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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 nucle
by 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 agoAn 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 agoJohn Von Neumann: the first redditor
- friedman23 5y agoIf you are executing the nash equilibrium strategy, if your opponent deviates from the strategy you win by default.
- Imnimo 5y agoConsider 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rileymat2 5y agoI don’t think this is quite right, it requires the opponent to use the optimal strategy.
- Reuzel 5y agoI am not going to correct this statement, just please ask you not to use the word "intellectual-yet-idiot" to describe other people ever again. IYI is a great and new concept, and can be enlightening when correctly applied. Let us (pseudo)intellectuals cherish that value. EDIT: https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/09/intellectual-yet-idiot/ https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/09/intellectual-yet-idiot/ to add something interesting for others.
- 271828182846 5y agoafter reading that article it seems to me that "idiot-yet-intellectual" might be fitting JVN.
- Reuzel 5y agoYeah, after you reading that article, I totally agree. It might also be fitting to describe NN Taleb. The only one it does not fit, I think, would be Edward Snowden, the last cultural bastion of free speech and human rights protection.
- elzbardico 5y agoHave you ever wondered if your opinion is derived from first facts or based on a biased selection of sources that you've been exposed to? Not that I am telling this is the case, but have you ever considered that? I am generally curious, because saying John Von Neumann is IYI is a very courageous proposition.
- leesec 5y agoA man who didn't want a perceived enemy to get nuclear capabilities. Wow, what a lunatic.
- DSingularity 5y agoAnd willing to kill tens of millions of innocents to achieve this. Yeah man a lunatic who in his detachment from the common man became less than in some of the most important dimensions of all: empathy, humanity.
- oh_sigh 5y agoEasy to say now, looking back on history and seeing that there wasn't a civilization ending nuclear war. I wonder what the odds were of that happening? Did we get lucky and eke by that period with 1% odds? Or was there only ever a very very small chance of a nuclear holocaust, and people were worried about nothing? The answer to that question is what I would need to know about whether it is reasonable to nuke 10M people.
- GDC7 5y agoEvery potential enemy is also a potential friend or a potential neutral. By definition. Besides you don't get to wipe 1B people off the planet (which way back then represented 35% of the global population), and have as only consequence the fact that you "won" the prisoner's dilemma. Such "victories" emerge as such after centuries when scientists would be studying the DNA remains and see who survived and who perished. But such great filter doesn't produce anything good for those living through it. Even the "winners" There was no quality of life to be gained by the US and USSR in nuking each other, still there isn't today between US and Russia.Russia and the US can only be baited into nuking each other. And that's the danger we must be really careful about. Thank god "normal" people like JFK and Kruschev who enjoyed the pleasures of life like cigars, alcohol and women were at the helm and not some guy who was paranoid about "winning" a game. As far as predictive capabilities on this matter...Tom Clancy > John Von Neumann
- selimthegrim 5y ago
- sugarpile 5y agoI fail to see how pushing for a strategy that, from a game theory point of view, was sound makes him a lunatic. Plenty of people don't view the preservation of life as the be all end all and if that strategy had been followed and it had led to a world where only the United States had ever been allowed to develop nuclear weapons I see a very easy argument for it being the more long-term humane option. Edit: who's more of a lunatic: the man who presses a button that kills a million people and saves a billion or the man that doesn't? I'd argue the latter.
- ramesh31 5y ago>Edit: who's more of a lunatic: the man who presses a button that kills a million people and saves a billion or the man that doesn't? I'd argue the latter. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao would agree
- Smoofer 5y agoGood thing we were able to avoid billions of deaths without nuking every major USSR city?
- sugarpile 5y agoAnd should nuclear war ever occur? ~70 years is a relatively short time frame. Check back with me in another 200 and let me know if your comment still holds.
- khafra 5y agoIs your theory that nuking the USSR would have completely prevented nuclear proliferation for at least two centuries? That no other nation would have developed nukes in secret, or stolen some from the USA? Or is your theory that nuking China, India, Pakistan, France, Israel, etc., as soon as they started to get nuclear weapons would still be worth it? If you're saying global thermonuclear war is a bigger risk than we tend to think, e.g. because of anthropic shadow effects, I agree. But I still don't think there's positive expected value in a pre-emptive all-out nuclear attack.
