would someone like John Von Neumann be intellectually inferior

[Anonymous No.11343017]

to your average college philosophy student

it seems like he was incapable of understanding philosophy or anything of abstraction and was able to think only concretely

[Anonymous No.11343020]

>>11343017
show me a modern philosopher who has objectively had as profound an effect on the modern world as jew von noyman

weak bait

[Anonymous No.11343024]

>>11343017

it's possible he had tunnel vision, might be common amongst the greats

[Anonymous No.11343050]

>>11343024
This. Many gifted mathematical minds are very naive about human affairs. It’s not as though they don’t have the ability to be world-changing in the arts and humanities, it’s just that they are very narrowly focused.

BTW, I think I heard JBPtalking about this phenomenon. Typically, geniuses are driven by complete mastery over their field of study or their particular focus and tend on average not to broaden their understanding unless and until they feel they’ve succeeded in some measure of mastery. Just a thought.

[Anonymous No.11343051]

He was just a savant autist but with rockets instead of trains

[Anonymous No.11343070]

Some people are good at some things but not so good at others. More news at 11.

[Anonymous No.11343073]

>>11343020
>material effects determine the genius of a person
absolute cobbler ideology

[Anonymous No.11343084]

>>11343024
worth noting that within the field of math his results were tremendously broad and diverse

> architect of computer engineering
> modern physics
> architect of functional analysis

[Anonymous No.11343113]

>>11343017
Yes, anon. You're smarter than Von Neumann because you're enrolled as a philosophy student.

[Anonymous No.11343200]

>>11343017
Ffs I suck at math and science but can recognize a genius when I see one. No, he’s not intellectually inferior to some stupid undergrad. Just because you like philosophy more doesn’t mean you don’t have to disparage this man’s genius, it’s this immature attitude which makes people in STEM make fun of people in the humanities. Think how you feel when you hear pretentious STEMtards asking, “is Plato that smart compared to the average undergrad physics student? It seems like the undergrad physics student knows more concrete stuff about reality than Plato, who was only capable of thinking abstractly and didn’t contribute to our modern understanding of the world.” Abstract and concrete thinking should both be treasured parts of the intellectual heritage and capacities of humanity.

[Anonymous No.11343240]

>trying to compare an average student's intelligence against fucking Von Neumann of all people, who is arguably one of the most intelligent men in history
Anyone who would say "yes" to your question is deluded to no return

[Anonymous No.11343260]

>If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at five o' clock, I say why not one o' clock?

[Anonymous No.11343284]

>>11343017
>Implying pure math isn't abstract

That's completely retarded. Von Neumann was quite capable of thinking as abstractly as possible. That being said, he is an intellectual faggot (even though he's admittedly smarter than me) for completely disregarding philosophy, and he was a morally detestable person who wanted to nuke Russia as well.

[Anonymous No.11343286]

>>11343050
But von Neumann was a huge socialite and party-er

he was also a notoriously bad driver due to the fact that he would read while behind the wheel

[Anonymous No.11343298]

>>11343017
>Von Neumann
>incapable of abstract thought

Am I missing something?

[Anonymous No.11343311]

>>11343050
That's not really true though, at the very least geniuses have to be well versed in several different scientific fields, if not metaphysics per se. If you don't broaden you can't see your field from the outside and will end up like those poor autistic suckers doing M theory or particle physics. The key, afaik, is to pursue other people's intuitions and math only as far as it is useful (probably not far beyond PhD level coursework), and then break off your own branch of the knowledge chain, rather than following it all the way to mind boggling equations that are just assumptions upon assumptions mixed up with more assumptions and then ran through two dozen computer simulations.

[Anonymous No.11343759]

>>11343017
>mathematician
>incapable of abstraction
Pure mathematics is probably the most abstract thing a human can engage itself in

[Anonymous No.11343804]

No.

God fucking no.

John Von Neumann is literally the best the human race had to offer that generation. Just because he wasn't tuned for philosophy doesn't mean he wasn't an intellectual powerhouse. That guy scared the FUCK out of high-caliber intellectuals with his abilities.

[Anonymous No.11343808]

>>11343759
Metaphysics in philosophy is as abstract as it gets. Math at least has common definitions and models that people can agree on. Most of math is the application of memory, whereas philosophy seems to go beyond our perceptions, which is why it’s so hard to solve.

