The Many Worlds of John von Neumann | Robert Wright & Ananyo Bhattacharya
5,295
Published 2023-03-14
0:25 Ananyo’s book, The Man from the Future, about game theory inventor and polymath John von Neumann
6:38 Early life as a mathematical wunderkind
10:16 Von Neumann’s foundational contributions to quantum physics
24:39 Was entanglement as "spooky" to von Neumann as it was to Einstein?
33:46 Building—and reckoning with—the atomic bomb
47:22 Did von Neumann really want to nuke the USSR?
52:30 Why was early game theory so zero-sum–focused?
1:05:44 Influence on Turing, the open source movement, and modern computing
1:22:27 How brushes with totalitarianism shaped von Neumann’s views
1:28:56 Programming pioneer Klára Dán von Neumann
1:33:26 The duality of von Neumann’s social life
1:39:58 Did von Neumann grok incompleteness before Gödel?
1:42:45 Unfinished work comparing computers and the brain
1:50:23 Von Neumann’s deathbed conversion: Pascal's wager or something more?
Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Ananyo Bhattacharya (The Man from the Future). Recorded January 17, 2023.
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All Comments (16)
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I read ananyo's book. It's really great to shed light on one of history's forgotten geniuses, john von neumann. His stature and esteem today does not do justice to his one of a kind mind and vast contributions in many different fields.
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Fine conversation and excellent book. A couple of notes: (1) Von Neumann, Gödel, and Wigner are all buried within a few stones of each other at the Princeton Cemetery....a remarkable collection of remains. (2) His hard-to-find book The Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata (edited and published posthumously) can be checked out through the Mercer County Library System. (3) While that book is probably better known for its discussion of cellular automata, it was its other topic, kinematic automata, about which Freeman Dyson said “So far as we know, the basic design of every microorganism larger than a virus is precisely as von Neumann said it should be. Everything we have learned about evolution since 1948 tends to confirm that von Neumann was right.” The kinematic automaton was discussed extensively by Howard Pattee and in chapter six of *Behavior and Culture in One Dimension*.
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Also, it's just nice to hear Bob talk with the sort of person with whom he can feel so comfortable and excited.
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What a treasure!!! Such good information. Thanks, Bob!
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Glad you're doing longer podcasts now, Bob.
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Excellent talk.
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Great podcast! Really enjoyed this one
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great interview, i am also a subscriber to the Parrot Room.... can't get enough of thoughtful content.
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Three Scientists Reference!!!! That's my personal favorite Bob book.
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Consciousness is the fuel that makes material reality material
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Great conversation. It's a shame that nutz like coleman whatshisname get 14k views and this doesn't. The world is really not in a good place.
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If the "cut" can be mathematically anywhere along the spectrum of scales for wave function "collapse"/state reduction then it becomes an empirical question where it is. I think research into trying to build quantum computers will ultimately answer this (I'm betting on Penrose's idea that it is a gravitational collapse into locality that happens at a certain matter-energy level)
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According to Wikipedia, tomorrow (March 15) is Von Neumann's birthday anniversary.
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Einstein, born 1879, 14th March.
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" It's amazing to think how much talent Princeton had at one time" Bob is just another one of these biased journalists clearly pushing his own agenda ;-)
