For the Thinking Anon
Math Appeal
Steve Sailer
Reading The Man From the Future, it’s hard not to acknowledge mathematics as the king of the disciplines. Von Neumann was first and foremost a mathematician, a protégé of David Hilbert, the most influential mathematician of the early 20th century. He delighted Hilbert by offering, as a teenager, a response to Bertrand Russell’s Paradox that was undermining confidence in Hilbert’s program for mathematical progress.
He combined a generally conservative posture with an emphasis on cooperation—for instance, he used his massive influence to keep the new electronic computer from being tied down by patents and secrecy, arguing that America needed as many companies working smartly on computers as possible. Therefore, he published the plans for the computer he oversaw in the late 1940s. The huge lead American capitalism built up in digital technology by following this strategy helped win the Cold War decades later.
From von Neumann’s position of strength on the intellectual high ground of math, the adult prodigy then conducted a series of lightning raids on lesser fields:
—Physics (helping reconcile the seemingly conflicting quantum-mechanics approaches of Heisenberg and Schrödinger).
—Engineering (leading the design of the implosion device for triggering the first-ever atomic bomb, which was exploded at Trinity, New Mexico, in July 1945).
—Economics (more or less inventing the subject of game theory and coining the useful term “zero-sum game”).
—Computer science (articulating in 1945 the von Neumann architecture that instantly became the standard way to design general-purpose computers; note that he didn’t invent the computer, but his clarity of mind and prestige helped get the American computer industry off to a quick start on the right foot).
—Nuclear war strategy (hanging out at the early RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, von Neumann offered ideas for dealing with the Soviets that tended to be less Dr. Strangelove than Gen. Buck Turgidson. Like the leftist pacifist Russell in the late 1940s, von Neumann kicked around the idea of nuking the Soviets before they got the Bomb and could retaliate).
—Psychology (writing a book on the subject while dying of cancer).
read it and expand yer thinking
https://www.takimag.com/article/math-appeal/