5 ms·

> whose coziness with the military-industrial complex remains controversial to this day. Why is it controversial? I know nothing of Von Neumann, but it doesn't

> whose coziness with the military-industrial complex remains controversial to this day. Why is it controversial? I know nothing of Von Neumann, but it doesn't seem like a bad thing. "Coziness" could mean a lot of things, but personally even if Von Neumann was taking the military industrial complex out on a date every Tuesday, I wouldn't see a problem with it. Is the implication that the military was influencing his integrity as a scientist? The bigger criticism of Von Neumann is that he set back quantum mechanics for a few decades: https://twitter.com/orzelc/status/1446414513465696256 https://twitter.com/orzelc/status/1446414513465696256 EDIT: There's a shocking comment further downthread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28811713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28811713 I retract my claim that the bigger criticism was his treatment of QM. The bigger criticism is that Von Neumann was a lunatic – I try not to call names, but advocating the extermination of a population is the dealbreaker threshold of niceness for me.

sudosysgen 5y ago
Do you think that enthusiastically egging on the nuclear holocaust of tens of million of people for ultimately no good reason (and that's the best case scenario of his proposal, it could have been even worse as he seriously underestimated the Soviet Union) is not a bad thing? Had he managed to convince the president, he would have been one of the people with the worst impact on humanity (and science incidentally) of all history, perhaps even dooming us all.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  As I already said, I know nothing about Von Neumann's history. You'll have to fill me in before I can answer that question, since you didn't really say what happened. My criticism had a source which clearly explained what he did and why it had a negative impact. You may want to do the same thing, or I think no one will be impressed with your claim that Neumann personally was the decisive factor in killing a bunch of people that would've been dead a century later anyway. (Just a little joke.)
  - leephillips 5y ago
    Your "source" is a tweet that makes a claim with almost no justification.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    He ended up not being the decisive factor, but as the above said, he advocated for a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union, and was already part of the nuclear decision-making process - he was invited to participate in the decision for which cities to strike in Japan but was ultimately overruled because he suggested to hit target with no military importance and high concentrations of civilians. He thought (very wrongly) that coexistence with the Soviets was impossible and that they had to be eliminated as soon as possible. Here are sources if you want: "Von Neumann, four other scientists, and various military personnel were included in the target selection committee that was responsible for choosing the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the first targets of the atomic bomb. [...] The cultural capital Kyoto, which had been spared the bombing inflicted upon militarily significant cities, was von Neumann's first choice" "He was quoted in 1950 remarking, "During a Senate committee hearing he described his political ideology as "violently anti-communist, and much more militaristic than the norm". If you say why not bomb [the Soviets] tomorrow, I say, why not today? If you say today at five o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Nuclear_weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Nuclear_weapo...) I don't think that I need to give sources as to why nuking the USSR would have had a huge negative impact.
    - jtsuken 5y ago
