitted into swimming school, karate, painting, singing, dance class, you name it.
My cousin's kid is enrolled into five extra-curricular classes. She is 7.
I have been seeing this for decades now. Despite being born into upper middle class homes, and having their parents shower money on stuff, most kids grow up to be vastly uninteresting individuals.
- Most of them speak grammatically incorrect, Indian-style English.
- Many struggle to find jobs even in the low-paying strata of the private sector.
- Most of them don't go to top schools since almost any college that matters takes admission through meritocratic channels (academic test scores and/or admission tests)
I have seen a lot of these rich babies fail in life.
Privilege never equals achievement.
There is always some element of genetics involved.
Hard work matters more than genetics, I believe so. But the influence of genes is not trivial.
Genes + extreme hard work + good environment provide a baseline for true genius.
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 wr…
When he made those comments, Stalin was still alive. You have the benefit of 70 years of hindsight and the knowledge that the Soviet Union moderated after Stalin’s death and collapsed entirely of its own accord a few decades later. Additionally, H-bombs didn’t even exist in 1950. A nuclear strike on the Soviet Union in 1950 would have been devastating but not as catastrophic as you would imagine today. It would have…
Stalin is the guy who executed people who didn't abandon the idea of worldwide communism. He moderated the foreign policy of the USSR. He was also the guy who expended a lot of political capital and burned quite a few bridges to propose defensive alliances with Western countries, betraying those who wanted to plunge them into revolution.
He was pretty evil, but Stalin was much more moderate on exporting communism by military force than the norm - his invasions were mostly about maintaining the national security of the USSR.
The US by 1950 had hundreds of nuclear bombs. It would have been devastatig, the fallout would have been horrifying, and the famines that would follow would be the largest in the history of humanity.
>If the Nazis won WWII, don’t you think it would be worth at least considering using nuclear weapons in a war to destroy their regime before they developed a competitive nuclear arsenal of their own? Or would you have argued for coexistence with them? The Soviet Union in 1950 was very much the moral equivalent of that situation.
If it was the Nazis, I would, because there plan after winning WW2 involved killing 200+ million people. Say what you will about Stalin and he truly was evil, he had no plans of world conquest, much less of genociding hundreds of millions and literally enslaving a billion people.
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Lincoln didn't have access to an arsenal that could end humanity if used in the wrong way, so I don't know if the comparison is warranted. In general, if someone is trying to exterminate a population, then I believe that they fall under the lunatic umbrella, and that the umbrella should come down like a Venus fly trap and gobble all of them up. On balance, if we did this to every such person throughout histor…
> I think Lincoln didn't have access to an arsenal that could end humanity if used in the wrong way, so I don't know if the comparison is warranted. Neither did the US in 1950. You’re thinking of H-bombs, which didn’t exist until 1952. > In general, if someone is trying to exterminate a population Which is not, in the context of 1950, what von Neumann was advocating. He was advocating for the use of strategic bombing…
This is quite wrong. The plans were to drop hundreds of nukes. Those were definitely in the right order of magnitude to potentially end humanity. Certainly enough to kill the vast majority of the USSR.
There is no strategic use of nuclear weapons against a nuclear armed country. The plan was a war of extermination. Strategically at the time the majority of the military was in the GDR, not even in the USSR.
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#80Sometimes 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…
Not doubting this, but can you point us to a source?