What does Veeky Forums think of geniuses like this guy?

What does Veeky Forums think of geniuses like this guy?

>perfect recall (could read a book once and recite it word for word)
>at age 6, could multiply and divide 8-digit numbers in his head
>brought his tutor, Gábor Szegő, to tears with his mathematical ability
>contributed to a shitload of fields: 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
>Von Neumann was so bright that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Eugene Wigner would say, “only he was fully awake.” He had “the fastest mind” that economist Paul Samuelson had ever encountered and was “the cleverest man in the world” according to head of Britain’s National Physical Laboratory, as noted by Daniel Yergin in “The Quest.”

Why even bother trying to contribute to science or mathematics when there are ubermenschen like this walking around?

Also, I find it interesting that over half of the ultra-geniuses in the world are Jewish.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtu.be/_VwzfLNpa9c
reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/295hmp/have_you_developed_a_verbatim_memory_of/
recordholders.org/en/list/memory.html.
jstor.org/stable/2319080
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
livescience.com/40247-ashkenazi-jews-have-european-genes.html
3.bp.blogspot.com/_OqiKkTj5eBg/S76p2gJ08iI/AAAAAAAAA9Y/f184W4djO-k/s1600/IQADD.bmp
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

>Why even bother trying to contribute to science or mathematics when there are ubermenschen like this walking around?
Because math and science is fun. Set a goal and work for it. You'll enjoy the process.
There are also many types of intelligence
youtu.be/_VwzfLNpa9c

>There are also many types of intelligence

0/10 bait

why? because you don't have to be buckethead to have fun playing the guitar. likewise you don't have to be a Von Neumann to enjoy math and science. Geniuses like this guy are who inspired me to do physics and stop being shit lol they are archetypes

There are small but interesting things to be discovered out there. Scale what you try to accomplish to your aptitude and intelligence.

Also, having a mind like that is freakishly abnormal. If other brilliant people are basically shitting their pants at his ability, then you are likely closer to their ability than they are to his, so you aren't so far behind the norm as to be useless. Try to gauge how close you could be to them with your ability in the classroom. I mean I think if we're honest with ourselves at the end of the day we are capable of estimating our level of intellect.

Certainly don't let the greater talent of others stop you from at least trying if it's something you really want to do, though. Trite but true you're never going to be the best in anything.

Actually, your goal should be to be so smart, that Von Neumann would shit his pants at your level ability. There is absolutely nothing genetic about the ability to process information, it's 100% according to metaprocessing which can itself be changed through metaprocessing, so technically if you had a goal and method you could bootstrap yourself to peak human intelligence. It's just this isn't the goal for most people, and even if it was there's no guarantee they'd be able to accomplish it in their lifetime. It's a lot easier to use compound interest to make 1 million dollars if you start with 100,000, than 100.

>There is absolutely nothing genetic about the ability to process information

Literally no one who studies the human brain believes that.

Genetics is mediated through information processing, but the information processing itself is not genetic.

Wishful thinking at its finest.

So if I want to be another Shakespeare, Beethoven, Goethe, Ramanujan, or Gauss, I just have to try really, really hard?

Wow, what a neat trick!

If you disagree, I would love to hear why it would be any other way, which is to say why human learning would be incapable of placing us at a level similar to or greater than Von Neumann. The current lack of ability towards doing so is only weak evidence against my premise, but there is strong evidence that learning processes are robust enough such that information exposure accounts for greater variation in human ability to process information, than genetics. Furthermore, extremely detailed and tailored environments can overcome so-called cognitive disabilities such that the person in question is then indistinguishable from a normal or even intelligent person. Therefore the current lack of ability to progress further is less due to any inherent limitation and more because we do not yet have enough information for what sorts of training and learning regimes would be most effective for accomplishing the desired outcome.

Yes. Is being capable of reciting a ten minute piano piece from first hearing less impressive than being able to multiply 4 digit numbers rapidly?

...

The guy you're responding to is a retard. Horsepower matters. The number of people in the world capable of Beethoven-like creativity is probably less than 50.

You don't need to contribute shitloads to impact the scientific community. Just one discovery is enough to impact the community for the better. Scientific knowledge is a collective from many nameless scientists, and without them, even if their names aren't written down, we wouldn't be where we were today.

>perfect recall (could read a book once and recite it word for word)

bullshit.

von Neumann is more myth than man, and if you believe these myths then you are simply a tool.

