8 ms·

The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

55 points by TheTrotters 5y ago

HenryKissinger 5y ago
How much of our global technological progress can be attributed to a handful of geniuses who happened to be at the right time and place? How much more backward would the world be if the likes of Newton and Von Neumann hadn't existed? I unironically believe that the government should dig up his body, retrieve DNA samples, and clone him. Populate federal labs and agencies with Von Neumann clones. Sell a few to FAAMNG too for good measure. Let uber geniuses run the nation's courts, monetary policy, tax laws, environmental protection programs, and defense planning and acquisition.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Interesting opinion Henry, what did you make of Robert S. McNamara back in the day?
- rybosworld 5y ago
  Von Neumann had a uniquely sharp mind. His daughter was very successful and seemingly above average intelligence, but it's not clear that she had his same potential. I do think it's too bad that the brightest minds don't tend to have a lot of offspring.
  - stared 5y ago
    It is called "regression towards the mean" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean). If someone is at a particular extreme, and the trait is hereditary in less than 100% (biologically or cultural), it is likely that their offsprings will be less extreme. On the contrary - I find it sad that more intelligent and more accomplished people have fewer offsprings on average than others. While the process is not surprising socially, either there is no hereditary factors in intellectual abilities at all (which does not hold water), or step by step, we decline. Let's hope that technological augments to our mental capabilities develop faster than the biological process. Once I compared the trajectory to "Idiocracy" (from 2006). Yet, a friend said it is an optimistic movie - since they still choose the smartest person as their president.
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      twice in a row really, I'd say Camacho was as smart as Joe - he just didn't come from a society that knew to use water for irrigating crops.
- nickdothutton 5y ago
  This is why it’s vital to identify genius at an early age (it’s mostly genetic, so the parents provide a big clue) and promote those with the ability regardless of their background or circumstances. Trying to lift the masses a few IQ points is largely a waste of time. Pluck the gifted and grow them. This is how our civilisation advances.
- rejectedandsad 5y ago
  > Let uber geniuses run the nation's courts, monetary policy, tax laws, environmental protection programs, and defense planning and acquisition We literally already let elite school grads do this and where has it gotten us? 40 years of a yawning gap between the cosmopolitan dream-hoarder class and the rest of us fighting for scraps?
  - LudwigNagasena 5y ago
    You mean elite schools with legacy admissions and affirmative action policies? Yeah, it lead the US to a yawning gap. Make college funding conditional on transparent admission based on standardized testing and things will get better.
  - javajosh 5y ago
    Intelligence only matters to a certain point for good administrators. Morality, courage, and, above all, self-restraint are just as important. These are the people capable of changing the rules in a way that benefits others even if it means a slight drop in personal wealth, power, or prestige. Often we seem to pick those who are constitutionally incapable of doing that, much to our detriment. (One big reason is that egoists can be wealthy, and wealth can manufacture consent, but that's a discussion for another time.) George Washington could have been a King, and declined. Whatever other skeletons he had in his closet, that decision puts him very high in my book, and is a fantastic example of our American value of both innovation and civic-minded self-restraint.
    - celticninja 5y ago
      >civic-minded self-restraint. Such a well know American characteristic you needed a 22nd amendment.
      - javajosh 5y ago
        That we have strayed from the virtue of self-restraint is beyond all doubt, root and vine. Our consumerist, ignorant population and our egoist, shameless leadership proves it. That doesn't mean its not a virtue that we once cared deeply about, and or that it wasn't definitional. And it doesn't mean we won't start caring about it again. I'd like to think that its in our DNA, just recessive right now. The elite schools are populated by smart people who are well on their way to mastering the rules of the game, like their parents did (speaking broadly), but in general they aren't interested at all in changing the rules for the betterment of the broader society. I'm generalizing, but it's basically true. (There may be some idealistic instinct in college; but that quickly evaporates when the hard choices must be made that impact your families income and safety within society.) How many lawyers build a successful career on mastering the corrupt rules vs how many build a career speaking truth to power and calling out the corruption? Reforming a corrupt system, succeed or fail, will destroy you and everything you love, and these days you won't even get the paltry victory of public esteem. It's worse: half of our public will take the system's side, insofar as they even know about it, because the system can afford great PR and produces endless distraction.)
- idbehold 5y ago
  "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould
  - MikeUt 5y ago
    Gould is known for placing ideology ahead of science, so it's refreshing that he admits as much. Stephen F. Blinkhorn, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, wrote that The Mismeasure of Man was "a masterpiece of propaganda" that selectively juxtaposed data to further a political agenda. [..] Jensen also criticized Gould for concentrating on long-disproven arguments (noting that 71% of the book's references preceded 1950), rather than addressing "anything currently regarded as important by scientists in the relevant fields" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man