- 5y ago
- glitcher 5y ago> In any case, hero-worship of scientists is very silly. The Nobel Prize bears a lot of the blame for this I think it's more that it gets indoctrinated in the process of learning math and science, where every historic formula, theory, hypotheses, and law, is named after someone. It's easy to overlook that all those someones were complex, flawed human beings. And as you allude to, many great discoveries are the work of many. But when learning science, I feel like the history often gets glossed over and tends to overlook the less famous contributors to great ideas.
- systemvoltage 5y agoI hate this. We are trying to look at the worst of someone that did so much for the world. People on HN are trying to cancel Feynman as well. I have nothing but feelings of disdain for you. Even if they did something wrong, I’d rather focus on their positive sides. Please stop this onslaught of taking down the history for some axe to grind.
- metalliqaz 5y agoFeynman??? wtf
- eyeundersand 5y agoSurely you're joking... (sorry, couldn't resist) I'm out of the loop on this one too. Anyone care to explain?
- BizarroLand 5y agoApparently he was a highly sexualized person and he partook in debauchery, got grabby with women in general and took advantage of naive science groupies when the opportunity presented itself and other things that are probably worse than that. https://galileospendulum.org/2014/07/13/the-problem-of-richard-feynman/ https://galileospendulum.org/2014/07/13/the-problem-of-richa...
- jandrese 5y agoIf you read his autobiography he includes a fair bit of Red Pill style advice to the reader. Stuff like how to neg women to get them to sleep with you. He also includes anecdotes about how he was the least sexist guy in the room on other occasions. This is the danger of filtering past culture through a modern lens.
- eyeundersand 5y agoHa! I'm in the middle of reading it. was might be more suitable seeing as I haven't touched it in about two months now but that's how I like doing it (3-4 in parallel). Just went back to check, and found out I left it at Part 4, with his involvement in the military having recently started. Don't recall anything particularly improper as regards the allegations(facts?, I'm not sure) but it's probably coming up. Thanks for letting me know!
- dandanua 5y ago> hero-worship of scientists is very silly About what they should think when developing a weapon of ultimate mass destruction? Rainbow unicorns? You can't be a pacifist and simultaneously fight for "peace", that's nonsense. You can only fight for your survival, and for your people, your culture, your principles and values.
- diplodocusaur 5y agoso, tribalism?
- da39a3ee 5y agoHe's much more than a brilliant scientist! Some people think he's the greatest mathematicians of the 20th Century, in addition to his seminal applied contributions to game theory, computing, economics etc. So it's not about "rehabilitating" or "hagiography". The discussion isn't about his political views or his personality or any of that. This person is an, perhaps the, outstanding genius of human history. In mathematics and theoretical science, the major breakthroughs have often been the work of one person. I'm sure you know this. In general your comment is going wrong by discussing Von Neumann as if he were an applied scientist: he was a theoretician.
- user982 5y ago> A brilliant scientist, yes, but also an unhinged lunatic. Not an unusual situation, see Cantor etc. What made Cantor unhinged? I skimmed his Wikipedia page (assuming you mean Georg) and the worst seemed to be a couple of sanatorium stays for depression.
- photochemsyn 5y agoOkay that's perhaps an unfair comparison. But would you want Cantor in a depressed state running something important? The concept of the 'universal genius' or the 'universal manager' and so on seems nonsensical, and yet we see those themes pumped out constantly. Expertise in one area does not magically create expertise in one area, and the mental skills involved in complex higher math don't make one an expert is human behavior or international relations. That's what I was trying to get at, perhaps poorly.
- hyperbovine 5y ago> In any case, hero-worship of scientists is very silly. Compared to, say, people who use sticks to roll balls into holes? [https://www.theonion.com/man-who-used-stick-to-roll-ball-into-hole-in-ground-pra-1819569900 https://www.theonion.com/man-who-used-stick-to-roll-ball-int...] I'll take scientist worship any day compared to all the other idiots and charlatans our culture chooses to worship.
- tshaddox 5y agoMaybe this is too radical but how about don't worship anything at all?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bryan0 5y agoImagine if every time a story came up about a once-in-a-generation brilliant innovator, the top comments were all about highlighting their flaws and mistakes and minimizing their accomplishments. What a depressing way to live.
- hn_throwaway_69 5y agoTall poppy syndrome is regrettably quite common here.
- paulpauper 5y agoYes research is collective, but , still, individuals prove key insights.