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He was a strong proponent of using nuclear first strikes (based on game theory and nothing else) against the USSR. So your point is debatable.

• keithalewis 3y ago
  Or maybe on first hand experience with communism.
  • mjhay 3y ago
    Von Neumann came to the US long before Hungary became Communist.
    • SaintGhurka 3y ago
      Hungary's red terror and the Hungarian soviet Republic were in 1919
  • trsohmers 3y ago
    I think the more accurate thing was first hand experience with authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Stalin and Hitler were two sides of the same coin.
    • bitshiftfaced 3y ago
      Neumann's first hand experience with communism is that of Hungary's 1919 brush with Béla Kun.
  • Cesura 3y ago
    I can't imagine supporting preemptive nuclear strikes, under any circumstances. Can you?
    • philwelch 3y ago
      We've had about seventy years to build up a political taboo against the use of nuclear weapons, which turned out to be an important guarantee of sustained peace in the Cold War environment we ultimately ended up in. But von Neumann passed away in 1957 when we were only first developing that taboo. There would have been close to zero moral compunction against using the atomic bomb against Nazi Germany had it been ready in time. And the communist regimes in Russia and China exceeded even Nazi Germany in the amount of mass murder they committed, and if you also count the degree to which they impoverished not only themselves but the countries in their spheres of influence for decades, the continued existence of communism throughout the 1950's and beyond has been arguably the greatest humanitarian disaster in human history. And if anything, someone in the early 1950's would have expected even worse; the Soviet Union was not quite as tyrannical and murderous after Stalin than it was under him, and the same is true for China after Mao. Von Neumann's remarks also took place in an era before we allowed the Soviets to arm themselves to the degree that they posed a serious nuclear threat to the United States. The pop culture notion that a nuclear war between the US and Soviet Union would entail both sides completely eliminating each other in the first day of hostilities was arguably never completely accurate, but especially in the early 1950's it was not even close to true. Again, we know from hindsight that allowing the Soviet Union to build a massive arsenal of ICBM's and hydrogen bombs (neither of which they had in the early 1950's) didn't lead to them actually using those weapons against us, but that was arguably an extremely lucky break for us and from von Neumann's perspective, eliminating that threat before it manifested wasn't a totally unreasonable option. Instead it turned out that the entire free world spent the next half century living in absolute terror of nuclear war, followed by the extremely happy surprise of the Soviet Union completely disintegrating between 1989 and 1991. Again, this was a really lucky break. And it was also a lucky break that the massive Soviet nuclear arsenal stayed under the control of a sane, democratic Russian government that never reverted to authoritarianism or corruption and developed strong institutions to ensure that those weapons could never fall into the wrong hands. We'd be in for a really rough future if that arsenal ended up in the hands of a corrupt dictator who consolidated power to the point of eliminating any possible succession plan, thus guaranteeing a massive crisis when he inevitably died of old age.
      • neilv 3y ago
    • avazhi 3y ago
      I can, and I can find extremely rational and reasonable reasons for doing so. Just because you lack the requisite imagination and intellect doesn’t mean those who aren’t similarly limited are ‘evil’.
      • Cesura 3y ago
        Thankfully you've provided an example further down the thread, so my comparatively weak intellect doesn't need to do very much inference: >As an example, it is within the realm of possibility that Israel or the United States use nukes on Iran, and there would be pretty strong logical/rational justifications for doing so. Iran has promoted hostile rhetoric against Israel since the latter's inception as a state (with a brief thawing of relations during the Shah's time in power). You could reasonably say that its anti-Israeli stance is one of the two fundamental foreign policy positions of Iran, alongside containing the expansion of Saudi influence in the region. Despite this (and despite having nearly 10x the population), Iran's ability to project power anywhere beyond its immediate borders has been limited to funding Islamic fundamentalist proxy groups. They have no functional nuclear weapons, and no capability to target Israel with a conventional land or sea attack. A real threat to Israel's sovereignty is neither credible nor imminent enough to warrant an Israeli preemptive nuclear strike (assuming such a justification can exist, as you're suggesting). It's undeniable that the Soviet Union perceived the US to be an existential threat to its sovereignty. For some reason though, I find it unlikely that you would describe a preemptive Soviet nuclear strike on the US as "rational and reasonable" from their perspective, despite fulfilling many of the same criteria as your example: a hostile power outside of reach of a conventional attack, whose foreign policy is molded around precipitating your failure as a state (with the added qualification that such a power could actually deliver on this goal in a tangible way). With an "imagination" like that, we can do nothing more than hope you're far from the reins of power.
        • avazhi 3y ago
          The Cold War isn't applicable because both sides had the capacity to destroy the other - look up mutually assured destruction if you need to. That's completely different from a case of, say, Israel preemptively nuking Iran to protect itself - permanently - from an Iran that is both actively seeking to develop nuclear weapons for itself and has on many occasions made clear that it will use them to wipe Israel off the face of the earth once it gets them. Those are not at all similar situations, if it isn't obvious. You guys can try to play dumb mind games with this but it turns out there aren't any true blanket statements about morality and what's evil and that ultimately the rational and realistic choices (viz., those made in self-defence) are apt to offend many of you funny people. Peace.
• neilv 3y ago
  Ties into the Einstein quote on HN the other day: an example of why you might not want to defer decisions to the smartest people.
  • avazhi 3y ago
    Which part was Einstein wrong about? I’ll wait.
    • neilv 3y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38223582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38223582
      • avazhi 3y ago
        Repeating platitudes about democracy isn't really much of a reposte to Einstein, though. And that isn't the bandy about the false equivocation that despotism is the answer - I think they've both stupid fucking ideas. Maybe we can make Platonic robot AI overlords, a la The Republic's Guardians (I say this mostly joking). But no, democracy isn't clearly the answer at all, and for that matter I don't think it can work well in a multicultural society, where you just get tyranny of the majority anyway.
        • neilv 3y ago
          Maybe people can be elevated sufficiently that you don't tyranny of the majority as much, but instead get people thinking beyond themselves.
          • avazhi 3y ago
            You must be a young person lol. Not sure you fully appreciate how stupid the average person is. It is literally impossible to get many men to think at all, let alone think ‘beyond themselves’.
• avazhi 3y ago
  And that makes him evil? Get real, literally.