How much more backward would the world be if the likes of Newton and Von Neumann hadn't existed?
I unironically believe that the government should dig up his body, retrieve DNA samples, and clone him. Populate federal labs and agencies with Von Neumann clones. Sell a few to FAAMNG too for good measure. Let uber geniuses run the nation's courts, monetary policy, tax laws, environmental protection programs, and defense planning and acquisition.
"Many generations of graduate students who might have been tempted to try to construct hidden-variables theories were beaten into submission by the claim that von Neumann, 1932, had proved that it could not be done. A few years later (see Jammer, 1974,p.273) Grete Hermann, 1935, pointed out a glaring deficiency in the argument, but she seems to have been entirely ignored. Everybody continued to cite the von Neumann proof. A third of a century passed before John Bell, 1966, rediscovered the fact that von Neumann's no-hidden-variables proof was based on an assumption that can only be described as silly." Mermin https://cqi.inf.usi.ch/qic/Mermin1993.pdf
No one is infallible, and this kind of mythical status has problems. Grete was dismissed, and Bell's paper only was admitted because the editor thought it was confirming Von Nuemman even. And even if von Neumman's proof wasn't as "silly" as Bell said, the fact that everyone else ran with it surely harmed quantum theory for a long while, reinforcing the Copenhagen side unjustifiably at the expense of others.
You might want to read up on his political views in general and his role in the creation of the atomic bomb in particular. He wanted to drop the bomb on Kyoto (the historical cultural center of Japan) and actively supported a preventive nuclear strike against Russia.
What's the lesson here? High intelligence doesn't correlate with moral and ethical behavior.
EDIT: just noticed your user name...
Well, even Bertrand Russell, who protested against war from WWI to the Vietnam War, advocated a preemptive nuclear strike against the USSR in 1954. The risk of nuclear war killing everyone, once the USSR had nukes, just seemed too great, I guess.
Also, humans have created thousands of different and highly contradictory systems of morality over the past several thousand years. You would probably be better off not believing that you have discovered the Correct Theory of Morality.
Hungary has a disproportionate number of the world class mathematicians of the 20th century. The numbers are even more extreme when you consider that those mathematicians are all from Budapest, all from Eötvös, and the vast majority of them Fejér's supervisees. It's totally plausible that Fejér created an environment where people who might otherwise have been middling mathematicians, decent engineers, or never have found their niche, were transformed, by collaboration and inspiration, into the likes of von Neumann, Erdős, Pólya.
Even today the Eötvös school of analysis and combinatorics is a significant powerhouse, with most members direct mathematical descendants from Fejér. And there are other branches such as Cambridge combinatorialists where the influence of Fejér's students and grand-students has been key in the formation of world class mathematicians.
Equal potential maybe. But it's nonsense to equate potential with talent. Talent is observed based on demonstrable execution.
A pithy quote is all that is.
Stephen F. Blinkhorn, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, wrote that The Mismeasure of Man was "a masterpiece of propaganda" that selectively juxtaposed data to further a political agenda. [..] Jensen also criticized Gould for concentrating on long-disproven arguments (noting that 71% of the book's references preceded 1950), rather than addressing "anything currently regarded as important by scientists in the relevant fields"
We literally already let elite school grads do this and where has it gotten us? 40 years of a yawning gap between the cosmopolitan dream-hoarder class and the rest of us fighting for scraps?
George Washington could have been a King, and declined. Whatever other skeletons he had in his closet, that decision puts him very high in my book, and is a fantastic example of our American value of both innovation and civic-minded self-restraint.
On the contrary - I find it sad that more intelligent and more accomplished people have fewer offsprings on average than others. While the process is not surprising socially, either there is no hereditary factors in intellectual abilities at all (which does not hold water), or step by step, we decline. Let's hope that technological augments to our mental capabilities develop faster than the biological process.
Once I compared the trajectory to "Idiocracy" (from 2006). Yet, a friend said it is an optimistic movie - since they still choose the smartest person as their president.
You could essentially just give a bunch of kids a phenomenal education and end up with a similiar, if not better result due to diversification of talents.
The result is not as good as you might expect, this philosophy leads to aristocracy, not the most efficient form of government, by a long shot.
I often think of this when people claim it is impossible to conceive of any advanced thought in an open office or noisy environment. In fact, it is just a personal preference and one environment isn't necessarily any better than another.
Just because a study finds that some cause, on average, has some effect, I don’t think it is correct to start believing that that cause and effect will hold for you or any else in particular.
I’m convinced that for you noise is distracting, and that it is probably the case for most people, but I also totally believe that for some people it can work the other way around. I don’t think you can use the aggregate result of a study to argue against somebody else’s personal experience.
[1] - https://medium.com/s/how-to-design-creative-workspaces/how-n...
First, the difference between the television blaring and my office talking is that in office chatter I'm constantly picking up bits of sound that make my brain think I should be paying attention to them. The sounds of a Simpsons rerun I've seen 90 times don't distract my brain in the same way.
Second, we're talking about what works for MOST people, Peopleware has actual data to back this up, the majority of people need quiet private space to do deep work.
Agree. I found that hearing my boss on one side of a phone call where they referenced me or my work in some way was very distracting. What had happened? What was going to happen? What was I potentially being committed to?
The environment is still under his control. Not at all like an open office.
Genius is a very real thing, but I don't need to read adulation after adulation in a series of anecdotes and quotes that will only make me feel inadequate.
The mathematics itself is greater than the mathematician, who himself craps on the toilet like anyone else. Focus on the math, not the mathematician. It will make you happier.
Personally I don't feel inadequate when reading about someone like von Neumann, as I'm not really tempted to compare myself to him in the first place. Colleagues are peers, people I graduated with are peers, but von Neumann is almost like another species.
I forget who it was who pointed out that Silicon Valley billionaires tend to dress like 'normal people', in sharp contrast to aristocrats. People don't tend to feel poor for comparing themselves against the Queen, as they perceive too much distance to make a personal comparison.
Von Neumann's contemporaries agreed, which is why he and other Ashkenazi Jews from Hungary were nicknamed Martians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) . Societal and genetic pressures over centuries produced unusually high IQs (and some associated genetic problems).
Perhaps I am more prone to egoism than you! I had a "promising" start to my career and a lot of ambition. I've fallen off that track and had time to reflect on what matters, but I still feel twinges of ego-driven ambition.
I think it is understandable to feel inadequate. that is motivation to be better.
Reading of the achievements of others doesn't make me feel inadequate, rather it fills me with hope and real joy.
Yes, Mathematics is greater than mathematicians, but never forget our mathematics is still profoundly and inescapably human, and none the worse for it. Read more Mathematics!
Do you think von Neumann's education might have had anything to do with what he was able to achieve?
How about how he was raised by his parents?
Or how about his work ethic, motivation, and attitude towards discovery?
How about the people that he admired and that influenced him?
Learning these things might help us to raise future extraordinary achievers, or might even help us with our own lives/work.
You will not find any of these things in his mathematics, but you might learn about them by studying his life.
The mathematician reveals the math. The math won't reveal itself
To each his own I guess, but personally I don’t want to waste my time on something I’m not good at nor do I have the capability to be good at.
If you put that scene in a film, people would call it unbelievable.
