
The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann - jorgenveisdal
https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/the-unparalleled-genius-of-john-von-neumann-791bb9f42a2d
======
lqet
"Von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two
of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same
principle when he talked to the rest of us." \- Edward Teller

See [0] for a demonstration.

I watched a documentary from the 80ies a long time ago. A mathematician (can't
remember his name) who worked with von Neumann in Los Alamanos was
interviewed. He described von Neumann's last weeks in the hospital - the
cancer had already metastasized into his brain. The mathematician said
something along this lines (I am citing from memory): "von Neumann was
constantly visited by colleagues, who wanted to discuss their latest work with
him. He tried to keep up, struggling, like in old times. But he couldn't. Try
to imagine having one of the greatest minds maybe in the history of mankind.
And then try to imagine losing this gift. I was terrible. I have never seen a
man experience greater suffering."

Marina von Neumann (his daughter) later wrote this about his final weeks:

"After only a few minutes, my father made what seemed to be a very peculiar
and frightening request from a man who was widely regarded as one of the
greatest - if not the greatest - mathematician of the 20th century. He wanted
me to give him two numbers, like 7 and 6 or 10 and 3, and ask him to tell me
their sum. For as long as I can remember, I had always known that my father's
major source of self-regard, what he felt to be the very essence of his being,
was his incredible mental capacity. In this late stage of his illness, he must
have been aware that this capacity was deteriorating rapidly, and the panic
that caused was worse than any physical pain. In demanding that I test him on
these elementary sums, he was seeking reassurance that at least a small
fragment of this intellectual powers remained." [1]

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLbllFHBQM4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLbllFHBQM4)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Martians-Daughter-Memoir-Marina-
Whitm...](https://www.amazon.com/Martians-Daughter-Memoir-Marina-
Whitman/dp/0472118420)

~~~
x220
I've taken a medication that occasionally makes me feel stupid. For a day I
might be unable to continue reading a book without re-reading each sentence a
few times. I might not be able to talk to people about a complicated or
technical subject without stumbling over my words. I will find it difficult to
think in the abstract terms, and when I listen to others who talk about
abstract values and concepts I have to continually relate it back to a
concrete example otherwise I'm lost. My IQ is normally between 140-155. When I
go through these brain-fog days I estimate it's at around 90.

It feels terrible. When I first experienced it, I was terrified that it would
be permanent because that would keep me from doing my job and keeping up with
my interests and hobbies. Now I only get this brain-fog every so often. I
think it helps me communicate with people better and has helped me learn
patience. I finally understand how some people might be genuinely, earnestly
trying to understand what I'm trying to say or teach, but can't understand it
because I'm communicating it at the right level of analysis.

If you're intellectually gifted (many programmers are), you shouldn't take
that for granted. You got lucky, and if you weren't lucky enough to be
intelligent, it might have been impossible to do the same kind of work you do
today. Please appreciate that.

~~~
spookthesunset
> If you're intellectually gifted (many programmers are)

Lets not jerk each other off too hard, eh? Just like everybody in life, in any
trade or profession, most programmers are just average people like everybody
else. They just happened to luck out and be good at a talent that pays well.

Odds are incredibly high you aren't any smarter than somebody who paints
houses for a living, fills your prescription, or plays football for the NFL.
We are all just people trying to make a living -- don't ever forget that.

~~~
hgytr
There is a reason why a cashier works for minimum wage.

A few days ago I went to a grocery store to buy sparkling water. I got 16
small bottles and arranged them as a 4 by 4 grid before cashier, so she
wouldn't need to spend time counting them and delaying the line. It took her
over 10 seconds to count the bottles: apparently, she didn't recognize the
pattern and counted them by groups of 3-4 bottles covering the counted ones
with her hands to simplify the process. Programmers don't even need to
multiply 4x4, they just see the answer. This scene hints that the cashier's
analytical skills are next to none and this alone explains why she is a
cashier.

Another example. There is a curious simple test to check your working memory
capacity. Imagine a 3x3 grid and draw there words oil/gas/dry. Now read all
the words that you see on the grid. Not all people have visual imaginations:
some operate with graph-like structures and represent the grid as a set of
logical statements: row1 is gas, row2 is oil, row3 is dry. This is fine as
long as they do it efficiently. Most people in this task will resort to the
snail analytical approach and will be thinking like: cell 2-1 is A, so cell
next to the right is 2-2 belongs to word 2 which is oil and thus the second
letter is I, so our current sequence is AI. Obviously it will take them ages
to enumerate all the words this way. High level programmers can keep the
entire grid in memory, either as an image or in symbolic form, and thus can
enumerate words quickly. Why does this example matter? Programmers have to
keep many objects and connections between them in memory.

If everybody had these raw cognitive skills, programmers would get the
standard minimum wage. Same for accountants, lawyers, bankers.

~~~
Jeff_Brown
> Imagine a 3x3 grid and draw there words oil/gas/dry. Now read all the words
> that you see on the grid.

