7 ms·

The legend of John von Neumann (1973)

96 points by tjaerv 12y ago

jnazario 12y ago
John von Neumann was an absolutely amazing human and scientist. truly a genius, a polymath, and evidently quite an interesting party guest. the book Prisoner's Dilemma is ostensibly about game theory but it's set within the context of von Neumann's life. really quite fascinating, one of my favorite people to study. http://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William-Poundstone/dp/038541580X/ http://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William-Poundstone/d...
- Radim 12y ago
  Not to rain on the parade, but such glorification of "heroes" is... just awkward. Wasn't there an article on Herbert's Dune on the HN front page, just yesterday? In particular, von Neumann was an "amazing human" as long as you don't mind him advising the military to bomb Russia out of the map, preemptively. What a wonderfully humane move. "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?" (and this is not just some cranky scientist rambling -- he was very high up in the military circles, an advisor/policy maker). Another common target of cringeworthy worship: Feynman. All fun stories (and I'm aware saying this is probably not going to go down well on HN) until you read about the abuse of women, paid abortions, broken marriages of his colleagues... They're all human.
  - mau 12y ago
    Can you please add some sources for the claim about Feynman? A quick search on the web "feynman abuse" didn't gave me relevant results.
    - irremediable 12y ago
      The famous quote is "His ex-wife reportedly testified that on several occasions when she unwittingly disturbed either his calculus or his drums he flew into a violent rage, during which time he attacked her, threw pieces of bric-a-brac about and smashed the furniture." That was from an FBI file (https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi-files-on-richard-feynman-1165/#366875-responsive-documents https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi...) on Feynman. I don't know anything about the "paid abortion" thing. It's tricky stuff... Feynman was (is?) a hero of mine, and I struggle to put this stuff in context.
      - jerf 12y ago
        "It's tricky stuff... Feynman was (is?) a hero of mine, and I struggle to put this stuff in context." Heros have feet of clay. The correct move is to adjust your concept of "hero" to include this. The alternative, that you will only declare someone a "hero" if they are perfect in every way yields a definition of "hero" with 0 instances, which is a useless definition. If Feynmann was abusive to his wife to some degree, well, plenty of people are abusive to their wifes without also creating physics breakthroughs. It's OK to honor his ability to do that without having to think of him as perfect.
        irremediable 12y ago
        I half-agree with you, but isn't there an ethical line past which it's wrong to call someone a hero?
        fail2ban 12y ago
        Isn't that something you should decide for yourself? Also, why do you assume there's a duality between hero and non-hero? The person did what they did. Simplifying it to the point of 'hero' or 'not hero' is overgeneralizing, I think. Acknowledge their achievements. Acknowledge their faults. Labels aren't a requirement.
        bdamm 12y ago
        Shine a bright enough light and everyone is hiding cockroaches.
        jerf 12y ago
        To be honest, I don't really call very many people "heros". I personally keep a pretty high bar for that. But that goes into an entirely different, and very large, discussion.
        jnbiche 12y ago
        I tend not to engage in much hero worship anymore, but if the question is essentially whether there's an ethical line past which we can't look up to someone, then I'd say it's of vital importance to know exactly what this "abuse" entailed. Did he physically beat his wife on multiple occasions, or did he throw an ash tray or plate at a wall on a few occasions? I know a good number of people in a relationship, both male and female, who have engaged in some variation of second offense(throwing things or breaking things during their worst arguments with their spouse/partner. But it wasn't habitual and didn't extend to physical contact. If that's "all" Feynman is accused of, then I don't think it's that big of a deal. I mean, he had a son and daughter who looked up to him, so I am a bit skeptical that he was a brutal wife beater (who tend not to draw the respect of their children).
    - GCA10 12y ago
      Feynman's life is well-chronicled -- in its totality -- in Jim Gleick's biography "Genius." Feynman had a somewhat messy personal life, and Gleick covers the key points briefly but clearly. For example (p. 277) "Bethe worried that Feynman was growing restless after four years at Cornell. There were entanglements with women: Feynman pursued them and then dropped them, or tried to, with increasingly public frustration -- so it seemed even to undergraduates, who knew him as the least professorial of professors." If you get to p. 290, there's a quite astonishing section on Feynman's effort to work out the rules of flirting in a bar. You can still admire his science after reading the book. You'll be both charmed and troubled by his over-sized personality. But, hey, he was a complicated guy.
  - jerf 12y ago