      I think JvN deserves at least some benefit of the doubt. As far as I am aware there is little unbiased impartial information about these meetings discussing the targets for nuclear strikes. Most information was published well after JvN has died. He also had no chance to comment even in the last years of his life. (Apparently the military was near him in hospital to make sure he didn't reveal any secrets) e.g. JvN's recommendation to bomb Kyoto is usually supported with a quote from a book that was written by the general who ran the Manhattan project and published his account of the events five years after von Neumann's death. I wouldn't be surprised if the general was doing at least some white washing in the early sixties as the peace movement was gaining momentum. More recently, looking at how various US agencies and departments reacted to accusations of human rights abuses in say Iraq, it's very easy to imagine that JvN's comments on the topic where either ripped out of context or exaggerated. So again, while it's very clear how someone with an extremely scientific mindset like von Neumann's would through outrageous comments around during a brainstorming session or during a heated argument. I'd really try to withhold any judgment on this until I see the full transcripts of these meetings.
leephillips 5y ago
I think this is an overstatement. I don't think his mistake came close to delaying the development of QM for a "few decades". On the contrary, he was a major contributor to the mathematical foundations of QM, and, on balance, certainly advanced the field more than he retarded it, even considering his blunder.
alecst 5y ago
> The bigger criticism of Von Neumann is that he set back quantum mechanics for a few decades: https://twitter.com/orzelc/status/1446414513465696256 https://twitter.com/orzelc/status/1446414513465696256 Really skeptical of this. Not only did he write a famous "little book" on QM (which is still readable to this day), but hidden variable theories are pretty much disproved in QM. So even if he was wrong about the theorem, he was still right about the principle. There's a wikipedia on it here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory I spent a long time studying QM and never heard of anyone taking hidden-variable theories seriously so I don't know what this tweet is about.
mixmastamyk 5y ago
It’s not controversial during WWII, the pinnacle of human conflict. The war effort was a goal of almost everyone active. The nuclear race was on and many had to flee Europe. Even in normal circumstances, culturally people just didn’t care as much about human life back then. Criticizing that from the comfortable perspective of today or even halfway to the sixties, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Also being smart apparently doesn’t help much in predicting the future.
- rrsmtz 5y ago
  > Criticizing that from the comfortable perspective of today... doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. There's a difference between criticism and understanding. We can understand why people felt and acted the way they did in a given time period, but that doesn't mean that we need to sympathize with them or that they are somehow immune from criticism. Individuals are not just a victim of our circumstances, and morals about the sanctity of human life are far older than the 20th century and appear in times of deep discomfort as well as times of comfort.
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    Sanctity of life occurred gradually, and is in part a luxury of abundance. If you want to criticize, imho, criticize someone who actually did wrong. Those who expressed an opinion found to be a bad call almost a century in the future aren’t worth the bother in my opinion. We were incredibly lucky to have JvN.
    - rrsmtz 5y ago
      > Sanctity of life occurred gradually, and is in part a luxury of abundance. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" was not a product of an abundant, decadent society, and I promise you that Neumann had heard of it. I agree that Neumann gave humanity great scientific and technological gifts that brought us into the modern era, but so did Wernher von Braun. Both also used their gifts to cause suffering and destruction on a massive scale. We can't just whitewash their history; given their intelligence we must admit that they knew what they were doing and what they were angling for. And it still matters, because very intelligent and clever people in today's world are building weapons and killing machines, and hiding behind the same excuses.
kaba0 5y ago
If it seems like the first power to create nuclear bombs will use it and basically annihilate the other, then the only logical step would be to preemptively use it. And it doesn’t seem like an out of the world assumption that if the Soviets would have created it before, they would have used that - and that is also a fair assumption that the world would be better under faulty capitalism with proper democracy than a single-party dictatorship.

