Could someone edit the Wikipedia, please? To remove the faulty citations in that screenshot? I'd suggest starting the Child Prodigy section instead with:
John von Neumann was a child prodigy who by the age of 12 "already had an astonishing grasp of advanced mathematics." source: The Recollections of Eugene Wigner.
Rather than the current incorrect "8 figure" claim.
I've heard sometimes it's better to ask for an editor or someone with experience, since there are lots of rules, and first-time accounts editing a big page like Johnny's might be distrusted. But I really don't know anything about Wikipedia's details.
This is gratifying to read. A few months back, someone I thought seemed interesting and thoughtful DM’d me on Substack and asked if I wanted to join a Discord of Substackers who are interested in open dialogue and ideas etc. I thought it sounded cool so I joined, only for it to be chock full of classic anti-woke, “heterodox” edge lord type stuff, but the most frequent posters were diehard hereditarians. They went so far as saying they’d try to “convert” me ha.
They said it was dispassionate and idea-driven, but that wasn’t my experience. Many of them had read a few genetics papers and would go on and on about alleles and use other borrowed vocabulary etc. but upon close inspection this well-oiled machine of intellectual scaffolding was really like a Rube Goldberg propping up pretty conventional biases. Just consistently reiterating that their evidence wasn’t dispositive was enough to really raise their hackles, so much that one of the moderators and Discord owner got angry at me and DM’d me an apology a few days later. I thought it would be too dramatic to announce my departure so I still get a ping every few weeks but I still find it funny.
Thats not to say I don’t think there is any truth in hereditarianism. I just think that people who think it’s the keystone to a deep understanding of the world’s paradoxes rely too much on the conspiracy that it’s being suppressed. I find it helpful to remember that most conspiratorial thinking is usually the result of fear—that life is complex and problems are complex and it’s much easier to say “there are insurmountable genetic gaps in ability” than “the world is unjust and inefficient, and we perpetuate this in some way just by existing in it.”
I would recommend the one by Norman Macrae. It has an error in the tutoring progression, and he plays down Johnny's role in the EDVAC fiasco to his subject's benefit, and he has some ambiguous language around Johnny's mental powers. But it's a good biography overall.
I don't know anything about pop-hereditarianism, but what I do know about hereditarians, including (actually especially) the most extreme ones, is that what they advocate is exactly the system that produced von Neumann, namely that you take the most talented pupils and pump all your resources into giving them the best education instead of throwing it down the drain on the general population. Not only that, but they are the *only* people who advocate such a system. So, while this may demonstrate my ignorance of social-media subcultures, it seems to me that this is all an argument in favour of the people you are attacking.
Great article! I feel vindicated in having previously stated my skepticism about a lot of the Von Neumann anecdotes.
Here’s an sort of off-topic question: You describe McCulloch and Pitts’ work on artificial neurons as ”infamous”. Why? Why you gotta attack my boy Walter like that? (The article you linked really moved me when I first read it a few years ago).
Incidentally, I get you don’t want to get into ”what about B” arguments, but isn’t Pitts an example of one of these inexplicable childhood prodigies? The article linked starts with a story of him writing a letter to Bertrand Russell identifying mistake in Principia Mathematica despite having a working class father who wanted him to drop out of school. I feel some skepticism reading that too but the story is amazing even if just the broad strokes are true.
Good research, I agree the lionizing of Von Neumann as the super-human who remembered everything and was still fun at parties is hagiographical. Minds of great brilliance usually come with quirks or some personality deficits. However, I do think the origin of many of the non-Hungarian-born people mentioned in your article as interacting with Von Neumann challenge your favoring of nurture - Wiener, Ulam and Goldstine were all Ashkenazi Jews, just not born in Hungary. Von Neumann or Wigner's lack of Jewish identity or sense of whether their ethnicity mattered to their achievements is irrelevant: having a stronger Jewish identity is not what is thought to make Jews smarter by hereditarians, and Wigner's statement seems more like a product of the times. Even if a few Martians weren't Jewish, it's astonishing that so many were, given the relative proportion of Jews to non-Jews in Hungary at the time. At the right tails of accomplishment, genes are a must, but you are right that experience is what determines the winners.