I can't do this for shit and I'm a genius.

~~~
partyboat1586
I bet you can still enumerate them though through a different method.

~~~
Jeff_Brown
Walking home that day I was obsessed with this. I guess I did okay. Found at
least one five-letter word ("grail", I remember). I can't see all the letters
at the same time, so I feel like I'm cheating when I do it.

On the other hand even when I think of a three letter word I don't see the
letters, I just kind of know what they are.

------
mikorym
_In an answer to the question of why there is no evidence of intelligent life
beyond earth despite the high probability of it existing, Szilárd responded:
"They are already here among us – they just call themselves Hungarians."_ [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_\(scientists\))

~~~
Scaevolus
For a depressing analysis on where all the Hungarian geniuses came from and
why they vanished: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-
consid...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-
as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/)

~~~
mirekrusin
He mentions Curie as non-Ashkenazi, but even with her I don't know, she was
born Polish with full name "Maria Salomea Skłodowska"(-Curie), her middle name
"Salomea", given after her grandmother sounds to me like Jewish origin. I
wonder how percentage of Nobel price winners/etc. would look like if you'd
really dig deeper few generations or did genetic tests.

~~~
codingslave
I have a hypothesis that almost all of the greatest intellectual achievements
come from a very small number of bloodlines. I really doubt the idea that
people are born and some just end up as the smartest in generations, I think
theres more to the story

~~~
Gatsky
I am not sure that a ‘bloodline’ is a valid genetic concept. It depends a lot
who the partner is, after all they provide 50% of the offspring’s genetic
material. Put another way, if you are a genius in some field, the chance of
having a child with someone of equal or greater aptitude is effectively zero.

The ‘more to the story’ is possibly just affluence and family stability, which
are also culturally embedded.

~~~
bostik
> _The ‘more to the story’ is possibly just affluence and family stability,
> which are also culturally embedded._

At a guess I would think these are the more important factors.

Being born into an affluent family gives access to higher likelihood of more
varying influences and stimuli from an early age. Children are by their nature
curious creatures, so having the possibility to satisfy their curiosity in
more avenues should reflect on their later ability to absorb new information
in these fields (because they already have an established baseline knowledge).

Family stability probably helps to support curiosity and emotional safety.
When failures are treated as positive experiences ("what did we learn from
this?"), as opposed to wasted effort, you are more likely to allow yourself to
seek more such experiences.

 _Of course_ there are outliers. But over generations, I would expect more
innovations and brilliant minds to emerge from families who can provide and
support their offspring with the environment to flourish in their fields of
interest.

------
chx
> In 1945, von Neumann proposed a description for a computer architecture now
> known as the von Neumann architecture,

Do note that he proposed a description but it wasn't his idea.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Draft_of_a_Report_on_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Draft_of_a_Report_on_the_EDVAC#Controversy)

> some on the EDVAC design team contended that the stored-program concept had
> evolved out of meetings at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of
> Electrical Engineering predating von Neumann's activity as a consultant
> there, and that much of the work represented in the First Draft was no more
> than a translation of the discussed concepts into the language of formal
> logic in which von Neumann was fluent.

~~~
ScottBurson
Aha — Stigler's law strikes again.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy)

~~~
philwelch
I'm disappointed Stigler's law was actually coined by Stigler.

~~~
fourthark
> Stigler himself named the sociologist Robert K. Merton as the discoverer of
> "Stigler's law" to show that it follows its own decree, though the
> phenomenon had previously been noted by others.

------
keiferski
Can anyone recommend readings on von Neumann that highlight his non-
mathematical achievements? Obviously he was primarily a physicist and
mathematician, but for a non-mathematician, the long list of academic
publications is hard to interpret and appreciate. For example, more in the
vein of these:

\- _Reportedly, von Neumann possessed an eidetic memory, and so was able to
recall complete novels and pages of the phone directory on command. This
enabled him to accumulate an almost encyclopedic knowledge of what ever he
read, such as the history of the Peloponnesian Wars, the Trial Joan of Arc and
Byzantine history (Leonard, 2010). A Princeton professor of the latter topic
once stated that by the time he was in his thirties, Johnny had greater
expertise in Byzantine history than he did (Blair, 1957)._

\- _...conversing in Ancient Greek at age six..._

\- _On his deathbed, he reportedly entertained his brother by reciting the
first few lines of each page from Goethe’s Faust, word-for-word, by heart
(Blair, 1957)._

~~~
mistermann
> Reportedly, von Neumann possessed an eidetic memory, and so was able to
> recall complete novels and pages of the phone directory on command. This
> enabled him to accumulate an almost encyclopedic knowledge of what ever he
> read

If he was able to recall ~entire pages of the phone directory on command, I
wonder if he could also recall (near) verbatim text of _all_ the novels he had
ever read, to what degree he could do this, or to what degree he could at
least comprehensively recall key points, facts, timelines.

I would think he would have spent some time speculating on how the brain
stores memories, I wonder if any of his theories were ever captured in some
form.