    - flaubere 5y ago
      Gould wrote a controversial book attacking whole swathes of science done in the past. The existence of a senior lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire who has written a criticism of it doesn't seem that surprising and certainly doesn't seem sufficient evidence that we should disregard what he has to say.
      - MikeUt 5y ago
        > certainly doesn't seem sufficient evidence that we should disregard what he has to say. No, we should disregard what he has to say because even his arguments against the century-old studies he attacks (while carefully avoiding modern work) were shown to be faulty. It's like (poorly) debunking phlogiston in the modern day, and expecting to be taken seriously.
        flaubere 5y ago
        Stephen F. Blinkhorn, is that you?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- spacechild1 5y ago
  > Let uber geniuses run the nation's courts, monetary policy, tax laws, environmental protection programs, and defense planning and acquisition. You might want to read up on his political views in general and his role in the creation of the atomic bomb in particular. He wanted to drop the bomb on Kyoto (the historical cultural center of Japan) and actively supported a preventive nuclear strike against Russia. What's the lesson here? High intelligence doesn't correlate with moral and ethical behavior. EDIT: just noticed your user name...
  - yesenadam 5y ago
    > actively supported a preventive nuclear strike against Russia. Well, even Bertrand Russell, who protested against war from WWI to the Vietnam War, advocated a preemptive nuclear strike against the USSR in 1954. The risk of nuclear war killing everyone, once the USSR had nukes, just seemed too great, I guess.
    - spacechild1 5y ago
      So Bertrand Russell wasn't always right, either. Fortunately, the actual politicians in charge were a bit more reasonable.
      - adolph 5y ago
        What if he was right and we live now in a world worse as a result? What if he wasn’t right and we live now in a world better as a result?
    - i_haz_rabies 5y ago
      I wonder if their opinions would have changed if they had been aware of the possibility this would result in nuclear winter.
    - nahuel0x 5y ago
      For the curious, check this essay "Did Russell Advocate Preventive Atomic War against the USSR?": https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/russelljournal/article/download/2014/2039 https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/russelljournal/article/download...
- meroes 5y ago
  On the contrary: "Many generations of graduate students who might have been tempted to try to construct hidden-variables theories were beaten into submission by the claim that von Neumann, 1932, had proved that it could not be done. A few years later (see Jammer, 1974,p.273) Grete Hermann, 1935, pointed out a glaring deficiency in the argument, but she seems to have been entirely ignored. Everybody continued to cite the von Neumann proof. A third of a century passed before John Bell, 1966, rediscovered the fact that von Neumann's no-hidden-variables proof was based on an assumption that can only be described as silly." Mermin https://cqi.inf.usi.ch/qic/Mermin1993.pdf https://cqi.inf.usi.ch/qic/Mermin1993.pdf No one is infallible, and this kind of mythical status has problems. Grete was dismissed, and Bell's paper only was admitted because the editor thought it was confirming Von Nuemman even. And even if von Neumman's proof wasn't as "silly" as Bell said, the fact that everyone else ran with it surely harmed quantum theory for a long while, reinforcing the Copenhagen side unjustifiably at the expense of others.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - DalasNoin 5y ago
    Interesting citation, I had heard of John Bell's theorem, which disproves local hidden variable theories. But I did not know that von Neumann had his own attempt at disproving these theories. Researching this a little further, I also found people arguing that von Neumanns arguments were misconstrued by Bell. https://arxiv.org/abs/1006.0499 https://arxiv.org/abs/1006.0499 I wonder how Grete Hermann's arguments compare to the arguments from Bell and what the real truth is.
    - meroes 5y ago
      Ya I am not an expert to judge if Bell, Grete, and Mermin also misunderstood von Neumman, and I see a few papers argue that. But the larger physics community does seem to agree with Bell's take. I do find it a bit weird that paper is using an entire page of what von Neumman would have said in response.
- stephc_int13 5y ago
  This is mostly what Plato advocated in The Republic, it inspired quite a few policies over the last few centuries. The result is not as good as you might expect, this philosophy leads to aristocracy, not the most efficient form of government, by a long shot.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- domano 5y ago
  Aside from the other issues mentioned by commenters i want to add that this perspective leaves out the whole nature vs nurture debate - so those clones would not automatically become geniuses. You could essentially just give a bunch of kids a phenomenal education and end up with a similiar, if not better result due to diversification of talents.
- flaubere 5y ago
