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

nautil.us

21–22 of 22 posts

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

#21

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.

Two years ago I might have asked how it was possible that a Nazi supporter could literally be married to a Jew and hold the same beliefs.

After seeing people dying of COVID with their family accusing the doctors of killing them while blaming it on a nonexistent illness, I no longer wonder, now I'm just sad for humanity

Make it mandatory to teach critical thinking and basic science literacy in high school ASAP

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

#22
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, an…

Wiener's wife did influence the fallout between him and McCulloch but this hardly killed cybernetics, and is perhaps best interpreted as an MIT turf war.

In [Ronald Kline's 'The Cybernetic Moment'](https://archive.org/details/cyberneticsmomen0000klin) this episode happens in p. 66, and the thing goes on for another 250 pages :)

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