Most Hungarians were basically still in a feudal system outside the cities. So I'm not sure they should count for the comparison. When you say the success is surprising (needing more explanation)
> given the relative proportion of Jews to non-Jews in Hungary at the time
shouldn't Norman Macrae's report that the demographics were 70% Jewish-Hungarian at the top high schools (at least Johnny's, which was Lutheran) make us much less surprised that the "relative proportion" ended up the way it did? Just speaking generally, I don't see how statistical overrepresentation at the end of a pipeline needs any further explaining at all if there's also statistical overrepresentation at the beginning.
Yes, urbanization is part of the answer, but weren't many ethnic groups in the U.S. at the time fairly urbanized? And yet Jews were still quite over-represented among top physicists. If you have a family that descends from 500 years of educated city-dwellers and a family descended from 100 years of educated city-dwellers, whose offspring would you expect to have better achievement/ performance in cognitively demanding fields? The smart hereditarian argument is not superiority or magic genes, just better adaptation to the modern environment because of longer time generationally spent in an environment similar to the current modern environment( you could say the modern environment now has less local qualities because of globalization). The "lead" such an early urbanizing group might have can be decreased by groups who urbanize, but I find it hard to see how it could be fully closed, barring quite unusual circumstances like natural disasters/wars/cataclysmic events. The one example of an intelligence advantage being overturned that I can recall in history is Germanics, who quite likely had less intellectual outliers in 100 AD compared to Greeks and Romans, but now probably have more intellectual achievement today. But groups with high civilization at one point do seem to retain at least an elite or minority with relatively high accomplishment( Assyrians, Copts, Lebanese Christians, Parsis).
> So we have four fluent languages, his ability to add “el” to words, and at least some unclear amount of Latin and Greek from school as an adult—deeply impressive, except for the Spanish!
I wanted to add that this looks similar to von Neumann's joke about knowing numbers. It also is a regular American joke to do that. It's probably his humor.
You're spot on. There's actually a ton of the stories like that. Just nowadays no one understands wit, since that requires reading comprehension.
E.g., there's the much-repeated anecdote (which goes something like this, I'm just paraphrasing here) about the professor of history who says to Johnny's wife: "I will come to your next party, but only if we don't discuss Byzantine history. I'm supposed to be the world expert on it, and if people hear Johnny talk, they won't think it's true anymore!"
And then pop biographers use it to show how smart he his, like "Wow, that was a real ask, he definitely was stipulating to not do that because Johnny knew so much more. That Johnny! That brain!" While actually it was either a joke or Johnny was just... annoying.
It's wit and probably manners and basic social interactions. The internet probably isn't any bit helpful given there are few forced social interactions one has to maintain.
It’s also a very useful corrective. I am guilty of repeating those exaggerated anecdotes about Von Neumann’s capabilities myself. If you ever write a follow-up to this centered on the hagiographic reputation of another historical figure, I would nominate Sagan. I love the man, but his various biographies (in particular, Davidson’s) make him seem like a preordained genius and a god among fellow intellects.
Guess who wrote a biography of Carl Sagan, one I read as a kid? William Poundstone. The one who misinterpreted Halmos and thought the telephone book story was real.
Incidentally, I am fascinated at the extent to which Carl Sagan has almost disappeared from public imagination in such a short period of time. He was one of the most famous public figures in America at the height of Cosmos, and he was well-regarded as an actual scientist in addition to being a science communicator and an activist (certainly to a greater extent than, say, Tyson or Bill Nye). These days, however, he is almost never referenced.
Thoughts on “the man from the future?” (Bhattacharya). There is clearly a difference between the kind of mental computation and speed that von Neumann excelled at and real (and rare) transformative originality (genius). That said, JvN’s breath was, well, breathtaking and there is that famous anecdote from Teller which attests to his brilliance.
I knew several Hungarians at grad school and while I really don’t want to generalised, they were serious rigorous and high quality scientists. I was very envious of the Post-Doc’s Western Blots which you could have exhibited at the Tate!
Governesses bonanza and lunchtime conferences in childhood... This determinism is worse than the genetic one you're debunking! At least if it's just genes you can be lazy and hang around. That may be part of its draw...
Great piece! Brings to mind tales of supposed savants who just studied mnemonics and methods of calculating pi, etc. In addition to his tutors, young vN was raised in a general intellectual environment, with lots of smart people regularly coming over for dinner and discussing their specialties. Here's hoping we can all afford the modern equivalent of governesses and tutors.