In 100 years when genetic programming takes over this will be the norm

So I don't really care, good for him though

>bullshit.
That's not the first time I read of such thing.
Victims of gaslighting sometimes possess an uncanny aural memory.
reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/295hmp/have_you_developed_a_verbatim_memory_of/

this

>von Neumann is more myth than man, and if you believe these myths then you are simply a tool.
There is no feat in that list that is not humanely achievable.
>perfect recall (could read a book once and recite it word for word)
>at age 6, could multiply and divide 8-digit numbers in his head
This is trivial if you have outstanding visualization abilities (it's like using pen and paper).
Sometimes kids have eidetic memory so this is not surprising.
See: recordholders.org/en/list/memory.html.
>brought his tutor, Gábor Szegő, to tears with his mathematical ability
You can read more on Wikipedia:
>Some of von Neumann's instant solutions to the problems in calculus posed by Szegő, sketched out on his father's stationery, are still on display at the von Neumann archive in Budapest.[22] By the age of 19, von Neumann had published two major mathematical papers, the second of which gave the modern definition of ordinal numbers, which superseded Georg Cantor's definition.[25] At the conclusion of his education at the gymnasium, von Neumann sat for and won the Eötvös Prize, a national prize for mathematics.[26]

>>perfect recall (could read a book once and recite it word for word)

nope

Stay mad redditor.

neumann is a brainlet compared to pic related

Actually, yep.

Just goes to show how diverse the human phenotype can be. It sucks that you're stuck in brainletdom, though

strong kek at the multiple intelligence bait

It's true he would probably beat you in any field you went into if he was alive, but he's not.

He's dead and you're alive, he can no longer contribute anything.

I think there's quite a difference between certain types of intelligence. Some people have extremely fast brains, extreme memories, etc. But there's also individuals who are quite regular as far as speed and memory, yet can conjure up creative solutions to complex problems.

I'd suggest not to be fooled by all the fanfare surrounding a person. We've heard of far too many "brilliant 6 year old attending unis" type stories - but where they at tho now?

Don't sell yourself short.

>What does Veeky Forums think of geniuses like this guy?

Most view him as a meme. Others, like me, view him as a pretty cool guy who contributed greatly to man's understanding of the world.

>Why even bother trying to contribute to science or mathematics when there are ubermenschen like this walking around?

Your argument is of the form

1) You should not compete in activity X if an agent Y exists that has far greater ability in activity X than you do

2) Such a Y exists

3) Therefore you should not partake in activity X

Why weightlift when you're 130 pounds and will never be a world record holder? Why run when you'll never be as fast as Usain Bolt? Why have sex when you'll never be as good as Wilt? You do it because even though you're not an all time great at any of those things, you still get joy from taking part in these activities.

>Also, I find it interesting that over half of the ultra-geniuses in the world are Jewish.

They are God's chosen people

>I'd suggest not to be fooled by all the fanfare surrounding a person. We've heard of far too many "brilliant 6 year old attending unis" type stories - but where they at tho now?

Sending bombs to people in academia

I'm actually starting to wonder about this.

Even if we assume you're correct the process to reach genius-level intelligence is unknown.

Come up with a definition of genius and see if Jews are overrepresented.

>snowflake e-peen measurement contest on leddit

noice

yeah african mudhutters are just as intelligent in dear own whey

I enjoy the process. I hope to contribute in some small way through the things I learn on my way to an apparently undefinable goal.

>genius
>can't even beat sophisticated calculator
>didn't slay thousand pussy
kek.

Stay mad nerds.

>Why even bother trying to contribute to science or mathematics when there are ubermenschen like this walking around?
But he's been dead for over 50 years...

please return to /pol/

40% of Nobel prizes go to Jews even though they're a tiny percent of the world's population. Almost all of the great mathematicians and physicists of the last 150 years have been Jews. Jews make up half the partners of law firms. They write literally 80% of Hollywood screenplays. 60% of the world's billionaires are Jews. Remember, we're talking about a teeny, tiny percent of world population. We're talking 14 million people, max. Their genius is so widespread that I, a New Yorker, have never known a Jewish person who did not have someone in his family with renown in some field or other.

0/10

Can you do it?

>It sucks that you're stuck in brainletdom, though

If you only knew who I am and what I can do.

PBut to the point: there is no evidence of such a memory in history (other than rumors and legends that are not verified with tests). The only exception - a proven one - is Kim Peek, and his brain was structurally different from normal human brains (so much so that he had severe impairments).

Moreover, Neumann is not even among the top 10 mathematicians in history, and the scientific community, although they saw him as brilliant, did not consider him a creative genius like Einstein and Newton.

As for precocity and mathematical ability, Terence Tao is probably superior to Neumann.

You are more dazzled by stories and gossip than by the work of the man himself.

What does Reddit have to do with it?

>What does Reddit have to do with it?
Yep/nope it's typical Reddit aggregate speak.

I honestly did not know: I do not go to Reddit (although I do not see anything wrong with someone going there or here)

Maybe if I work really hard I'll overcome my genetic limitations.

"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration" - Thomas A. Edison

"The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense." - Thomas A. Edison

He was only so precocious because of his atypical neurology (either Asperger's or HFA). It doesn't mean you shouldn't compete, just because you didn't luck out on the genetic lottery.

