11 ms·

The genius of John von Neumann

126 points by conductor 5y ago

Myrmornis 5y ago
I think this article is mischaracterizing him as an applied mathematician with contributions to economics, game theory, computing etc — it gives almost no weight to his real mathematical work. I wonder why - it seems inconceivable that the biography being reviewed makes the same mistake.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dhanna 5y ago
I don’t need another biography/blog post fawning about John von Neumann, I need this goddamn series reprinted https://www.amazon.com/John-Von-Neumann-Collected-Works/dp/0080095666 https://www.amazon.com/John-Von-Neumann-Collected-Works/dp/0....
- mathieubordere 5y ago
  oh god, another one to put on the wishlist
  - davemp 5y ago
    Wow that collection must be rare. The only complete listing on ebay is $2.5k and not in good condition. Talk about show off books.
- bavent 5y ago
  At this point we need a weekly John von Neumann thread.
  - paulpauper 5y ago
    news.ycombinator.com/Neumann or Neumann.ycombinator.com
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  What would one do with it?
  - dhanna 5y ago
    Not sure, I’ll figure that out once I get my hands on it.
photochemsyn 5y ago
You could write another article entitled 'the lunacy of John von Neumann' over his endless pushes for destroying every major city in the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons, too. A brilliant scientist, yes, but also an unhinged lunatic. Not an unusual situation, see Cantor etc. What's curious is how many hagiographies have been written about this individual - some people seem bent on rehabilitating this figure by erasing uncomfortable history. In any case, hero-worship of scientists is very silly. The Nobel Prize bears a lot of the blame for this - but in reality, the vast majority of fundamental scientific discoveries are the result of dozens if not hundreds of researchers working over decades. The invention of the electronic computer is a good example of this, as is the invention of the nuclear bomb, as is the discovery and characterization of DNA's role in the cell.
- DantesKite 5y ago
  An intellectual-yet-idiot who placed too much hope and emphasis on game theory, despite the fact that it only works when agents are perfectly rational.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    John Von Neumann: the first redditor
  - friedman23 5y ago
    If you are executing the nash equilibrium strategy, if your opponent deviates from the strategy you win by default.
    - Imnimo 5y ago
      Consider the following game matrix, in which you pick a row and your opponent picks a column, and you receive the first payoff and your opponent receives the second. (100,100) (-100,99) (99,99) (98,98) The Nash equilibrium strategy is that you pick row 1 and your opponent picks column 1, each receiving 100 points. Once in this state, neither of you can improve by unilaterally changing your strategy. However, if your opponent irrationally deviates and takes column 2, receiving 99 instead of 100, you will get the catastrophic -100 payoff.
jgmmo 5y ago
I have had this great book for 10+ years, and still find it fascinating it's called "Prisoner's Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb". I try to re-read it on occasion. It's half John von Neumann biography and half subject matter history. Call him an unhinged lunatic if you want photochemsyn; but I consider him a super genius. Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29506.Prisoner_s_Dilemma https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29506.Prisoner_s_Dilemma
- triclops200 5y ago
  He was a super genius. Just a super genius who repeatedly called for genocide and nuclear first strikes. He was removed from the target selection committee for the Japan bombings because he kept advocating for high civilian targets with no military value and even the generals at the table viewed him as crazy. The ability to be a genius and a lunatic aren't mutually exclusive and the recent efforts to build a hagiography around him are concerning.
  - vishho 5y ago
    A first strike is not lunacy. It is a rational decision, if the nuclear arms race is viewed under game theory. He was a consultant, not had his hand on the button. The people with the hand on the button were talking about the rising threat and how to deal with it in the future. Neumann rightly reasoned that if there ever came a conflict, the winning move would have been an early first strike. If you look at his statements, these are statements of mathematical fact, not political strategy. If anything, he showed the hypocracy of target selection and its justifications for war. You want to play to win, or worry about rules and perceptions, unsure of if your opponent employs similarly intelligent analysts and game theorists? Look at the target selection of American adversaries in their information warfare. Made by lunatics? Or made to win a shadow war and damage American culture and politics without regard to military status?
    - gonehome 5y ago
      In the prisoner's dilemma isn't a core constraint that the prisoners can't collaborate? Therefore you can't cooperate for the best outcome and both are independently incentivized to defect. In global diplomacy the goal is to coordinate for the best outcome. So I'm not sure a strike first 'defection' is the rational move.
badRNG 5y ago