  Although von Neumann was certainly a genius who happened to be in the right place at the right time, he's also an example of how groups of people can create a culture seemingly much more important than the effect of one outstanding individual. Lipót Fejér led a school of analysis at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He ran a seminar, was the centre of a large group of young mathematicians who worked together and was enormously influential. Hungary has a disproportionate number of the world class mathematicians of the 20th century. The numbers are even more extreme when you consider that those mathematicians are all from Budapest, all from Eötvös, and the vast majority of them Fejér's supervisees. It's totally plausible that Fejér created an environment where people who might otherwise have been middling mathematicians, decent engineers, or never have found their niche, were transformed, by collaboration and inspiration, into the likes of von Neumann, Erdős, Pólya. Even today the Eötvös school of analysis and combinatorics is a significant powerhouse, with most members direct mathematical descendants from Fejér. And there are other branches such as Cambridge combinatorialists where the influence of Fejér's students and grand-students has been key in the formation of world class mathematicians.
brudgers 5y ago
recent discussion, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26695502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26695502
- TheTrotters 5y ago
  Huh, I thought it was a new article but turns out they simply republished it on Substack today.
JetSetWilly 5y ago
> In fact, von Neumann claimed to do some of his best work in noisy, chaotic environments such as in the living room of his house with the television blaring. I often think of this when people claim it is impossible to conceive of any advanced thought in an open office or noisy environment. In fact, it is just a personal preference and one environment isn't necessarily any better than another.
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  Not impossible, just impossible for them. First, the difference between the television blaring and my office talking is that in office chatter I'm constantly picking up bits of sound that make my brain think I should be paying attention to them. The sounds of a Simpsons rerun I've seen 90 times don't distract my brain in the same way. Second, we're talking about what works for MOST people, Peopleware has actual data to back this up, the majority of people need quiet private space to do deep work.
  - KineticLensman 5y ago
    > in office chatter I'm constantly picking up bits of sound that make my brain think I should be paying attention to them Agree. I found that hearing my boss on one side of a phone call where they referenced me or my work in some way was very distracting. What had happened? What was going to happen? What was I potentially being committed to?
- fastasucan 5y ago
  I find it the opposite. To work in a noicy environment is obviously so remarkable that its worth writing about.
- bytematic 5y ago
  Something that greatly surprised me when I worked in my first open plan office was that I didn't prefer any headphones or earbuds of any kind. I kind of melted into my work and sometimes looking up at people walking by or various smells, sounds, etc. would keep my mind active.
- 5y ago
abnry 5y ago
Great people are warranted discussion, but as someone who was once in the academic math world, I had to quit reading after a few sentences. Genius is a very real thing, but I don't need to read adulation after adulation in a series of anecdotes and quotes that will only make me feel inadequate. The mathematics itself is greater than the mathematician, who himself craps on the toilet like anyone else. Focus on the math, not the mathematician. It will make you happier.
- MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  > Focus on the math, not the mathematician. It will make you happier. Personally I don't feel inadequate when reading about someone like von Neumann, as I'm not really tempted to compare myself to him in the first place. Colleagues are peers, people I graduated with are peers, but von Neumann is almost like another species. I forget who it was who pointed out that Silicon Valley billionaires tend to dress like 'normal people', in sharp contrast to aristocrats. People don't tend to feel poor for comparing themselves against the Queen, as they perceive too much distance to make a personal comparison.
  - abnry 5y ago
    > Personally I don't feel inadequate when reading about someone like von Neumann, as I'm not really tempted to compare myself to him in the first place. Colleagues are peers, people I graduated with are peers, but von Neumann is almost like another species. Perhaps I am more prone to egoism than you! I had a "promising" start to my career and a lot of ambition. I've fallen off that track and had time to reflect on what matters, but I still feel twinges of ego-driven ambition.
  - paulpauper 5y ago
    The queen does not have much personal money anyway. it belongs to the family. I think it is understandable to feel inadequate. that is motivation to be better.
    - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
mabbo 5y ago
> “There was a seminar for advanced students in Zürich that I was teaching and von Neumann was in the class. I came to a certain theorem, and I said it is not proved and it may be difficult. von Neumann didn’t say anything but after five minutes he raised his hand. When I called on him he went to the blackboard and proceeded to write down the proof. After that I was afraid of von Neumann” — George Pólya If you put that scene in a film, people would call it unbelievable.
mjreacher 5y ago
In my opinion one of the great contributions of Von Neumann was the fact his "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC" report was spread so quickly in academic circles. When Eckert and Mauchly attempted to apply to patent their ideas for the ENIAC, the courts decided that the report constituted prior publication, and their patent application failed, meaning the key ideas and concepts from the ENIAC, many which define modern computers, were now in public domain and could be used freely

