The legend of John von Neumann (1973)
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The legend of John von Neumann (1973)
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Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)
#2John von Neumann was an absolutely amazing human and scientist. truly a genius, a polymath, and evidently quite an interesting party guest. the book Prisoner's Dilemma is ostensibly about game theory but it's set within the context of von Neumann's life. really quite fascinating, one of my favorite people to study.
http://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William-Poundstone/d...
Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)
#3The section on "work habits" is especially amazing. I know people who are very smart but also very lazy. They end up falling behind in the long run; may be a corollary to the Curse of the Gifted.
Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)
#4I wonder if a person like this came along today, whether they would be allowed to have the same type of impact in the variety of different ways that John von Neumann did. Whether he was advancing economic theory or telling the military the most efficient altitude to detonate a bomb, it was all the same basic skill set. He was just a crazy smart and logical guy and he applied that to every field that he could. I can't think of any modern equivalent person who has had a similar impact in the number of disciplines that von Neumann did. Does this type of opportunity still exist or do we now put too much focus on having people concentrate on a single area of expertise?
Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)
#5More than once I was studying something in completely unrelated fields (eg: quantum mechanics, biology, game theory), when suddenly von Neumann (who I first knew for his contributions to computer science) is mentioned and I'm like "What? This guy again?". After the third time I went to read his biography because it couldn't be the same person. But yeah, it was.
Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)
#6John von Neumann was an absolutely amazing human and scientist. truly a genius, a polymath, and evidently quite an interesting party guest. the book Prisoner's Dilemma is ostensibly about game theory but it's set within the context of von Neumann's life. really quite fascinating, one of my favorite people to study. http://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William-Poundstone/d...
Not to rain on the parade, but such glorification of "heroes" is... just awkward. Wasn't there an article on Herbert's Dune on the HN front page, just yesterday?
In particular, von Neumann was an "amazing human" as long as you don't mind him advising the military to bomb Russia out of the map, preemptively. What a wonderfully humane move.
"If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?"
(and this is not just some cranky scientist rambling -- he was very high up in the military circles, an advisor/policy maker).
Another common target of cringeworthy worship: Feynman. All fun stories (and I'm aware saying this is probably not going to go down well on HN) until you read about the abuse of women, paid abortions, broken marriages of his colleagues...
They're all human.
Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)
#7I wonder if a person like this came along today, whether they would be allowed to have the same type of impact in the variety of different ways that John von Neumann did. Whether he was advancing economic theory or telling the military the most efficient altitude to detonate a bomb, it was all the same basic skill set. He was just a crazy smart and logical guy and he applied that to every field that he could. I can't…
I think in many ways, in terms of exploring scientific and engineering realms, we're more conservative now. Personally, I'm doing a PhD in computer science, and I find it incredibly frustrating. Publishing papers is all about minute incremental improvements, and you absolutely must have numerical results to prove that you beat the competition. You can't publish negative results either, your work is considered worthless.
I'm in compilers and programming languages. I really wanted to create my own language as part of my PhD thesis, but I was basically told that this would be unpublishable. I mean, how can you hope to numerically show that your language is better than everything else around? Plus it's all been done already, nothing else new can possibly be invented in that realm.
Things weren't always like this. In the 1970s, we created things like Smalltalk, ML and LISP, which had a tremendous impact on the programming world. People also had bold ideas about artificial intelligence and nuclear-powered spaceships. In the 70s, people were allowed to just explore ideas, in the hopes that these ideas would lead to something good (and some did). Now, it's much harder, you bring up an idea and people immediately try to shoot it down, ask you for proof that it definitely will work, and bring up the most asinine suggestions as to why your idea will definitely fail.
Today, the exploration has been scaled down. It's not because the exploration failed, we invented many great things as a result of it, it's largely IMO because we live in different economic times. The USA is no longer in an economic boom, things are no longer in expansion. There are cuts to scientific funding, cuts to education. People are being told not to be "wasteful". We live in a much more nearsighted world, in a sense. Being a dreamer isn't considered a virtue.
Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)
#8John von Neumann was an absolutely amazing human and scientist. truly a genius, a polymath, and evidently quite an interesting party guest. the book Prisoner's Dilemma is ostensibly about game theory but it's set within the context of von Neumann's life. really quite fascinating, one of my favorite people to study. http://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William-Poundstone/d...
Not to rain on the parade, but such glorification of "heroes" is... just awkward. Wasn't there an article on Herbert's Dune on the HN front page, just yesterday? In particular, von Neumann was an "amazing human" as long as you don't mind him advising the military to bomb Russia out of the map, preemptively. What a wonderfully humane move. "If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today a…
Can you please add some sources for the claim about Feynman? A quick search on the web "feynman abuse" didn't gave me relevant results.
Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)
#9I wonder if a person like this came along today, whether they would be allowed to have the same type of impact in the variety of different ways that John von Neumann did. Whether he was advancing economic theory or telling the military the most efficient altitude to detonate a bomb, it was all the same basic skill set. He was just a crazy smart and logical guy and he applied that to every field that he could. I can't…
I think in many ways, in terms of exploring scientific and engineering realms, we're more conservative now. Personally, I'm doing a PhD in computer science, and I find it incredibly frustrating. Publishing papers is all about minute incremental improvements, and you absolutely must have numerical results to prove that you beat the competition. You can't publish negative results either, your work is considered worthle…
To be fair, were any of Smalltalk, ML or LISP created as part of someone's thesis? I thought they were all academic (or academic/commercial) projects, but developed by academics at a more senior stage in their careers.
I'm pretty sure I've seen some recent theses that did describe the creation of languages, too. Though they had less of a theoretical computer science bent, and more of a focus on saying "this is a language for X problem domain".
Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to rain on the parade, but such glorification of "heroes" is... just awkward. Wasn't there an article on Herbert's Dune on the HN front page, just yesterday? In particular, von Neumann was an "amazing human" as long as you don't mind him advising the military to bomb Russia out of the map, preemptively. What a wonderfully humane move. "If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today a…
Can you please add some sources for the claim about Feynman? A quick search on the web "feynman abuse" didn't gave me relevant results.
The famous quote is "His ex-wife reportedly testified that on several occasions when she unwittingly disturbed either his calculus or his drums he flew into a violent rage, during which time he attacked her, threw pieces of bric-a-brac about and smashed the furniture." That was from an FBI file (https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi...) on Feynman.
I don't know anything about the "paid abortion" thing.
It's tricky stuff... Feynman was (is?) a hero of mine, and I struggle to put this stuff in context.