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Comment by iancmceachern | Hacker News Reader

I came here to say this. The bombs worked, so I'd say he's a pretty darn good physicist... did it really need saying?

The interviewed article doesn't imply that he wasn't a good physicist, it says that his contributions aren't comparable to the kind of geniuses like Einstein or Johnny Von Neumann.

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.

I don't know about taking offence but there's something grating about the tendency to try and "rank" everything (either explicitly or implicitly) - which underpins so much internet content. Such discussions always feel like those "who would win in a fight" conversations you may have had as a kid.

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.

I understand that too, but you also need to understand that the public for such articles are the people that wonder exactly how does Oppenheimer ranks among the scientists of his era.

There are (in that era) no other geniuses 'like' Einstein or von Neumann.

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.

Larry Bird is probably the real Einstein equivalent because he was great as a college player, NBA player, head coach, and team executive. Oppenheimer may not have been the genius of Einstein or von Neumann, but there's no telling that either of those guys would have had the ability to drive the kind of program management results that Oppenheimer did, right? Competence and capability span domains, it's not always productive to isolate one's capability within a single "vertical" of achievement.

The author is due for a rewatch of Amadeus.

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.

Well Amadeus is complete fiction so I wouldn't base anything from history on that.

I'm not basing anything on history from it. I'm talking about how we live our lives.

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