3 ms·

I think the point about his wife might have also been a factor. "There was just one person who wasn’t happy about the reunion: Wiener’s wife. " "And so she inv

I think the point about his wife might have also been a factor. "There was just one person who wasn’t happy about the reunion: Wiener’s wife. " "And so she invented a story. She sat Wiener down and informed him that when their daughter, Barbara, had stayed at McCulloch’s house in Chicago, several of “his boys” had seduced her. Wiener immediately sent an angry telegram to Wiesner: “Please inform [Pitts and Lettvin] that all connection between me and your projects is permanently abolished. They are your problem. Wiener.” He never spoke to Pitts again. And he never told him why.3" What a wedge to be driven between the sum of the parts. I've started to think pregnancy is such a drain on the female body that the change in behaviour in women afterwards seem like minor psychotic episodes which the medical profession ignore and pass off as "normalised" behaviour. In a round about way, she legally killed him because her actions are not recognised as murder by the legal profession. Edit: One other point on his theorem, with quantifying the chemical effects in the body & brain, you are never going to be able to mathematically model a chemical entity with logic. We are complex realtime chemical reactions, we are not able to quantify the activity of every cell exactly, only generalise which introduces a margin of error in being able to predict a biological entities next move.

pmarreck 5y ago
The thing with the deceitful jealous shrew of a wife breaking up a productive (and dare I say, brotherly-loving?) company of men by lying about a sexual assault (a psychic cudgel that is still available to every woman) which in turn lead to the emotional downfall of one of the men into alcoholism, was so disappointing, and frankly, evil. I googled her and it also turns out she was an ardent Nazi supporter... Shocker.
- TheSalarian 5y ago
  Do you have a source for this? My searches land primarily on the University of North Carolina professor. I do see that she was a German immigrant but I'm not finding many details beyond that.
  - pmarreck 5y ago
    https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/books/review/dark-hero-of-the-information-age-the-original-computer-geek.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/books/review/dark-hero-of... > The catastrophe emerged from Wiener's German-born wife, Margaret, and their almost gothically weird relationship. Though Wiener was Jewish, Margaret became an outspoken Nazi supporter during World War II. (She kept a copy of "Mein Kampf" on a dresser at home.) She was even more hostile to her daughters, and accused the elder of inspiring "unnatural" sexual feelings in her father. As Wiener's reputation grew and he crisscrossed the globe on lecture circuits, Margaret attempted to trigger his depressions with undercutting remarks. At the peak of Wiener's fame, she told an audacious lie that destroyed his relationship with his closest scientific collaborators. One of Wiener's daughters had interned for a spring with the colleagues; Margaret told Wiener that their daughter had had sex with several of them. Wiener chose to believe the falsehood. He immediately cut off all contact with his collaborators, never explained the accusation and never spoke to them again. And that, the authors contend, is the real reason cybernetics died. Wiener's colleagues were shattered, and without his participation, their explorations of his ideas quickly atrophied. One of Wiener's former protégés, the young mathematical genius Walter Pitts, was so scarred that ultimately he drank himself to death. By the time of Wiener's death in 1964, there were few proselytizers left; Soviet scientists were interested, but this only served to give cybernetics a "red" tinge. Just a dream of a spouse, that one. :: eye roll ::
  - pmarreck 5y ago
    Two years ago I might have asked how it was possible that a Nazi supporter could literally be married to a Jew and hold the same beliefs. After seeing people dying of COVID with their family accusing the doctors of killing them while blaming it on a nonexistent illness, I no longer wonder, now I'm just sad for humanity Make it mandatory to teach critical thinking and basic science literacy in high school ASAP
dullcrisp 5y ago
> I've started to think pregnancy is such a drain on the female body that the change in behaviour in women afterwards seem like minor psychotic episodes which the medical profession ignore and pass off as "normalised" behaviour. I don’t know that there’s a nice way to say this, but this is such a misogynistic take. I don’t see anything in the story that involved pregnancy or hormones. Whenever you read about something bad that was done by a man do you comment about how testosterone turns men into psychopaths?
- Terry_Roll 5y ago
  That is your opinion and you can count yourself lucky you have not been exposed to the evil in some women which could alter your point of view. But consider this, if someone holds a misogynistic view, what caused this opinion to form? On the point of testosterone turning men into psycho's, I'll agree it can make men more emotionless or robotic, but that doesnt make them an a-hole going around causing crimes, which is the connotation the word psychopath generates in the general psyche of a population.

pmarreck 5y ago

The thing with the deceitful jealous shrew of a wife breaking up a productive (and dare I say, brotherly-loving?) company of men by lying about a sexual assault (a psychic cudgel that is still available to every woman) which in turn lead to the emotional downfall of one of the men into alcoholism, was so disappointing, and frankly, evil. I googled her and it also turns out she was an ardent Nazi supporter... Shocker.

TheSalarian 5y ago
Do you have a source for this? My searches land primarily on the University of North Carolina professor. I do see that she was a German immigrant but I'm not finding many details beyond that.
- pmarreck 5y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/books/review/dark-hero-of-the-information-age-the-original-computer-geek.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/books/review/dark-hero-of... > The catastrophe emerged from Wiener's German-born wife, Margaret, and their almost gothically weird relationship. Though Wiener was Jewish, Margaret became an outspoken Nazi supporter during World War II. (She kept a copy of "Mein Kampf" on a dresser at home.) She was even more hostile to her daughters, and accused the elder of inspiring "unnatural" sexual feelings in her father. As Wiener's reputation grew and he crisscrossed the globe on lecture circuits, Margaret attempted to trigger his depressions with undercutting remarks. At the peak of Wiener's fame, she told an audacious lie that destroyed his relationship with his closest scientific collaborators. One of Wiener's daughters had interned for a spring with the colleagues; Margaret told Wiener that their daughter had had sex with several of them. Wiener chose to believe the falsehood. He immediately cut off all contact with his collaborators, never explained the accusation and never spoke to them again. And that, the authors contend, is the real reason cybernetics died. Wiener's colleagues were shattered, and without his participation, their explorations of his ideas quickly atrophied. One of Wiener's former protégés, the young mathematical genius Walter Pitts, was so scarred that ultimately he drank himself to death. By the time of Wiener's death in 1964, there were few proselytizers left; Soviet scientists were interested, but this only served to give cybernetics a "red" tinge. Just a dream of a spouse, that one. :: eye roll ::
- pmarreck 5y ago
  Two years ago I might have asked how it was possible that a Nazi supporter could literally be married to a Jew and hold the same beliefs. After seeing people dying of COVID with their family accusing the doctors of killing them while blaming it on a nonexistent illness, I no longer wonder, now I'm just sad for humanity Make it mandatory to teach critical thinking and basic science literacy in high school ASAP

dullcrisp 5y ago

> I've started to think pregnancy is such a drain on the female body that the change in behaviour in women afterwards seem like minor psychotic episodes which the medical profession ignore and pass off as "normalised" behaviour. I don’t know that there’s a nice way to say this, but this is such a misogynistic take. I don’t see anything in the story that involved pregnancy or hormones. Whenever you read about something bad that was done by a man do you comment about how testosterone turns men into psychopaths?

Terry_Roll 5y ago
That is your opinion and you can count yourself lucky you have not been exposed to the evil in some women which could alter your point of view. But consider this, if someone holds a misogynistic view, what caused this opinion to form? On the point of testosterone turning men into psycho's, I'll agree it can make men more emotionless or robotic, but that doesnt make them an a-hole going around causing crimes, which is the connotation the word psychopath generates in the general psyche of a population.