Bizarre that the second to top comment (on the linked page) immediately turned the conversation into one about the commenter's view on racial/sexual supremacy and goes on to say "correspondingly, there are also ethnicities that are less intelligent" (I'm assuming they are implying supremacy of their own group.) It's quite jarring the frequency one comes across white supremacist/misogynist talking points when one tries to engage with programming/computer science communities online. It makes me appreciate the largely positive and safe experience HN provides, despite the occasional user that insists the opposite. Edit: some of the comments appear to have been removed/deleted or otherwise fallen off, though the comment about "ethnicities that are less intelligent" is still up near the top.
- tuesdayrain 5y ago
  All he said is that some ethnicities are less intelligent than others. What is the statistical likelihood that 100% of ethnicities, which have evolved in drastically different environments across the world, have all developed perfectly identical intelligence on average? It's just not how evolution realistically works. People shouldn't close their eyes to how the world actually is whenever it doesn't match up with how they think it should be.
  - 29athrowaway 5y ago
    Yeah but some comparisons suck. If you measure the IQ for the same ethnicity you will notice that the IQ changes over time. Having proper levels of iodine is responsible for about 15 points of IQ. Removing lead from fuel, some extra increase. Pollution, nutrition, water purity, all the accrued knowledge about fetal and child development that is applied in modern economies, etc. plays a role. Also, there are negative factors like exposure to violence and trauma, substance abuse, which is correlated with poverty and inequality... which is a legacy of slavery, racial segregation, etc.
  - badRNG 5y ago
    All you've done is restate the original claim without providing evidence that intelligence "doesn't match up" (as you claim) across ethnicities. Generally when pressed, folks who dress up their racism in pseudoscientific language rely on the same small handful of talking points which largely haven't changed since "scientific racism" was mainstream in the 19th century. This started with phrenology, a widespread mainstream pseudoscience not only focused on dehumanizing black people, but also explicitly targeting natives as an apparent attempt to justify otherwise unconscionable public policies of the day. [1] It's bad enough to hold pseudoscientific beliefs; it's worse if those beliefs originate in a blantant attempt to dehumanize others. [1] https://pages.vassar.edu/realarchaeology/2017/03/05/phrenology-and-scientific-racism-in-the-19th-century/ https://pages.vassar.edu/realarchaeology/2017/03/05/phrenolo...
hirundo 5y ago
"It’s fashionable to say that intelligence isn’t real, or that we can’t define it, or that it’s a Western colonial construct. But the word points to a real thing: there is some quality which rocks don’t have, and which mice have a bit of, and which chimpanzees have more of, and humans have a lot of; and which is something like problem-solving ability or ability to achieve goals." We have IQ for measuring problem-solving ability, but it doesn't correlate well with the ability to achieve goals. That would be another very useful measure though, of something like intelligence * grit. Call it IGQ. An IGQ test would somehow set goals in a realistic, complex, chaotic environment, with social and physical as well as intellectual obstacles. So, a GPA is a sort of IGQ.
- goto11 5y ago
  The quote sounds like either a strawman or a misunderstanding. I don't think many people would claim intelligence "isn't real", but obviously IQ tests are created by humans which certain culturally-influenced ideas about what constitute intelligence.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Herodotus38 5y ago
A little pedantic but I want to fix something. I noticed in the first sentence that he states Von Nuemann died of bone cancer. This is incorrect. His cancer was first found in his collarbone, and it was a metastatic lesion. They biopsied it and various sources I've read have stated the primary cancer was pancreatic or prostate. This means that it would have been an undifferentiated adenocarcinoma. This means the cancer has evolved to the point where you can recognize some aspects of it, but it has shed a lot of the characteristics of its cell of origin. It could also have been a cholangiocarcinoma or possible gastric cancer, hepatic, etc... The term bone cancer refers to things like osteosarcomas, these usually occur in children. Not trying to say the rest of the article is bad, but when I see something like this I want to point it out. Previous biographies I've read have always reported pancreatic cancer, which is what I was going to originally type, but according to wikipedia there are some different sources listed.
- paulpauper 5y ago
  Interesting insight
  - Herodotus38 5y ago
    Thanks. Who knows, maybe this article will be cited by others in the future, and it will be one more piece of misinformation. The fight never stops.
paulpauper 5y ago
>He was not an economist, but he developed the use of fixed-point theorems in economics in a paper which the historian Roy Weintraub calls “the single most important article in mathematical economics”, and which inspired “half a dozen” Nobel laureates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer_fixed-point_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer_fixed-point_theorem no mention of him. I don't think he conceived of the idea.
- dash2 5y ago
  He didn't invent the fixed-point theorem, he developed their use in economics.
joeman1000 5y ago
I can never escape von Neumann. Everywhere I look, there is his influence. Even just as an engineer I see this. Physics, mathematics, computing (!), economics.. I am dumbfounded whenever I come across yet another monumental von Neumann idea that I use every day without knowing. Imagine how much further down the track we would be if we got another decade out of this incredible man…

