Hollywood movie aside, just how good a physicist was Oppenheimer?
science.org
science.org
General Leslie Groves thought very highly of Oppenheimer, and if you got the stamp of approval from Groves, you were doing something right.
Oppenheimer was dragged through the mud during the red scare and his name is still tarnished because of that. It is ironic and a little sad that he was awarded the Fermi medal once his name was finally cleared because Fermi worked for him during the Manhattan Project. It probably would have been the Oppenheimer Medal if it weren’t for Senator McCarthy.
Oppenheimer beat Heisenberg (also a pretty smart guy) to the bomb and not by a little either. And thank whatever higher power is out there he did.
(I am reusing most of my comment from a different story)
It's ironic to me that this is the first time I'm hearing that he was caught up in the red scare. I mean I'm no historian but apparently didn't tarnish his name all that much! :-)
Anecdotally, I've only ever heard the name Fermi in the phrase Fermi Paradox. Oppenheimer I know much more about, and I only know there's a movie about him because it's all over HN this month.
I'm sure that the red scare did tarnish his name for decades, but it looks to me like those decades had ended by 2004 when Google's trends pick up.
[0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...
My context is from being outside of the US though.
Case closed.
Plenty of folks who aren't physics geeks have heard of the Fermi Paradox.
Source: Am not a physics geek.
google trends seems to agree: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=world%20...
Whereas Fermi (in the context of the Fermi paradox) is kinda foundational, if you're in the extraterrestrial life field.
Russians, Sting, 1985
-- so I would say Oppenheimer being the "inventor" of the atomic bomb was (literally) pop culture
Oh also Leo fucking Szilard! From wikipedia ...
> He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patented the idea in 1936, and in late 1939 wrote the letter for Albert Einstein's signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb.
But, at the time, it of course did derail careers and destroy lives.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Hall
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Koval
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Gold
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Fuchs
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Glasser
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dexter_White
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Gregory_Silvermaster
There were many, many people in the US who betrayed their country to the Soviets because they believed in Communism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_espionage_in_the_Unit...
The Rosenbergs were known as believers in Communism.
Even Oppenheimer, who was a stance Anti-Stalinist and the liberal under the fascist security clique, had the very same view and motivation. Just from the far right.
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Event... names many more.
I would more equate it with someone being very publicly arrested for a horrible crime, only for the verdict to result in "not guilty" or the case dropped before going to court. You know, like OJ or MJ.
Captain Ramius: “It is an ancient Hindu text, quoted by an American.”
Political Officer: “An American?”
Captain Ramius: “Mmm. He invented the atomic bomb. And was later accused of being a communist.”
--The Hunt for Red October (1990 movie, not sure its in the book)
Public interest in his politics was relevant. He probably was a fellow traveler so what?
However, even during the red scare, communism/socialism was (and still is) fashionable with the elites. Compare https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-new-su... and see how McCarthyism might have been a reaction.
Example
"Merriam-Webster has a new definition of “racism”"
https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/6/10/21286656/merriam-we...
There are people who believe it's impossible to be racist against white people, others believe it's simply discriminating based on race.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/us/anti-defamation-league-rac...
>Since 2020, the ADL had described racism as “the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges White people.”
It's a powerful word that can be used to shut people down, so it is liberally used to do so, and its definition is changing to suit the policies and objectives of politicians and organizations.
One example: during the pandemic it was considered "racist" to suggest that the virus might have come from a lab, if you don't believe me I can find you a million reddit threads, Twitter threads, and articles saying as much. NOW it is openly talked about by government institutions and those same institutions that were writing articles decrying it as racist.
I fail to see how talking about the definitions of words and their power makes me a fascist. If anything you are the fascist for misusing the power of certain words to stifle discussion and the free exchange of ideas.
This has been especially common in my home country Sweden,
where these labels were used by the political and media elite to put down the grass roots movement trying to stop mass migration from Africa and the Middle East.
We aren't animals.
2. If you don't like foreigners you're a bigot and terrible person.
Hating someone because of where they are from is illogical because not all people from a specific location act and think the same. Therefore your hatred has no specific valid target.
I'm not saying anything about what behavior is "acceptable" or endorsing anything. I'm saying that people and animals have been acting that way for a very long time. Tolerance for strangers is more in need of sociological explanation than the opposite. Certainly, the trend towards tolerance exists and is rising over the course of history, which I very much like. It's about asking what the default state is from which society makes "progress".
Or are you disputing the historical claim that humans on average have never been more tolerant towards strangers than today?
So? Just because people have done something for a long time doesn't mean it's right.
Or are you disputing the historical claim that humans on average have never been more tolerant towards strangers than today?
This seems like it is true but what's the evidence for this claim and why are you asking if I dispute it? Where did I say anything about changes in tolerance over time?
Tolerance for strangers is more in need of sociological explanation than the opposite
Why? What if humanity over time grows and learns thanks to our ability to store information, like in books.
More importantly why do we need an explanation and why does it matter?
If you are trying to use the fact that something happened for most of human history then changed recently and that makes it abnormal. Think slavery, rape, woman's right, etc
Like I very explicitly said, I do not think it's right. That's not what I'm talking about.
> What if humanity over time grows and learns thanks to our ability to store information, like in books.
That's going for an explanation.
> why do we need an explanation and why does it matter?
The original post I responded to asked for an explanation.
You're asking what the default state is? I assume you mean instincts right?
Why does it matter, what's the relevance?
The same government that wants to revoke citizenships and permanent residence permits. Yup, calling them fascists is an abuse of the word. Hahahaha.
I intentionally didn’t mention the Sweden Democrats. You were branded a fascist, racist, etc. if you spoke up, no matter your political allegiance. You’re just making my point for me.
A majority of Swedes have been opposed to this insanity, not just the Sweden Democrats.
Sadly voting for them is the only option for anyone who understands what a disaster this is(unless you do like me, decide to move out).