~~~
clickok
Supposedly, yes-- during his final stay in the hospital, his brother read to
him from a book they'd enjoyed during their childhood, Dickens' _A Tale of Two
Cities_. When his brother had to turn the page, John would continue the
narration from memory while his brother found his place on the subsequent
page.

Given that he could be occasionally absent minded, I suspect that it had to be
something that piqued his interest, but his sense of what was interesting was
extremely broad.

He did in fact speculate on the workings of the brain in _The Computer and the
Brain_ , which is based on a lecture series he had planned out but did not
deliver. It was more in the context of automata theory, but as someone with an
interest in AI, automata, and neuroscience, it was frankly rather dank[0]. A
lot of the pioneering work was, and is enjoyable in part because it's original
and speculative, so you don't have to master the literature to make sense of
it, you can just pick a paper and go. I'd recommend reading Pitts and
McCullogh, plus also Lettvin, but others might have some equally lit[1]
recommendations.

\--

0\. In the contemporary sense, _c.f._ "cool", "dope", or "excellent"; not dank
like a root cellar.

1\. _vide supra_

~~~
cshimmin
Okay we get it, you blaze.

~~~
clickok
My word choice is more driven by exposure to the dataset that I'm working
with. There's been some recent successes with autoencoders trained on virtual
sensory input (i.e., video games) with surprising results, e.g., neural
networks that can simulate the dynamics of these environments with surprising
fidelity.

Of course, learning to _play_ video games at a high level is trivially easy,
as everyone in the field now knows. The next challenge is, naturally, to make
money doing this. But how? After the traditional thirty seconds of research
before undertaking a major project, I determined that the only way to make
money from video games is to become a popular streamer.

So now I am training an agent to generate video of it playing and reacting to
an imaginary game and equally fictitious Twitch viewers, with a dataset drawn
from the top Fortnite streamers. The reward function is comprised of a blend
of subscribers, donations, and (logarithmically scaled) misogyny in the chat.
Thus far, I've only managed to create some sort of window into hell, where the
"game" consists of unceasing violence, murder after murder after murder as
towers of mismatched material swell and fall in ever transforming locations on
the isle while the chat endlessly subscribes, spams, and emotes in cackling
glee and the superimposed webcam video features a... thing with too many eyes
and hands screaming incoherently.

At first I thought it was a problem with my dataset, so I started watching
some of the streams myself. This has not yielded insight into the whole
"nightmare vision" output of my model, but it has expanded my vocabulary on
the twin subjects of combustibles and comestibles, which I feel is a
reasonable trade-off for the sanity battering associated with this whole
endeavour.

~~~
OrderlyTiamat
What blend of lovecraft and twitch is this.

------
calhoun137
I am so happy to see this article about Von Neumann on HN!!! I have been
posting about him on here for years, and have read all his books, but not as
many of his papers as I would like, they are really hard! I have been working
for many years now on continuing his theories of weather control technology
and self-replicating machines. He is my absolute personal hero and the
scientist who, far above all others, I consider to be the one in whose
footsteps I want to follow.

~~~
kragen
That's interesting! Have you made progress on self-replication? I think it's a
very important problem. I've made some notes categorized under topics/self-
replication.html in
[http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano-20191110.tar.gz](http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano-20191110.tar.gz),
but of course I'm no Johnny von Neumann.

~~~
calhoun137
Von Nueman is on the record as saying he believed computers were a sub field
of self replicating machines. I believe they will be very important in the
future and will have many applications.

Not really, unfortunately. I think it would be fun to build a 3d printer that
can replicate itself, but have not tried building any prototypes because
besides being too expensive I also havent taken my research into that far
enough. I am a very ambitious person and have big plans for the future! What I
have done on this subject besides reading about it is very theoretical and
abstract, its more of an aspiration right now than an active research project
to be completely honest.

~~~
wes-k
You may want to check out
[https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap](https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap) which is
exactly this type of 3D printer. I don’t think it’s 100% though.

~~~
kragen
Well, RepRap has the philosophy that self-replicating systems such as
hedgehogs and raspberries need some definite set of “vitamins” available
prefabricated in their environment for self-replication, and RepRap chose
things like threaded rod, NEMA motors, hotends, and Arduinos as their
vitamins. This was extremely successful at making 3-D printers mainstream —
every popular 3-D printer out there derives from RepRap designs — but not at
producing an exponentially growing quantity of 3-D printers printed by 3-D
printers.

------
dr_dshiv
Von Neumann invented a novel paradigm for computing using harmonic integration
of analog oscillations. The patent was granted after his death.

While there were a few prototypes in the 50s, the transistor killed it. A
fully functional version of this computational architecture has never been
built, to my knowledge:

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US2815488A/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US2815488A/en)

~~~
timmaxw
For anyone who's interested in more detail:

This type of computer is also called a "parametron"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parametron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parametron)).
A Japanese researcher named Eiichi Goto independently invented it around the
same time as von Neumann, and developed it much further than von Neumann did,
so the idea is more often associated with Goto than with von Neumann.

