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When people say that academic politics are meaner and nastier than legislative politics, this is the kind of thing they're talking about. Just practically, if

When people say that academic politics are meaner and nastier than legislative politics, this is the kind of thing they're talking about. Just practically, if Pitts had known how to maintain a formal separation between his personal friendships and his professional relationships he might have been able to avoid all the problems with Wiener (who doesn't really come across in a very good light, blaming it all on his wife is a bit of a dodge of responsibility). Pitts comes across as a brilliant person who was perhaps emotionally unstable and over-involved with his work - in that, he seems to have fallen into depression in part because his view of how the world worked was sabotaged by the results of his experiments, so he set his dissertaion on fire and fell into alcoholism... (I can't imagine what Pitts would have thought of the rise of chaos theory in physical systems, aka 'sensitive dependence on initial conditions' which was largely discovered with the aid of computers, although Poincare sort of foresaw it). A rather tragic tale, but not one that is at all uncommon in the academic world.

HarryHirsch 3y ago
I can't imagine what Pitts would have thought of the rise of chaos theory in physical systems, aka 'sensitive dependence on initial conditions' which was largely discovered with the aid of computers, although Poincare sort of foresaw it He must have been aware of it - control theory involves feedback loops, and numerical robustness is what it's all about. Anti-aircraft rocketry was developed at that point, and Wiener was a central figure, he even called the field "cybernetics".
stevenwoo 3y ago
The very beginning kind of explains everything in my presumptive reading, his father was abusive and Pitts dove into books and via this obsession gave himself a college prep education by the age of fifteen and ran away from his family forever at age 15. Academic achievement wise, it's what many parents wants for their child, but the possible concentration on the one thing and the relationship history left him under leveled to deal with the rest of living.

HarryHirsch 3y ago

I can't imagine what Pitts would have thought of the rise of chaos theory in physical systems, aka 'sensitive dependence on initial conditions' which was largely discovered with the aid of computers, although Poincare sort of foresaw it He must have been aware of it - control theory involves feedback loops, and numerical robustness is what it's all about. Anti-aircraft rocketry was developed at that point, and Wiener was a central figure, he even called the field "cybernetics".

stevenwoo 3y ago

The very beginning kind of explains everything in my presumptive reading, his father was abusive and Pitts dove into books and via this obsession gave himself a college prep education by the age of fifteen and ran away from his family forever at age 15. Academic achievement wise, it's what many parents wants for their child, but the possible concentration on the one thing and the relationship history left him under leveled to deal with the rest of living.