55 points by TheTrotters 5y ago

How much of our global technological progress can be attributed to a handful of geniuses who happened to be at the right time and place? How much more backward would the world be if the likes of Newton and Von Neumann hadn't existed? I unironically believe that the government should dig up his body, retrieve DNA samples, and clone him. Populate federal labs and agencies with Von Neumann clones. Sell a few to FAAMNG too for good measure. Let uber geniuses run the nation's courts, monetary policy, tax laws, environmental protection programs, and defense planning and acquisition.

mhh__ 5y ago
Interesting opinion Henry, what did you make of Robert S. McNamara back in the day?
rybosworld 5y ago
Von Neumann had a uniquely sharp mind. His daughter was very successful and seemingly above average intelligence, but it's not clear that she had his same potential. I do think it's too bad that the brightest minds don't tend to have a lot of offspring.
- stared 5y ago
  It is called "regression towards the mean" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean). If someone is at a particular extreme, and the trait is hereditary in less than 100% (biologically or cultural), it is likely that their offsprings will be less extreme. On the contrary - I find it sad that more intelligent and more accomplished people have fewer offsprings on average than others. While the process is not surprising socially, either there is no hereditary factors in intellectual abilities at all (which does not hold water), or step by step, we decline. Let's hope that technological augments to our mental capabilities develop faster than the biological process. Once I compared the trajectory to "Idiocracy" (from 2006). Yet, a friend said it is an optimistic movie - since they still choose the smartest person as their president.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    twice in a row really, I'd say Camacho was as smart as Joe - he just didn't come from a society that knew to use water for irrigating crops.
nickdothutton 5y ago
This is why it’s vital to identify genius at an early age (it’s mostly genetic, so the parents provide a big clue) and promote those with the ability regardless of their background or circumstances. Trying to lift the masses a few IQ points is largely a waste of time. Pluck the gifted and grow them. This is how our civilisation advances.
rejectedandsad 5y ago
> Let uber geniuses run the nation's courts, monetary policy, tax laws, environmental protection programs, and defense planning and acquisition We literally already let elite school grads do this and where has it gotten us? 40 years of a yawning gap between the cosmopolitan dream-hoarder class and the rest of us fighting for scraps?
- LudwigNagasena 5y ago
  You mean elite schools with legacy admissions and affirmative action policies? Yeah, it lead the US to a yawning gap. Make college funding conditional on transparent admission based on standardized testing and things will get better.
- javajosh 5y ago
  Intelligence only matters to a certain point for good administrators. Morality, courage, and, above all, self-restraint are just as important. These are the people capable of changing the rules in a way that benefits others even if it means a slight drop in personal wealth, power, or prestige. Often we seem to pick those who are constitutionally incapable of doing that, much to our detriment. (One big reason is that egoists can be wealthy, and wealth can manufacture consent, but that's a discussion for another time.) George Washington could have been a King, and declined. Whatever other skeletons he had in his closet, that decision puts him very high in my book, and is a fantastic example of our American value of both innovation and civic-minded self-restraint.
  - celticninja 5y ago
    >civic-minded self-restraint. Such a well know American characteristic you needed a 22nd amendment.
    - javajosh 5y ago