    "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?" As a mathematician, it's probably worth pointing out the use of the implication. "If you are planning on bombing them tomorrow at 5pm then why wait?" is not equivalent to "Russia should be bombed now." And indeed, of all the logical fallacies I see on the Internet this is one of the ones that tends to bother me personally the most. "A -> B" is not! equivalent to "B". If I meant B, I would have simply said B. I suspect the same is true of von Neumann.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      I agree with your sentiment overall, but I don't think it applies to von Neumann. The sentence right before that quote is: "With the Russians it is not a question of whether but of when." It seems generally accepted that he was in favor of destroying the Soviets before they gained the ability to retaliate, although I will admit that I can't find any more direct quotes about it. It's hardly surprising either. During those few years when the US had the ability to devastate the USSR but not vice versa, it was a fairly common opinion. In addition to all the common reasons for advocating this, a Hungarian would also be influenced by the rather brutal domination of his homeland by the Soviets in that time.
  - poof131 12y ago
    Rain is good. No matter how smart you are, you can still be an idiot sometimes: "Von Neumann knew that it was only a matter of time before the Soviet Union became a nuclear power. He predicted that were Russia allowed to build a nuclear arsenal, a war against the U.S. would be inevitable. He therefore recommended that the U.S. launch a nuclear strike at Moscow, destroying its enemy and becoming a dominant world power, so as to avoid a more destructive nuclear war later on." http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/1998-99/game-theory/neumann.html http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects...
  - crassus2 12y ago
    Nietzsche has interesting things about our need to tear down people who have great, unique accomplishments over common weaknesses - calling this the "slave morality". The weak need to feel superior to the great, so we redefine greatness to mean other things.
    - calibraxis 12y ago
      The context: slave vs. master morality. Democracy is a slave morality. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality) Personally, I think slave moralities have much to recommend them, as movements against elite domination. Intellectual culture has its own hype, like the computer world. Some with loudspeakers try to deify a few "great thinkers", focussing on (certain narrow aspects of) their personalities they wish others to emulate. Brushing others aside who don't fit their model, despite talent. (Like people with the wrong gender/race.) Let's take another well-known philosopher (Chomsky), who pointed out how humanity's masters try to turn "great" figures into villains, when they act with exemplary slave morality: "Compare Russell and Einstein, two leading figures, roughly the same generation. They agreed on the grave dangers facing humanity, but chose different ways to respond. Einstein responded by living a very comfortable life in Princeton and dedicating himself to research that he loved, taking a few moments for an occasional oracular statement. Russell responded by leading demonstrations and getting himself dragged off by the cops, writing extensively on the problems of the day, organizing war crimes trials, etc. The result? Russell was and is reviled and condemned, Einstein is admired as a saint. Should that surprise us? Not at all."
  - darkmighty 12y ago
    That's not what is being discussed here -- what's in point are his wonderful mathematical prowess, not his principles. Being good at one thing doesn't imply pristine ethics. You also have to remember that those figures have pretty much all they ever said scrutinized, so that tends to distort things -- I'm pretty sure everyone one time or another made some unethical remarks, specially as a WWII fugitive. Horrible things happened in Europe and after that the harshness of Stalinism was also clear. I think it wouldn't be hard to get caught in "ultra-Americanism" at the time.
  - jnazario 12y ago
    > Not to rain on the parade, but such glorification of "heroes" is... just awkward. you need to stop putting words in my mouth. never did i use the word hero, never did i use the word worship. never did i suggest those things, either.
- topkekz 12y ago
  "John von Neumann invented the digital computer" Mauchly and Eckert did but Neumann came and stole the fame. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mauchly#EDVAC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mauchly#EDVAC Eniac: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer, Scott McCartney http://www.2think.org/eniac.shtml http://www.2think.org/eniac.shtml
bagrow 12y ago
The section on "work habits" is especially amazing. I know people who are very smart but also very lazy. They end up falling behind in the long run; may be a corollary to the Curse of the Gifted.
oafitupa 12y ago
More than once I was studying something in completely unrelated fields (eg: quantum mechanics, biology, game theory), when suddenly von Neumann (who I first knew for his contributions to computer science) is mentioned and I'm like "What? This guy again?". After the third time I went to read his biography because it couldn't be the same person. But yeah, it was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
- Cyph0n 12y ago
  Yeah, the same happened to me. I believe it was the thermonuclear bomb and the Von Neumann architecture. I thought that it couldn't be the same guy - two entirely unrelated fields - but it was. The guy was, in my opinion at least, the last true polymath.
  - a3n 12y ago