>If you only knew who I am and what I can do.
Can you elaborate a bit?
I'm always interested in learning about other people's knacks.
>PBut to the point: there is no evidence of such a memory in history (other than rumors and legends that are not verified with tests). The only exception - a proven one - is Kim Peek, and his brain was structurally different from normal human brains (so much so that he had severe impairments).
Read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Oliver Sacks).
The chapter about the guy who memorized the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
>As for precocity and mathematical ability, Terence Tao is probably superior to Neumann.
Von Neumann's interests when he was young were not limited to mathematics.
Can you quote something similar to this
[By the age of 19, von Neumann had published two major mathematical papers, the second of which gave the modern definition of ordinal numbers, which superseded Georg Cantor's definition.]
but relative to Tao?
>You are more dazzled by stories and gossip than by the work of the man himself.
This is natural since you'd need to be able to understand his work and and contextualize it historically.
Nonetheless, it is clear that he made relevant contributions to various fields.
jstor.org/stable/2319080

>saying nope and yep means reddit
shut the fuck up you retarded cunt

Upvoted for reference.

I don't think it's a different "type" of intelligence--it's just perfect recall + muscle memory of piano keystrokes.

>Can you elaborate a bit?
>I'm always interested in learning about other people's knacks.

I am a writer. I will not say what works I have published or what my name is. I'm sorry for that, but I'm afraid to expose myself. Besides, my native language is not English, so most of you could not read me in the original.

I have won several awards for poetry and literature throughout my childhood and adolescence. I do not know if I can count this as a special skill, but I have a great facility with metaphorical thinking and the creation of figures of speech. One of my best teachers told me that the ability to create metaphors is something that cannot be develop beyond a certain point, thatit is something that you either have or you do not have. He also said that he never saw anyone with the ease that I have with the creation of poetic imagery, and that if I did not follow this course I would be throwing away a pearl that he often longed to have himself.

But that user somehow got it right: I usually fell like a brainlet and a loser.

Did anyone ever conduct any analysis on his brain?

Underrated post:

Thanks.

Oh yes, gods chosen ubermensch. Not the germans, THEM.

Im glad we got it right this time.

In other news, hasidic and sephardic jews are not as smart as Ashkenazi. Weird.

In other OTHER news. Watch the Ashkenazi accuse random white people of being nazis when they themseves arnt German and the Ashkenazi himself IS.

Truely, you are gods chosen hypocrits.

I realized I'll never be smarter than him, but on the other hand I work with neuron computer interfacing so maybe I can beat him in the end thanks to sheer autistic tenacity and the wonders of modern technology.

Probably not though

Look we triggered the stormcuck.

Im not a white supremecist.

Is that really the only thing you can say in your defence?

He died like a pussy, in complete fear and military isolation though

>Von Neumann reportedly said in explanation that Pascal had a point, referring to Pascal's Wager.[175][176][177] Father Strittmatter administered the last rites to him.[16] Some of von Neumann's friends (such as Abraham Pais and Oskar Morgenstern) said they had always believed him to be "completely agnostic."[176][178] 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."[179] Father Strittmatter recalled that von Neumann did not receive much peace or comfort from it, as he still remained terrified of death.[179]

>Why even bother trying to contribute to science or mathematics when there are ubermenschen like this walking around?

And how will you ever know whether you are one of them unless you give it a good try?

Nice self fulfilling prophecy there, m8.

>He was of course completely agnostic all his life, and then he suddenly turned Catholic
What an emotional faggot. kek
Emotion can turn even the greatest geniuses into brainlets.

Or perhaps there is something to religion brainlets like you two can't comprehend...

It's pretty fucking obvious he turned to catholicism because he was desperate, not because it was closer to the truth.

Yeah, because turning towards religion for solace on your death bed is such a huge fucking mystery and clearly intimately linked to intelligence.

this, also, the copy-pasta:

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

1/2

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

Also, Einstein was more humane, more of a pacifist and a humanist than Neumann. He was a wiser man, as one can see even from the information’s about his death:
>On Tuesday, April 12, 1955, Einstein developed abdominal pain, which became more severe on the following day. Although Einstein must have realized that the aneurysm had finally burst, he initially refused hospitalization. He finally agreed to be admitted to the Princeton Hospital, only because he felt he was becoming too much of a burden at home. He was seen by Frank Glenn, MD, then Chief of Surgery at New York Hospital, who diagnosed cholecystitis and a leaking abdominal aneurysm. Glenn recommended resection of the aneurysm, even though the operation was new. At that time, Dr. Glenn had only done a few such operations, using cadaver grafts to replace the aorta. Einstein refused surgery, saying: "I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly."*

in contrast with the information about Neumann:

*Cohen JR, Graver LM. The ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm of Albert Einstein. Surg Gynecol Obstet. 1990;170:455-458.