[Anonymous No.11343826]

Von neumann's intuition was godlike
Philosophy or not, the man was an undeniable genius and no philosopher born in the last 100 years can compare

[Anonymous No.11343865]

>>11343051
>He was just a savant autist but with rockets instead of trains
He quoted Faust in German from memory on his deathbed, so that's bogus.

Supposedly he was very afraid to die though:

>"Of this deathbed conversion, Morgenstern told Heims, 'He was of course completely agnostic all his life, and then he suddenly turned Catholic—it doesn't agree with anything whatsoever in his attitude, outlook and thinking when he was healthy.' The conversion did not give von Neumann much peace. Until the end he remained terrified of death, Strittmatter recalled."

What have you done with your life if you have no peace of mind when its about to end?

[Anonymous No.11343873]

>>11343808
its more like metaphysics is bullshit

[Anonymous No.11343880]

>>11343804
I'd go so far to say as the guy has a serious claim to being the smartest man who ever lived. His mental abilities were incredible and his list of achievements is undeniable. He was almost certainly on the spectrum, but the guy was a legitimate genius.

[Anonymous No.11343883]

>>11343865
>peace of mind
overated

[Anonymous No.11343885]

>>11343865
I'd like to see you react with more dignity when you realize you spent a big chunk of your life shitposting on 4chan instead of doing anything constructive

[Anonymous No.11343900]

>>11343885
ayy the self-hatred

I don't actually hate myself for posting here anon, I've found a lot of good books that I may never have otherwise. I don't have many friends IRL who are into literature, not all of us are so lucky.

As for how I will fare when I die, that's between me and the universe.

[Anonymous No.11344501]

>>11343826
>>11343804
>>11343298
>>11343286
How does everyone suddenly know so much about Von Neumann? Is there a work or biography that everyone's been reading?
>>11343240

[Anonymous No.11344518]

>>11344501
He's an important figure in mathematics, computing, physics, and engineering, as well as one of the leading scientists of the manhattan project and the early cold war era. Anyone who's interested in these things will come across him, and once you do you'll be blown away by what a fascinating man he was.

He was also one of the inspirations for Dr. Strangelove.

[Anonymous No.11344526]

>>11343017
Nice bait. Almost had me riled up.

[Anonymous No.11344608]

>>11343885
It all goes away in the end. I don't know if I'll react better, but I can say that it would be a damn shame if I react like Neuman-boy, screaming in terror at something that has happened for all of human history. I would hope not to be such a massive faggot when that moment comes.

>his mind, the amulet on which he had always been able to rely, was becoming less dependable. Then came complete psychological breakdown; panic, screams of uncontrollable terror every night.

better to an hero before that point and retain dignity

[Anonymous No.11344637]

>>11343808
>whereas philosophy seems to go beyond our perceptions
Same goes for much of modern pure mathematics.

[Anonymous No.11344646]

>>11343073
>anything other than material effects determine the genius of a person
absolute sophist ideology

[Anonymous No.11344649]

>He made major contributions to a number of fields, including mathematics (foundations of mathematics, functional analysis, ergodic theory, representation theory, operator algebras, geometry, topology, and numerical analysis), physics (quantum mechanics, hydrodynamics, and quantum statistical mechanics), economics (game theory), computing (Von Neumann architecture, linear programming, self-replicating machines, stochastic computing), and statistics.
How do brainlets compete?

[Anonymous No.11345147]

>>11343808
Metaphysics is trash. It's convenient hole-filling, it has no depth or rigour. Pure mathematics is far more abstract and complex.

[Anonymous No.11345179]

>>11343017
yeah

intelligence (inter-ligare) means relating and binding things, not just "working" with them inside one sort of system

[Anonymous No.11345215]

>>11343017
Mathematics is much more abstract than philosophy

[Anonymous No.11345227]

>>11343284
>wanted to nuke Russia

Absolutely based, I love von Neumann even more now

[Anonymous No.11345540]

A more interesting question: who is the greatest genius, Von Neumann or Shakespeare?

[Anonymous No.11345592]

>>11345540
Absolutely ridiculous comparison

[Anonymous No.11345671]

>>11343240
>Von Neumann of all people, who is arguably one of the most intelligent men in history
>>11343804
>John Von Neumann is literally the best the human race had to offer that generation.
>>11343880
>I'd go so far to say as the guy has a serious claim to being the smartest man who ever lived. His mental abilities were incredible and his list of achievements is undeniable. He was almost certainly on the spectrum, but the guy was a legitimate genius.


