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The genius of John von Neumann

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Re: The genius of John von Neumann

#71

Post by oh_sigh »

DSingularity wrote: post #28
leesec wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A man who didn't want a perceived enemy to get nuclear capabilities. Wow, what a lunatic.

And willing to kill tens of millions of innocents to achieve this. Yeah man a lunatic who in his detachment from the common man became less than in some of the most important dimensions of all: empathy, humanity.

Easy to say now, looking back on history and seeing that there wasn't a civilization ending nuclear war.

I wonder what the odds were of that happening? Did we get lucky and eke by that period with 1% odds? Or was there only ever a very very small chance of a nuclear holocaust, and people were worried about nothing? The answer to that question is what I would need to know about whether it is reasonable to nuke 10M people.

Re: The genius of John von Neumann

#72

Post by gonehome »

vishho wrote: post #64
triclops200 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was a super genius. Just a super genius who repeatedly called for genocide and nuclear first strikes. He was removed from the target selection committee for the Japan bombings because he kept advocating for high civilian targets with no military value and even the generals at the table viewed him as crazy. The ability to be a genius and a lunatic aren't mutually exclusive and the recent efforts to build a hagiogra…

A first strike is not lunacy. It is a rational decision, if the nuclear arms race is viewed under game theory. He was a consultant, not had his hand on the button. The people with the hand on the button were talking about the rising threat and how to deal with it in the future. Neumann rightly reasoned that if there ever came a conflict, the winning move would have been an early first strike. If you look at his state…

In the prisoner's dilemma isn't a core constraint that the prisoners can't collaborate? Therefore you can't cooperate for the best outcome and both are independently incentivized to defect.

In global diplomacy the goal is to coordinate for the best outcome. So I'm not sure a strike first 'defection' is the rational move.

Re: The genius of John von Neumann

#73

Post by dragontamer »

gonehome wrote: post #72
vishho wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A first strike is not lunacy. It is a rational decision, if the nuclear arms race is viewed under game theory. He was a consultant, not had his hand on the button. The people with the hand on the button were talking about the rising threat and how to deal with it in the future. Neumann rightly reasoned that if there ever came a conflict, the winning move would have been an early first strike. If you look at his state…

In the prisoner's dilemma isn't a core constraint that the prisoners can't collaborate? Therefore you can't cooperate for the best outcome and both are independently incentivized to defect. In global diplomacy the goal is to coordinate for the best outcome. So I'm not sure a strike first 'defection' is the rational move.

There's no such restriction in the prisoner's dilemma.

Lets make it explicit. Let me _pretend_ that I'm going to work with you on the prisoner's dilemma game. I pretend that I'm trustworthy, and coordinate with you that we both trust each other.

That's when I betray you and take all the money for myself.

------------

In an *iterated* prisoner's dilemma, I simply work with you for the first X-1 trials (where X is the number of trials), and then betray you on the final trial. Since you know I'm going to betray you on the final trial, you betray me on the 2nd to last final trial. Etc. etc. This follows like induction all the way to the 1st trial.

Which means my best move is to betray you in the 1st trial, as per the rule of induction. But you know, pretend that I'm going to work with you (so that you choose trust in the 1st trial).

---------

Where things go sideways is iterated + public prisoner's dilemma. That is, there are 3 players, and the 3rd player watches what the other 2 players do. Each iteration, we rotate who plays the game.

Finally, we have a situation where trust is a good move: if only to "prove" to the other player that you're trustworthy and possibly get more gains over the long term.

Re: The genius of John von Neumann

#74

Post by stevemadere »

photochemsyn wrote: post #16
sugarpile wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how pushing for a strategy that, from a game theory point of view, was sound makes him a lunatic. Plenty of people don't view the preservation of life as the be all end all and if that strategy had been followed and it had led to a world where only the United States had ever been allowed to develop nuclear weapons I see a very easy argument for it being the more long-term humane option. Edit: who's more…

It's a lunatic position. Consider the die-hard environmental activist who decides the best way to save the planet is to create a collection of deadly infectious pathogens, distribute them to every major city on the planet, and so reduce the human population by 75%, creating a glorious utopia for everyone to enjoy. Several books and movies have employed this plot, 'Cobra Event' comes to mind. Consider the psychology o…

Is there a Kickstarter for that project? Asking for a friend.

