Comment by katmannthree | Hacker News Reader

Comment by katmannthree | Hacker News Reader

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> 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).

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