Comment by anon_tor_12345 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anon_tor_12345 | Hacker News Reader

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lol people don't understand that science at gerard 't hooft's level is just as petty and vulgar as your local bar.

what i mean is very accomplished scientists brag and sneer and bluster all the time - they feel entitled to and we worship and empower them to. examples abound; read any of feynman's books; landau had a scale by which he measured other scientists; von neumann would chew people out who couldn't keep up with him; the cat fight right now around Mochizuki's proof; etc etc etc. if you've never been around these people you think they're saints when in fact they're almost universally assholes.

it's not unlike ultra-wealthy people competing with each other for the greatest monument to their wealth...

i'm sure someone will respond to me to say something like they need to be this way to accomplish (just like with the slavish worship of the ultra wealthy) what they've accomplished and to this i always present to them john bardeen, who won two nobels and still managed to be a good neighbor.

> you think they're saints when in fact they're almost universally assholes

This does not match my experience, and outside the classroom I have been in 1:1 or 2:1 situations with several Nobel prize winners. I'm commenting on individual demeanor, not whatever happens when departmental politics plays out.

As you describe Bardeen, I would take that to be the norm.

Edit: That much said, the topic article rubs me the wrong way. As someone above says, the tone is harsh.

To be fair to one of those examples,

> von neumann would chew people out who couldn't keep up with him

Imagine what that experience was like from his perspective, constantly explaining simple things to people too lazy to put in the work necessary to have a proper discussion about whatever before ultimately wasting his time. Over and over and over again. That gets old quickly no matter what level you're operating on.

Lol this is exactly what I preemptively alluded to - how we (as a culture) enable this kind of behavior. It becomes even worse when you realize that at least the ultra wealthy pay people for the right to abuse them and von Neumann et al are abusing, frequently, poorly paid junior scientists.

>That gets old quickly no matter what level you're operating on.

If you can't handle being around people that are differently abled from you then the answer is not to take your frustrations out on them. The answer is to stop being around people. No community/culture/society owes anyone, not even people at this level, some kind of pampered sphere of existence that revolves around them.

> If you can't handle being around people that are differently abled from you then the answer is not to take your frustrations out on them.

Of course. But von Neumann was just as human as the people who struggled to keep up with him, he just had different weaknesses. Having low emotional intelligence is every bit as deserving of understanding as having low general intelligence.

> The answer is to stop being around people. No community/culture/society owes anyone, not even people at this level, some kind of pampered sphere of existence that revolves around them.

You sure about that? Society has MASSIVELY benefited from von Neumann's work. If the cost of that was a few people's hurt feelings at his inability to interact with them a way that doesn't hurt their feelings it was a small price to pay.

>You sure about that? Society has MASSIVELY benefited from von Neumann's work. If the cost of that was a few people's hurt feelings at his inability to interact with them a way that doesn't hurt their feelings it was a small price to pay.

The flawed premise implicit in this is that he (or even someone else) wouldn't have produced all the same things while being cordial. More importantly the even greater flaw is the assumption that he wouldn't have produced even more if he'd been easier to work with

You could speculate to that effect, just as easily and correctly as you could speculate that he would have been even more productive still had he surrounded himself with people he didn't consider mentally slow.

>with people he didn't consider mentally slow.

your whole point is that no such people existed?

Wait what? What did I say that lead you to that conclusion?

I'm sure there were people in his time who would rightly consider him to be slower than they were (and equally sure that he wouldn't be acknowledging that if confronted about it).

My point is more that he had his own flaws, just like the people he had trouble getting along with. Being around slow people _is_ often frustrating, especially if you're more concerned with working than teaching. Was he an ass? Absolutely. But we should we try to understand_why_ he was, rather than just talk about how he should have been kicked out of society. Especially in von Neumann's case, where his net utility to society was insanely high (compare to, say, Mochizuki).

Pauli: “What Professor Einstein [just] said is not totally stupid.”

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