Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

stepanov.lk.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 68 posts

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#21

Post by dragonwriter »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #7
slg wrote: post #4

I 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…

People are still creating new languages in academic contexts -- and ones which go on to have influence outside of the academy -- now. Likewise, I'm sure even in the 1970s, someone's thesis advisor told them it had all been done.

You're trying to compare different times, but its getting confused because you're actually comparing one incident now to an aggregate impression of the "1970s" (though, from the 3 specific examples cited, the "1970s" you are talking about are really something like 1958-1973.)

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#22

Post by GCA10 »

mau wrote: post #8
Radim wrote: post #6

Earlier 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.

Feynman's life is well-chronicled -- in its totality -- in Jim Gleick's biography "Genius." Feynman had a somewhat messy personal life, and Gleick covers the key points briefly but clearly.

For example (p. 277) "Bethe worried that Feynman was growing restless after four years at Cornell. There were entanglements with women: Feynman pursued them and then dropped them, or tried to, with increasingly public frustration -- so it seemed even to undergraduates, who knew him as the least professorial of professors."

If you get to p. 290, there's a quite astonishing section on Feynman's effort to work out the rules of flirting in a bar. You can still admire his science after reading the book. You'll be both charmed and troubled by his over-sized personality. But, hey, he was a complicated guy.

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#23

Post by dragonwriter »

acheron wrote: post #14
tachyonbeam wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not disagreeing with you necessarily, but the 70s were hardly an economic boom time in the USA either.

OTOH, the time when Lisp (1958), Smalltalk (1969), and ML (1973 is what Wikipedia has for "first appeared in", but unlike Lisp and and Smalltalk I can't find information on definition vs. release) were first defined all (except the last, which is on the cusp) precede the 1973 recession, and the preceding period actually was an economic boom time.

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#24

Post by poof131 »

Radim wrote: post #6
jnazario wrote: post #2

John 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…

Rain is good. No matter how smart you are, you can still be an idiot sometimes:

"Von Neumann knew that it was only a matter of time before the Soviet Union became a nuclear power. He predicted that were Russia allowed to build a nuclear arsenal, a war against the U.S. would be inevitable. He therefore recommended that the U.S. launch a nuclear strike at Moscow, destroying its enemy and becoming a dominant world power, so as to avoid a more destructive nuclear war later on."

http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects...

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#25

Post by [deleted] »

irremediable wrote: post #9
tachyonbeam wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lang…

[deleted]

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#26

Post by a3n »

Cyph0n wrote: post #16
oafitupa wrote: post #5

More 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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann

Yeah, the same happened to me. I believe it was the thermonuclear bomb and the Von Neumann architecture. I thought that it couldn't be the same guy - two entirely unrelated fields - but it was. The guy was, in my opinion at least, the last true polymath.

Except they're not unrelated. Von Neumann needed more computing power than he had available, for studying bomb blasts. Not only did he and colleagues largely create digital computers, but he marshaled the resources of the US government and academia to get it done.

Dyson's Turing's Cathedral is a fascinating account of the development of digital computers. The early ones were amazingly physical, using wave propagation delays in liquid mercury, and repeatedly painting rows of oscilloscope screens, as storage.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=turing%27s%20cathedral

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_tube

EDIT: s/Turning/Turing/

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#27

Post by darkmighty »

acheron wrote: post #14
tachyonbeam wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not disagreeing with you necessarily, but the 70s were hardly an economic boom time in the USA either.

And von Neumann lived mostly though war and 30's financial crisis. I honestly think it's more a question of (lack of) will/confidence from part of academia. I bet if had really good ideas about new languages and really wanted to dig deep on that he would be able to do so without starving.

Maryam Mirzakhani (this year's female fields Medalist) commented that she's quite a slow thinker, and left a clear impression that it's more a matter of asking important questions and actually trying to solve them with perseverence. It's just far more secure to chase the low-hanging fruits.

http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-tenacious-...

" Another notable and enviable trait of von Neumann's was his mathematical courage. If, in the middle of a search for a counterexample, an infinite series came up, with a lot of exponentials that had quadratic exponents, many mathematicians would start with a clean sheet of paper and look for another counterexample. Not Johnny! When that happened to him, he cheerfully said: "Oh, yes, a thetafunction...", and plowed ahead with the mountainous computations. He wasn't afraid of anything."

That's an inspiration!

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#28

Post by crassus2 »

Radim wrote: post #6
jnazario wrote: post #2

John 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…

Nietzsche has interesting things about our need to tear down people who have great, unique accomplishments over common weaknesses - calling this the "slave morality". The weak need to feel superior to the great, so we redefine greatness to mean other things.

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#29

Post by jnazario »

irremediable wrote: post #13
slg wrote: post #4

I 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…

To be honest with you, I think this problem is less about open-mindedness and more about the increased depth in which we've studied most fields. There's been a huge increase in the number of academics in these fields, and a lot of the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. There still are some polymaths, but it's hard for them to make as fundamental a contribution in fields that have already existed for a long(is…

your comments reminds me of this, which was posted here on HN some time ago when it first came out. "The Last Days of the Polymath"

http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/edward-carr/last-days...

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#30

Post by tachyonbeam »

amiramir wrote: post #17
tachyonbeam wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Lisp was defined in the 50s and implemented in the 60s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language)

True, however many other lisps were developed in the 1970s (i.e.: Maclisp), including Scheme which came in 1975.
Post reply on HN