The basic idea is that if a nonlinear harmonic oscillator is driven at twice
its resonant frequency, it will oscillate stably in either of two phases. The
two phases represent "0" and "1". If the driving signal is switched off and on
again, the oscillator will arbitrarily "pick" a phase to stabilize on. If it's
exposed to an input signal from another oscillator as it's turning on, it will
always pick the same phase as the input signal. This makes it possible to copy
a "0" or "1" from one oscillator to another. If the oscillator is exposed to
input signals from several other oscillators, it will pick by "majority vote".
Finally, a NOT-gate can be built by inverting the signal polarity. This set of
primitives is sufficient to build arbitrary logic gates and flip-flops.

Goto's paper has an excellent explanation and more detail:

Goto, E. (1959). The Parametron, a Digital Computing Element Which Utilizes
Parametric Oscillation. Proceedings of the IRE, 47(8), 1304–1316.
doi:10.1109/jrproc.1959.287195

(PDF available at [https://sci-hub.tw/10.1109/JRPROC.1959.287195](https://sci-
hub.tw/10.1109/JRPROC.1959.287195))

~~~
eismcc
Thank you for this!

There’s also a quantum variant:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_flux_parametron](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_flux_parametron)

------
ubertakter
Pretty good article. Can't wait to read other, less sensational articles
recommended here.

One particular error in the article stood out to me: the Trinity test site is
in White Sands, New Mexico, not Nevada. This was immediately noticeable
because I've been to the Trinity site.

Von Neumann probes pop up in sci-fi. One of my favorite uses of them is in the
Bobiverse books: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32109569-we-are-
legion?f...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32109569-we-are-
legion?from_search=true&qid=rikQuF7074&rank=1)

------
yannis7
von Neumann, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Einstein, Rutherford, Turing, Teller, Szilard,
Wigner, Meitner... the list goes on... -- how did that time produce so many
people of colossal intellect? War certainly can't be the primary factor, given
that many of them were brilliant/productive even before WWI

~~~
0-_-0
4 on your list are Hungarian, and 3 of them went to the same high school:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasori_Gimn%C3%A1zium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasori_Gimn%C3%A1zium)

Hungary had a great education system at the time.

~~~
chx
> Hungary had a great education system at the time.

I seriously doubt you could back this. You are generalizing from a single
school. Might as well argue that socialist Hungary had a great education
system because of Fazekas. Neither are true. I happen to have a maths teacher
degree from a Hungarian university and we studied Hungarian education history
and I learned much more about education systems later on my own (and this is
not to say this university maths teacher course was a good one, quite the
opposite). If you want to know what great education at the time looked like,
read up on Summerhill -- it was founded in 1921 but humanistic education has
been around for centuries.

~~~
0-_-0
While having a much smaller population (10M), Hungary places 4th in worldwide
medal rankings on the International Mathematics Olympiad [1] behind China
(1.5B), USA (300M) and Russia (150M)

[1]: [https://www.imo-
official.org/results_country.aspx?column=awa...](https://www.imo-
official.org/results_country.aspx?column=awards&order=desc)

~~~
chx
There were a few, very few special math classes that _went against the system_
which delivered results. I went to one, I should know...

~~~
iguy
If we're talking about von Neumann, or even just the math olympiad, then
clearly we're not talking about how well the education system serves the 50th
percentile. It's possible for a system to be awful for most, and somehow find
and train the top few percent brilliantly.

------
n_t
You might like "Prisoner's Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game Theory, and the
Puzzle of the Bomb" ([https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-Neumann-Theory-
Puzz...](https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-Neumann-Theory-
Puzzle/dp/038541580X))

------
roca
Awww, I was hoping they'd mention how Neumann was keen on launching a
preemptive nuclear strike against the USSR.

~~~
arethuza
_" “If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say
today at 5 o’clock, I say why not one o’clock?”_

Hardly surprising that he was one of the influences on the character of Dr
Strangelove. Was he a remarkable genius, absolutely - was he right about
everything, definitely not.

~~~
johngalt
Context is crucial when reading this quote now rather than the 1950s. JVN said
this _before_ a nuclear war would have been 'world ending'.

Consider that several nations had avoided war as hard as possible prior to
WW2. Standing by as entire countries we absorbed by a hostile power. In the
end it only resulted in much greater destruction. Many people like JVN saw the
same theme playing out with the iron curtain, and the destructiveness of the
weapons only increasing over time.

The thought process was:

"We need to have a destructive war now to avoid having an earth shattering war
later."