      That we have strayed from the virtue of self-restraint is beyond all doubt, root and vine. Our consumerist, ignorant population and our egoist, shameless leadership proves it. That doesn't mean its not a virtue that we once cared deeply about, and or that it wasn't definitional. And it doesn't mean we won't start caring about it again. I'd like to think that its in our DNA, just recessive right now. The elite schools are populated by smart people who are well on their way to mastering the rules of the game, like their parents did (speaking broadly), but in general they aren't interested at all in changing the rules for the betterment of the broader society. I'm generalizing, but it's basically true. (There may be some idealistic instinct in college; but that quickly evaporates when the hard choices must be made that impact your families income and safety within society.) How many lawyers build a successful career on mastering the corrupt rules vs how many build a career speaking truth to power and calling out the corruption? Reforming a corrupt system, succeed or fail, will destroy you and everything you love, and these days you won't even get the paltry victory of public esteem. It's worse: half of our public will take the system's side, insofar as they even know about it, because the system can afford great PR and produces endless distraction.)
idbehold 5y ago
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould
- MikeUt 5y ago
  Gould is known for placing ideology ahead of science, so it's refreshing that he admits as much. Stephen F. Blinkhorn, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, wrote that The Mismeasure of Man was "a masterpiece of propaganda" that selectively juxtaposed data to further a political agenda. [..] Jensen also criticized Gould for concentrating on long-disproven arguments (noting that 71% of the book's references preceded 1950), rather than addressing "anything currently regarded as important by scientists in the relevant fields" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man
  - flaubere 5y ago
    Gould wrote a controversial book attacking whole swathes of science done in the past. The existence of a senior lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire who has written a criticism of it doesn't seem that surprising and certainly doesn't seem sufficient evidence that we should disregard what he has to say.
    - MikeUt 5y ago
      > certainly doesn't seem sufficient evidence that we should disregard what he has to say. No, we should disregard what he has to say because even his arguments against the century-old studies he attacks (while carefully avoiding modern work) were shown to be faulty. It's like (poorly) debunking phlogiston in the modern day, and expecting to be taken seriously.
      - flaubere 5y ago
        Stephen F. Blinkhorn, is that you?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
spacechild1 5y ago
> Let uber geniuses run the nation's courts, monetary policy, tax laws, environmental protection programs, and defense planning and acquisition. You might want to read up on his political views in general and his role in the creation of the atomic bomb in particular. He wanted to drop the bomb on Kyoto (the historical cultural center of Japan) and actively supported a preventive nuclear strike against Russia. What's the lesson here? High intelligence doesn't correlate with moral and ethical behavior. EDIT: just noticed your user name...
- yesenadam 5y ago
  > actively supported a preventive nuclear strike against Russia. Well, even Bertrand Russell, who protested against war from WWI to the Vietnam War, advocated a preemptive nuclear strike against the USSR in 1954. The risk of nuclear war killing everyone, once the USSR had nukes, just seemed too great, I guess.
  - spacechild1 5y ago
    So Bertrand Russell wasn't always right, either. Fortunately, the actual politicians in charge were a bit more reasonable.
    - adolph 5y ago
      What if he was right and we live now in a world worse as a result? What if he wasn’t right and we live now in a world better as a result?
  - i_haz_rabies 5y ago
    I wonder if their opinions would have changed if they had been aware of the possibility this would result in nuclear winter.
  - nahuel0x 5y ago
