I have had this great book for 10+ years, and still find it fascinating it's called "Prisoner's Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb". I try to re-read it on occasion. It's half John von Neumann biography and half subject matter history.<p>Call him an unhinged lunatic if you want photochemsyn; but I consider him a super genius.<p>Link: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29506.Prisoner_s_Dilemma" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29506.Prisoner_s_Dilemma</a>
A little pedantic but I want to fix something. I noticed in the first sentence that he states Von Nuemann died of bone cancer. This is incorrect. His cancer was first found in his collarbone, and it was a metastatic lesion. They biopsied it and various sources I've read have stated the primary cancer was pancreatic or prostate. This means that it would have been an undifferentiated adenocarcinoma. This means the cancer has evolved to the point where you can recognize some aspects of it, but it has shed a lot of the characteristics of its cell of origin. It could also have been a cholangiocarcinoma or possible gastric cancer, hepatic, etc...<p>The term bone cancer refers to things like osteosarcomas, these usually occur in children.<p>Not trying to say the rest of the article is bad, but when I see something like this I want to point it out.<p>Previous biographies I've read have always reported pancreatic cancer, which is what I was going to originally type, but according to wikipedia there are some different sources listed.
I can never escape von Neumann. Everywhere I look, there is his influence. Even just as an engineer I see this. Physics, mathematics, computing (!), economics.. I am dumbfounded whenever I come across yet another monumental von Neumann idea that I use every day without knowing. Imagine how much further down the track we would be if we got another decade out of this incredible man…
I think this article is mischaracterizing him as an applied mathematician with contributions to economics, game theory, computing etc — it gives almost no weight to his real mathematical work. I wonder why - it seems inconceivable that the biography being reviewed makes the same mistake.
>He was not an economist, but he developed the use of fixed-point theorems in economics in a paper which the historian Roy Weintraub calls “the single most important article in mathematical economics”, and which inspired “half a dozen” Nobel laureates.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer_fixed-point_theorem" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer_fixed-point_theorem</a><p>no mention of him. I don't think he conceived of the idea.
"It’s fashionable to say that intelligence isn’t real, or that we can’t define it, or that it’s a Western colonial construct. But the word points to a real thing: there is some quality which rocks don’t have, and which mice have a bit of, and which chimpanzees have more of, and humans have a lot of; and which is something like problem-solving ability or ability to achieve goals."<p>We have IQ for measuring problem-solving ability, but it doesn't correlate well with the ability to achieve goals. That would be another very useful measure though, of something like intelligence * grit. Call it IGQ. An IGQ test would somehow set goals in a realistic, complex, chaotic environment, with social and physical as well as intellectual obstacles. So, a GPA is a sort of IGQ.
You could write another article entitled 'the lunacy of John von Neumann' over his endless pushes for destroying every major city in the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons, too.<p>A brilliant scientist, yes, but also an unhinged lunatic. Not an unusual situation, see Cantor etc. What's curious is how many hagiographies have been written about this individual - some people seem bent on rehabilitating this figure by erasing uncomfortable history.<p>In any case, hero-worship of scientists is very silly. The Nobel Prize bears a lot of the blame for this - but in reality, the vast majority of fundamental scientific discoveries are the result of dozens if not hundreds of researchers working over decades. The invention of the electronic computer is a good example of this, as is the invention of the nuclear bomb, as is the discovery and characterization of DNA's role in the cell.
I don’t need another biography/blog post fawning about John von Neumann, I need this goddamn series reprinted <a href="https://www.amazon.com/John-Von-Neumann-Collected-Works/dp/0080095666" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/John-Von-Neumann-Collected-Works/dp/0...</a>.
Bizarre that the second to top comment (on the linked page) immediately turned the conversation into one about the commenter's view on racial/sexual supremacy and goes on to say "correspondingly, there are also ethnicities that are less intelligent" (I'm assuming they are implying supremacy of their own group.) It's quite jarring the frequency one comes across white supremacist/misogynist talking points when one tries to engage with programming/computer science communities online.<p>It makes me appreciate the largely positive and safe experience HN provides, despite the occasional user that insists the opposite.<p><i>Edit: some of the comments appear to have been removed/deleted or otherwise fallen off, though the comment about "ethnicities that are less intelligent" is still up near the top.</i>