To (reluctantly) defend the pop-hereditarian project. Is the meta-message from that side of the aisle to say something broadly along the lines of-
“even given the perfect educational, nutritional, familial, etc environment; you still wouldn’t be able to tutor just anyone into being a Johnny”
-basically saying there an innate “thing” he had that other people given his education and environment still wouldn’t be able to achieve. Or rather, we still have no clue what “it” is even after looking for so long.
One can always pushback and state that no one really believes blank slatism to that degree. Sure, but it is very strongly implied by some anti-hereditarian writing.
Very enjoyable read. Cleary, John had the best environment to create genius. However, the introduction of 100% hereditarians seems to be somewhat of a strawman argument. Leading intellectuals arguing for a ROLE for heredity in IQ like Charles Murray have been vilified for suggesting ANY role for genes. In the Bell Curve he cited research indicating 60% genetic and he has suggested a range of 40% to 80% genetic role is likely. There are those like Flynn that have argued for close to 100% nurture, but I haven't read any credible 100% nature advocates.
I think there was a lot of people who, when arguing against the blank slatist view, said they were not genetic determinists. And then, in all their other arguments and comments and beliefs, basically are genetic determinists. If it quacks like a duck...
Can you give examples of notable people (not just internet randos) arguing for genetic factors being close to 100%, with environment, education and upbringing having close to zero effect in outcomes?
YEs, Von Neumann comes from riches - but perhaps because his ancestors were genetically smarter too.
Carl Gauss would be a much better example of genetic superiority without much environmental help: Carl's mother was illiterate, he got same education as mediocrities around him yet he arguably was a bigger genius than Neumann.
Even Danzig, who in real life did what Matt Damon does in Good Will Hunting, would be a better example
Could someone edit the Wikipedia, please? To remove the faulty citations in that screenshot? I'd suggest starting the Child Prodigy section instead with:
John von Neumann was a child prodigy who by the age of 12 "already had an astonishing grasp of advanced mathematics." source: The Recollections of Eugene Wigner.
Rather than the current incorrect "8 figure" claim.
I've heard sometimes it's better to ask for an editor or someone with experience, since there are lots of rules, and first-time accounts editing a big page like Johnny's might be distrusted. But I really don't know anything about Wikipedia's details.
This is gratifying to read. A few months back, someone I thought seemed interesting and thoughtful DM’d me on Substack and asked if I wanted to join a Discord of Substackers who are interested in open dialogue and ideas etc. I thought it sounded cool so I joined, only for it to be chock full of classic anti-woke, “heterodox” edge lord type stuff, but the most frequent posters were diehard hereditarians. They went so far as saying they’d try to “convert” me ha.
They said it was dispassionate and idea-driven, but that wasn’t my experience. Many of them had read a few genetics papers and would go on and on about alleles and use other borrowed vocabulary etc. but upon close inspection this well-oiled machine of intellectual scaffolding was really like a Rube Goldberg propping up pretty conventional biases. Just consistently reiterating that their evidence wasn’t dispositive was enough to really raise their hackles, so much that one of the moderators and Discord owner got angry at me and DM’d me an apology a few days later. I thought it would be too dramatic to announce my departure so I still get a ping every few weeks but I still find it funny.
Thats not to say I don’t think there is any truth in hereditarianism. I just think that people who think it’s the keystone to a deep understanding of the world’s paradoxes rely too much on the conspiracy that it’s being suppressed. I find it helpful to remember that most conspiratorial thinking is usually the result of fear—that life is complex and problems are complex and it’s much easier to say “there are insurmountable genetic gaps in ability” than “the world is unjust and inefficient, and we perpetuate this in some way just by existing in it.”
Amazing piece. Is there biography you do recommend?
I would recommend the one by Norman Macrae. It has an error in the tutoring progression, and he plays down Johnny's role in the EDVAC fiasco to his subject's benefit, and he has some ambiguous language around Johnny's mental powers. But it's a good biography overall.
https://www.amazon.com/John-Von-Neumann-Scientific-Deterrence/dp/082182676X
The other biographies I investigated all contained more factual errors and I wouldn't recommend them.
