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Comment by danieltillett | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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

http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/Archive/whose.html

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.

> 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?

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.).

I read up on a little bit of what you reference and have a question...

Does Kripke describe a query language in Naming and Necessity?

I know someone who went to high school with Kripke, who told me that at that age he apparently was doing classified work for the military.

Ed Witten at Princeton, who reduced the number of dimensions in string theory, is called "The Martian" by his affectionate (but disbelieving) grad students ...

Motivation is key here. It seems that von Neumann became too fond of prestige and spy stuff. So he was less creative. Smarter than Gödel, able to recognise the importance of Gödel's work, but unable to produce anything of similar moment.

One could call it a feeling of responsibility maybe. The ongoing conflicts were defining the world and scientists (and he individually) could change the course of history. I think vNM's work is equally impressive (or even more; it's difficult to compare), maybe his main contribution is starting Game Theory[1]; but because it is spread across so many fields it doesn't look as groundbreaking.

[1]: Indeed he was so confident in his work he believed he was "Starting and ending" game theory, that there would be little else to work on after his monumental work that is OTGEB. He was very wrong of course, but like other theories of the kind (Information Theory comes to mind), this early lead is very significant to the creation of a coherent field.

'Feeling of responsibility' is a nice way of putting it but the fact is that creative geniuses are pretty irresponsible and unconscientious fellows. They abandon a lot of projects and can't force themselves to work on things that don't interest them.

We don't have any record of systems with more intelligence than humans, so the question to us is equivalent to asking what is the maximum potential of intelligence itself.

For this reason general AI may offer us great insight into our mortal coil.

Imagine a von Neumann who didn't drink and kept himself in shape.

He died of cancer, probably a result of nuclear testing. They didn’t fully realize how dangerous it was until later.

I wasn't referring to age of death, but mental performance while alive.

That's not a valid inference. Even during the era of nuclear testing, the great majority of cancers were not caused by radiation.

Now, SMOKING...

Folks nearest to nuclear testing died early of cancer. VN didn’t smoke. Look up the movie the Conqueror.

I grew up near SSFL so have some stories too.

That's nice. It remains the case that fallout will have caused only a small increase in the national background cancer rate.

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/r...

Yes, only a “small” significant increase to those nearby. And we’re not talking only about fallout but manipulation in the lab.

It’s specifically your brand of risk downplaying that led to all these early deaths. Things are much safer today because educated folks understand the risks and prepare for them.

What makes you think von Neumann got any exposure in labs? He was a mathematician, not any sort of experimentalist.

The idea that his cancer came from fallout is just moralizing nonsense, the silly logical error of thinking that the universe operates in a way that punishes badness.

He was actually at Los Alamos, he was trained as a chemical engineer; it’s hard to imagine he didn’t get invited to see the demon core and other fun stuff, or otherwise breathe in some particles.

Yes, especially at a time when they were quite nonchalant about safety.

So, you think being in the room with the "demon core" was dangerous even when it wasn't being used? The radiation from it in a non-critical state would have been very small. If he had been there during a criticality accident it would have been recorded.

I think you're just waving your hands here because you have no evidence to support the claim.

Um, yeah, I stated all the evidence at hand. If you’re looking for a strong convincing case, I ain’t giving one.

And the likely cause wouldn’t be some gamma rays, it’d be from ingesting radioactive or chemically harmful matter.

So, your theory is he licked that plutonium sphere when he was in there?

Sounds legit!

The argument is that it's plausible, not certain.

Everyone (and many family members) working at SSFL 15 years later died early of contamination. They were careless in those days. Probably had a few buckets of the stuff laying around like at the Grand Canyon gift shop.

There wasn't just testing, but a whole bunch of other nuclear and chemical research these scientists were exposed to.

Smokers lungs experience something like 1000x more radiation than a visit near Chernobyl. My dad was a student of von Neumann. In the 50's it was fashionable to smoke, drink martinis, and drink lots of coffee, and exercise was for chumps. My dad didn't live even as long as von Neumann, and died of a heart attack.

VN didn’t smoke and your first sentence is obviously exaggerated.

I’ve always been curious about his drinking. Maybe the impression I have of him is misleading and he only drank at weekends or something. Not to compare my pathetic studies to him, but personally I’ve had to almost give up alcohol entirely to study math. I suppose I could also be getting old :)

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