>muh blank slate
Lmao

>If you disagree, I would love to hear why it would be any other way

Try every single study that says IQ is immutable

This, Jews are a race of geniuses.

White people are not superior in the way that the alt-righters on here fashion them.

Let me guess, you are jewish?

>4chinz safe place
>switch from /b to /sci to post theory of all
>start shitposting in patterns thread
>showing some experiments and shit
>return home see this shit
>whybother.gif
>people always find excuses to not use brain

As far as I know, no, I'm not.

I am not OP btw i just dont give no fcks about the name and such

It's not an easy thing to admit there is a demographic that is generally superior to you but, yes, I would say Jews have the upper hand.

I don’t know about that. To me there is a cultural component that it is as much as important as genetics. Jewish-European families usually lived in closed communities* where culture and hard work were highly valued. Most kids at home had a good deal of musical and language education, something that is not that spread in the “white people” culture. There are many white families that do that, but not as many as the Jewish ones: the good-cultured white families are brought down by the many bad ones.

There is also the fact that, when one think on “smart Jews” one has the Ashkenazy in mind, whose culture was different from other Jewish groups of the world. They were the ones who prized early childhood education etc., and, not surprisingly, were the ones who contributed with most of the famous Jewish names in history.

Also, check the fact that the genetic of the Ashkenazy is “white”, or “European”:

livescience.com/40247-ashkenazi-jews-have-european-genes.html

If you choose some good families from Britain or Germany and made them design a closed culture of great emphasis in home schooling and early cultural undertakings and obsessive competition they would be as high-achieving as the Jewish community.

All of that said, there are no Jews of the stature of Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Bach, Beethoven and Mozart.

*I was somewhat frightened to read in the works of Jewish-European writers a frequent denomination of the populations that lived near them (be it Pollack’s, or Russians, or Germans) as “enemies”, and that they should study hard to show how better than their “enemies” they were. There is a particular example in Isaac Babel’s “Story of my Dovecot”.

bump fags

He invented linear programming, that's pretty huge.

Where is he buried? We should clone him.

>when there are ubermenschen like this walking around
There aren't.
There's one or two people like that in a generation at most.

The vast majority of science is done by people with just normal high intelligence.

Who fucking cares. There are always going to be people out there better than you, people who you can learn from and people who astound you; that's one of the beautiful aspects of life, in my opinion. Just because you're not a genius and can't be the best at everything doesn't mean you can't enjoy life. If you want to get better at something just do it, and who knows, eventually you may reach levels near this guy.

You make some good points, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that any German or British family could do as well as ashkenazi's simply with the right culture. There have been studies done that show that despite having some similar genetics to most European cultures, they top the charts in IQ (specifically verbal and mathematical), which is scarcely related to culture. This is because ashkenazi's are more genetically isolated, which leads to more congenital ailments, but also can favor specific positive genes as-well.

3.bp.blogspot.com/_OqiKkTj5eBg/S76p2gJ08iI/AAAAAAAAA9Y/f184W4djO-k/s1600/IQADD.bmp

>muh why bother

Because they can't do everything and there's still room for you

>Also, I find it interesting that over half of the ultra-geniuses in the world are Jewish.
They control the world because they're ultra geniuses.

Was there even anyone who could match him in terms of brainpower? I'm thinking about Ramanujan, Newton, Gauss, Euler, Maxwell, Leibniz, Goethe, Da Vinci, Aristotle, Plato and Tesla

William James Sidis.

>>at age 6, could multiply and divide 8-digit numbers in his head
autism

>Also, Einstein was more humane, more of a pacifist and a humanist than Neumann.
people like Einstein are one of a kind. It's interesting how he thought that Dostoevsky as an author was worthier than Gauss, and his idea of the Universe being Spinozist.

His article on socialism may be archaic, but it's touching. Einstein wasn't a spastic like Dirac

>reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/295hmp/have_you_developed_a_verbatim_memory_of/

I developed an eidetic memory by practice through childhood. My siblings and parents would often try to trick me to my detriment, and to figure out tricks I'd have to remember extremely intricate details. Thus, I not only developed good logic skills, but memory.

>over half of the geniuses are Jewish
Source?

It's been said that von neumann had an aural memory actually. All that matters is that you have good short term memory, the key to all intelligence. Something you can increase with practice.

Cool.

von neumann was a monster
almost all mathematicians of his time and after think so
the decay of his ability with age and the terrible torment that came with it is told with excruciating color in several entries of Mathematical Apocrypha redux

I'm sure a lot of this is myth. I mean, perfect recall? You really believe that shit?

you clearly haven't seen the many first hand accounts of von neumann's abilities

1/3

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.

2/3

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?