A new biography of John von Neumann
11–20 of 132 posts
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#12The release of a new biography explains the recent surge of threads about him:
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#13Ah, the genius of being at the right time among the right people, and having an all-too-helpful assistant...
> 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 arithmetic.
Certainly very few people have this level of genius, but if Von Neumann were to be born to an average milieu it is impossible he would have been able to reach those milestones.
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#14Ah, the genius of being at the right time among the right people, and having an all-too-helpful assistant...
Oh my god, give me a break. It's von Neumann.
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#15Sometimes 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
He probably would - he was incredibly warlike and had quite little regard for human life. Just like anyone else he had violently wrong opinions and predictions and had his biases - he was certainly a fallible mind though a genius.
That being said, there are quite a few historical figures (Einstein, Penrose, Hawking, Ramanujan, Bertrand Russel, Grothendieck) that are nowhere as morally questionable as many, though they are all flawed people.
On a purely intellectual level I doubt that you would be disappointed though they are all human in the end.
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#16Earlier 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…
I think this is a question of what your definition of "a lot" is. If you use percentage - for example, 1% of parents, of maybe even less - 0.01%, 0.01%*7.7 billion = about a million people.
Does percentage make more sense here or absolute number? It depends on your context. I would say in this argument, it seems more certain that Von Neumann's success, which is always a function of both nature and nurture, can probably be attributed more to nature. Or, perhaps most likely, it's a rare event of talent meets incredible luck.
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#17The 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…
Recent HN discussion on the Martians of Budapest :
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#18Ah, the genius of being at the right time among the right people, and having an all-too-helpful assistant...
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.
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#19Ah, the genius of being at the right time among the right people, and having an all-too-helpful assistant...
I think any argument that tries to boil down success into either nature or nurture is a bit of a futile exercise - the boring and non-controversial answer is always that it is a combination of both.
No need to get all riled up about fairness.
Re: A new biography of John von Neumann
#20Earlier 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…
I think this is a question of what your definition of "a lot" is. If you use percentage - for example, 1% of parents, of maybe even less - 0.01%, 0.01%*7.7 billion = about a million people. Does percentage make more sense here or absolute number? It depends on your context. I would say in this argument, it seems more certain that Von Neumann's success, which is always a function of both nature and nurture, can probab…
Von Neumann was raised in the absolute best possible environment for intellectual development.
It's certainly a meeting of nature and nurture.