I agree that there are big social problems in Sweden. But I don't see how sending Kurds to die in Turkey; and generally blaming every problem that exist on immigrants while doing nothing to address said problems, will solve anything.
I’ve never argued for sending Kurds to turkey, and I’m not blaming Swedens problems on any immigrants - they are completely self made by self centered so called leaders and a gullible populace who has had little exposure to the outside world.
Have a nice day
At the very least, if you are one, don't be offended by being called one...
The last 2-3 decades of migration to Sweden has been disastrous and was done against the majority’s will, with gang violence extreme segregation and a diminished social cohesion.
Sweden will never be the same
But thanks for confirming that most right wing ideology is simply rooted in peoples incapability to cope with change.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Biker_War
Last year alone, Sweden had 60 shot dead.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-hits-record-with...
“Strommer said Sweden's sixty shooting deaths this year compared to four in Norway, four in Denmark and two in Finland. The deaths are the tip of an iceberg of violence and organised crime that have put down deep roots in parts of society, Strommer said.
Last year, 45 people were shot dead in Sweden. In 2012, the total was 17, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention.”
I cope well with change. I no longer live in Sweden but I still mourn what happened to my country and what could have been. So much wasted opportunity
Mostly by younger (18 and under) swedes with no prospects thanks to increased economic kettling (segregation) being used by more established swedish criminal gangs as young hitters serve reduced time and are seen as disposable people.
Driven by an increase in black market weapon availability and a criminal culture change away from shooting others in the leg and now shooting to kill.
See:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyDZfYzVGJg
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/segregation-behind-gang-rela...
And those social problems, integration of new citizens and migrants, are much more complex than "stop migration". Because even if you did, what's next? Throwing all those people out that are already there? Also those born there (not just Sweden, in Germany it is the same, not to start with France), or just those without proper passports? Everyone, regardless of passport?
Or, radical idea, just find a way to successfully integrate everyone in society, even if it means the existing society will have to change.
In which country has importing millions of uneducated people with a diametrically different culture actually worked out?
I have lived in two highly functional multi cultural societies:
Dubai(UAE) for two years, although predominantly muslim people from all over the planet seem to get more or less along. The Emiratis rule with an iron fist, and that seems to do the trick. You even think about joining a violent gang, you’re sent to some prison dungeon for years before being kicked out.
Although I’m sure the same deal would work out well in Sweden which is in general also an authoritarian nation(although they prentend otherwise), I doubt this is what most proponents of multi culturalism envision.
Now I live in Switzerland, a nation that has three distinct cultures for hundreds of years and seem to integrate foreigners from all over the world very well(though not without problems). The difference between Switzerland and Sweden/Germany/France is the system of direct democracy (where every poor decision can be quickly reverted), in general a bottom up decentralized approach and just as important, you have to QUALIFY YOURSELF to gain residence, and to gain citizenship is difficult(and can be revoked).
Also, all rigjt wing people always bring up Switzerland and direct democracy up. Until, that is, the majority opposses whatever those right wingers want. Good luck in Switzerland so.
Yes, _Dubai_(not UAE) is a good example of a functioning multi cultural society - bear in mind UAE consists of 7 different Emirates, all very different places, independently governed. Hardly perfect, but it’s one of the best examples of multi cultural societies I’ve witnessed.
And you hardly have to be a right winger to like Switzerland - and I find it interesting you think direct democracy is a right wing virtue - wasn’t power to the people what the left used to fight for?
And what’s your best example of a multi cultural country?
That you did not see how low skilled labour in Dubai is treated, housed in ghettos, passports withheld and labor contracts sold, is a pitty. And advocating for Dubai style enforcement against "violant gangs", your point, is hardly something that is compatible with western democracy and freedom as written (in spirit it is getting erroded on a daily basis lately).
Germany is another example, e.g. Berlin, despute what media would make you believe.
Switzerland is, like most European countries, a nice place for qualified folks, preferably white. Poor non-whites, well, all.of a sudden things are less rosey. Still better then elsewhere, but place for improvement.
Mass migration from the middle east and africa so is not necessarily an unsolvable problem, Germany took loads of refugees, up to the point it anbaled the AfD and extreme right, but there were hardly any problems with it. Integration is lacking, but that is, as I said, a point for both, newcomers and those already there. If newcomers are basically marginalized, one doesn't have to wonder crime is a result. Or frustration (France shows this with their problems integrating 2-4 th generation people in their banlieues).
And power to the people, I am all for it. One has to be vigilant so that the means of handing power to the people are not abused by populists and extremists, and ultimately abolished. History has examples of how that happens, we should avoid allowing it again.
I worked closely with the laborers from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India for two years, installing heavy machinery.
In general, they are not badly treated at all. Their living conditions are closer to being in the army. Dubai has done a lot to stamp out bad actors. Taking the passport is now illegal (though it still sometimes happens). One foreman had saved up 250,000 Dirhams and intended to start and electrical contractor company back home in Pakistan.
People from Western Europe seem to think 99% of these guys are slaves - they are not. They go to Dubai to get some of that sweet oil money.
It if mass migration from the Middle East and Africa is not an unsolvable problem(just really really hard), why bother? What is the advantage?
Further, I don’t agree that there should be any limits what power the people has. I want 100% direct democracy(naturally with a guiding constitution, that can be changed)
So it's "either you agree with me or you're a bigot".
Calling Swedes hateful is a joke, they are the nicest and most tolerant people you will find. Leaving 0 middle ground and creating a dichotomy of either "on our side or a nazi" is precisely what is causing so much division in western societies.
These words mean nothing anymore, all "racist" means now is just someone who you don't agree with.
Additionally, you have elected federal politicians in the US calling people communists.
Better to give money to USA to buy one F22 and to complain about darkies being criminals, than to put money to education so that criminality isn't the only route out of poverty right? /s
And of course in Sweden the schools where the residents are poor get less money, aren't as good, and it's much more difficult for their students to be accepted into a university.
At least to international eyes.
