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The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

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Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#51

Post by dr_dshiv »

chx wrote: post #36

> In 1945, von Neumann proposed a description for a computer architecture now known as the von Neumann architecture, Do note that he proposed a description but it wasn't his idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Draft_of_a_Report_on_the... > some on the EDVAC design team contended that the stored-program concept had evolved out of meetings at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering…

He also posthumously patented a "non-von Neumann" architecture that has never been built, to my knowledge. I'm surprised that all the attention on quantum computing hasn't revived the idea.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US2815488A/en

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#52

Post by Merrill »

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…

>He died at age 53 on February 8, 1957, at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., under military security lest he reveal military secrets while heavily medicated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Illness_and_d...

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#53

Post by mvdwoord »

barry-cotter wrote: post #32
zorked wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's not like you can infer anything from an IQ test other than an IQ test result.

IQ is positively correlated with health, educational achievement, job performance, income and occupational status and negatively correlated with out of wedlock childbirth and being convicted of a crime. Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, American Psychological Association http://differentialclub.wdfiles.com/local--files/definitions...

Some people disagree.

https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#54

Post by nabla9 »

_ugfj wrote: post #44
0-_-0 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 on your list are Hungarian, and 3 of them went to the same high school: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasori_Gimn%C3%A1zium Hungary had a great education system at the time.

> Hungary had a great education system at the time. I seriously doubt you could back this. You are generalizing from a single school. Might as well argue that socialist Hungary had a great education system because of Fazekas. Neither are true. I happen to have a maths teacher degree from a Hungarian university and we studied Hungarian education history and I learned much more about education systems later on my own (…

Mathematics culture and mathematical pedagogy in Hungary has legendary reputation. I don't know how their system works now,but at least up to 80s or 90s it was seen as being the highest level. It emphasized creativity, communication and problem solving.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-28582-5_...

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#55

Post by arethuza »

solveit wrote: post #40
arethuza wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was hardly alone if favouring a "preventative war" - Curtis LeMay was another advocate - they thought it was the rational thing to do. How someone can rationally advocate the cold blooded killing of millions is, frankly, completely beyond me.

That's because we're lucky to live in a world where the cold war stayed cold, and LeMay and von Neumann were coming from half a century of the worst slaughter the world had ever seen.

We can be thankful that the likes of Eisenhower and later Kennedy, who lived through the very same times, recoiled from the prospect of initiating a greater slaughter than WW2.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#56

Post by qnsi »

arethuza wrote: post #46
qnsi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should study game theory

Their reasoning was based on the idea that a war with the Soviets was inevitable and that the US should attack before it lost the strategic advantage - given that there was no war are you actually arguing that they were correct?

What you are doing is resulting, connecting result with decision under probability. I am not sure what was probability of a war but I don’t think that because war didn’t happen that it was unprobable.

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#57

Post by jjgreen »

qnsi wrote: post #38
0-_-0 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 on your list are Hungarian, and 3 of them went to the same high school: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasori_Gimn%C3%A1zium Hungary had a great education system at the time.

Or great genes

Or there's some kind of magical properties of paprika that the rest of the world hasn't yet noticed ...

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#58

Post by marliechiller »

barry-cotter wrote: post #32
zorked wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's not like you can infer anything from an IQ test other than an IQ test result.

IQ is positively correlated with health, educational achievement, job performance, income and occupational status and negatively correlated with out of wedlock childbirth and being convicted of a crime. Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, American Psychological Association http://differentialclub.wdfiles.com/local--files/definitions...

people dont like being shown things that dispute their world view, especially on things which wield as much weight as intelligence, which is why i assume youve been downvoted. IQ may not be an exact metric of intelligence, but the correlations of IQ to success in the modern western world are too obvious to ignore, and indeed could be detrimental to ignore. Note, correlation does not equate causation, but suggests deeper research is required

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#59

Post by bobcostas55 »

0-_-0 wrote: post #31
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

4 on your list are Hungarian, and 3 of them went to the same high school: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasori_Gimn%C3%A1zium Hungary had a great education system at the time.

SSC had a great post on that: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-consid...

Re: The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

#60

Post by wholmezy »

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…

What is the letter? Sounds interesting.
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