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A man who tried to redeem the world with logic (2015)

nautil.us

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Re: A man who tried to redeem the world with logic (2015)

#11

Post by Terry_Roll »

openknot wrote: post #2

This is one of my favourite pieces of science feature reporting. I lack the background in computer science to better appreciate the technical angles of the story, but for the present, the article made a strong impression because of the underdog story: "The library was familiar ground, where he had taught himself Greek, Latin, logic, and mathematics—better than home, where his father insisted he drop out of school and…

I think the point about his wife might have also been a factor.

"There was just one person who wasn’t happy about the reunion: Wiener’s wife. " "And so she invented a story. She sat Wiener down and informed him that when their daughter, Barbara, had stayed at McCulloch’s house in Chicago, several of “his boys” had seduced her. Wiener immediately sent an angry telegram to Wiesner: “Please inform [Pitts and Lettvin] that all connection between me and your projects is permanently abolished. They are your problem. Wiener.” He never spoke to Pitts again. And he never told him why.3"

What a wedge to be driven between the sum of the parts. I've started to think pregnancy is such a drain on the female body that the change in behaviour in women afterwards seem like minor psychotic episodes which the medical profession ignore and pass off as "normalised" behaviour. In a round about way, she legally killed him because her actions are not recognised as murder by the legal profession.

Edit: One other point on his theorem, with quantifying the chemical effects in the body & brain, you are never going to be able to mathematically model a chemical entity with logic. We are complex realtime chemical reactions, we are not able to quantify the activity of every cell exactly, only generalise which introduces a margin of error in being able to predict a biological entities next move.

Re: A man who tried to redeem the world with logic (2015)

#12

Post by pmarreck »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #11
openknot wrote: post #2

This is one of my favourite pieces of science feature reporting. I lack the background in computer science to better appreciate the technical angles of the story, but for the present, the article made a strong impression because of the underdog story: "The library was familiar ground, where he had taught himself Greek, Latin, logic, and mathematics—better than home, where his father insisted he drop out of school and…

I think the point about his wife might have also been a factor. "There was just one person who wasn’t happy about the reunion: Wiener’s wife. " "And so she invented a story. She sat Wiener down and informed him that when their daughter, Barbara, had stayed at McCulloch’s house in Chicago, several of “his boys” had seduced her. Wiener immediately sent an angry telegram to Wiesner: “Please inform [Pitts and Lettvin] th…

The thing with the deceitful jealous shrew of a wife breaking up a productive (and dare I say, brotherly-loving?) company of men by lying about a sexual assault (a psychic cudgel that is still available to every woman) which in turn lead to the emotional downfall of one of the men into alcoholism, was so disappointing, and frankly, evil. I googled her and it also turns out she was an ardent Nazi supporter... Shocker.

Re: A man who tried to redeem the world with logic (2015)

#13

Post by dullcrisp »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #11
openknot wrote: post #2

This is one of my favourite pieces of science feature reporting. I lack the background in computer science to better appreciate the technical angles of the story, but for the present, the article made a strong impression because of the underdog story: "The library was familiar ground, where he had taught himself Greek, Latin, logic, and mathematics—better than home, where his father insisted he drop out of school and…

I think the point about his wife might have also been a factor. "There was just one person who wasn’t happy about the reunion: Wiener’s wife. " "And so she invented a story. She sat Wiener down and informed him that when their daughter, Barbara, had stayed at McCulloch’s house in Chicago, several of “his boys” had seduced her. Wiener immediately sent an angry telegram to Wiesner: “Please inform [Pitts and Lettvin] th…

> I've started to think pregnancy is such a drain on the female body that the change in behaviour in women afterwards seem like minor psychotic episodes which the medical profession ignore and pass off as "normalised" behaviour.

I don’t know that there’s a nice way to say this, but this is such a misogynistic take. I don’t see anything in the story that involved pregnancy or hormones. Whenever you read about something bad that was done by a man do you comment about how testosterone turns men into psychopaths?

Re: A man who tried to redeem the world with logic (2015)

#14

Post by Schiphol »

jll29 wrote: post #5

Great history of science reporting, I enjoyed reading it. Errata: The article says "The higher the probability, the higher the entropy and the lower the information content." It should say "the lower the entropy", of course, as the definition of information is the same as the definition of entropy (they are correlated, not anti-correlated): white noise has the lowest probability (it's impossible to predict), the high…

> according to Shannon's original Theory of Communication

But not according to Wiener's notion of information, which is, as both theorists agreed, equivalent to Shannon's up to a change in sign.

Re: A man who tried to redeem the world with logic (2015)

#15

Post by Schiphol »

varjag wrote: post #6

Oh wow. I read early Wiener account of McCulloch&Pitts work and even have one of their papers in my copy of 1956 Dartmouth workshop proceedings. It always puzzled me how Wiener and the whole cybernetics thing sort of just faded away. Had no idea that one woman single-handedly killed it.

One woman did not single-handedly kill cybernetics.

Re: A man who tried to redeem the world with logic (2015)

#16

Post by varjag »

Schiphol wrote: post #15
varjag wrote: post #6

Oh wow. I read early Wiener account of McCulloch&Pitts work and even have one of their papers in my copy of 1956 Dartmouth workshop proceedings. It always puzzled me how Wiener and the whole cybernetics thing sort of just faded away. Had no idea that one woman single-handedly killed it.

One woman did not single-handedly kill cybernetics.

