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The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)

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Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)

#181

Post by adrian_b »

Rochus wrote: post #176
adrian_b wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The name "von Neumann" is rightly applied to this, because von Neumann was the first who has written a complete and consistent description of this architecture, so that anybody could understand it and build computers based on this architecture. The Eckert group had some rather vague ideas about the architecture of their future computer, the successor of ENIAC, and those ideas certainly included some kind of stored pr…

They were "secretive" because they were obligated to do so. It was a secret, military project, and nothing could be published. Ironically, it was the security officer (H. Goldstein) who (illegally) circulated the Neumann paper; no one had expected it, least of all the actual inventors.

You are right, but even after they were no longer bound by secrecy they never published anything important, which would help advance the computer technology as much as the publications of other computer projects, e.g. from Cambridge, IAS, NIST, MIT or even IBM.

I have not seen any document from them that could establish credibly how much von Neumann learned from them and how much they have learned from von Neumann.

At least in other cases where some people had secret knowledge that became public only much later, e.g. in the case of the public-key cryptography discovered by the British before Diffie-Hellman-Merkle, they could show some classified reports containing the secret knowledge.

The Eckert group has not shown any previous documents containing the ideas from the von Neumann report, but they just claimed that most ideas have already been communicated during the previous discussions of the group.

That might be true, or not, but it does not matter much.

Only the publication of the von Neumann report was really important, regardless who was the source for the ideas contained in it.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)

#182

Post by MagnumOpus »

astrange wrote: post #108
smnplk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the foundations have to be genetic. There are multitude of factors involved and one of them is having a strong memory. But there also needs to be a drive and thirst for knowledge.

The difference between humans and other apes is genetic, but anything more than that is not. Humans have nearly no genetic diversity because of population bottlenecks, there are barely any interesting differences between us. It's also not that useful to think about. Phenylketonuria is a condition that makes you less intelligent if you drink Diet Coke, and most people don't have the gene for it. But not having phenylk…

Both points you make are massively incorrect.

Humans do have massive genetic diversity, in physical characteristics as well as mental ones). In the last decade, GWAS analysis has now lead to the ability to identify the gene combinations responsible for intelligence (as well as height, various cancer predispositions etc), and predictive ability is high (i.e. predicting cohort differences in income, years of education etc just from genetic material).

It is also something both extremely useful and important to think about both how to avoid both nature and nurture components of intelligence. Preventing diseases detrimental to brain development (like using unleaded fuel and paints) are some of the best bang for the buck on a population level, and maximizing the genetic potential of your offspring by avoiding genetic faults and choosing positive traits while doing IVF will be an unavoidable consequence of current research.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)

#183

Post by Rochus »

jshier wrote: post #82
masswerk wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind that he repeatedly refers to Julian Biglow of the IAS as a (neutral) witness. There have been plenty of law suits regarding this… Probably, the same also applies to any commentary and/or writing by von Neumann.

Lawsuits? Unless you're talking personal suits, the only one I know of, Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, did not go well for Eckert or Mauchly, personally or professionally, especially Mauchly.

There was already a law suite in 1962 (Bell Telephone Laboratories vs. Sperry Rand) where the court upheld the validity of the ENIAC patent. There was another case in 1964 where Shaw, Sharpless and Burks required that their names would be added as inventors to the patent, which was not successful.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)

#184

Post by mcherm »

copperx wrote: post #117
suifbwish wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating when individuals of such advanced intelligence are not obsessed with immortality. Either They believe it is not possible or they are secretly a god trying to escape the boredom of already having long since achieved it.

Sometimes I wish von Neumann had gone into another field, such as genetics.

He basically did.

He was creating frameworks for understanding self-replicating systems before the nature of DNA had been determined.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)

#185

Post by DonHopkins »

aap_ wrote: post #147
croes wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ENIAC the worlds first computer? What about Z3 by Konrad Zuse? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_(computer)

There was no first computer. The further you go back the less it becomes a computer, the further you go forward the less it becomes a first. I can really recommend the book "ENIAC in Action" on this matter and of course on the ENIAC generally.