126 points by conductor 5y ago

I think this article is mischaracterizing him as an applied mathematician with contributions to economics, game theory, computing etc — it gives almost no weight to his real mathematical work. I wonder why - it seems inconceivable that the biography being reviewed makes the same mistake.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dhanna 5y ago

I don’t need another biography/blog post fawning about John von Neumann, I need this goddamn series reprinted https://www.amazon.com/John-Von-Neumann-Collected-Works/dp/0080095666 https://www.amazon.com/John-Von-Neumann-Collected-Works/dp/0....

mathieubordere 5y ago
oh god, another one to put on the wishlist
- davemp 5y ago
  Wow that collection must be rare. The only complete listing on ebay is $2.5k and not in good condition. Talk about show off books.
bavent 5y ago
At this point we need a weekly John von Neumann thread.
- paulpauper 5y ago
  news.ycombinator.com/Neumann or Neumann.ycombinator.com
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mixmastamyk 5y ago
What would one do with it?
- dhanna 5y ago
  Not sure, I’ll figure that out once I get my hands on it.

photochemsyn 5y ago

You could write another article entitled 'the lunacy of John von Neumann' over his endless pushes for destroying every major city in the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons, too. A brilliant scientist, yes, but also an unhinged lunatic. Not an unusual situation, see Cantor etc. What's curious is how many hagiographies have been written about this individual - some people seem bent on rehabilitating this figure by erasing uncomfortable history. In any case, hero-worship of scientists is very silly. The Nobel Prize bears a lot of the blame for this - but in reality, the vast majority of fundamental scientific discoveries are the result of dozens if not hundreds of researchers working over decades. The invention of the electronic computer is a good example of this, as is the invention of the nuclear bomb, as is the discovery and characterization of DNA's role in the cell.

DantesKite 5y ago
An intellectual-yet-idiot who placed too much hope and emphasis on game theory, despite the fact that it only works when agents are perfectly rational.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  John Von Neumann: the first redditor
- friedman23 5y ago
  If you are executing the nash equilibrium strategy, if your opponent deviates from the strategy you win by default.
  - Imnimo 5y ago
    Consider the following game matrix, in which you pick a row and your opponent picks a column, and you receive the first payoff and your opponent receives the second. (100,100) (-100,99) (99,99) (98,98) The Nash equilibrium strategy is that you pick row 1 and your opponent picks column 1, each receiving 100 points. Once in this state, neither of you can improve by unilaterally changing your strategy. However, if your opponent irrationally deviates and takes column 2, receiving 99 instead of 100, you will get the catastrophic -100 payoff.

jgmmo 5y ago

I have had this great book for 10+ years, and still find it fascinating it's called "Prisoner's Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb". I try to re-read it on occasion. It's half John von Neumann biography and half subject matter history. Call him an unhinged lunatic if you want photochemsyn; but I consider him a super genius. Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29506.Prisoner_s_Dilemma https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29506.Prisoner_s_Dilemma

triclops200 5y ago
He was a super genius. Just a super genius who repeatedly called for genocide and nuclear first strikes. He was removed from the target selection committee for the Japan bombings because he kept advocating for high civilian targets with no military value and even the generals at the table viewed him as crazy. The ability to be a genius and a lunatic aren't mutually exclusive and the recent efforts to build a hagiography around him are concerning.
- vishho 5y ago
  A first strike is not lunacy. It is a rational decision, if the nuclear arms race is viewed under game theory. He was a consultant, not had his hand on the button. The people with the hand on the button were talking about the rising threat and how to deal with it in the future. Neumann rightly reasoned that if there ever came a conflict, the winning move would have been an early first strike. If you look at his statements, these are statements of mathematical fact, not political strategy. If anything, he showed the hypocracy of target selection and its justifications for war. You want to play to win, or worry about rules and perceptions, unsure of if your opponent employs similarly intelligent analysts and game theorists? Look at the target selection of American adversaries in their information warfare. Made by lunatics? Or made to win a shadow war and damage American culture and politics without regard to military status?
  - gonehome 5y ago
    In the prisoner's dilemma isn't a core constraint that the prisoners can't collaborate? Therefore you can't cooperate for the best outcome and both are independently incentivized to defect. In global diplomacy the goal is to coordinate for the best outcome. So I'm not sure a strike first 'defection' is the rational move.

badRNG 5y ago

Bizarre that the second to top comment (on the linked page) immediately turned the conversation into one about the commenter's view on racial/sexual supremacy and goes on to say "correspondingly, there are also ethnicities that are less intelligent" (I'm assuming they are implying supremacy of their own group.) It's quite jarring the frequency one comes across white supremacist/misogynist talking points when one tries to engage with programming/computer science communities online. It makes me appreciate the largely positive and safe experience HN provides, despite the occasional user that insists the opposite. Edit: some of the comments appear to have been removed/deleted or otherwise fallen off, though the comment about "ethnicities that are less intelligent" is still up near the top.