The “evidences” of his supreme memory are false.

There were even people who stated that he could recall every single book he ever read, word for word. This is a gross exaggeration.

Just think: Von Neumann was incredibly gifted with raw talent and had the luck to have been born in a rich and cultured family who was interested in fostering a very demanding education since he was still an infant. Therefore, he matured in a very bright man.

Yet he was one human being of billions and billions of other humans that have lived thorough history, and nobody has ever seen (and proved) anything like an eidetic memory capable of storing that much quantity of information (all the books that an avid reader has read). There is the case of Kim Peek, but his brain was biologically different, and there is no decisive proof that Peek actually could recall every book he read perfectly.

There are right now many people in the world with remarkable brains, and there were others in Von Neumann’s time, and before that. Yet we never see anything like the tales we find in Von Neumann’s stories.

It is one thing for one to train oneself to memorize a particular work: there are people who did this with the Iliad in ancient times, and even today. There are people who go to talk shows to show their great memory, but they all depend on training, and to ask for them to memorize every book they read from one single read is to ask something that cannot be done.

There is an African tribe that I saw once in a documentary who have been introduced to Shakespeare’s works by a colonizer. They did not care about the works for their beauty and thought, but they started to compete between them to see who could memorize more of it without fail – soon they were storing vast materials of Shakespeare inside their brains and reciting it: it was something of a sport for them.

However, is important to know that all of those memorization-achievements were due to training, and most of the reciting needed to follow the chain of verses or lines. They could not simply pick a page at random and start reciting: they needed to start at some point and move from there forward.

In all of history, nobody has ever seen something as great as some gossips about Neumann state. So, what is easier to believe: that this is one case in all the history of humanity or that the stories were grossly exaggerated?

[Anonymous No.11345674]

>>11345671

Here, look at this book about Neumann: the author is clearly saying that there was a lot of legend about Neumann’s capacities:

https://books.google.com.br/books?id=pmPaAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA308&dq=von+neumann+memory&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwis6oG3wZ_TAhVBlZAKHT2CA_I4ChDoAQhdMAg#v=onepage&q=memory&f=false

And here (here is the central piece of my argumentation) you can see that he selected some books and subjects to “learn by hearth”, to memorize them, and later used the time-invested-knowledge to baffle his friends:

https://books.google.com.br/books?id=pmPaAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA308&dq=von+neumann+memory&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwis6oG3wZ_TAhVBlZAKHT2CA_I4ChDoAQhdMAg#v=onepage&q=von%20neumann%20memory&f=false

and:

https://books.google.com.br/books?id=pmPaAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA308&dq=von+neumann+memory&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwis6oG3wZ_TAhVBlZAKHT2CA_I4ChDoAQhdMAg#v=onepage&q=memory&f=false


So he was actually doing what all the people who work their own memories do: he was training and selecting specific texts to learn.

[Anonymous No.11345678]

>>11345674

>In contrast Johnny borrowed (we must not say plagiarized) anything from anybody, with great courtesy and aplomb. His mind was not as original as Leibniz’s or Newton’s or Einstein’s, but he seized other people’s original (though fluffy) ideas and quickly changed them in expanded detail into a form where they could be useful for scholarship and for mankind. He rightfully deemed that this was clever people’s duty and their fun, so he was not worried that he was not credited with all his due by the general public or the newspapers (the latter he held in what sometimes seemed Prussian disdain). One of the professional ways in which he wrung more than twenty-four hours’ work out of a twenty-four-hour day was to get the boring research on some projects done by collaborators whom he enthused by gasping that they were famously expanding their own original ideas

>The great glory from Einstein’s dreaminess, which can also be called his closer touch with the cosmos, was that he had marvelous flashes of irrational intuition that changed the direction of scientific progress; Johnny amiably envied these because Johnny could never be irrational himself.
>“For Von Neumann,” said his assistant Paul Halmos, “it seems impossible to be unclear in his thought expression.” Although “we can all think clearly, more or less, some of the time, Von Neumann’s clarity of thought was orders of magnitude greater than that of most of us, all the time.” Halmos was probably thinking of Einstein when he likened some scientists to the creator of the Great G-Minor Fugue, while adding in his next sentence that by contrast “Von Neumann’s greatness was of the human kind”.
>A big advantage to mere humans is that one can one can develop them from nursery on. Among the several million babies born this month, it is plausible that there will not have been any Einsteins or creators of the great G-minor Fugue. But it is genetically almost certain that there will have been some who could become capable of thinking in the towering level of Johnny’s concentration, intellect and mind.