But what was the zeroth computer?

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)

#186

Post by Rochus »

adrian_b wrote: post #181
Rochus wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were "secretive" because they were obligated to do so. It was a secret, military project, and nothing could be published. Ironically, it was the security officer (H. Goldstein) who (illegally) circulated the Neumann paper; no one had expected it, least of all the actual inventors.

You are right, but even after they were no longer bound by secrecy they never published anything important, which would help advance the computer technology as much as the publications of other computer projects, e.g. from Cambridge, IAS, NIST, MIT or even IBM. I have not seen any document from them that could establish credibly how much von Neumann learned from them and how much they have learned from von Neumann. A…

> but even after they were no longer bound by secrecy they never published anything important

There were a lot of publications; the first one in September 1945 (three month after Goldstein disclosed the Neuman paper) named "Automatic High Speed Computing, A Progress Report on the EDVAC" (see https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10272462...), which was also prior to the patent and yet another reason for its invalidity.

> I have not seen any document from them that could establish credibly how much von Neumann learned from them and how much they have learned from von Neumann.

Having a look at the timeline Neumann was not aware of the project before the ENIAC design was completed.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)

#187

Post by [deleted] »

throw99909 wrote: post #180
TheTrotters wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientists become famous partly due to their accomplishments and partly due to their life story. Would John Nash be famous if it weren’t for his tragic struggles with mental health? Would I know about Feynman if it weren’t for “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman”, his safecracking, and the topless bars? Would Stephen Hawking be a household name if he weren’t disabled? WW2 gave a fascinating context to many scientific p…

I would offer Terry Tao as a counterexample. The only thing strange about him is how, well, not-strange he is!

[deleted]

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)

#188

Post by DonHopkins »

peter303 wrote: post #100
adverbly wrote: post #56

Is it just me or does it seem like there something like there were a lot of celebrity-level STEM heroes to come out of the early 20th century. These folks all seemed to work together closely. Maybe these things take time, but it just doesn't seem like there is anything remotely like this going on today, despite far greater access to education and increases in global population. Is it perhaps that the limelight is les…

Two words: SILICON VALLEY. Plus a lot of incest with Stanford grad students and young Stanford professors.

Which episode are you referring to?

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)

#189

Post by rowanG077 »

beefield wrote: post #119
suifbwish wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating when individuals of such advanced intelligence are not obsessed with immortality. Either They believe it is not possible or they are secretly a god trying to escape the boredom of already having long since achieved it.

Or they have realized that immortality is actually a dumb idea. Either you talk about real immortality where you live forever. And forever is a really long time. Or you talk about being able to decide when to die. In which case dying accidentally today becomes much more expensive so you become obsessed about avoiding accidental death today and miss the whole point of living a longer life...

I think it's incredibly arrogant to talk with such certainty about biological immortality. It's not something we can fathom at this time.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)

#190

Post by Sharlin »

ykl wrote: post #59
adverbly wrote: post #56

Is it just me or does it seem like there something like there were a lot of celebrity-level STEM heroes to come out of the early 20th century. These folks all seemed to work together closely. Maybe these things take time, but it just doesn't seem like there is anything remotely like this going on today, despite far greater access to education and increases in global population. Is it perhaps that the limelight is les…

They all worked closely together because they all worked on the Manhattan Project. When there’s a single huge government project requiring the nation’s smartest people and on which the survival of the nation depends, it shouldn’t be too surprising that all of the top scientists and mathematicians and engineers all end up working together. :) The fact that so many of them specifically grew up in Hungary, went to schoo…

They immigrated because they could see that another war was brewing in Europe. So basically the US can thank the Nazis for that. They all had Jewish heritage (which is a very interesting fact in itself!) so it was sort of personal to them as well.
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