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".
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)
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 ↗