There had just been two world spanning wars in their lifetime. They considered
a third inevitable. If it was going to happen at some point, better that it
occurs before world ending arsenals were constructed.

~~~
arethuza
I am aware of the context - doesn't make it any less terrifying.

Edit: I'm going to ask you the same question I asked another commenter - do
you think it would have been better for the US to have attacked the Soviets as
Von Neumann and others wanted?

~~~
johngalt
Of course not, but only because we already know how the story ends. If they
had been correct, we wouldn't be here to say that we should have listened.

Their predictions on nuclear arsenals were correct. A nuclear war in 1965
would have been vastly worse than one in 1950.

What they got wrong is that great powers would successfully avoid war over the
long term. Which _at the time_ was a bet with very poor odds.

~~~
CWuestefeld
I seem to remember that von Neumann was also responsible for what later came
to be known as "Mutually Assured Destruction", the idea through game theory
that ensuring that both nations would be prevented from acting preemptively
because the results would carry too great a cost.

------
danieltillett
I have always wondered how close von Neumann was to the maximum human
potential. Does he sit close the outer edge of possible human potential, or
can greater geniuses be created? Is there anyone alive who even comes close to
Johnny?

~~~
anongraddebt
My guess is that each relatively difficult field (fields that require
substantial thought... I guess you know it when you see it) has its freaks of
nature: genetic anomalies that, for at least a brief moment, seem to transcend
the other participants.

In the 20th century, philosophy had Saul Kripke. Among other things, he
published one of the seminal papers in the (at that time) nascent area of
modal logic when he was 17. I have it on good authority from a professor
friend that many - who know Kripke in a professional setting - regard him as
having a sort of alien intelligence.

Not to take away from Von Neumann, but there are at least a couple people each
century who have these sorts of alien cognitive skills.

Also, while there is probably some truth to them having a sort of alien
intelligence, we can't disregard the contexual factors of their success. Von
Neumann lived in a unique academic-historical period. A period where one could
make lasting, foundational contributions to a variety of disciplines.

~~~
chalst
At the most charitable, Kripke was not generous in acknowledging influences.

[http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/Archive/whose.html](http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/Archive/whose.html)

~~~
anongraddebt
This is interesting. I hadn't heard of this dispute.

I just read the Marcus paper from 1961 that is essential to Smith's thesis. I
also read the back-and-forth rebuttals between Smith and Soames. I read the
Marcus paper before reading the Smith and Soames papers.

I don't really see how Soames' primary claim is not likely true. He says:

"Marcus, along with certain other philosophers, do deserve credit for
anticipating important aspects of contemporary theories of reference. However
this credit in no way diminishes the seminal role of Saul Kripke."

When reading the Marcus paper, you really have to start stretching and
expanding her arguments if you want to claim that she did more than anticipate
'important aspects of contemporary theories of reference'.

It should also be noted that Timothy Williamson (Oxford) has been one of the
staunchest advocates for the proper appreciation of the work that Marcus
produced, and yet he doesn't agree with Smith.

But really, this is all probably secondary to the issues surrounding Kripke's
importance. Naming and Necessity - like most paradigm shifting works - was not
a one-trick pony. Kripke expanded on his possible world semantics, introduced
distinctions like metaphysical vs epistemic necessity, laid waste to any
residual belief in the merits of logical positivism, came up with the first
succesful (at least, most see it as succesful) argument for the existence of
synthetic a priori truths, etc. Moreover, Kripke came up with at least two
fairly water tight arguments against the descriptivist theory he was going
against. If Marcus was the first person to introduce this new theory of
reference, than the theory was stillborn. Kripke (if we take him as having
taken the theory from Marcus) actually explained the ins-and-outs of the
theory, provided associated puzzles, addressed counterarguments, related it to
other issues in analytical philosophy, etc.

Lastly, Naming and Necessity was not the only impressive work of Kripke's. We
would have to include his work on modal logic as well as his work on
Wittgenstein. There are probably a number of puzzles and counterarguments that
were never published that should be included as well. For example, Kripke once
attended a conference on personal identity where a philospher had just
presented a new argument in his talk that elicited a standing ovation from the
rest of the philosophers in the room (this basically never happens at
conferences). Kripke was asked to come up and comment on this new argument. He
came up and provided a water tight refutation of it. Everyone in the room was
taken back by this.

~~~
sooheon
> He came up and provided a water tight refutation of it. Everyone in the room
> was taken back by this.

His name? Albert Einstein.

Just kidding. But do you have any text of this exchange?

~~~
anongraddebt
I don't. My philosophy of language prof in undergrad relayed it to me. She
said the conference had been held in Israel. I'd start there in your search.
My guess, though, is that a transcript doesn't exist. Analytical philosophy as
a profession has typically been pretty piss poor for archiving conferences
(whether transcripts or programs, etc.).

------
ironyman
I've recently been engrossed by the question of how geniuses and highly
intelligent people think. There's bits and pieces of information online. What
I'd really like to see, though, is (a) geniuses describe their thought process
and (b) a smart person voicing is interior monologue while attacking a
problem.