God. If my grandparents saw what being a republican would become in thirty short years I don’t know if they’d be able to take it. Reagan republicans would probably shoot the lot of them.
How would that tarnish his name today?
I had a vague understanding that he had a bad reputation, but always assumed it came from more of an "anti-nuclear activist" angle (because he was responsible for making nuclear weapons real).
The fact that we didn't is good luck, but it could have gone different during many points in the cold war and then you and I wouldn't be able to discuss about this on here. But if you knew about Oppenheimer and still were alive you would probably not think highly of the man.
So it doesn't have to do with anti-nuclear (as in: against civil nuclear use) — Oppenheimer was just the prototypical smart guy that failed to predict the consequences of his own actions and by that nearly ended humanity. This makes him an ethically ambivalent figure, and that ambivalence has become a defining trait of the public image of Oppenheimer.
That's not my understanding. I don't think you have anti-nuclear activists that are totes fine nuclear weapons and just don't like powerplants. The activists who oppose civil nuclear use are a strict subset of a broader anti-nuclear activist set that includes nuclear disarmament.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement:
> The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies....Major anti-nuclear groups include Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Peace Action, Seneca Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. The initial objective of the movement was nuclear disarmament, though since the late 1960s opposition has included the use of nuclear power. Many anti-nuclear groups oppose both nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
Which is also a bit funny seeing as Oppenheimer was opposed to the H-bomb and the whole nuclear arms race.
Being labelled a commie is on a whole other scale of bad.
> It was such a shock to me to see that a committee of men (Oppenheimer, Compton, Tolman, Smyth, Urey, and Rabi) could present a whole lot of ideas, each one thinking of a new facet, while remembering what the other fella said, so that, at the end, the decision is made as to which idea was the best - summing it all up - without having to say it three times. These were very great men indeed.
He was considered the most brilliant theoreticist behind Dirac, Schroedinger, Bohr, Pauli and Heisenberg in Goettingen and early Berkeley years. But then he didn't push out that many papers as before, so he didn't win the Nobel as all his other colleagues, below him. He should have won it for the black hole paper at least, but that was too advanced and too theoretical for those folks then. Instead he was an extremely good teacher, manager and later politician, which was more important than advancing physics. E.g. Bethe and many of his students surpassed him in physics, and he was happy with delegation. This article mentions most of it, the book goes far deeper.
This. I am so glad Americans killed ~200k mostly Japanese civilians when Japan was already militarily crippled and Germany capitulated three months prior.
If you have not watched https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War then it provides an interesting point of view to counter the simplistic "the war was already over we only did it to scare the russians" viewpoint.
It is funny so, how many people still fail to see the targeted and indiscriminate bombing of civilians done during WW2 by the allies as the war crime it was. Heck, even the RAF bomber command addmitted that in internal memos.
I'd claim in modern history, on large enough scale only Germany went properly through this, and is still source of a lot of guilt in their population. Allied fire bombings of whole cities, turks doing Armenian genocide, Japanese atrocities in China, russians with whatever they did anywhere in past 50 years etc... I see rather ignorance and lies and desperate attempts to look the other way rather than anything else.
Don't forget Chinese atrocities in China.
Grafitti/street art seems to be encouraged as an emotional and creative outlet. Plenty of world class free museums, and most others are rather cheap (8-10 euros) compared to other locations in Europe.
"Never again" is still a big part of the culture. The rise of the Nazis is a common theme at school, not only in history lessons, but also others ("analyze this speech's rhetoric").
I suppose as a German it feels natural to be able to criticize what the people in your country have done before yourself and some patterns are fairly easy to spot. It's sometimes hard to understand why it can be so difficult for others.
My partner on this trip is a Brazilian (from Sao Paolo) who has been living in Paris for the past decade. She touched on the fairly complex history of that country and how someone like Bolsonaro could be popular. The country is large with very different regions, each with their own capital, etc, which leads to a sort of isolation in ways. Yet their supreme court was still able to see fit to punish claims of election fraud that the US is incapable of doing.
Is it true that US whistleblowers should consider getting to Berlin before leaking their information as German laws on speech would help protect them? For example wouldn’t Assange and Snowden have been much better off if they had?
Anti-whistleblower/leaker sentiment has always been a strong force in every gov’t - only being physically in the jurisdiction of the ‘enemy’ is decent protection, and even then assassinations happen.
Governemt criticism and whistleblowing is generally regarded more highly. As far as I can tell Snowden is well respected and the idea of granting him asylum is fairly popular (it almost happened, but the US's pressure is strong).
The laws in place aren't as good as you'd hope, though. The powers that be are, for some reason, not very happy with the idea of it becoming easier to expose their misbehavior, so protections for whistleblowers are not all that great. There was a recent attempt to pass a law that improves these protections, but it got watered down quite far.
But now the war has lasted for nearly four years. Despite the best that has been done by everyone – the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of our servants of the state, and the devoted service of our one hundred million people – the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest.
Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.
Japan lost the war in the Pacific by then (the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage).
The USSR entered war, but had yet to actively fight imperial Japan (while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest). Also, Germany had lost, and most of the troops and resources bound in Europe could be redeployed now.
Re atomic bombs: The enemy so was only the US (in practical terms, the other allies did not play a major role, except the fighting in India that Japan had already lost a year prior), and yes, the atomic bombs were devastating.
But Hihoroto himself said, it was much more than just the two atomic bombs being dropped.
But hey, if ypu need to justify the use of WMDs against civilians, every excuse is a good one I guess.
Your claim Sean as a Nazi apologist to discredit him literally are repeat soviet propaganda lines. In fact Putin recently made all of these arguments again to justify his invasion of Ukraine - I trust you see the irony.
War is hell - and atomic war is hell. War isn’t justifiable, and yet war is part of human nature. This is something that Historians have studied since there were historians. Ignore that research at your peril. The WW2 and modern conflict historians have done just that.