tuesdayrain 5y ago
All he said is that some ethnicities are less intelligent than others. What is the statistical likelihood that 100% of ethnicities, which have evolved in drastically different environments across the world, have all developed perfectly identical intelligence on average? It's just not how evolution realistically works. People shouldn't close their eyes to how the world actually is whenever it doesn't match up with how they think it should be.
- 29athrowaway 5y ago
  Yeah but some comparisons suck. If you measure the IQ for the same ethnicity you will notice that the IQ changes over time. Having proper levels of iodine is responsible for about 15 points of IQ. Removing lead from fuel, some extra increase. Pollution, nutrition, water purity, all the accrued knowledge about fetal and child development that is applied in modern economies, etc. plays a role. Also, there are negative factors like exposure to violence and trauma, substance abuse, which is correlated with poverty and inequality... which is a legacy of slavery, racial segregation, etc.
- badRNG 5y ago
  All you've done is restate the original claim without providing evidence that intelligence "doesn't match up" (as you claim) across ethnicities. Generally when pressed, folks who dress up their racism in pseudoscientific language rely on the same small handful of talking points which largely haven't changed since "scientific racism" was mainstream in the 19th century. This started with phrenology, a widespread mainstream pseudoscience not only focused on dehumanizing black people, but also explicitly targeting natives as an apparent attempt to justify otherwise unconscionable public policies of the day. [1] It's bad enough to hold pseudoscientific beliefs; it's worse if those beliefs originate in a blantant attempt to dehumanize others. [1] https://pages.vassar.edu/realarchaeology/2017/03/05/phrenology-and-scientific-racism-in-the-19th-century/ https://pages.vassar.edu/realarchaeology/2017/03/05/phrenolo...

hirundo 5y ago

"It’s fashionable to say that intelligence isn’t real, or that we can’t define it, or that it’s a Western colonial construct. But the word points to a real thing: there is some quality which rocks don’t have, and which mice have a bit of, and which chimpanzees have more of, and humans have a lot of; and which is something like problem-solving ability or ability to achieve goals." We have IQ for measuring problem-solving ability, but it doesn't correlate well with the ability to achieve goals. That would be another very useful measure though, of something like intelligence * grit. Call it IGQ. An IGQ test would somehow set goals in a realistic, complex, chaotic environment, with social and physical as well as intellectual obstacles. So, a GPA is a sort of IGQ.

goto11 5y ago
The quote sounds like either a strawman or a misunderstanding. I don't think many people would claim intelligence "isn't real", but obviously IQ tests are created by humans which certain culturally-influenced ideas about what constitute intelligence.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Herodotus38 5y ago

A little pedantic but I want to fix something. I noticed in the first sentence that he states Von Nuemann died of bone cancer. This is incorrect. His cancer was first found in his collarbone, and it was a metastatic lesion. They biopsied it and various sources I've read have stated the primary cancer was pancreatic or prostate. This means that it would have been an undifferentiated adenocarcinoma. This means the cancer has evolved to the point where you can recognize some aspects of it, but it has shed a lot of the characteristics of its cell of origin. It could also have been a cholangiocarcinoma or possible gastric cancer, hepatic, etc... The term bone cancer refers to things like osteosarcomas, these usually occur in children. Not trying to say the rest of the article is bad, but when I see something like this I want to point it out. Previous biographies I've read have always reported pancreatic cancer, which is what I was going to originally type, but according to wikipedia there are some different sources listed.

paulpauper 5y ago
Interesting insight
- Herodotus38 5y ago
  Thanks. Who knows, maybe this article will be cited by others in the future, and it will be one more piece of misinformation. The fight never stops.

paulpauper 5y ago

>He was not an economist, but he developed the use of fixed-point theorems in economics in a paper which the historian Roy Weintraub calls “the single most important article in mathematical economics”, and which inspired “half a dozen” Nobel laureates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer_fixed-point_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer_fixed-point_theorem no mention of him. I don't think he conceived of the idea.

dash2 5y ago
He didn't invent the fixed-point theorem, he developed their use in economics.

joeman1000 5y ago

I can never escape von Neumann. Everywhere I look, there is his influence. Even just as an engineer I see this. Physics, mathematics, computing (!), economics.. I am dumbfounded whenever I come across yet another monumental von Neumann idea that I use every day without knowing. Imagine how much further down the track we would be if we got another decade out of this incredible man…