The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann • Hacker News Board

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#321

Post by Jeff_Brown » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

hgytr wrote: post #285

nn3 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This scene hints that the cashier's analytical skills are >next to none and this alone explains why she is a cashier. Her numerical analytics skills perhaps, but she might be great at something else. Maybe she is a poet, or a musician, or great at handling 5 kids, or something else that you are terrible at. Just something that doesn't pay well, so she has to be a cashier. This is kind of a form of Moravec's paradox:…

Eh. Poetry and handling kids is orthogonal to intelligence. Intelligence is a very narrow and specific skill of discerning the real. It allows us to predict things. Coincidentally, it allows to make money and thus is well paid. It's ok if others disagree with me. My two examples above are meant to hint that intelligence consists of two distinct skills: ability to keep a still detailed image in your mind (the 3x3 grid…

Do you spend much time parenting?

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#322

Post by mirekrusin » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:23 PM UTC

speedplane wrote: post #258

mirekrusin wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the underlying mechanism is simply natural selection, just like you can breed dogs, tulips or bacteria for traits, humans can be "breed" into intelectual performance. None of religions/cultures do it, with exception of Ashkenazi.

> I think the underlying mechanism is simply natural selection Genetic natural selection takes thousands of years, or at an absolute minimum multiple generations. Social selection occurs far more rapidly, often within a single generation. A person born in the 1950s that is genetically predisposed to manual labor may do well for the first few decades of their life, but as society changes and starts valuing white colla…

I think you underestimate how powerful this mechanism can be. Take 20 years for one generation, ie. 100 years is 5 generations. We're talking about roughly time from 800 CE, that is 60 generations. Imagine taking smartest people to reproduce, then taking smartest from their kids and so on - 60 times. You will see an effect. You can optimize on anything, ie. "time you can dive underwater" you will see the difference compared to other people after 60 generations, see https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/indonesian-divers-ha...

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#323

Post by TaupeRanger » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

dr_dshiv wrote: post #185

DSingularity wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What advantages would this have?

Consciousness, primarily. Ha! No, but the computer would resemble brain oscillations and harmonic integration much more than linear clock cycles. We still don't know much about how the brain uses rhythms and harmonies to compute, but it does (brainwave bands are octaves, I.e. harmonic doublings, 2.5,5,10,20,40hz)

Any further resources on this phenomenon? Seems very interesting as an area of theoretical exploration.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#324

Post by doubleunplussed » Wed, Nov 27, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

majos wrote: post #312

doubleunplussed wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I agree that it's a good test. If I had two images in front of me of random dots, I cannot superimpose them and see a picture of Marilyn Monroe, no matter how long I can look at them. (ah, actually I could go cross-eyed to make them overlap in my field of vision, but I can't do it mentally). I could imagine a "spot the difference" type of test would be a good one though. The fields of random dots are…

Right, the point of the test is that you can't do it unless you can (relatively quickly) memorize what looks like a random picture of noise. With true photographic memory, that should be possible.

I still don't agree - I'm saying that even if I don't have to remember the field of random dots, even if it's right in front of me, I still can't see an image of Marilyn Monroe. Being able to remember it wouldn't help. If being able to remember it wouldn't help me pass the test, then the test will have a high false-negative rate, and is not a good test of memory.