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A new biography of John von Neumann

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Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#121

Post by johncearls »

raincom wrote: post #29
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”.

My least favorite example of this is statistical "significance" which gives the impression of importance. I can't think of a word that has caused more trouble in science than that.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#122

Post by kaba0 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #117
kaba0 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Neumann was supremely intelligent, beyond the conception of regular people And they would be right. This sort of genius is not only nurture and hard work, but nature as well. Like no matter what I do in my life, I will never even approach that level. Of course he is still human, and someone will born (rarely though) that will achieve similar feats, but let’s be honest and just say that what he did is well beyond th…

You may not, but hundreds if not thousands of people were able to push his work farther than he could. It's not beyond the ability of a regular person with enough work to understand what he understood. Really the biggest difference is speed.

Understanding something is not the same as being able to recreate it from scratch.

I can follow a math example’s solution, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I could solve it alone.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#123

Post by SiliconVallet »

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.

As it has been throughout history? What is your point besides stating obvious, self-evident truths that have existed throughout history? History has always been written about the rich and powerful and privileged. You sound a little defensive, perhaps because you were not born into such privilege. But tell me, what have YOU done with your life that is so worth of note in history books? Because so far you are just a complaining pissant.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#124

Post by sershe »

mr_toad wrote: post #97
sershe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There would be no decapitation. If the allies were capable of surgically removing a government they would have done it with Germany or Japan. The prevailing military doctrine at the time was ‘total war’, and it was implemented with strategic bombing campaigns. The weapons were so inaccurate that they simply kept dropping bombs until everything was destroyed. Any war on the Soviet Union, either nuclear or with convent…

Sure; and there were massive civilian casualties in WWII. If WWII could be prevented at the cost of e.g. entirely obliterating Berlin in 1935, it would be "worth it", strictly as a matter of lives lost and saved. Would it prevent WWII? That's a valid subject for debate, and the debate would have gone differently in 1935 than now with the benefit of hindsight. Ditto for 1946.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#125

Post by erosenbe0 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #116
erosenbe0 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Von Neumann was ethnically Jewish and his relatives or friends literally went from respected citizens to extermination in unfathomably short order; so one would not be surprised if his calculus pertaining to collateral damage in decimating the Nazis would be rather unforgiving.

That's an explanation, but it's still wrong. It's a very dangerous thing to justify ethnic revanchism.

Definitely does not make for justification but I am helping us understand why [hopefully hyperbolic] comments of a political nature by Von Neumann [or other Jewish contemporaries] are often rather objectionable by universal or nominal moral standards.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#126

Post by noiseman »

misbyrming wrote: post #119
noiseman wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There would be no negative consequences for you if you failed to take an upskirt picture. But if a country falls behind in weapons technology, then its very existence is imperilled.

On that, please see my point in my second comment above about considering a realistic scenario. Additionally, I believe that being an asshole is a negative consequence (of one's choices in life?) in and of itself. In a sense, I think it's the worse thing that can possibly happen to a person, to be an asshole.

I would contest the claim that being an asshole is something that “happens to” a person, rather than something that the person chooses to do.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#127

Post by philwelch »

sudosysgen wrote: post #79
philwelch wrote: post #74

Earlier 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. 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.

> The plans were to drop hundreds of nukes. Those were definitely in the right order of magnitude to potentially end humanity.

I'm not sure where you're getting a plan to drop hundreds of nukes on the Soviet Union in 1950 from Von Neumann--source?

In any case, these weren't hydrogen bombs. There were probably hundreds of relatively legitimate military targets in the USSR in 1950 that could be usefully attacked with nuclear weapons with yields in the tens of kilotons (versus the hundreds to thousands of kilotons of hydrogen bombs). It's a big country and you could drop hundreds of nuclear weapons in the right parts of it without destroying population centers. The Soviets themselves did that with their own testing.

> There is no strategic use of nuclear weapons against a nuclear armed country.

Which the USSR barely qualified as in 1950. Plus, they had few reliable ways of delivering those nuclear arms to US soil. That's the point of attacking them in 1950 as opposed to waiting until they had a large nuclear arsenal and the ability to reach the United States.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#128

Post by philwelch »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #89
philwelch wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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? That's a fascinating question. I'm not sure what to say. EDIT: Ah, my response is "That's an unfair comparison." The context was that Von Neumann was advocating the ex…

> The context was that Von Neumann was advocating the extermination of the Russian population, not their regime.

I don't think that's accurate. 1950 was before hydrogen bombs.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#129

Post by mixmastamyk »

rrsmtz wrote: post #69
mixmastamyk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sanctity of life occurred gradually, and is in part a luxury of abundance. If you want to criticize, imho, criticize someone who actually did wrong. Those who expressed an opinion found to be a bad call almost a century in the future aren’t worth the bother in my opinion. We were incredibly lucky to have JvN.

> Sanctity of life occurred gradually, and is in part a luxury of abundance. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" was not a product of an abundant, decadent society, and I promise you that Neumann had heard of it. I agree that Neumann gave humanity great scientific and technological gifts that brought us into the modern era, but so did Wernher von Braun. Both also used their gifts to cause suffering and destruction on a massive sca…

He didn't do anything wrong, or hide from his work, or opinions however. He's merely guilty of a wrong opinion, based on a bad call of a plausible future that didn't happen.

Let's not forget how close to war we came during the "bay of pigs" era.

Re: A new biography of John von Neumann

#130

Post by jgalt212 »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #52
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…

It’s not controversial during WWII, the pinnacle of human conflict. The war effort was a goal of almost everyone active. The nuclear race was on and many had to flee Europe. Even in normal circumstances, culturally people just didn’t care as much about human life back then. Criticizing that from the comfortable perspective of today or even halfway to the sixties, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Also being smart ap…

well put, or more succinctly hindsight is 20/20.
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