Is the age of polymath over?

>John von Neumann
>He made major contributions to a number of fields, including mathematics (foundations of mathematics, functional analysis, ergodic theory, 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.

Seems like specialization is the name of the game. These days you can be a theoretical physicists but have no understanding in basic electronics and how to solder a wire, or vice versa you can be an electrical engineer but doesn't know how electron propagates through the wire nor numerically solve an ordinary differential equations

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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 neumann johnny envied this because he could never be irrational himself&f=false
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it was over even in his time, he was an aberration. most of us including me are too brainlet to be able to be polymaths in this day in age. there is just too much to know in any given topic let alone field let alone subject.

Socrates and Plato was also polymaths, but they're both wrong on almost everything related to natural sciences

Only if you're a brainlet. Even an iq in the low 180s should suffice for a broad and deep understanding of the world.

t. brainlet

Name one decent modern polymath after John von Neumann. Even people like Richard Feynman had a horse blinders on and thrive just in one aspect of physics, rather than being a contributor in wide variety of fields.

He was by far the brightest mind of his time

that's not being a polymath. those are all related, einstein.

I was joking, dumbass. Polymaths are incredibly rare as time goes on simply because the exponential increase in information about each specific field. In the 17th century there were many polymaths because we knew little enough that a man could acquaint himself with the basics of every field in a rather short time. Gettig proficient (aka good ebough to do research) at every branch of mathematics and physics would probably take multiple lifetimes now for the vast majority of people.

>can you be good at several subjects

no

the fields are too big at this point.

you can be mediocre at a lot of them though.

>tfw I'm a brainlet

Why even live

>John von Neumann
>worth mentioning
nice bait

Studies are too advanced for encyclopedic knowlege to happen anymore
You can be an expert in one or in rare cases several fields and still have a board knowlege base but we can't excell in many fields.
Interdisciplinary collaboration makes polymaths irrelevant anyhow

von Neumann certainly was a genius. But he also had the advantage of being a great mathematician during a time when a lot of various fields were reframing their foundations in rigorous mathematics. The bulk of von Neumanns publications are the mathematical formalization of ideas that had already been floating around in the various sub fields he was working in.

>contriubtions to pure mathematics (mathematics) and applied mathematics (physics, economics, computing, statistics)

He's also a great experimentalist, he's the reason for a very crucial component of the atomic bomb.

Von Neumann is a meme.

>Name one decent modern polymath after John von Neumann.
Terence Tao knows about everything.

Neumann was really the worst of his time.

I highly doubt he'd be able to publish anything in reverse math.

>Name one decent modern polymath after John von Neumann
How about I name two?

Back to r eddit, mate.

Maybe in math but thats the point
Jvn made major contributions to many other fields

KEK

he said modern not omnipresent

Who are these guys? Can I get a quick rundown on them?

This, why is someone on Veeky Forums spamming these guys?

who was better?

-Rothschilds bow to Bogdanoffs
-In contact with aliens
-Possess psychic-like abilities
-Control france with an iron but fair fist
-Own castles & banks globally
-Direct descendants of the ancient royal blood line
-Will bankroll the first cities on Mars (Bogdangrad will be be the first city)
-Own 99% of DNA editing research facilities on Earth
-First designer babies will in all likelihood be Bogdanoff babies
-both brothers said to have 215+ IQ, such intelligence on Earth has only existed deep in Tibetan monasteries & Area 51
-Ancient Indian scriptures tell of two angels who will descend upon Earth and will bring an era of enlightenment and unprecedented technological progress with them
-They own Nanobot R&D labs around the world
-You likely have Bogdabots inside you right now
-The Bogdanoffs are in regular communication with the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, forwarding the word of God to the Orthodox Church. Who do you think set up the meeting between the pope & the Orthodox high command (First meeting between the two organisations in over 1000 years) and arranged the Orthodox leader’s first trip to Antarctica in history literally a few days later to the Bogdanoff bunker in Wilkes land?
-They learned fluent French in under a week
-Nation states entrust their gold reserves with the twins. There’s no gold in Ft. Knox, only Ft. Bogdanoff
-The twins are about 7 decades old, from the space-time reference point of the base human currently accepted by our society
-In reality, they are timeless beings existing in all points of time and space from the big bang to the end of the universe. We don’t know their ultimate plans yet. We hope they’re benevolent beings.

