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The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

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Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#61

Post by jnbiche »

irremediable wrote: post #31
jerf wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's tricky stuff... Feynman was (is?) a hero of mine, and I struggle to put this stuff in context." Heros have feet of clay. The correct move is to adjust your concept of "hero" to include this. The alternative, that you will only declare someone a "hero" if they are perfect in every way yields a definition of "hero" with 0 instances, which is a useless definition. If Feynmann was abusive to his wife to some degree…

I half-agree with you, but isn't there an ethical line past which it's wrong to call someone a hero?

I tend not to engage in much hero worship anymore, but if the question is essentially whether there's an ethical line past which we can't look up to someone, then I'd say it's of vital importance to know exactly what this "abuse" entailed. Did he physically beat his wife on multiple occasions, or did he throw an ash tray or plate at a wall on a few occasions?

I know a good number of people in a relationship, both male and female, who have engaged in some variation of second offense(throwing things or breaking things during their worst arguments with their spouse/partner. But it wasn't habitual and didn't extend to physical contact.

If that's "all" Feynman is accused of, then I don't think it's that big of a deal. I mean, he had a son and daughter who looked up to him, so I am a bit skeptical that he was a brutal wife beater (who tend not to draw the respect of their children).

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#62

Post by gwern »

e12e wrote: post #47
tachyonbeam wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that during the war, the american government was throwing money around liberally. Trying to do everything it could to outwit and outdo the enemy. This is part of what caused the post-war economic boom, money being distributed and more people getting a chance to prosper.

Makes one wonder what the NSA have been doing since the 80s. They're supposed to be the biggest employer of mathematicians, and since the 90s they've had their very own "war budget". Maybe in 2050 we'll say -- oh wow, look at all the great stuff that came out of the islamophobic-fuelled war on the middle east that the US spearheaded. Shame about the future ruined for half a billion people, but boy did they come up wi…

> Makes one wonder what the NSA have been doing since the 80s. They're supposed to be the biggest employer of mathematicians, and since the 90s they've had their very own "war budget".

I wonder. Does anyone have recent sources indicating the NSA really might be the biggest employer of mathematicians? I'd also point to the Snowden and other leaks and attacks like Stuxnet - so far, everything revealed has been fairly humdrum in the sense that they are more or less what you'd expect if you threw a few billion dollars at known vulnerabilities in the Internet and current OSes. Portmapping entire countries' computers may be impressive in some respects, but not in the sense of beyond-cutting-edge cryptography/mathematics.

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#63

Post by fsck--off »

irremediable wrote: post #10
mau wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The famous quote is "His ex-wife reportedly testified that on several occasions when she unwittingly disturbed either his calculus or his drums he flew into a violent rage, during which time he attacked her, threw pieces of bric-a-brac about and smashed the furniture." That was from an FBI file ( https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi... ) on Feynman. I don't know anything about the "paid aborti…

> It's tricky stuff... Feynman was (is?) a hero of mine, and I struggle to put this stuff in context.

The context is that there was no such thing as no-fault divorce in the United States until 1969, and as a result, it was not uncommon for people to invent phony stories about abuse and submit false testimony to the court.

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#64

Post by e12e »

gwern wrote: post #62
e12e wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes one wonder what the NSA have been doing since the 80s. They're supposed to be the biggest employer of mathematicians, and since the 90s they've had their very own "war budget". Maybe in 2050 we'll say -- oh wow, look at all the great stuff that came out of the islamophobic-fuelled war on the middle east that the US spearheaded. Shame about the future ruined for half a billion people, but boy did they come up wi…

> Makes one wonder what the NSA have been doing since the 80s. They're supposed to be the biggest employer of mathematicians, and since the 90s they've had their very own "war budget". I wonder. Does anyone have recent sources indicating the NSA really might be the biggest employer of mathematicians? I'd also point to the Snowden and other leaks and attacks like Stuxnet - so far, everything revealed has been fairly h…

I'd say the recent revelation/allegation that NSA accidentally took down Syria's Internet connection in the recent Wired interview with Snowden and the general "vibe" of mismanagement that I get from Snowden's and Binney's accounts -- doesn't have to imply that NSA doesn't also do interesting work other than their practical attacks on global infrastructure. But it does seem clear that if they actually do interesting stuff (say, working on using multiple satellites to photograph the same area in order to extrapolate to higher resolution images than what is possible from a single lens due to atmospheric effects -- or perhaps quantum or DNA/RNA computing etc). It is clear that whatever they might be doing, it does seem to be ridiculously highly classified, just like the sibling comment's example with RSA and GCHQ.

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#65

Post by e12e »

vilhelm_s wrote: post #55
e12e wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern language that comes to mind, is of course, Haskell. And "in between" we have Standard ML. And I think one could argue that the Dylan revival project and Rust are various extensions on the idea of invent(academically)-implement(pragmatically). And the Racket ball is still rolling, of course. So, I don't think it's right to say that things are all different now. Might be that the maturation of computer scien…

I do think there is a big difference in academic computer science now and then. Rob Pike has written about it from an operating systems perspective [1], and Richard Gabriel from a programming language perspective [2]. It seems that until the early 1990s, there were lots of projects focused on building "systems", i.e. big pieces of software which are in themselves practically useful; then there is a sharp shift and ac…

I'm not sure it's quite so clear cut, don't forget about http://vpri.org/ for example. Or the OLTP (one laptop per child) with assorted projects. Or the work on various unikernels on top of xen (like mirageos). Or Minix3. Or livelykernel (http://www.lively-kernel.org/).

Or perhaps even Dragonfly BSD.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, some of the links above might even support your point -- I'm just not sure we've "stopped" with big, complete systems -- but the field as a whole has gotten much bigger -- and there's only so much hype to go around...

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#66

Post by rumcajz »

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…

Just move to open source. There you are judged by your peers rather than by numerical results.

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#67

Post by gwern »

e12e wrote: post #64
gwern wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Makes one wonder what the NSA have been doing since the 80s. They're supposed to be the biggest employer of mathematicians, and since the 90s they've had their very own "war budget". I wonder. Does anyone have recent sources indicating the NSA really might be the biggest employer of mathematicians? I'd also point to the Snowden and other leaks and attacks like Stuxnet - so far, everything revealed has been fairly h…

I'd say the recent revelation/allegation that NSA accidentally took down Syria's Internet connection in the recent Wired interview with Snowden and the general "vibe" of mismanagement that I get from Snowden's and Binney's accounts -- doesn't have to imply that NSA doesn't also do interesting work other than their practical attacks on global infrastructure. But it does seem clear that if they actually do interesting…

While the NSA has a huge budget, it's not infinite, and what gets one promoted and what analysts are boasting about in their slides gives you a definite idea for what the organization values. Do any of the leaks sound like there might be huge contingents of mathematicians off in side-corridor making breakthroughs? Not really.

Re: The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

#68

Post by jnazario »

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…

> Not to rain on the parade, but such glorification of "heroes" is... just awkward.

you need to stop putting words in my mouth. never did i use the word hero, never did i use the word worship. never did i suggest those things, either.

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