Also, I didn't say Stalin's War is Nazi apologist BS, just that it seems borderline to some BS that was spread right after the war. Which makes sense, since it was the early days of the Cold War.
Churchil was never in favor of a seperate peace, nor someone else in the Allied camp. Every declaration made that extremely clear. Claiming otherwise is delusional.
You are glossing over this as if it means nothing. The "when" is incredibly important during an active war. Would the "when" be after an American invasion? Taking Okinawa killed 12,500 Americans, 77,000 Japanese military, and at least 100,000 Japanese civilians. That was less than 2 months before the dropping of the atomic bombs. If didn't Japan surrender then, how many more of those battles would it have taken to produce the "when" of a Japanese surrender? How many battles on the Russian side in Manchuria would it have taken? Not only had Japan never surrendered in it's entire 2,000 year plus history, no military unit had surrendered during the entire war. There was organized coup attempted literally the night before the surrender was broadcast and Prime Minister Suzuki, who had survived a different assassination attempt 9 years earlier, only escaped by minutes. Prime Ministers that were not ultranationalist enough had been assassinated in 1921 and 1930, with two former Prime Ministers dying during another coup attempt in 1936.
The casual confidence in the outcome of the war is so disconnected from reality that it is laughable. Japanese political surrender, and that surrender being followed by the military was not in any way, some sort of forgone conclusion.
And yes, tze end of WW2 was predictable in mid 1944, no doubt about that in any shape or form. The details were up for grabs, sure, the overall outcome was not.
First, convenient to ignore the 100,000 civilian deaths. Second, what you are saying is the war was basically won*
*After hundreds of thousands of additional military deaths fighting to completely dismantle Japan.
>The details were up for grabs
Again, these "details" are hundreds of thousands to millions of deaths. You are acting like death from atomic bombs are the only deaths that matter, so people that die during battle or millions of deaths from starvation from a blockade[1] are fine. This is just so divorced from reality I don't even understand what you are trying to say. Yeah, we could have just killed millions Japanese people with a blockade or kill 100,000 Americans and a million Japanese during an invasion. Atomic weapons were totally unneeded.
[1]https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/victory-in-ja...
To put that in perspective, the Civil War ended 80 years prior to that. We are almost as far removed from WWII as WWII is from the Civil War. While there are still people alive today who were alive during WWII, we're talking about people like Joe Biden, who is 80, who was 3 when it ended.
It if very likely that no one who served is still alive. Our fathers and grandfathers are the ones who had fathers and grandfathers serve.
All of our information about World War II and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is from stuff written about it. Something told to someone who then told it to us. So of course there's a disconnect.
You are sticking to the term "militarily crippled" but is it justified? Yes, Japan had lost the war by that point. But crippled implies that they could not fight back, or inflict losses on an invading force. There is no evidence to suggest that.
If the two bombs had not been used, when would the war have ended and how many lives would it have cost on both sides before it was over? More or less than 200 000? Would that have been better or worse morally?
Those are difficult questions. I don't claim to have good answers to them, but I would not glibly dismiss them with sarcasm.
> Lesson #5: Proportionality should be a guideline in war.
> McNamara talks about the proportions of cities destroyed in Japan by the US before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, comparing the destroyed Japanese cities to similarly-sized cities in the US: Tokyo, roughly the size of New York City, was 51% destroyed; Toyama, the size of Chattanooga, was 99% destroyed; Nagoya, the size of Los Angeles, was 40% destroyed; Osaka, the size of Chicago, was 35% destroyed; Kobe, the size of Baltimore, was 55% destroyed; etc. He says LeMay once said that, had the United States lost the war, they would have been tried for war crimes, and agrees with this assessment.
I'm not sure I would class that as 'heavily under dispute'.
Certainly the death toll would have been higher without the two bombs. By what measure would you claim that there is no dispute that Japan was "militarily crippled"? There is difference between losing a war and being unable to mount a punishing defense.
(Japan was not militarily crippled, they actually had far more forces then the United States anticipated in the home islands. Japan was also pretty much completely disconnected from Germany even before Germany fell)
The ethics of strategic bombing in general and nuclear bombing in particular are rightly debated, but you should bring better facts and understanding when touching such an incandescent topic.
- Option 1: Drop nuclear bombs on Japan, kill 200 000 people, end the war right there.
- Option 2: Continue as is and let 400 000 people die every month.
There's an argument that Japan was ready to surrender. When? In a month? Two? Three?
Which one do you choose?
I would also argue that the use of those bombs saved many more lives by teaching the world a lesson about the horror of nuclear weapons. Its very possible that nuclear weapons would have been used in future conflicts when they would have been much more prevalent had it not been for the example set in WWII.
Japan didn’t even surrender after the first one! It took two to convince them it wasn’t a one-time fluke and that it was real and could be repeated.
I think it is a fact of life that atrocities happen during war. Just admit it and say that this was one of them. Do not give me the "This was for the betterment of the world" BS.
No need to debate ethics. Shooting someone with a gun, killing them in a concentration camp, using an atomic bomb on them, bayoneting them. Just admit they are all bad. All sides are the same and it is BS for the US or Nazis or Imperial Japan or anyone to say anything was "for the betterment of the world".
How is that the Japanese's fault? The US invaded.
Americans always justify the genocide by saying "we had to bomb them otherwise we would have killed more of them by conventional means"... Well maybe don't kill them?
Japan knew it was beaten, but Roosevelt insisted on unconditional surrender. A negotiated peace would have been better for everyone especially since the Americans kept the emperor, which was the principal condition the Japanese wanted.
Hell, even when the Japanese emperor finally tried to surrender, his own military cabinet tried to stop him.
It’s like hitler in his bunker. He only finally gave up when essentially everyone else was dead and/or the fight was completely, literally, impossible.
There was a similar thread were people were talking about Alan Turings running times, and concluding that they are worthless compared to modern-day Olympic athletes. I mean, if that's really the thing you want to point out about Alan Turing, to me that just demonstrates that you have some issues.
