When you look at it holistically, von Neumann was more influential in science and mathematics in the 20th century than either Einstein or Planck. He wasn't as obvious a symbol of the scientific revolution, but his contributions to SO MANY THINGS at a fundamental level makes him stand out to me.
Definitely my favorite physicist for the same reason you state. The notion that he just went around different fields and said “here’s how math can improve things,” invented some new approach, and moved on to another field to do it all over again just cracks me up.
Nowadays we'd call that "engineer's disease". I wonder how many potential Von Neumanns were discouraged from branching out into other fields by jealous gatekeepers who assume that any interest in their field by "outsiders", especially technical people, is "epistemic trespassing".
If people are assigned a "gatekeeping" position, they should at least be expected to be able to tell great minds from crack pots. (As opposed to just blindly applying a statistical filter)
Otherwise why not just replace them with a script (or these days, an AI)
Isn’t history replete with examples of great minds who were received as crackpots until, after careers’ worth of labor to validate them, some of their crazy ideas turned out to be correct?
The problem is the actual crackpots outnumber hidden gems by many orders of magnitude, so wasting time trying to sift through the noise is a losing proposition.
And I don’t know many, if any, examples of people received as crackpots that later were considered genius. At worst genius takes a little time to be recognized, which is a situation far more common.
I think maybe Srinivasa Ramanujan? Maybe not a full crackpot, but defo not worth spending time on because his work looked like Aliens came by and dropped a textbook.
I forget the quote, but one of the guys that recognized that he was worth looking into said something to the effect of "his work was too crazy for him to be crazy".
I have yet to meet a (academic) researcher that doesn't like to talk about their research topic if somebody comes and is genuinely interested. I mean most work on a topic that has maybe another 10-100 people in the world who are interested.
The problem is that instead most people to come to them are either obvious crackpots, who think they have solved cancer (energy...) and contact the person because they are a biologist, physicist ... (on a completely unrelated topic usually). Or they come from a place of arrogance, i.e. "we do ... like this, our method is clearly superior you should adopt it", or even worse here buy our clearly superior method.
An example I can think of off the top of my head is Luis Alvarez, the nobel physicist who came up with the asteroid impact theory of dinosaur extinction. The geology and paleontology community shunned him until the 90s when the Chicxulub crater was discovered (though geology is historically infamous for this, to the extent that nearly every important paradigm shift in geology was made by non-geologist outsiders who faced ridicule for their theories)
Yeah. I've been a part of a number of academic projects, and though my career has been in the private sector, my experience is that collaboration across fields and disciplines is relatively pain free (though maybe not a priority because the pathway to a pub and impact is not obvious). I think most people want to work with other interested people.
In my limited experience, the friction is between labs and groups that are working on very similar things, and the competition is direct and obvious. And even here, the source of the conflict is the reward structures of the field, not some aversion to collaboration or personal arrogance.
If someone is equal in talent to Von Neumann it's probably extremely difficult to discourage them enough via gatekeeping to stop them from making progress.
Usually that's because the engineer is not a very good engineer, at least outside their specialty. If they had studied engineering more, they would have probably learned that other engineers are already doing the thing they proposed.
"Using methodology from a field known for its focus on methodology in another field" was still a novel idea in von Neumann's time. But because von Neumann and others did it, and because millions of people entered science after them, most combinations like that have already been tried. Breakthroughs from combining ideas from unrelated fields require something little less obvious these days.
srejk · · focus · HN ↗
snapetom · · focus · HN ↗
harpersealtako · · focus · HN ↗
lalalandland · · focus · HN ↗
hnfong · · focus · HN ↗
Otherwise why not just replace them with a script (or these days, an AI)
qlte · · focus · HN ↗
alwa · · focus · HN ↗
SideQuark · · focus · HN ↗
And I don’t know many, if any, examples of people received as crackpots that later were considered genius. At worst genius takes a little time to be recognized, which is a situation far more common.
tekla · · focus · HN ↗
I forget the quote, but one of the guys that recognized that he was worth looking into said something to the effect of "his work was too crazy for him to be crazy".
SideQuark · · focus · HN ↗
amunozo · · focus · HN ↗
IAmBroom · · focus · HN ↗
It's like an analog to the fact that almost all people consider themselves funny.
ahazred8ta · · focus · HN ↗
cindyllm · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
chucksmash · · focus · HN ↗
If somebody truly believes they have a useful model then they don't discouraged by academic gatekeeping, they go and build Time Cube.
cycomanic · · focus · HN ↗
The problem is that instead most people to come to them are either obvious crackpots, who think they have solved cancer (energy...) and contact the person because they are a biologist, physicist ... (on a completely unrelated topic usually). Or they come from a place of arrogance, i.e. "we do ... like this, our method is clearly superior you should adopt it", or even worse here buy our clearly superior method.
harpersealtako · · focus · HN ↗
kaffekaka · · focus · HN ↗
colinhb · · focus · HN ↗
In my limited experience, the friction is between labs and groups that are working on very similar things, and the competition is direct and obvious. And even here, the source of the conflict is the reward structures of the field, not some aversion to collaboration or personal arrogance.
bmitc · · focus · HN ↗
However, the gatekeeping you mention definitely occurs to mere mortals who might have an interesting bend on existing ideas.
KylerAce · · focus · HN ↗
jltsiren · · focus · HN ↗
"Using methodology from a field known for its focus on methodology in another field" was still a novel idea in von Neumann's time. But because von Neumann and others did it, and because millions of people entered science after them, most combinations like that have already been tried. Breakthroughs from combining ideas from unrelated fields require something little less obvious these days.
helterskelter2 · · focus · HN ↗