    Except they're not unrelated. Von Neumann needed more computing power than he had available, for studying bomb blasts. Not only did he and colleagues largely create digital computers, but he marshaled the resources of the US government and academia to get it done. Dyson's Turing's Cathedral is a fascinating account of the development of digital computers. The early ones were amazingly physical, using wave propagation delays in liquid mercury, and repeatedly painting rows of oscilloscope screens, as storage. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=turing%27s%20cathedral https://duckduckgo.com/?q=turing%27s%20cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_tube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_tube EDIT: s/Turning/Turing/
    - Cyph0n 12y ago
      Wow. Really cool stuff. I'll be sure to check out the book then.
slg 12y ago
I wonder if a person like this came along today, whether they would be allowed to have the same type of impact in the variety of different ways that John von Neumann did. Whether he was advancing economic theory or telling the military the most efficient altitude to detonate a bomb, it was all the same basic skill set. He was just a crazy smart and logical guy and he applied that to every field that he could. I can't think of any modern equivalent person who has had a similar impact in the number of disciplines that von Neumann did. Does this type of opportunity still exist or do we now put too much focus on having people concentrate on a single area of expertise?
- tachyonbeam 12y ago
  I think in many ways, in terms of exploring scientific and engineering realms, we're more conservative now. Personally, I'm doing a PhD in computer science, and I find it incredibly frustrating. Publishing papers is all about minute incremental improvements, and you absolutely must have numerical results to prove that you beat the competition. You can't publish negative results either, your work is considered worthless. I'm in compilers and programming languages. I really wanted to create my own language as part of my PhD thesis, but I was basically told that this would be unpublishable. I mean, how can you hope to numerically show that your language is better than everything else around? Plus it's all been done already, nothing else new can possibly be invented in that realm. Things weren't always like this. In the 1970s, we created things like Smalltalk, ML and LISP, which had a tremendous impact on the programming world. People also had bold ideas about artificial intelligence and nuclear-powered spaceships. In the 70s, people were allowed to just explore ideas, in the hopes that these ideas would lead to something good (and some did). Now, it's much harder, you bring up an idea and people immediately try to shoot it down, ask you for proof that it definitely will work, and bring up the most asinine suggestions as to why your idea will definitely fail. Today, the exploration has been scaled down. It's not because the exploration failed, we invented many great things as a result of it, it's largely IMO because we live in different economic times. The USA is no longer in an economic boom, things are no longer in expansion. There are cuts to scientific funding, cuts to education. People are being told not to be "wasteful". We live in a much more nearsighted world, in a sense. Being a dreamer isn't considered a virtue.
mililani 12y ago
I think it's sad that at the end of his life, he was really fearful of death. So fearful, in fact, that he sought refuge in religion, but supposedly, it didn't bring much comfort. I always think of that when I ponder about my own struggles with life, the human condition, and mortality. I really don't want to be that fearful of my own impending death if I get something like cancer.
laichzeit0 12y ago
I'm surprised this article doesn't mention his language abilities. Since the age of six, von Neumann was fluent in Latin and ancient Greek. He also read (and remembered completely) all the major works of antiquity. As someone who's been struggling with Latin and Greek for over 10 years it completely breaks my spirit to know that for someone else it was so effortless.
yohanatan 12y ago
Gödel did not prove that mathematics could not 'be proved consistent'. He proved that particular axiomatic systems cannot be both complete and consistent.
- Chinjut 12y ago
  Presumably, the reference is to Goedel's second incompleteness theorem, rather than the first incompleteness theorem. (One might still quibble with phrasing it in this way, of course)
CurtMonash 12y ago
"Hungarian is not exactly a lingua franca" Hard to argue with that part. :) Anyhow, a colleague of mine at PaineWebber sadly came down with schizophrenic delusions, and concluded that he and I were illegitimate children of Norbert Weiner, while Jack Grubman and Andy Kessler had been sired by John von Neumann. I objected strenuously; as somebody whose PhD these was a special case of the min-max theorem for zero-sum games, I thought it only fitting that I be on the von Neumann side of the ledger.
spindritf 12y ago
What I find truly remarkable about polymaths is that they don't seem to be crippled in other regards. There is no trade-off. Actually, abilities seem to positivly correlate rather than displace each other. It seems like there's a free lunch somewhere. Which is unusual for living beings, for evolution to miss it.
- lifeisstillgood 12y ago
  Niels Bohr - Nobel Prie winner, Quantum THeoretician, Olympic athlete. I think you might be onto something - I suspect its that genius is not genetic, which indicates it might be nurture not nature - which means things might be really cool for humans in a hundred years.
- eggoa 12y ago
  Well, he only had one kid. That makes him a pretty lousy performer from evolution's point of view.
  - walterbell 12y ago
    He did improve the evolutionary odds of most people on HN, so that counts for something.