And we live in internet scale now. Everyone is comparing because there is nothing else to do.
There are a few reasons Oppenheimer is remembered today, including reasons having to do with physics. Unlike most physicists from 1900-1950.
It's so spectacular that it's put on 70 mm film 70 years later.
It seems to me that people forget that the "picking" part is what it's all about: actually doing the work.
> because it was all just "ripe for picking" (or any new tech or theory really was all ripe for picking at the time that it was picked).
Yea, that kind of is the point. General relativity came out of nowhere and was executed on at the same time. SpaceX is irrelevant to discussing achievements in physics.
Newton was a genius, but calculus isn't solely his. A lot of modern calculus is closer to Leibnitz's formulation rather than Newton's, e.g. notation [0].
We use Newton's insights into the applications of the Calculus to other sciences and we use Leibniz's artful way of capturing the Calculus to symbols on paper (and chalkboards).
There's a power of "dualism" in mathematics that sometimes you don't know that you have the right math until you've got two (or more views of it), enough to say "these lenses really do show the same thing".
I find it interesting to spot such dualisms, and especially how many of them were contemporary mathematicians working at some remove or another (countries or an ocean apart). From a computing perspective that's always been fascinating to me about the Church-Turing Theorem (which is always a relevant tangent on HN). Most people ignore Alonso Church's contributions and just call it the Turing Theorem, but the Theorem itself is about dualism (that all formulations we found of computation themselves are dual and can be translated or emulated between each other) and doesn't exist if it weren't for Church and Turing coexisting and conversing. (Plus, it has been said that it was Church that originally proposed the math to prove the dualism between their work and it was a sequence of correspondence that Church originated.)
That is no disrespect to Alan Turing, of course, to include Church in that theorem name and respect the dualism of their contemporaneous work. I think that balance looks a lot like Newton versus Leibniz: Turing knew the practical applications of computing and was starting from a place of having built them (though classified at the time) and Church was working from pure principles and theory in mathematics (the Lambda Calculus). We greatly benefit from both having worked on the same ideas as duals of each other, and we greatly benefit that their correspondence involved an ocean in between them so that they also weren't entirely in the same mindspace. We use a lot of Turing's applied practical synthesis of computing and we rely on a lot of things from Church's notations or things derived from it (including the Y Combinator for which this site's domain name refers).
Modern computing owes a lot to the dualism of Turing and Church. Modern Calculus owes a lot to the dualism of Newton and Leibniz. I find that incredibly interesting and I appreciate that about the mathematics of both things.
Obviously his work is based on the result of others, you could make that claim for 100% of scientists and mathematicians.
Not only was relativity a mind blowing thing that he clearly saw through, there's the massive leap to general relativity, then there's the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, the mass energy equivalence, Bose-Einstein condensate, the cosmological constant and even his work on quantum entanglement. Any of which would make a physicist very famous. For one single person to come up with so many ideas, is almost unbelievable.
Einstein ticks quite a few of the boxes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_mirabilis_papers
(General relativity was 1915.)
Plenty of other physicists were contemporaries of Einstein and did not see what he saw.
I suspect also that had Einstein instead lived in this modern age where, at least to this layman physics progress appears to be floundering, he too would have been struggling to stitch all the pieces together into some semblance of a whole.
Astonishing!
Einstein's genius was the General Theory of Relativity. That was truly original and revolutionary thought, the likes of which we only see every few hundred years.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_g...
Who says that doesn't take super-genius?
I'm not disagreeing that he was a genius, only that genius is a very ill-defined term.
More importantly Einstein's peers thought he was above them all.
Quoting Eugene Wigner who know both Einstein and Von Neumann.
"I have known a great many intelligent people in my life. I knew Planck, von Laue and Heisenberg. Paul Dirac was my brother in law; Leo Szilard and Edward Teller have been among my closest friends; and Albert Einstein was a good friend, too. But none of them had a mind as quick and acute as Jancsi (John) von Neumann. I have often remarked this in the presence of those men and no one ever disputed. But Einstein's understanding was deeper even than von Neumann's. His mind was both more penetrating and more original than von Neumann's. And that is a very remarkable statement. Einstein took an extraordinary pleasure in invention. Two of his greatest inventions are the Special and General Theories of Relativity; and for all of Jancsi's brilliance, he never produced anything as original."
It's been pointed out to me a few times that a lot of big advances in the natural sciences are made by people early in their careers who aren't very old. Perhaps it's easier to accept something "weird" and follow such a thought when you're not two-three decades invested in an old paradigm.
> I have known a great many intelligent people in my life. I knew Planck, von Laue and Heisenberg. Paul Dirac was my brother in law; Leo Szilard and Edward Teller have been among my closest friends; and Albert Einstein was a good friend, too. But none of them had a mind as quick and acute as Jancsi (John) von Neumann. I have often remarked this in the presence of those men and no one ever disputed. But Einstein's understanding was deeper even than von Neumann's. His mind was both more penetrating and more original than von Neumann's. And that is a very remarkable statement. Einstein took an extraordinary pleasure in invention. Two of his greatest inventions are the Special and General Theories of Relativity; and for all of Jancsi's brilliance, he never produced anything as original.
What Einstein had was a deep curiosity, damn near super-human persistence, and some measure of an inventor's creativity. Even in mundane interactions, his curiosity stood out.
I don't think they are. Turing was a runner. He ran in the 2:40s for the marathon, which is a reasonably good amateur time even today, and was a few places away from making the British Olympic team.
(It's also ironic that you (understandably) refer to Bannister by his mile - he himself would rather have been remembered for his achievements in neurology.)
It also explains few of the reasons: lack of focus, timing, different scientific culture.
I'm not exactly understanding why so many people are taking the offense either.
The interviewer asks a very straight forward question multiple times: help the reader how does Oppenheimer ranks in his skills and contributions to other physicists of that era and it does just that.