    For the curious, check this essay "Did Russell Advocate Preventive Atomic War against the USSR?": https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/russelljournal/article/download/2014/2039 https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/russelljournal/article/download...
meroes 5y ago
On the contrary: "Many generations of graduate students who might have been tempted to try to construct hidden-variables theories were beaten into submission by the claim that von Neumann, 1932, had proved that it could not be done. A few years later (see Jammer, 1974,p.273) Grete Hermann, 1935, pointed out a glaring deficiency in the argument, but she seems to have been entirely ignored. Everybody continued to cite the von Neumann proof. A third of a century passed before John Bell, 1966, rediscovered the fact that von Neumann's no-hidden-variables proof was based on an assumption that can only be described as silly." Mermin https://cqi.inf.usi.ch/qic/Mermin1993.pdf https://cqi.inf.usi.ch/qic/Mermin1993.pdf No one is infallible, and this kind of mythical status has problems. Grete was dismissed, and Bell's paper only was admitted because the editor thought it was confirming Von Nuemman even. And even if von Neumman's proof wasn't as "silly" as Bell said, the fact that everyone else ran with it surely harmed quantum theory for a long while, reinforcing the Copenhagen side unjustifiably at the expense of others.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- DalasNoin 5y ago
  Interesting citation, I had heard of John Bell's theorem, which disproves local hidden variable theories. But I did not know that von Neumann had his own attempt at disproving these theories. Researching this a little further, I also found people arguing that von Neumanns arguments were misconstrued by Bell. https://arxiv.org/abs/1006.0499 https://arxiv.org/abs/1006.0499 I wonder how Grete Hermann's arguments compare to the arguments from Bell and what the real truth is.
  - meroes 5y ago
    Ya I am not an expert to judge if Bell, Grete, and Mermin also misunderstood von Neumman, and I see a few papers argue that. But the larger physics community does seem to agree with Bell's take. I do find it a bit weird that paper is using an entire page of what von Neumman would have said in response.
stephc_int13 5y ago
This is mostly what Plato advocated in The Republic, it inspired quite a few policies over the last few centuries. The result is not as good as you might expect, this philosophy leads to aristocracy, not the most efficient form of government, by a long shot.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
domano 5y ago
Aside from the other issues mentioned by commenters i want to add that this perspective leaves out the whole nature vs nurture debate - so those clones would not automatically become geniuses. You could essentially just give a bunch of kids a phenomenal education and end up with a similiar, if not better result due to diversification of talents.
flaubere 5y ago
Although von Neumann was certainly a genius who happened to be in the right place at the right time, he's also an example of how groups of people can create a culture seemingly much more important than the effect of one outstanding individual. Lipót Fejér led a school of analysis at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He ran a seminar, was the centre of a large group of young mathematicians who worked together and was enormously influential. Hungary has a disproportionate number of the world class mathematicians of the 20th century. The numbers are even more extreme when you consider that those mathematicians are all from Budapest, all from Eötvös, and the vast majority of them Fejér's supervisees. It's totally plausible that Fejér created an environment where people who might otherwise have been middling mathematicians, decent engineers, or never have found their niche, were transformed, by collaboration and inspiration, into the likes of von Neumann, Erdős, Pólya. Even today the Eötvös school of analysis and combinatorics is a significant powerhouse, with most members direct mathematical descendants from Fejér. And there are other branches such as Cambridge combinatorialists where the influence of Fejér's students and grand-students has been key in the formation of world class mathematicians.