Apparently I'm not alone in this interpretation:

Jerry Lettwin, one of Conway and Siegelman’s informants, suggests that Margaret’s accusation was a lie. Nevertheless, Wiener reacted strongly and immediately, cutting all ties with McCulloch and his group. His actions were, as the authors argue, the death knell for cybernetics as a unified field of study. McCulloch and his team were devastated by Wiener’s rejection, and they turned away from further exploration and elaboration of his ideas.

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.221696...

Re: A man who tried to redeem the world with logic (2015)

#17

Post by thebeastie »

randcraw wrote: post #3
openknot wrote: post #2

This is one of my favourite pieces of science feature reporting. I lack the background in computer science to better appreciate the technical angles of the story, but for the present, the article made a strong impression because of the underdog story: "The library was familiar ground, where he had taught himself Greek, Latin, logic, and mathematics—better than home, where his father insisted he drop out of school and…

Yeah, I was struck by the article when I first read it too. I suspect the author warrants a closer look; great writing. I've always been intrigued by mathematicians, which is probably the best label for Pitts. That world can be as virtual as it gets. Based on his fascination for Principia Mathematica, I have the sense that Pitts may have needed the world to fit into a neat representation that he felt he could navigat…

Someone like pitts may have needed a story to give himself some kind of existential validity in the world, and to give the world meaning (see also Neitsche). People in this position are prone to attaching themselves to grandiose ideas. Still, it sounds like he would have been fine, had it not been for what happened with Weiner.

Re: A man who tried to redeem the world with logic (2015)

#18

Post by TheSalarian »

pmarreck wrote: post #12
Terry_Roll wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point about his wife might have also been a factor. "There was just one person who wasn’t happy about the reunion: Wiener’s wife. " "And so she invented a story. She sat Wiener down and informed him that when their daughter, Barbara, had stayed at McCulloch’s house in Chicago, several of “his boys” had seduced her. Wiener immediately sent an angry telegram to Wiesner: “Please inform [Pitts and Lettvin] th…

The thing with the deceitful jealous shrew of a wife breaking up a productive (and dare I say, brotherly-loving?) company of men by lying about a sexual assault (a psychic cudgel that is still available to every woman) which in turn lead to the emotional downfall of one of the men into alcoholism, was so disappointing, and frankly, evil. I googled her and it also turns out she was an ardent Nazi supporter... Shocker.

Do you have a source for this? My searches land primarily on the University of North Carolina professor. I do see that she was a German immigrant but I'm not finding many details beyond that.

Re: A man who tried to redeem the world with logic (2015)

#19

Post by Terry_Roll »

dullcrisp wrote: post #13
Terry_Roll wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point about his wife might have also been a factor. "There was just one person who wasn’t happy about the reunion: Wiener’s wife. " "And so she invented a story. She sat Wiener down and informed him that when their daughter, Barbara, had stayed at McCulloch’s house in Chicago, several of “his boys” had seduced her. Wiener immediately sent an angry telegram to Wiesner: “Please inform [Pitts and Lettvin] th…

> I've started to think pregnancy is such a drain on the female body that the change in behaviour in women afterwards seem like minor psychotic episodes which the medical profession ignore and pass off as "normalised" behaviour. I don’t know that there’s a nice way to say this, but this is such a misogynistic take. I don’t see anything in the story that involved pregnancy or hormones. Whenever you read about somethin…

That is your opinion and you can count yourself lucky you have not been exposed to the evil in some women which could alter your point of view. But consider this, if someone holds a misogynistic view, what caused this opinion to form?

On the point of testosterone turning men into psycho's, I'll agree it can make men more emotionless or robotic, but that doesnt make them an a-hole going around causing crimes, which is the connotation the word psychopath generates in the general psyche of a population.

Re: A man who tried to redeem the world with logic (2015)

#20

Post by pmarreck »

TheSalarian wrote: post #18
pmarreck wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing with the deceitful jealous shrew of a wife breaking up a productive (and dare I say, brotherly-loving?) company of men by lying about a sexual assault (a psychic cudgel that is still available to every woman) which in turn lead to the emotional downfall of one of the men into alcoholism, was so disappointing, and frankly, evil. I googled her and it also turns out she was an ardent Nazi supporter... Shocker.

Do you have a source for this? My searches land primarily on the University of North Carolina professor. I do see that she was a German immigrant but I'm not finding many details beyond that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/books/review/dark-hero-of...

> The catastrophe emerged from Wiener's German-born wife, Margaret, and their almost gothically weird relationship. Though Wiener was Jewish, Margaret became an outspoken Nazi supporter during World War II. (She kept a copy of "Mein Kampf" on a dresser at home.) She was even more hostile to her daughters, and accused the elder of inspiring "unnatural" sexual feelings in her father. As Wiener's reputation grew and he crisscrossed the globe on lecture circuits, Margaret attempted to trigger his depressions with undercutting remarks. At the peak of Wiener's fame, she told an audacious lie that destroyed his relationship with his closest scientific collaborators. One of Wiener's daughters had interned for a spring with the colleagues; Margaret told Wiener that their daughter had had sex with several of them. Wiener chose to believe the falsehood. He immediately cut off all contact with his collaborators, never explained the accusation and never spoke to them again. And that, the authors contend, is the real reason cybernetics died. Wiener's colleagues were shattered, and without his participation, their explorations of his ideas quickly atrophied. One of Wiener's former protégés, the young mathematical genius Walter Pitts, was so scarred that ultimately he drank himself to death. By the time of Wiener's death in 1964, there were few proselytizers left; Soviet scientists were interested, but this only served to give cybernetics a "red" tinge.

Just a dream of a spouse, that one. :: eye roll ::

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