This is not to say everyone is equal let's all sing kumbaya but if we're discussing classical composers do we really need to rank someone vs Mozart/Bach/Beethoven? It rarely adds anything.
Einstein was probably the most visionary scientist of the whole century at making huge steps forward in several key areas. John von Neumann made landmark achievements across pure maths, physics, engineering, computer science and economics.
To say that a basketball player is not comparable to Larry Bird or to Michael Jordan is no disparagement.
No one is Mozart. All we can control is our disposition and the work ethic of Amadeus' Salieri is worth striving for.
However the notion that Oppenheimer and Salieri were mediocrities because they weren't the best is a bit insulting. If those highly capable and powerful figures in history aren't worth dignity then what about the 99.9% of people that are below their level? Everyone deserves dignity.
I don't understand how's that dishonest and ignorant.
If you said Carmelo Anthony was no Michael Jordan are you being lazy, dishonest and ignorant?
Just movie is coming... Remember 2012 ? Same. Money.
But the book compares Oppy’s contemporaries like Hans Beta to Oppy and reaches the same “no Einstein” conclusion. But my read was that that wasn’t a bad thing, Oppy was extremely capable in physics, but his real natural talent was in bringing out the true insights from others rather than making those insights himself directly, and was otherworldly good at coordination leadership. Which is why he led the Los Alamos project.
I don’t think I view “no Einstein” as a dig, but rather a factual truth presented in the best biography of the man and meant to highlight his world beating talent.
Hell no.
-most of the groupwork was laid by Poincaré
-Einstein's wife helped him a lot (and wasn't properly credited)
-Despite being a supposed genius, Einstein didn't "get" quantum mechanics.
Of course, his later years did not live up to this stellar record - he both made mistakes and was less productive. But how could they?
Joseph Heller was challenged by a journalist in later years that "he hadn't written anything as good as Catch-22 recently". He replied "No. But who has?"
He kept up with the math and the experiments, but took a contrary view on the interpretation. As an interesting side note, the Copenhagen interpretation which was emerging around that time is now disfavored by the wider physics community (except as a calculation tool).
Einstein was one of the pioneers in Quantum Mechanics, making foundational contributions to the understanding of the quantum nature of light (the photoelectric effect and stimulated emission). Even in his criticism of certain elements of Quantum Mechanics, he was incredibly perceptive. The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox is a really difficult problem, which gets to the heart of the apparent strangeness of Quantum Mechanics.[0]
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Podolsky%E2%8...
The American taste for comic book superheroes makes such stories compelling.
As a reminder, even Einstein was dismissed as an incompetent quack by his colleagues in Germany when he unveiled relativity, so lack of respect for one another has always been a thing for our species.
Related: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/heuristics-that-almost...
People have innate ability but achieve different outcomes based on where when and how they come of age. The problem with these trains of thought is he wasn’t born in 1980 or 1580. At that time, Einstein was the guy who was able to figure out how to connect a bunch of dots and communicate those ideas and concepts to the world.
Oppenheimer may or may not have had the physics genius of Einstein - but he was certainly able to build a massive project team, execute on his project and release a new force. I’d venture to guess Einstein wouldn’t be suited to that work.
Landau kept a list of names of physicists which he ranked on a logarithmic scale of productivity ranging from 0 to 5. The highest ranking, 0, was assigned to Isaac Newton. Albert Einstein was ranked 0.5. A rank of 1 was awarded to the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Satyendra Nath Bose, Paul Dirac and Erwin Schrödinger, and others, while members of rank of 5 were deemed "pathologists". Landau ranked himself as a 2.5 but later promoted to a 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N44DZJW4LSw&list=PLVV0r6CmEs...
Einstein was famously skeptical and dogmatic about a lot of his own "landmark results", i.e. "God doesn't play dice with the universe", and Feynman was a massive attention ...attractor.
He's hardly in bad company if those are the worst criticisms.
Gell-Mann settled scores with Feynman and several others on his own Web of Stories session.
I'm not saying he's wrong - but within 30 seconds of the start of your clip Dyson also criticizes Niels Bohr, Max Born, Schrodinger, and Heisenburg in the same breath as Oppenheimer.
Parsing out exactly how much to take seriously, and how much is just the outcome of rivalry between a bunch of brilliant people with very strong beliefs, strong personalities, strong egos and the "eccentricity" that often comes with brilliance, being forced to live with each other for years - is a bit difficult.
I've seen Gell-Mann's interview too, and I don't find what he said about Feynman very surprising, but at the same time I wouldn't be surprised if others had similar but different complaints about him.
That's the context where many of his most famous comments come from. He was not skeptical of his own results or views, but of others' interpretations. It's the same for "Spooky action at a distance." Einstein had a deeply held belief that the universe was causal and logical, which he held to his death. Incidentally, the probabilistic explanation, "The Copenhagen Interpretation", ultimately 'won.'
It's one of the best examples of why equating science with consensus is such an odd view. The greatest physicist of all time held a fringe view on the very topic that he was 'the father' of. His arguing endlessly in support of his view, contrary to the consensus, only made for better science for all. To say nothing of some of the most amazing debates in history, with Einstein and Bohr having numerous live public debates over many years, constantly aiming to one-up each other.
The debates are ongoing and "Copenhagen" (which really isn't a unified and coherent view anyway) is currently losing (among physicists, it will take long to take over in more established areas such as school education or media).
Death, as often as not, saves us from old modes of thinking. If we ever invent immortality, we are in big trouble. That won’t be the last thing we invent, but it will precede the last thing by no more than twenty years. Thirty at the outside.
Head of the program that implemented a conceptual design, yes, no question.
> he was the conceptual designer for the bomb itself.
Very questionable.
It took multiple attempts by the MAUD committee to convince both US DoD and US physicists that an atomic bomb was even possible let alone feasible (ie practical to build (just) and affordable (just)).