96 points by tjaerv 12y ago

John von Neumann was an absolutely amazing human and scientist. truly a genius, a polymath, and evidently quite an interesting party guest. the book Prisoner's Dilemma is ostensibly about game theory but it's set within the context of von Neumann's life. really quite fascinating, one of my favorite people to study. http://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William-Poundstone/dp/038541580X/ http://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William-Poundstone/d...

Radim 12y ago
Not to rain on the parade, but such glorification of "heroes" is... just awkward. Wasn't there an article on Herbert's Dune on the HN front page, just yesterday? In particular, von Neumann was an "amazing human" as long as you don't mind him advising the military to bomb Russia out of the map, preemptively. What a wonderfully humane move. "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?" (and this is not just some cranky scientist rambling -- he was very high up in the military circles, an advisor/policy maker). Another common target of cringeworthy worship: Feynman. All fun stories (and I'm aware saying this is probably not going to go down well on HN) until you read about the abuse of women, paid abortions, broken marriages of his colleagues... They're all human.
- mau 12y ago
  Can you please add some sources for the claim about Feynman? A quick search on the web "feynman abuse" didn't gave me relevant results.
  - irremediable 12y ago
    The famous quote is "His ex-wife reportedly testified that on several occasions when she unwittingly disturbed either his calculus or his drums he flew into a violent rage, during which time he attacked her, threw pieces of bric-a-brac about and smashed the furniture." That was from an FBI file (https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi-files-on-richard-feynman-1165/#366875-responsive-documents https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi...) on Feynman. I don't know anything about the "paid abortion" thing. It's tricky stuff... Feynman was (is?) a hero of mine, and I struggle to put this stuff in context.
    - jerf 12y ago
      "It's tricky stuff... Feynman was (is?) a hero of mine, and I struggle to put this stuff in context." Heros have feet of clay. The correct move is to adjust your concept of "hero" to include this. The alternative, that you will only declare someone a "hero" if they are perfect in every way yields a definition of "hero" with 0 instances, which is a useless definition. If Feynmann was abusive to his wife to some degree, well, plenty of people are abusive to their wifes without also creating physics breakthroughs. It's OK to honor his ability to do that without having to think of him as perfect.
      - irremediable 12y ago
        I half-agree with you, but isn't there an ethical line past which it's wrong to call someone a hero?
        fail2ban 12y ago
        Isn't that something you should decide for yourself? Also, why do you assume there's a duality between hero and non-hero? The person did what they did. Simplifying it to the point of 'hero' or 'not hero' is overgeneralizing, I think. Acknowledge their achievements. Acknowledge their faults. Labels aren't a requirement.
        bdamm 12y ago
        Shine a bright enough light and everyone is hiding cockroaches.
        jerf 12y ago
        To be honest, I don't really call very many people "heros". I personally keep a pretty high bar for that. But that goes into an entirely different, and very large, discussion.
        jnbiche 12y ago
        I tend not to engage in much hero worship anymore, but if the question is essentially whether there's an ethical line past which we can't look up to someone, then I'd say it's of vital importance to know exactly what this "abuse" entailed. Did he physically beat his wife on multiple occasions, or did he throw an ash tray or plate at a wall on a few occasions? I know a good number of people in a relationship, both male and female, who have engaged in some variation of second offense(throwing things or breaking things during their worst arguments with their spouse/partner. But it wasn't habitual and didn't extend to physical contact. If that's "all" Feynman is accused of, then I don't think it's that big of a deal. I mean, he had a son and daughter who looked up to him, so I am a bit skeptical that he was a brutal wife beater (who tend not to draw the respect of their children).
  - GCA10 12y ago
    Feynman's life is well-chronicled -- in its totality -- in Jim Gleick's biography "Genius." Feynman had a somewhat messy personal life, and Gleick covers the key points briefly but clearly. For example (p. 277) "Bethe worried that Feynman was growing restless after four years at Cornell. There were entanglements with women: Feynman pursued them and then dropped them, or tried to, with increasingly public frustration -- so it seemed even to undergraduates, who knew him as the least professorial of professors." If you get to p. 290, there's a quite astonishing section on Feynman's effort to work out the rules of flirting in a bar. You can still admire his science after reading the book. You'll be both charmed and troubled by his over-sized personality. But, hey, he was a complicated guy.
