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I am so happy to see this article about Von Neumann on HN!!! I have been posting about him on here for years, and have read all his books, but not as many of h

I am so happy to see this article about Von Neumann on HN!!! I have been posting about him on here for years, and have read all his books, but not as many of his papers as I would like, they are really hard! I have been working for many years now on continuing his theories of weather control technology and self-replicating machines. He is my absolute personal hero and the scientist who, far above all others, I consider to be the one in whose footsteps I want to follow.

kragen 7y ago
That's interesting! Have you made progress on self-replication? I think it's a very important problem. I've made some notes categorized under topics/self-replication.html in http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano-20191110.tar.gz http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano-20191110.tar.gz, but of course I'm no Johnny von Neumann.
- calhoun137 7y ago
  Von Nueman is on the record as saying he believed computers were a sub field of self replicating machines. I believe they will be very important in the future and will have many applications. Not really, unfortunately. I think it would be fun to build a 3d printer that can replicate itself, but have not tried building any prototypes because besides being too expensive I also havent taken my research into that far enough. I am a very ambitious person and have big plans for the future! What I have done on this subject besides reading about it is very theoretical and abstract, its more of an aspiration right now than an active research project to be completely honest.
  - kragen 7y ago
    I'm interested to hear what you think; my notes talk a lot about how to make things less expensive.
  - wes-k 7y ago
    You may want to check out https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap which is exactly this type of 3D printer. I don’t think it’s 100% though.
    - kragen 7y ago
      Well, RepRap has the philosophy that self-replicating systems such as hedgehogs and raspberries need some definite set of “vitamins” available prefabricated in their environment for self-replication, and RepRap chose things like threaded rod, NEMA motors, hotends, and Arduinos as their vitamins. This was extremely successful at making 3-D printers mainstream — every popular 3-D printer out there derives from RepRap designs — but not at producing an exponentially growing quantity of 3-D printers printed by 3-D printers.

kragen 7y ago

That's interesting! Have you made progress on self-replication? I think it's a very important problem. I've made some notes categorized under topics/self-replication.html in http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano-20191110.tar.gz http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano-20191110.tar.gz, but of course I'm no Johnny von Neumann.

calhoun137 7y ago
Von Nueman is on the record as saying he believed computers were a sub field of self replicating machines. I believe they will be very important in the future and will have many applications. Not really, unfortunately. I think it would be fun to build a 3d printer that can replicate itself, but have not tried building any prototypes because besides being too expensive I also havent taken my research into that far enough. I am a very ambitious person and have big plans for the future! What I have done on this subject besides reading about it is very theoretical and abstract, its more of an aspiration right now than an active research project to be completely honest.
- kragen 7y ago
  I'm interested to hear what you think; my notes talk a lot about how to make things less expensive.
- wes-k 7y ago
  You may want to check out https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap which is exactly this type of 3D printer. I don’t think it’s 100% though.
  - kragen 7y ago
    Well, RepRap has the philosophy that self-replicating systems such as hedgehogs and raspberries need some definite set of “vitamins” available prefabricated in their environment for self-replication, and RepRap chose things like threaded rod, NEMA motors, hotends, and Arduinos as their vitamins. This was extremely successful at making 3-D printers mainstream — every popular 3-D printer out there derives from RepRap designs — but not at producing an exponentially growing quantity of 3-D printers printed by 3-D printers.