1) Do you know of any information like this? Link?

2) Otherwise: do you think in a way that's different (better) than the average
person?

~~~
hgytr
I heard that Tesla could effectively "run" experiments in his mind, not just
visualize them. Another pointer is that some "schools of thought" divide the
art of thought into ability to visualize and ability to analyze where the
latter has to be built upon the former and only when the former is perfected.
My personal belief is that being a genius is about the ability to keep in mind
many things at a time without losing details.

~~~
pas
I read this about Edison.

Also he read very fast, the librarians though he did not like the books that's
why he was returning all of them every next week.

Also what usually geniuses can do is process information a lot. Read and write
many papers. Eg Terrence Tao. His blog is always going strong, the polymath
projects, plus regular teaching, plus his own (other) research.

Alexander Grothendieck, wrote books full of brand new ideas about very
abstract math. Amazing insights. Ability to work with unfamiliar cutting-edge
things while keeping focus, while communicating them to others.

------
rmp33
A question to mathematicians: what does your mind look like when you prove a
theorem?

There is a comment here, saying that many hard theorems require one to build a
complex branch of math and use it to prove a single statement. So I asked
myself: what does it really look like to prove a theorem at such level?

I can tell what's going on in a programmer's mind. Software is very much like
an imaginary mechanism and software engineers are mechanics. For example, this
site is a database connected with a html page, so a programmer literally
imagines a big gray building that means the database, another building that
means the html page and a pipe that connects them. The database has a few
tables: one for user accounts, another for posts like this, another for
comments. So a programmer imagines 3 big blocks inside that building that are
connected with pipes transferring data. Next to the database there is a
controller device that sends and receives messages in the pipe connecting it
to the users. This analogy continues to tiny things like classes, methods and
variables. The entire HN forum looks like a big multi-dimensional city-like
structure with numerous pipes connecting pieces together. Experienced
programmers not only organize this city well, but can also predict and
eliminate complexity, e.g. they know that if you put that kind of building
over there, others will inevitable connect to it tens of pipes and the entire
city will be a mess, where you see a pipe and have no idea what it connects to
and what will happen if you cut it.

~~~
Noumenon72
I think you are experiencing "typical mind fallacy".
[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-
from-one-example-realizing-it/)

I imagine there are programmers who build objects by imagining people asking
them questions and thinking what the objects would answer, or all kinds of
other things. People for whom Spring's Repository/Service/Controller/View are
real things with personalities or flavors. I tend to think in a mix of "If I
could just tell the computer what to do in English, what would I say?"
(function names) and "Whose responsibility is this? Is this really their job?"
(classes).

------
mikorym
> Needless to say, von Neumann‘s main contributions to the atomic bomb would
> not be as a lieutenant in the reserve of the ordnance department, but rather
> in the concept and design of the explosive lenses that were needed to
> compress the plutonium core of the Fat Man weapon that was later dropped on
> Nagasaki.

What are the equations that govern an atomic bomb? I don't want to say that I
am asking for a friend... /s

I assume that by now the relevant equations would be well known anyway?

~~~
eigenvalue
The equations they are referring to do not concern the nuclear aspects of an
atomic bomb. They describe how to set up the geometry of conventional plastic
explosives (different kinds of explosives that burn at different speeds) in
just the right configuration so that the propagating shock waves interfere
with each other to result in a spherical shock wave that pushes the core of
the bomb (the radioactive part) towards a single fixed point at the center. If
any of this is off even slightly, the forces will not be in balance and the
core materials will shoot out of the weak point, rather than uniformly
compress to bring the nuclear material to the critical point where the fission
is self-sustaining.

------
j7ake
Nice article. Are there any good biographies of John von Neumann that are
highly recommended?

EDIT: found it at the end of the article

" For anyone interested in learning more about the life and work of John von
Neumann, I especially recommend his friend Stanislaw Ulam’s 1958 essay John
von Neumann 1903–1957 in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 64
(3) pp 1–49 and the book John von Neumann by Norman Macrae (1992). "

~~~
SamReidHughes
Apparently there are none. Judging by the Amazon reviews of Macrae, I’d pass.
I found some other discussions of the question:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/36ipik/good_biography...](https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/36ipik/good_biography_about_john_von_neumann/)

[https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-good-biography-book-about-
Jo...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-good-biography-book-about-John-von-
Neumann)

~~~
jorgenveisdal
I tend to agree, but Macrae isn't bad.