It's a meme among the teenage troglodytes of /b/ as far as I can ascertain.

>teenage troglodytes

>/b/
*/pol/

although in 2017 there's really no difference

>article by John von Neumann: “Can We Survive Technology?”

referred to climate control through managing solar radiation or changing the earth’s heat budget as a thoroughly “abnormal” industry that could have “rather fantastic effects” on a scale difficult to imagine. Von Neumann, a noted mathematician and pioneer in computerized weather forecasts and climate models, pointed out that altering the surface reflectivity of specific regions or redirecting air masses in an attempt to trigger a new ice age were not necessarily rational undertakings. Tinkering with the earth’s heat budget or the atmosphere’s general circulation, he claimed, “will merge each nation’s affairs with those of every other more thoroughly than the threat of a nuclear or any other war may already have done.” In his opinion climate control could lend itself to unprecedented destruction and to forms of warfare as yet unimagined. It could alter the entire globe and shatter the existing political order. He made the Janus-faced nature of weather and climate control clear. The central question was not “What can we do?” but “What should we do?” This was the “maturing crisis of technology” for von Neumann, in which technological realities and possibilities—from nuclear warfare to climate engineering—might undermine the very existence of nation states and the treaties and ties that bind them.

It's pretty sad this didn't happen, would have been really cool.

1/2

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

2/2

>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.

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 neumann johnny envied this because he could never be irrational himself&f=false

no i don't think it is over. i don't think it is possible to be involved in more than one field of science thou but i am pretty sure there will always be scientists who are also great artists as well. i am getting my degree in genetics but i am also trying to publish my literature

Kolmogorov >>> Neumann
I thought we've come to a consensus lomg time ago.

>Bog (Бoг) is Russian for "God"

Yep
Fields are such circlejerks that you need at least a master's just to understand the jargon, and a PhD to get taken seriously

No more polymaths

Yes, but they were honestly wrong. Not wrong in the sense Feynman meant by "not even wrong." Mistaking the two belies your own ignorance.

>tfw sort of on my way to being a polymath

>military officer
>speak 3 languages
>masters degree in US History
>program for fun
>was in a band in high school and college and can play multiple instruments
>wrestled for 8 years and am ablack belt in judo
>going for bachelors in physics

masters degree in US history

AHAHHAHAAHAHAHAAHA

>military officer

Is that supposed to be impressive?

>speak 3 languages

I speak 4 languages. Not by choice just have to.

>masters degree in US History

TOP KEK

>program for fun

OK STOP IT YOU'RE MAKING ME LAUGH

>was in a band in high school and college and can play multiple instruments

WOW

>wrestled for 8 years and am ablack belt in judo

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

>going for bachelors in physics

JESUS CHRIST!

Dude, if you are serious you have no clue. Basically Dunning–Kruger in action.

First of all, none of those skills are impressive in the least. I know plenty of people who could easily out do you, including myself. Secondly, you need to master multiple fields, not just get introduced to them, if you want to be considered a polymath.

Whenever people speak about "superintelligence" Johnny for the bill.

>pol
The /pol/ on this site is just /b/ larping as /pol/, and the usual assortment of shills

>I highly doubt he'd be able to publish anything in reverse math.
So reverse math is like finding a set of axioms for a set of theorems to be true?
He knows so much math that he would surely be able to contribute.
It's not like he can publish about everything though, he's not an alien.

what did you mean?

>Veeky Forums
The Veeky Forums on this site is just /x/ larping as Veeky Forums, and the usual assortment of brainlets and people asking for help with homework subtly.

I have yet to see an interesting thread on Veeky Forums

>>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.

Does that mean that Bach was a greater genius than Von Neumann?

>tfw too smart to be a genius.
Do you retards believe this bullshit?

>>tfw too smart to be a genius.

That was not the point of those quotes, you know.