I don't know anything about pop-hereditarianism, but what I do know about hereditarians, including (actually especially) the most extreme ones, is that what they advocate is exactly the system that produced von Neumann, namely that you take the most talented pupils and pump all your resources into giving them the best education instead of throwing it down the drain on the general population. Not only that, but they are the *only* people who advocate such a system. So, while this may demonstrate my ignorance of social-media subcultures, it seems to me that this is all an argument in favour of the people you are attacking.
Glad you mentioned Pitts. The son of a boilermaker with no tutoring. Hopefully, he is what everyone should think of when imagining an autodidact.
Great article! I feel vindicated in having previously stated my skepticism about a lot of the Von Neumann anecdotes.
Here’s an sort of off-topic question: You describe McCulloch and Pitts’ work on artificial neurons as ”infamous”. Why? Why you gotta attack my boy Walter like that? (The article you linked really moved me when I first read it a few years ago).
Great catch, that should just be famous!
Oh! Well that explains it.
Incidentally, I get you don’t want to get into ”what about B” arguments, but isn’t Pitts an example of one of these inexplicable childhood prodigies? The article linked starts with a story of him writing a letter to Bertrand Russell identifying mistake in Principia Mathematica despite having a working class father who wanted him to drop out of school. I feel some skepticism reading that too but the story is amazing even if just the broad strokes are true.
A terrific read, thank you! Right up there with my all-time favorite, "Why We Stopped Making Einsteins."
Good research, I agree the lionizing of Von Neumann as the super-human who remembered everything and was still fun at parties is hagiographical. Minds of great brilliance usually come with quirks or some personality deficits. However, I do think the origin of many of the non-Hungarian-born people mentioned in your article as interacting with Von Neumann challenge your favoring of nurture - Wiener, Ulam and Goldstine were all Ashkenazi Jews, just not born in Hungary. Von Neumann or Wigner's lack of Jewish identity or sense of whether their ethnicity mattered to their achievements is irrelevant: having a stronger Jewish identity is not what is thought to make Jews smarter by hereditarians, and Wigner's statement seems more like a product of the times. Even if a few Martians weren't Jewish, it's astonishing that so many were, given the relative proportion of Jews to non-Jews in Hungary at the time. At the right tails of accomplishment, genes are a must, but you are right that experience is what determines the winners.
Most Hungarians were basically still in a feudal system outside the cities. So I'm not sure they should count for the comparison. When you say the success is surprising (needing more explanation)
> given the relative proportion of Jews to non-Jews in Hungary at the time
shouldn't Norman Macrae's report that the demographics were 70% Jewish-Hungarian at the top high schools (at least Johnny's, which was Lutheran) make us much less surprised that the "relative proportion" ended up the way it did? Just speaking generally, I don't see how statistical overrepresentation at the end of a pipeline needs any further explaining at all if there's also statistical overrepresentation at the beginning.
Yes, urbanization is part of the answer, but weren't many ethnic groups in the U.S. at the time fairly urbanized? And yet Jews were still quite over-represented among top physicists. If you have a family that descends from 500 years of educated city-dwellers and a family descended from 100 years of educated city-dwellers, whose offspring would you expect to have better achievement/ performance in cognitively demanding fields? The smart hereditarian argument is not superiority or magic genes, just better adaptation to the modern environment because of longer time generationally spent in an environment similar to the current modern environment( you could say the modern environment now has less local qualities because of globalization). The "lead" such an early urbanizing group might have can be decreased by groups who urbanize, but I find it hard to see how it could be fully closed, barring quite unusual circumstances like natural disasters/wars/cataclysmic events. The one example of an intelligence advantage being overturned that I can recall in history is Germanics, who quite likely had less intellectual outliers in 100 AD compared to Greeks and Romans, but now probably have more intellectual achievement today. But groups with high civilization at one point do seem to retain at least an elite or minority with relatively high accomplishment( Assyrians, Copts, Lebanese Christians, Parsis).
> So we have four fluent languages, his ability to add “el” to words, and at least some unclear amount of Latin and Greek from school as an adult—deeply impressive, except for the Spanish!
I wanted to add that this looks similar to von Neumann's joke about knowing numbers. It also is a regular American joke to do that. It's probably his humor.
You're spot on. There's actually a ton of the stories like that. Just nowadays no one understands wit, since that requires reading comprehension.