After ignoring several letters, including one from Einstein, it took a personal visit from the Australian physicist Mark Oliphant to campaign at the DoD and to then walk Oppenheimer through the Frisch–Peierls memorandum (students of Oliphant) and convince Oppenheimer to run the calculations on a compressed spherical ball of uranium isotopes (seperated by a process developed by Oliphant) himself.
It's a rarely taught and oft forgotten piece of nuclear history that the impetus and conceptual design for the Manhatten project originated from non US citizens outside of the USofA.
Is it really forgotten? It's pretty well known that Operation Paperclip shoveled loads of foreign scientists into the USA. Hans Bethe, the Teller-Ulam design etc. all created by immigrants. The original a-bomb memorandum was all foreign.
Much of the USA's present technical superiority is due to the massive brain drain during WW2, I think most reasonably informed folks understand that the USA is largely a country of immigrants united by ideals under one banner, not a homogeneous people group.
I'd say rarely taught in the USofA - I dare say a vox pop person on the street interview might struggle to find someone that can name three countries starting with the letter U let alone name 5 Manhatten project nuclear scientists (that haven't had recent big budget movies made about them).
> It's pretty well known that Operation Paperclip shoveled loads of foreign scientists into the USA
Case in point really
* A: I mention that it's relatively unknown that during WWII before the start of the Manhatten project the MAUD committe spelled out that an atomic weapon was feasible and game planned a design.
* B: You respond that it's actually really well known that after WWII scientists flooded into the USofA from Europe (and a number from Nazi rocket and other projects).
It's not clear how B bears on A.
My assumption is that your frequent misspelling of "Manhattan" and usage of the term "USofA" is that you're not a US citizen. So as a US citizen, I wanted to encourage you that most of us with a decent high school education do consciously/subconsciously understand that this whole country is based on immigration, and much of our WW2 STEM advancements were achieved by the sweat and blood of immigrants and foreigners (at that time).
US education has trouble teaching about the environments/state-of-affairs/'climate' that lead to a historical event; they tend to focus on the event itself almost primarily.
So, while I might easily give you 5 'Manhattan-project' associated scientist names from my US education -- many people could -- I do have trouble recounting the specific discoveries/test/discussions/meetings/collaborations/etc that lead up to each small accomplishment that was then later poured into the Manhattan Project -- and I think that that's understandable; a public education is incomplete -- too much stuff needs to be done, and the student has a small expectation to further their own studies and complete the picture.
It's also a matter of regional public education and the biases present. Japanese education tends to minimize the scientific achievement of the Manhattan Project; American text-books tend to minimize our loss in Vietnam -- it would be entirely unsurprising to me if your local regional education system focused on the collaboration and contribution to the (very-early) not-Manhattan Project if it represents a facet of local culture that provides pride in the accomplishment.
American culture is pretty obviously proud of the Manhattan Project results, so we hear more about our personal contributions than we hear about other groups roles; it seems perfectly obvious to me -- and it seems like exactly the same scenario abroad; pride in the local accomplishments that contributed to The Bomb.
> Operation Paperclip
Not Austrian. The one with the kangaroos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michell
Until the first experimental evidence for black holes, none of the continuously improving theories about them were taken seriously, because they were based on extrapolations of the known physics laws outside their known domain of validity, and in physics extrapolations may always fail.
There is a path dependence that makes it almost impossible to compare individuals that worked in different eras. This is hinted at by the famous "standing on shoulders of giants" quote of Newton and is further complemented by something I believe Lev Landau has expressed using the phrase "all the brides are taken" (he felt there weren't big enough problems for him to have a chance to measure against the "greats)"
There is one and only Universe, the understanding of which by humans is a single historical trajectory. There is no possibility to control for any variable and repeat the experiment.
Would the absence of the specific "Newton" individual delay the process of understanding the physical works? by how much? A few years, decades, centuries? Taking into account that ideas and possibilities tend to "float" in the environment of a particular era but also the presence of non-linear loops such as: influential scientists that get recognized early on can stall further development during their own lifetime!
Making the best of a risky task would require that we only compare apples with apples, individuals of a particular era and operating in the same information environment. So in this instance, ranking Oppenheimer against individuals of his generation only.
Having said all that, imho there is really nobody like Einstein. Ever since the 18th century most physics is in a sense "programmatic". There is a defined mental framework that people apply repeatedly to an ever growing range of accessible or relevant domains. Einstein's journey created an entire new paradigm (the fabric on which physics plays out is itself physics) and one we still have not fully understood.
The most exciting possibility is that somebody might be able to piece together that growing observational hints from cosmology and the various puzzles of black holes to take that paradigm to the next stage.
Even among many other extremely brilliant minds he was recognized for being exceptional. Some of the quotes from other scientists in the Wikipedia link below really hammer home his particularly, peculiarly unique brilliance. I've never seen Oppenheimer described this way.
To pick him apart and view him only through the lens of his physics research is very myopic, equivalent to picking apart whether Bill Gates was a great programmer.
Freund, Peter (2007) A Passion For Discovery, World Scientific Publishing Company. Available from: http://www.amazon.com/Passion-For-Discovery-Peter-Freund/dp/...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born–Oppenheimer_approximation [1] https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k15386r/f475.item - page 457
As a layman I find it hard to parse the difference from “no Einstein” but still doing “Nobel-level” work.
The interview didn’t really help explain it.
Special + general relativity
Microscopic definition of Brownian motion
Photoelectric effect
Mass-energy equivalence
Another bit: at the time Einstein worked on Brownian motion the theory of atoms was still not entirely accepted by everyone. His worked helped settle the matter.
The matter of the existence of the atoms has become pretty much settled in 1865, when Johann Josef Loschmidt was the first who determined the size and mass of the atoms, and then his results were well used by others, like Maxwell and Stoney (who determined the electric charge of the atoms).
Nevertheless, the improved theory due to Einstein has lead to more precise results about the atom properties.
This is also one of few of his works, together with the general relativity theory that he published around the same time during WWI, where he introduced new mathematical relationships between physical quantities, instead of just giving new interpretations to relationships already found by others.