- jerf 12y ago
  "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?" As a mathematician, it's probably worth pointing out the use of the implication. "If you are planning on bombing them tomorrow at 5pm then why wait?" is not equivalent to "Russia should be bombed now." And indeed, of all the logical fallacies I see on the Internet this is one of the ones that tends to bother me personally the most. "A -> B" is not! equivalent to "B". If I meant B, I would have simply said B. I suspect the same is true of von Neumann.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    I agree with your sentiment overall, but I don't think it applies to von Neumann. The sentence right before that quote is: "With the Russians it is not a question of whether but of when." It seems generally accepted that he was in favor of destroying the Soviets before they gained the ability to retaliate, although I will admit that I can't find any more direct quotes about it. It's hardly surprising either. During those few years when the US had the ability to devastate the USSR but not vice versa, it was a fairly common opinion. In addition to all the common reasons for advocating this, a Hungarian would also be influenced by the rather brutal domination of his homeland by the Soviets in that time.
- poof131 12y ago
  Rain is good. No matter how smart you are, you can still be an idiot sometimes: "Von Neumann knew that it was only a matter of time before the Soviet Union became a nuclear power. He predicted that were Russia allowed to build a nuclear arsenal, a war against the U.S. would be inevitable. He therefore recommended that the U.S. launch a nuclear strike at Moscow, destroying its enemy and becoming a dominant world power, so as to avoid a more destructive nuclear war later on." http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/1998-99/game-theory/neumann.html http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects...
- crassus2 12y ago
  Nietzsche has interesting things about our need to tear down people who have great, unique accomplishments over common weaknesses - calling this the "slave morality". The weak need to feel superior to the great, so we redefine greatness to mean other things.
  - calibraxis 12y ago
    The context: slave vs. master morality. Democracy is a slave morality. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality) Personally, I think slave moralities have much to recommend them, as movements against elite domination. Intellectual culture has its own hype, like the computer world. Some with loudspeakers try to deify a few "great thinkers", focussing on (certain narrow aspects of) their personalities they wish others to emulate. Brushing others aside who don't fit their model, despite talent. (Like people with the wrong gender/race.) Let's take another well-known philosopher (Chomsky), who pointed out how humanity's masters try to turn "great" figures into villains, when they act with exemplary slave morality: "Compare Russell and Einstein, two leading figures, roughly the same generation. They agreed on the grave dangers facing humanity, but chose different ways to respond. Einstein responded by living a very comfortable life in Princeton and dedicating himself to research that he loved, taking a few moments for an occasional oracular statement. Russell responded by leading demonstrations and getting himself dragged off by the cops, writing extensively on the problems of the day, organizing war crimes trials, etc. The result? Russell was and is reviled and condemned, Einstein is admired as a saint. Should that surprise us? Not at all."
- darkmighty 12y ago
  That's not what is being discussed here -- what's in point are his wonderful mathematical prowess, not his principles. Being good at one thing doesn't imply pristine ethics. You also have to remember that those figures have pretty much all they ever said scrutinized, so that tends to distort things -- I'm pretty sure everyone one time or another made some unethical remarks, specially as a WWII fugitive. Horrible things happened in Europe and after that the harshness of Stalinism was also clear. I think it wouldn't be hard to get caught in "ultra-Americanism" at the time.
- jnazario 12y ago
  > Not to rain on the parade, but such glorification of "heroes" is... just awkward. you need to stop putting words in my mouth. never did i use the word hero, never did i use the word worship. never did i suggest those things, either.
topkekz 12y ago
"John von Neumann invented the digital computer" Mauchly and Eckert did but Neumann came and stole the fame. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mauchly#EDVAC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mauchly#EDVAC Eniac: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer, Scott McCartney http://www.2think.org/eniac.shtml http://www.2think.org/eniac.shtml

