That story caught my eye and I had a different take. This is just my experience and anecdote should always be taken with caution, but here we are. I worked a l

That story caught my eye and I had a different take. This is just my experience and anecdote should always be taken with caution, but here we are. I worked a little with someone, now deceased, who was maybe comparable to von Neumann in some ways as an academic or intellectual figure. Few in history are comparable to von Neumann really, but there are a lot of similarities in this person with reference to a different and narrower field. This person is cited in blog posts that show up on HN from time to time in disparate but related fields, and there's a similarity in a lot of respects at a smaller scale. My impression with that person was that they were smart, very smart, but not actually smarter than a lot of other people I knew and respected in academics. They had this sort of persona, almost like a role they were playing, with an an accompanying reputation that sort of got amplified and mythologized into legend. I have a lot to say about this, but at some point it became like an ignition process, where fame led to more citations and attention, which fed off itself. A lot of what they wrote or thought about wasn't really that different from their colleagues, who were more cautious or prudent or less extravagant. Their reputation got kind of turned into something outsized from reality. Stories like this with von Neumann (where "the question itself" or some important feature "go undescribed") kind of reminded me of my experiences in this regard. The details are fuzzy in these stories because they're exaggerated or obscure scrutiny, or are based on someone's subjective impression rather than the details. Call me jaded, but as my career progressed and I've worked with more people, I've become increasingly skeptical of claims to great minds or genius. It's a tricky subject because I wouldn't say there's no such thing as cognitive ability, but as claims become more extreme, there's usually a different explanation. It's the regression to the mean phenomenon. Usually they're just in the right millieu, with the right colleagues, and/or have a certain character they project, or something.