E.g., there's the much-repeated anecdote (which goes something like this, I'm just paraphrasing here) about the professor of history who says to Johnny's wife: "I will come to your next party, but only if we don't discuss Byzantine history. I'm supposed to be the world expert on it, and if people hear Johnny talk, they won't think it's true anymore!"
And then pop biographers use it to show how smart he his, like "Wow, that was a real ask, he definitely was stipulating to not do that because Johnny knew so much more. That Johnny! That brain!" While actually it was either a joke or Johnny was just... annoying.
It's wit and probably manners and basic social interactions. The internet probably isn't any bit helpful given there are few forced social interactions one has to maintain.
Thank you for this. This article makes me more optimistic and positive about my future children’s abilities.
It’s also a very useful corrective. I am guilty of repeating those exaggerated anecdotes about Von Neumann’s capabilities myself. If you ever write a follow-up to this centered on the hagiographic reputation of another historical figure, I would nominate Sagan. I love the man, but his various biographies (in particular, Davidson’s) make him seem like a preordained genius and a god among fellow intellects.
Guess who wrote a biography of Carl Sagan, one I read as a kid? William Poundstone. The one who misinterpreted Halmos and thought the telephone book story was real.
Haha, classic! And thus we come full circle.
Incidentally, I am fascinated at the extent to which Carl Sagan has almost disappeared from public imagination in such a short period of time. He was one of the most famous public figures in America at the height of Cosmos, and he was well-regarded as an actual scientist in addition to being a science communicator and an activist (certainly to a greater extent than, say, Tyson or Bill Nye). These days, however, he is almost never referenced.
No good high-definition version of the original Cosmos anywhere!
Thoughts on “the man from the future?” (Bhattacharya). There is clearly a difference between the kind of mental computation and speed that von Neumann excelled at and real (and rare) transformative originality (genius). That said, JvN’s breath was, well, breathtaking and there is that famous anecdote from Teller which attests to his brilliance.
I knew several Hungarians at grad school and while I really don’t want to generalised, they were serious rigorous and high quality scientists. I was very envious of the Post-Doc’s Western Blots which you could have exhibited at the Tate!
Governesses bonanza and lunchtime conferences in childhood... This determinism is worse than the genetic one you're debunking! At least if it's just genes you can be lazy and hang around. That may be part of its draw...
Great piece! Brings to mind tales of supposed savants who just studied mnemonics and methods of calculating pi, etc. In addition to his tutors, young vN was raised in a general intellectual environment, with lots of smart people regularly coming over for dinner and discussing their specialties. Here's hoping we can all afford the modern equivalent of governesses and tutors.
To (reluctantly) defend the pop-hereditarian project. Is the meta-message from that side of the aisle to say something broadly along the lines of-
“even given the perfect educational, nutritional, familial, etc environment; you still wouldn’t be able to tutor just anyone into being a Johnny”
-basically saying there an innate “thing” he had that other people given his education and environment still wouldn’t be able to achieve. Or rather, we still have no clue what “it” is even after looking for so long.
One can always pushback and state that no one really believes blank slatism to that degree. Sure, but it is very strongly implied by some anti-hereditarian writing.
Very enjoyable read. Cleary, John had the best environment to create genius. However, the introduction of 100% hereditarians seems to be somewhat of a strawman argument. Leading intellectuals arguing for a ROLE for heredity in IQ like Charles Murray have been vilified for suggesting ANY role for genes. In the Bell Curve he cited research indicating 60% genetic and he has suggested a range of 40% to 80% genetic role is likely. There are those like Flynn that have argued for close to 100% nurture, but I haven't read any credible 100% nature advocates.
I think there was a lot of people who, when arguing against the blank slatist view, said they were not genetic determinists. And then, in all their other arguments and comments and beliefs, basically are genetic determinists. If it quacks like a duck...
Can you give examples of notable people (not just internet randos) arguing for genetic factors being close to 100%, with environment, education and upbringing having close to zero effect in outcomes?
YEs, Von Neumann comes from riches - but perhaps because his ancestors were genetically smarter too.
Carl Gauss would be a much better example of genetic superiority without much environmental help: Carl's mother was illiterate, he got same education as mediocrities around him yet he arguably was a bigger genius than Neumann.
Even Danzig, who in real life did what Matt Damon does in Good Will Hunting, would be a better example