------
hi41
I am curious to know. Why does the Jewish community have a disproportionately
large number of extremely intelligent people as evidenced by the number of
Nobel laureates and other great intellectuals?

~~~
b0rsuk
I heard it's preference for non-physical work (lawyers, doctors, bankers,
artists, writers...). Also, an old Polish novel "Lalka" by Bolesław Prus says
Jews have an admiration for intellect and charades is one of their favorite
family past-times.

------
hyperpallium
> Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to
> them.

------
undebuggable
Interesting anecdote from from the biography of Stanisław Ulam, a close friend
of von Neumann. Von Neumann was apparently fascinated by the history of the
ancient Greece which he learned by reading Thucydides and Herodotus. Once he
was talking with Stan about the Siege of Melos[1] and how violent the human
nature can be when driven by pride and ambition set to pursue a certain goal.
That were late 30s and catastrophes like Lidice[2] and countless others on the
soil which today are Poland and Belarus were soon to happen.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Melos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Melos)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre)

------
artur_makly
“Johnny built, at the Institute for Advanced Study, an experimental elec-
tronic calculator, popularly known as the joniac, which eventually became the
pilot model for similar machines all over the country. Some of the basic prin-
ciples developed in the joniac are used even today in the fastest and most
modern calculators. To design the machine, Johnny and his co-workers tried to
imitate some of the known operations of the live brain. This is the aspect
which led him to study neurology, to seek out men in the fields of neurology
and psychiatry, to attend many meetings on these subjects, and, eventu- ally,
to give lectures to such groups on the possibilities of copying an extremely
simplified model of the living brain for man-made machines. ”

From his book - “The Computer and The Brain”

[https://ia800800.us.archive.org/4/items/TheComputerAndTheBra...](https://ia800800.us.archive.org/4/items/TheComputerAndTheBrain/The%20Computer%20and%20The%20Brain_text.pdf)

------
fahrixds
Can anyone recommend readings on von Neumann that highlight his non-
mathematical achievements? Obviously he was primarily a physicist and
mathematician, but for a non-mathematician, the long list of academic
publications is hard to interpret and appreciate. For example, more in the
vein of these: \- Reportedly, von Neumann possessed an eidetic memory, and so
was able to recall complete novels and pages of the phone directory on
command. This enabled him to accumulate an almost encyclopedic knowledge of
what ever he read, such as the history of the Peloponnesian Wars, the Trial
Joan of Arc and Byzantine history (Leonard, 2010). A Princeton professor of
the latter topic once stated that by the time he was in his thirties, Johnny
had greater expertise in Byzantine history than he did (Blair, 1957).

\- ...conversing in Ancient Greek at age six...

\- On his deathbed, he reportedly entertained his brother by reciting the
first few lines of each page from Goethe’s Faust, word-for-word, by heart
(Blair, 1957).

------
pfdietz
That excerpt from Goedel's letter leaves out the most interesting part: he
talks about what is essentially the P=NP problem!

------
signa11
i always find it quite strange that for some reason, norbert weiner, is
generally excluded from such paeans...

~~~
dr_dshiv
I think he will be popular in the future as cybernetic theory provides much a
much more reliable design viewpoint than "artificial intelligence"

------
yannis7
there's a lazy sensationalist style on that article that I find off-putting --
the relevant Wikipedia page is more sober and actually (or because of that)
makes you more in awe of the man in question.

~~~
AjwadJaved
This article was published around his death day and is my favorite piece about
him [https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/06/21/john-von-
neumann/](https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/06/21/john-von-neumann/)

------
biolurker1
Wouldn't einstein qualify as the most intelligent human ever lived?

~~~
roca
A real comparison is of course impossible, but of that coterie, Kurt Gödel is
a strong contender. As the original post mentions, he singlehandedly destroyed
Hilbert's formalist program (which von Neumann was also working on) and von
Neumann is quoted as saying he was "in a class by himself". There is the
famous letter from Gödel to von Neumann which anticipates the P=NP problem by
decades.

In a different era, I think Blaise Pascal is also a contender. At age 19 he
invented a working mechanical calculator with a functional carry mechanism,
which somehow his contemporaries failed to achieve for the next sixty years.

~~~
wholmezy
What is the letter? Sounds interesting.

~~~
roca
The first part is actually quoted in the original post. The full letter is
here: [https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/the-gdel-
letter/](https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/the-gdel-letter/)

------
okareaman
I think moderators should mark articles behind paywalls as such, I already
don't click on wapo or nytimes links but you never can tell with medium. I'm
retired on a fixed income and I can't justify in my budget subscribing to
these places. It makes me sad when I can't read an article that might
otherwise fascinate me. One solution would be to never click on medium links,
but then I'd miss the ones that are free.

~~~
quomopete
Medium really botched the paywall approach and I couldn't possibly agree with
you more. It is so inconsistently applied and quite honestly I can't justify
spending 5 dollars a month on a "publisher" whose content is so variable. Some
Medium articles are really good, others are baseless clickbait, it's hard to
tell until you read the article and already sunk the time and the money.