sudosysgen 5y ago

Do you think that enthusiastically egging on the nuclear holocaust of tens of million of people for ultimately no good reason (and that's the best case scenario of his proposal, it could have been even worse as he seriously underestimated the Soviet Union) is not a bad thing? Had he managed to convince the president, he would have been one of the people with the worst impact on humanity (and science incidentally) of all history, perhaps even dooming us all.

sillysaurusx 5y ago
As I already said, I know nothing about Von Neumann's history. You'll have to fill me in before I can answer that question, since you didn't really say what happened. My criticism had a source which clearly explained what he did and why it had a negative impact. You may want to do the same thing, or I think no one will be impressed with your claim that Neumann personally was the decisive factor in killing a bunch of people that would've been dead a century later anyway. (Just a little joke.)
- leephillips 5y ago
  Your "source" is a tweet that makes a claim with almost no justification.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  He ended up not being the decisive factor, but as the above said, he advocated for a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union, and was already part of the nuclear decision-making process - he was invited to participate in the decision for which cities to strike in Japan but was ultimately overruled because he suggested to hit target with no military importance and high concentrations of civilians. He thought (very wrongly) that coexistence with the Soviets was impossible and that they had to be eliminated as soon as possible. Here are sources if you want: "Von Neumann, four other scientists, and various military personnel were included in the target selection committee that was responsible for choosing the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the first targets of the atomic bomb. [...] The cultural capital Kyoto, which had been spared the bombing inflicted upon militarily significant cities, was von Neumann's first choice" "He was quoted in 1950 remarking, "During a Senate committee hearing he described his political ideology as "violently anti-communist, and much more militaristic than the norm". If you say why not bomb [the Soviets] tomorrow, I say, why not today? If you say today at five o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Nuclear_weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Nuclear_weapo...) I don't think that I need to give sources as to why nuking the USSR would have had a huge negative impact.
  - jtsuken 5y ago
    I think JvN deserves at least some benefit of the doubt. As far as I am aware there is little unbiased impartial information about these meetings discussing the targets for nuclear strikes. Most information was published well after JvN has died. He also had no chance to comment even in the last years of his life. (Apparently the military was near him in hospital to make sure he didn't reveal any secrets) e.g. JvN's recommendation to bomb Kyoto is usually supported with a quote from a book that was written by the general who ran the Manhattan project and published his account of the events five years after von Neumann's death. I wouldn't be surprised if the general was doing at least some white washing in the early sixties as the peace movement was gaining momentum. More recently, looking at how various US agencies and departments reacted to accusations of human rights abuses in say Iraq, it's very easy to imagine that JvN's comments on the topic where either ripped out of context or exaggerated. So again, while it's very clear how someone with an extremely scientific mindset like von Neumann's would through outrageous comments around during a brainstorming session or during a heated argument. I'd really try to withhold any judgment on this until I see the full transcripts of these meetings.

leephillips 5y ago

I think this is an overstatement. I don't think his mistake came close to delaying the development of QM for a "few decades". On the contrary, he was a major contributor to the mathematical foundations of QM, and, on balance, certainly advanced the field more than he retarded it, even considering his blunder.

alecst 5y ago

> The bigger criticism of Von Neumann is that he set back quantum mechanics for a few decades: https://twitter.com/orzelc/status/1446414513465696256 https://twitter.com/orzelc/status/1446414513465696256 Really skeptical of this. Not only did he write a famous "little book" on QM (which is still readable to this day), but hidden variable theories are pretty much disproved in QM. So even if he was wrong about the theorem, he was still right about the principle. There's a wikipedia on it here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory I spent a long time studying QM and never heard of anyone taking hidden-variable theories seriously so I don't know what this tweet is about.

mixmastamyk 5y ago

It’s not controversial during WWII, the pinnacle of human conflict. The war effort was a goal of almost everyone active. The nuclear race was on and many had to flee Europe. Even in normal circumstances, culturally people just didn’t care as much about human life back then. Criticizing that from the comfortable perspective of today or even halfway to the sixties, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Also being smart apparently doesn’t help much in predicting the future.

rrsmtz 5y ago
> Criticizing that from the comfortable perspective of today... doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. There's a difference between criticism and understanding. We can understand why people felt and acted the way they did in a given time period, but that doesn't mean that we need to sympathize with them or that they are somehow immune from criticism. Individuals are not just a victim of our circumstances, and morals about the sanctity of human life are far older than the 20th century and appear in times of deep discomfort as well as times of comfort.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Sanctity of life occurred gradually, and is in part a luxury of abundance. If you want to criticize, imho, criticize someone who actually did wrong. Those who expressed an opinion found to be a bad call almost a century in the future aren’t worth the bother in my opinion. We were incredibly lucky to have JvN.
  - rrsmtz 5y ago
    > Sanctity of life occurred gradually, and is in part a luxury of abundance. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" was not a product of an abundant, decadent society, and I promise you that Neumann had heard of it. I agree that Neumann gave humanity great scientific and technological gifts that brought us into the modern era, but so did Wernher von Braun. Both also used their gifts to cause suffering and destruction on a massive scale. We can't just whitewash their history; given their intelligence we must admit that they knew what they were doing and what they were angling for. And it still matters, because very intelligent and clever people in today's world are building weapons and killing machines, and hiding behind the same excuses.

kaba0 5y ago

If it seems like the first power to create nuclear bombs will use it and basically annihilate the other, then the only logical step would be to preemptively use it. And it doesn’t seem like an out of the world assumption that if the Soviets would have created it before, they would have used that - and that is also a fair assumption that the world would be better under faulty capitalism with proper democracy than a single-party dictatorship.