The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

Post by senderista » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 6:24 PM UTC

anongraddebt wrote: post #22

danieltillett wrote: post #10

I have always wondered how close von Neumann was to the maximum human potential. Does he sit close the outer edge of possible human potential, or can greater geniuses be created? Is there anyone alive who even comes close to Johnny?

My guess is that each relatively difficult field (fields that require substantial thought... I guess you know it when you see it) has its freaks of nature: genetic anomalies that, for at least a brief moment, seem to transcend the other participants. In the 20th century, philosophy had Saul Kripke. Among other things, he published one of the seminal papers in the (at that time) nascent area of modal logic when he was…

Post by devmacrile » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 6:33 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #21

Can anyone recommend readings on von Neumann that highlight his non-mathematical achievements? Obviously he was primarily a physicist and mathematician, but for a non-mathematician, the long list of academic publications is hard to interpret and appreciate. For example, more in the vein of these: - Reportedly, von Neumann possessed an eidetic memory, and so was able to recall complete novels and pages of the phone di…

Post by chrisco255 » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 6:47 PM UTC

mvf0 wrote: post #74

lqet wrote: post #47

"Von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us." - Edward Teller See [0] for a demonstration. I watched a documentary from the 80ies a long time ago. A mathematician (can't remember his name) who worked with von Neumann in Los Alamanos was interviewed. He described von…

Here is that exact documentary you were thinking of [0]. It's really a fantastic documentary on the incredible feats of von Neumann and worth a watch by everyone here. That person you quoted was Edward Teller and the interview can be found at 54:58 [1]. I read somewhere that the young boy asking von Neumann a question at 6:13 [2] is actually Bill Clinton. Can anyone verify this? [0] https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE [1] h…

Post by carapace » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

roca wrote: post #23

biolurker1 wrote: post #7

Wouldn't einstein qualify as the most intelligent human ever lived?

A real comparison is of course impossible, but of that coterie, Kurt Gödel is a strong contender. As the original post mentions, he singlehandedly destroyed Hilbert's formalist program (which von Neumann was also working on) and von Neumann is quoted as saying he was "in a class by himself". There is the famous letter from Gödel to von Neumann which anticipates the P=NP problem by decades. In a different era, I think…

Post by F-0X » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

rpmisms wrote: post #85

yannis7 wrote: post #28

von Neumann, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Einstein, Rutherford, Turing, Teller, Szilard, Wigner, Meitner... the list goes on... -- how did that time produce so many people of colossal intellect? War certainly can't be the primary factor, given that many of them were brilliant/productive even before WWI

Elon Musk will be this generations' Edison. Some current nobody in ML or AI research will be the Turing of our time. They're here, we just don't know it yet.