Re: The genius of John von Neumann

#75

Post by GDC7 »

philwelch wrote: post #60
GDC7 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every potential enemy is also a potential friend or a potential neutral. By definition. Besides you don't get to wipe 1B people off the planet (which way back then represented 35% of the global population), and have as only consequence the fact that you "won" the prisoner's dilemma. Such "victories" emerge as such after centuries when scientists would be studying the DNA remains and see who survived and who perished.…

Von Neumann's advocacy of a preemptive strike, to my knowledge, took place in the 1950's, when the Soviet Union was still under the rule of Stalin and did not yet have the ability to effectively strike back at the US. It was far from a guarantee that the Soviets would moderate after Stalin's death--it was sort of like hoping that, if Germany won WWII, that the Nazis would moderate after Hitler's death. Behold your "p…

> It was far from a guarantee that the Soviets would moderate after Stalin's death

That is the same of saying that there was no reason to suspect that the US would moderate after FDR's death.

Getting involved in a conflict on the other side of the world is not exactly something a moderate would do.

Germany had a spirit of revenge after WW1. What did the US have to do on the other side of the world...once again?

No matter the other side of the world argument, countries which decided to be moderate were never involved even as they were right there where the disaster went down: Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Greece, Norway...

If you adjust for education, quality of life and also hunger, then the US didn't look so moderate after all.

Re: The genius of John von Neumann

#76

Post by screye »

badRNG wrote: post #9

Bizarre that the second to top comment (on the linked page) immediately turned the conversation into one about the commenter's view on racial/sexual supremacy and goes on to say "correspondingly, there are also ethnicities that are less intelligent" (I'm assuming they are implying supremacy of their own group.) It's quite jarring the frequency one comes across white supremacist/misogynist talking points when one trie…

The unfortunate reality is that group level differences in characteristics associated with intelligence are measurable. It is pretty much an open secret in genomics.

Additionally, given how regression to the mean works, a small enough endogamous minority will display larger deviations from the mean (positive or negative) than larger ethnic groups that usually constitute the majority.

I agree that it is a really tricky line to walk. The brazen pursuit of truth or tabooing of prospectively society uprooting revelations. Both are a result of the same observation, just different moral systems.

I'm sure many grapple with this struggle in their own way. However, ostrasizing those who find themselves on the other side of that fence by shouting various 'X-isms', is neither productive nor effective.

Re: The genius of John von Neumann

#77

Post by paulpauper »

Herodotus38 wrote: post #47

A little pedantic but I want to fix something. I noticed in the first sentence that he states Von Nuemann died of bone cancer. This is incorrect. His cancer was first found in his collarbone, and it was a metastatic lesion. They biopsied it and various sources I've read have stated the primary cancer was pancreatic or prostate. This means that it would have been an undifferentiated adenocarcinoma. This means the canc…

Interesting insight

Re: The genius of John von Neumann

#78

Post by paulpauper »

>He was not an economist, but he developed the use of fixed-point theorems in economics in a paper which the historian Roy Weintraub calls “the single most important article in mathematical economics”, and which inspired “half a dozen” Nobel laureates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer_fixed-point_theorem

no mention of him. I don't think he conceived of the idea.

Re: The genius of John von Neumann

#79

Post by philwelch »

GDC7 wrote: post #75
philwelch wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Von Neumann's advocacy of a preemptive strike, to my knowledge, took place in the 1950's, when the Soviet Union was still under the rule of Stalin and did not yet have the ability to effectively strike back at the US. It was far from a guarantee that the Soviets would moderate after Stalin's death--it was sort of like hoping that, if Germany won WWII, that the Nazis would moderate after Hitler's death. Behold your "p…

> It was far from a guarantee that the Soviets would moderate after Stalin's death That is the same of saying that there was no reason to suspect that the US would moderate after FDR's death. Getting involved in a conflict on the other side of the world is not exactly something a moderate would do. Germany had a spirit of revenge after WW1. What did the US have to do on the other side of the world...once again? No ma…

> That is the same of saying that there was no reason to suspect that the US would moderate after FDR's death.

No, it isn’t. FDR didn’t have tens of millions of people murdered in cold blood.

Re: The genius of John von Neumann

#80

Post by tshaddox »

hyperbovine wrote: post #39
photochemsyn wrote: post #5

You could write another article entitled 'the lunacy of John von Neumann' over his endless pushes for destroying every major city in the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons, too. A brilliant scientist, yes, but also an unhinged lunatic. Not an unusual situation, see Cantor etc. What's curious is how many hagiographies have been written about this individual - some people seem bent on rehabilitating this figure by erasi…

> In any case, hero-worship of scientists is very silly. Compared to, say, people who use sticks to roll balls into holes? [ https://www.theonion.com/man-who-used-stick-to-roll-ball-int... ] I'll take scientist worship any day compared to all the other idiots and charlatans our culture chooses to worship.

Maybe this is too radical but how about don't worship anything at all?
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