brudgers 5y ago

recent discussion, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26695502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26695502

TheTrotters 5y ago
Huh, I thought it was a new article but turns out they simply republished it on Substack today.

JetSetWilly 5y ago

> In fact, von Neumann claimed to do some of his best work in noisy, chaotic environments such as in the living room of his house with the television blaring. I often think of this when people claim it is impossible to conceive of any advanced thought in an open office or noisy environment. In fact, it is just a personal preference and one environment isn't necessarily any better than another.

blacktriangle 5y ago
Not impossible, just impossible for them. First, the difference between the television blaring and my office talking is that in office chatter I'm constantly picking up bits of sound that make my brain think I should be paying attention to them. The sounds of a Simpsons rerun I've seen 90 times don't distract my brain in the same way. Second, we're talking about what works for MOST people, Peopleware has actual data to back this up, the majority of people need quiet private space to do deep work.
- KineticLensman 5y ago
  > in office chatter I'm constantly picking up bits of sound that make my brain think I should be paying attention to them Agree. I found that hearing my boss on one side of a phone call where they referenced me or my work in some way was very distracting. What had happened? What was going to happen? What was I potentially being committed to?
fastasucan 5y ago
I find it the opposite. To work in a noicy environment is obviously so remarkable that its worth writing about.
bytematic 5y ago
Something that greatly surprised me when I worked in my first open plan office was that I didn't prefer any headphones or earbuds of any kind. I kind of melted into my work and sometimes looking up at people walking by or various smells, sounds, etc. would keep my mind active.
5y ago

abnry 5y ago

Great people are warranted discussion, but as someone who was once in the academic math world, I had to quit reading after a few sentences. Genius is a very real thing, but I don't need to read adulation after adulation in a series of anecdotes and quotes that will only make me feel inadequate. The mathematics itself is greater than the mathematician, who himself craps on the toilet like anyone else. Focus on the math, not the mathematician. It will make you happier.

MaxBarraclough 5y ago
> Focus on the math, not the mathematician. It will make you happier. Personally I don't feel inadequate when reading about someone like von Neumann, as I'm not really tempted to compare myself to him in the first place. Colleagues are peers, people I graduated with are peers, but von Neumann is almost like another species. I forget who it was who pointed out that Silicon Valley billionaires tend to dress like 'normal people', in sharp contrast to aristocrats. People don't tend to feel poor for comparing themselves against the Queen, as they perceive too much distance to make a personal comparison.
- abnry 5y ago
  > Personally I don't feel inadequate when reading about someone like von Neumann, as I'm not really tempted to compare myself to him in the first place. Colleagues are peers, people I graduated with are peers, but von Neumann is almost like another species. Perhaps I am more prone to egoism than you! I had a "promising" start to my career and a lot of ambition. I've fallen off that track and had time to reflect on what matters, but I still feel twinges of ego-driven ambition.
- paulpauper 5y ago
  The queen does not have much personal money anyway. it belongs to the family. I think it is understandable to feel inadequate. that is motivation to be better.
  - MaxBarraclough 5y ago

mabbo 5y ago

> “There was a seminar for advanced students in Zürich that I was teaching and von Neumann was in the class. I came to a certain theorem, and I said it is not proved and it may be difficult. von Neumann didn’t say anything but after five minutes he raised his hand. When I called on him he went to the blackboard and proceeded to write down the proof. After that I was afraid of von Neumann” — George Pólya If you put that scene in a film, people would call it unbelievable.

mjreacher 5y ago

In my opinion one of the great contributions of Von Neumann was the fact his "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC" report was spread so quickly in academic circles. When Eckert and Mauchly attempted to apply to patent their ideas for the ENIAC, the courts decided that the report constituted prior publication, and their patent application failed, meaning the key ideas and concepts from the ENIAC, many which define modern computers, were now in public domain and could be used freely