bagrow 12y ago

The section on "work habits" is especially amazing. I know people who are very smart but also very lazy. They end up falling behind in the long run; may be a corollary to the Curse of the Gifted.

oafitupa 12y ago

More than once I was studying something in completely unrelated fields (eg: quantum mechanics, biology, game theory), when suddenly von Neumann (who I first knew for his contributions to computer science) is mentioned and I'm like "What? This guy again?". After the third time I went to read his biography because it couldn't be the same person. But yeah, it was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann

Cyph0n 12y ago
Yeah, the same happened to me. I believe it was the thermonuclear bomb and the Von Neumann architecture. I thought that it couldn't be the same guy - two entirely unrelated fields - but it was. The guy was, in my opinion at least, the last true polymath.
- a3n 12y ago
  Except they're not unrelated. Von Neumann needed more computing power than he had available, for studying bomb blasts. Not only did he and colleagues largely create digital computers, but he marshaled the resources of the US government and academia to get it done. Dyson's Turing's Cathedral is a fascinating account of the development of digital computers. The early ones were amazingly physical, using wave propagation delays in liquid mercury, and repeatedly painting rows of oscilloscope screens, as storage. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=turing%27s%20cathedral https://duckduckgo.com/?q=turing%27s%20cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_tube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_tube EDIT: s/Turning/Turing/
  - Cyph0n 12y ago
    Wow. Really cool stuff. I'll be sure to check out the book then.