The world is run by smart people, built on a foundation of knowledge creating by generations of the greatest minds that make smart people look normal.
Some smart people are involved in running the world. But we also have plenty of less gifted people in charge.
There are smart people working at SpaceX today. But they are walking on the shoulders of giants like Aryabhata, Newton or Einstein.
I want to be careful though. As some sibling comments mention, these discoveries of these great people were indeed "in the air" of their time. They will have happened. But it would have taken many more great scientists and more time.
For instance, I believe there are incredibly deep insights today derived from the mixture of quantum mechanics and information science. More deep insights are imminent and inevitable. But there is hardly one towering figure to do them all in one sweeping motion the way Einstein or Newton or Euclid did (to name a few easy examples).
For me there are only three Scientists who could be called as truly "tectonic inducing" in the history of Modern Science. In order of ranking;
1) Isaac Newton.
2) James Clerk Maxwell.
3) Albert Einstein.
It goes really deep in terms of what it affects in physics.
No, he didn't. There's a reason we are talking about the Lorentz transformation, not the Einstein transformation.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lorentz_transformat...
> In physics, analogous transformations have been introduced by Voigt (1887) related to an incompressible medium, and by Heaviside (1888), Thomson (1889), Searle (1896) and Lorentz (1892, 1895) who analyzed Maxwell's equations. They were completed by Larmor (1897, 1900) and Lorentz (1899, 1904), and brought into their modern form by Poincaré (1905) who gave the transformation the name of Lorentz.[3] Eventually, Einstein (1905) showed in his development of special relativity that the transformations follow from the principle of relativity and constant light speed alone by modifying the traditional concepts of space and time, without requiring a mechanical aether in contradistinction to Lorentz and Poincaré.[4] Minkowski (1907–1908) used them to argue that space and time are inseparably connected as spacetime.
Einstein did great work, no doubt. But his work was still a product of his time, and was 'in the air'. If it hadn't been for Einstein, other people would have made similar discoveries soon. They were already in the process, after all.
However I suspect, it would have probably taken several great scientists and a few more years.
Thanks for the rabbit hole!
But that for me is really the point. Even if Lorentz had the math right, he didn't have the explanation, which Einstein delivered. And that's the valuable part in science. Having a model that explains the world better than previous models.
Special relativity was being worked on by several people contemporaneously. The fact that it is called "Lorentz Contraction" should tell you that other people were working on it.
> Main interests
> Mathematics, physics, geology, medicine, biology, embryology, epidemiology, veterinary medicine, paleontology, psychology, engineering, linguistics, philology, sociology, metaphysics, ethics, economics, diplomacy, history, politics, music theory, poetry, logic, theodicy, universal language, universal science
> Notable ideas
> Algebraic logic, Binary code, Calculus, Differential equations, Mathesis universalis, Monads, Best of all possible worlds, Pre-established harmony, Identity of indiscernibles, Mathematical matrix, Mathematical function, Newton–Leibniz axiom, Leibniz's notation, Leibniz integral rule, Integral symbol, Leibniz harmonic triangle, Leibniz's test, Leibniz formula for π, Leibniz formula for determinants, Fractional derivative, Chain rule, Quotient rule, Product rule, Leibniz wheel, Leibniz's gap, Algebra of concepts, Vis viva (principle of conservation of energy), Principle of least action, Salva veritate, Stepped reckoner, Symbolic logic/Boolean algebra, Semiotics, Analysis situs, Principle of sufficient reason, Law of continuity, Transcendental law of homogeneity, Ars combinatoria (alphabet of human thought), Characteristica universalis, Calculus ratiocinator, Compossibility, Partial fraction decomposition, Protogaea, Problem of why there is anything at all, Pluralistic idealism, Metaphysical dynamism, Relationism, Apperception, A priori/a posteriori distinction, Deontic logic, Well-founded phenomenon
Both Leibniz and Newton did a lot of interesting things, with only some (but very notable!) overlap.
I particularly like Leibniz's calculator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepped_reckoner and Newton's telescope.
I wouldn't quite say 'anyone else'. There's always John von Neumann.
Wigner may have said it best: "Einstein's understanding was deeper even than von Neumann's. His mind was both more penetrating and more original than von Neumann's. And that is a very remarkable statement."
I guess which one you want to put on a higher pedestal depends on various judgement calls.
And then there are people like Gauss and Euler, who lie so far beyond all comparison, it boggles the mind.
> Well, he was no Einstein. And he’s not even up to the level of Heisenberg, Pauli, Schrödinger, Dirac, the leaders of the quantum revolution of the 1920s. One of the reasons for this was his birth date. He was born in 1904, so he was 3 years younger than Heisenberg, 4 years younger than Pauli. Those few years were enough to place him in the second wave of the quantum revolution and behind the main wave of discovery, in what [philosopher of science] Thomas Kuhn called the “mopping-up operation,” applications of the new theory.
Edit: not saying I agree or not
There is only one physicist who moreorless created half of our contemporary understanding of physics
I mean, if you have a great developer who's even better as a manager because he has both the ability to manage and understand technical problems, is it an offense to say that "he wasn't John Carmack?".
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=J._Robert_Oppenhe...
So at the time, practically all US physicist were interested in building actual stuffs, and not working on theoritical models/math equations?
You didn't quote the immediately following:
[whereas European theorists were pursuing new concepts]
It was European (and Australian and New Zealand) physicists that thought of something new, and worked out the detailas, and developed the means of seperation.
These were the things that were vital to the creation of an atomic bomb .. along with a lot of mining and processing and further refining and isotopic seperation.
The problem with that approach is: It inevitably leads to stagnation.
If all I do is build practical stuff from what exists, I will get very big, very efficient, very impressive steam engines.
But I will never arrive at an internal combustion engine.
Because that requires exploring another path that, in the beginning, and probably for quite some time, will be less efficient compared to my best steam engines.