~~~
okareaman
I'm thinking of writing an extension that would go grab the first page of each
link and tell me if they want me to pay. The extension would turn the link red
if so. How consistently can I get this right though? I can't just go by domain
name because sometimes I have free articles left, on New Yorker for example. I
agree with you on Medium. I was more angry until I found out it is up to the
individual authors to turn on the paywall for their article so they can get
paid. 60 dollars a year for hit or miss medium content is a bit rich. They
must think they are in the same league as NYT or WAPO

------
neop1x
I have a feeling that modern society doesn't motivate scientistis and
mathematicians enough. It's easier and better-paid to do some marketing, big
data or game industry job. Tech startups are raising millions to develop
remotely controlled lightbulbs or multiplier AR chess games and schools are
lowering requirements for students to pass as politicians want to show the
increasing number of graduates.

~~~
sgillen
I think a big part of that is there are too many people inherently interested
in doing science. In fact there are already a lot more grads coming out with
science degrees than there are jobs, and math is even worse. Although these
positions have less pay, the competition is probably more fierce than for the
positions you mentioned (although I think game-dev has a similar issue).

This is a problem but it's a good one to have, we have a lot of people out
their willing to make science their life's work even without these external
motivators.

------
artur_makly
Hans Bethe explains in astounding articulate detail how John guided their
final Atom Bomb design :
[https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE?t=33m34s](https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE?t=33m34s)

------
clickok
Von Neumann is something of a hero of mine, in part because of how he
demonstrates (by example) that you can achieve surpassing insight by patiently
applying logic and analysis to whatever problem is at hand. But also because
he shows that you didn't have to be narrowly focused in your area of
competence, you could pursue other interests and even excel in those, even if
they aren't the things that you're known for.

He really liked history, particularly European history. There's some examples
of this in his letters[0], but my favorite von Neumann story on this topic is
how he managed to deduce the answer to a literary magazine's poetry trivia
question when queried by his brother. They would both be teenagers at the
time, and the magazine was in English, as opposed to their native martian, yet
John got the solution at once.

Paraphrasing from here[1], although his brother's limited run
biography/reminiscences has the story too.

The prize contest had the lines

    
    
      They know this well my baron and my men
      Gascony, England, Normandy, Poitou
      That I had never follower so low
      Whom I would leave in prison to my gain
      I say this not as a reproach to them
      But prisoner I am
    

John replied immediately: "Richard Coeur de Lion".

"Did you know the poem?"

"No."

"Then how did you identify the poet?"

"Very simple" he said. "Gascony, England, Normandy, and Poitou were in one
feudal hand only once during the early Plantagenets, and from there it was
quite easy to associate with Richard's crusades and European captivity. But of
course this is a translation, since quite obviously the early Plantagenets
spoke Norman-Midieval French."

His brother then goes on to state: I found out much later that the translation
was that of Henry Adams, and the _Prison Song_ is only one of Richard's most
perfect poems, usually referred to as gems of English literature!

\---

0\. One to his daughter springs to mind, where he expresses fatherly concern
about her getting married during her undergrad-- he's worried that she's too
young and this will derail her career. After that's addressed, he then moves
on to talking about one of her term papers, and proceeds to suggest an
insightful take on-- I believe, I haven't read the letters in a decade-- some
medieval French bishop. The juxtaposition of concerned father plus European
historian in a man more known for axioms and automata was jarring.

1\. "The Legacy of John Von Neumann" from the American Mathematical Society,
[https://books.google.ca/books?id=XBK-r0gS0YMC&dq](https://books.google.ca/books?id=XBK-r0gS0YMC&dq)
(see pg. 22-23)

------
archeantus
It must have been so much harder to be brilliant back then. Now we Just have
Google for everything. Imagine what these guys could have accomplished with
the computing power/tools of today.

------
tim333
He was also the originator of the term singularity in the accelerating
progress of technology sense. Interesting to see how that one pans out.

~~~
williamDafoe
Yeah as I understand it that ain't going to happen for a thousand years,
minimum ...

~~~
tim333
I'd guess quicker but time will tell.

------
billfruit
Was his work in quantum mechanics Nobel-worthy? If so he'd be on the list of
greats not to receive the prize.

------
csbartus
just one thought: everybody reading these words is reading it on a von Neumann
architecture computer

------
audition
von Neumann was very anti-Soviet in his political views, yet he worked with
(and was co-inventor on a nuclear bomb patent) with fellow nuclear weapons
scientist Klaus Fuchs. Fuchs was a spy who passed von Neumann's classified
work on to the Soviets. Despite his evident genius in so many areas, von
Neumann apparently failed to discern the motivations of his colleague.

------
hootbootscoot
The title contains a lovely pun.

~~~
hootbootscoot
"unparalleled" \- serial Von Neumann machine, get it? get it? nyuk nyuk

------
tehjoker
Was hoping for a parallel computing joke. :(

------
hagap
Love it!

------
HNLurker2
tl;dr he is Turing's cooler uncle and his Wikipedia page (wow comparable to
Bertrand Russell)

------
sunstone
So, kind of like Walter Pitts but born with a silver spoon in his mouth rather
than being abandoned to the streets of Chicago.