slg 12y ago

I wonder if a person like this came along today, whether they would be allowed to have the same type of impact in the variety of different ways that John von Neumann did. Whether he was advancing economic theory or telling the military the most efficient altitude to detonate a bomb, it was all the same basic skill set. He was just a crazy smart and logical guy and he applied that to every field that he could. I can't think of any modern equivalent person who has had a similar impact in the number of disciplines that von Neumann did. Does this type of opportunity still exist or do we now put too much focus on having people concentrate on a single area of expertise?

tachyonbeam 12y ago
I think in many ways, in terms of exploring scientific and engineering realms, we're more conservative now. Personally, I'm doing a PhD in computer science, and I find it incredibly frustrating. Publishing papers is all about minute incremental improvements, and you absolutely must have numerical results to prove that you beat the competition. You can't publish negative results either, your work is considered worthless. I'm in compilers and programming languages. I really wanted to create my own language as part of my PhD thesis, but I was basically told that this would be unpublishable. I mean, how can you hope to numerically show that your language is better than everything else around? Plus it's all been done already, nothing else new can possibly be invented in that realm. Things weren't always like this. In the 1970s, we created things like Smalltalk, ML and LISP, which had a tremendous impact on the programming world. People also had bold ideas about artificial intelligence and nuclear-powered spaceships. In the 70s, people were allowed to just explore ideas, in the hopes that these ideas would lead to something good (and some did). Now, it's much harder, you bring up an idea and people immediately try to shoot it down, ask you for proof that it definitely will work, and bring up the most asinine suggestions as to why your idea will definitely fail. Today, the exploration has been scaled down. It's not because the exploration failed, we invented many great things as a result of it, it's largely IMO because we live in different economic times. The USA is no longer in an economic boom, things are no longer in expansion. There are cuts to scientific funding, cuts to education. People are being told not to be "wasteful". We live in a much more nearsighted world, in a sense. Being a dreamer isn't considered a virtue.

mililani 12y ago

I think it's sad that at the end of his life, he was really fearful of death. So fearful, in fact, that he sought refuge in religion, but supposedly, it didn't bring much comfort. I always think of that when I ponder about my own struggles with life, the human condition, and mortality. I really don't want to be that fearful of my own impending death if I get something like cancer.

laichzeit0 12y ago

I'm surprised this article doesn't mention his language abilities. Since the age of six, von Neumann was fluent in Latin and ancient Greek. He also read (and remembered completely) all the major works of antiquity. As someone who's been struggling with Latin and Greek for over 10 years it completely breaks my spirit to know that for someone else it was so effortless.

yohanatan 12y ago

Gödel did not prove that mathematics could not 'be proved consistent'. He proved that particular axiomatic systems cannot be both complete and consistent.

Chinjut 12y ago
Presumably, the reference is to Goedel's second incompleteness theorem, rather than the first incompleteness theorem. (One might still quibble with phrasing it in this way, of course)

CurtMonash 12y ago

"Hungarian is not exactly a lingua franca" Hard to argue with that part. :) Anyhow, a colleague of mine at PaineWebber sadly came down with schizophrenic delusions, and concluded that he and I were illegitimate children of Norbert Weiner, while Jack Grubman and Andy Kessler had been sired by John von Neumann. I objected strenuously; as somebody whose PhD these was a special case of the min-max theorem for zero-sum games, I thought it only fitting that I be on the von Neumann side of the ledger.

spindritf 12y ago

What I find truly remarkable about polymaths is that they don't seem to be crippled in other regards. There is no trade-off. Actually, abilities seem to positivly correlate rather than displace each other. It seems like there's a free lunch somewhere. Which is unusual for living beings, for evolution to miss it.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago
Niels Bohr - Nobel Prie winner, Quantum THeoretician, Olympic athlete. I think you might be onto something - I suspect its that genius is not genetic, which indicates it might be nurture not nature - which means things might be really cool for humans in a hundred years.
eggoa 12y ago
Well, he only had one kid. That makes him a pretty lousy performer from evolution's point of view.
- walterbell 12y ago
  He did improve the evolutionary odds of most people on HN, so that counts for something.