https://books.google.com.br/books?id=pmPaAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=von+neumann+johnny+envied+this+because+he+could+never+be+irrational+himself&source=bl&ots=xst7kJLVSj&sig=Gyin1ROfYLEqWRvhCta36pTq1zk&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwit2KuG3c7RAhVLkZAKHaxNDHkQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=von%20neumann%20johnny%20envied%20this%20because%20he%20could%20never%20be%20irrational%20himself&f=false

[Anonymous No.11345717]

>>11345671
His memory is not his main qualification.

[Anonymous No.11345752]

>>11343200
>Plato, who was only capable of thinking abstractly and didn’t contribute to our modern understanding of the world
Sweetie, where do you think mathematicians got the idea that they are dealing with an abstract, objective realm which has nothing to do with physical reality? Platonism is the default (uncritical, unaware) position of most mathematicians even to this very day.

[Anonymous No.11345761]

>>11345752
And this is without even entering in the debate about how much Platonism influenced world history through its influence on Christianity.

[Anonymous No.11345791]

Why do I mix up C.S. Lewis and John von Neumann on photographs?

[Anonymous No.11345792]

>>11345540
Shakespeare, obviously. Von Neumann is still remembered because of the totally plebeian reason that his lifework proved (immensely) USEFUL. Shakespeare doesn't need to be a whore of prosaic usefulness to be still remembered and cherished, and he's therefore the greater genius.

[Anonymous No.11345794]

>it seems like he was incapable of understanding philosophy or anything of abstraction and was able to think only concretely
Given that the work he did (from quantum mechanics to set theory) is super abstract, I have some problems with the way you framed this claim.

[Anonymous No.11345821]

>>11344649
by covering their ears and pretending that their 3.2 undergrad gpa is a more impressive feat

[Anonymous No.11345822]

ahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, what color is your favorite, OP?

[Anonymous No.11345832]

>>11345678
>In contrast Johnny borrowed (we must not say plagiarized) anything from anybody, with great courtesy and aplomb. His mind was not as original as Leibniz’s or Newton’s or Einstein’s
absolutely stupid meme comparison desù, everyone in science borrows

[Anonymous No.11347282]

bump

[Anonymous No.11347353]

>>11343017
No.

[Anonymous No.11348146]

>>11343051
i think you're thinking of von braun

[Anonymous No.11349292]

bump

[Anonymous No.11349453]

>>11344649
>Von Neumann architecture

[Anonymous No.11349486]

>>11343808
So metaphysics is making up words that don't mean anything and then giving them a definition that doesn't mean anything? That's like so meta.

[Anonymous No.11349517]

>>11343050
>Many gifted mathematical minds are very naive about human affairs

Absolute horseshit and it doesn’t do you any good to think this way.

Many sociologists are amazing mathematicians, like Pareto

[Anonymous No.11349725]

>>11344608
>better to an hero before that point and retain dignity
so why are you here anon?

[Anonymous No.11349731]

>>11349725
because I'm scared of dying

[Anonymous No.11350388]

lmao @ all the insecure fags here seeing a stem guy and immediately jumping into conclusions (he must've had tunnel vision, very narrowminded, didn't care for philosophy)--when von Neumann in particular was EXTREMELY well read, fluent in the classical languages, knew more about Byzantine history and culture than a Byzantine scholar (just an example), was a multitalent in many fields.

[Anonymous No.11351753]

>>11350388
This. I hate STEM fags but respect scientific minds.

[Anonymous No.11352837]

>>11351753
Back in the day there wasn't this great divide between STEMfags who think xkcd and Joss Whedon movies are the apotheosis of culture and Humanitiesfags who'd just stare at you blankly if you asked them to differentiate a derivative or write down the formula for Ohm's Law.

Universities existed to create well-rounded minds, so that a nuclear physicist could quote the Upanishads or a novel writer could engage in recreational lepidopteritry.

Nowdays they exist as debt creation devices to impoverish stupid people and to get smart people to shove their heads further up their own ass rather than trying to broaden their perspectives and skills just a bit.

[Anonymous No.11353023]

>>11352837
>lepidopteritry
you mean lepidopterology