Author Discusses The Smartest Human Ever | The Human Podcast Ep 30 (Ananyo Bhattacharya)
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- Опубликовано: 9 июл 2024
- Ananyo Bhattacharya is the chief science writer at the London Insitute for Mathematical Sciences. He is the author of the Financial Times & TLS book of the year, The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann.
The Human Podcast is a new show that explores the lives and stories of a wide range of individuals. New episodes are released every week - subscribe to stay notified.
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ORDER OF CONVERSATION:
0:00 - Intro
0:24 - Top 3 Arguments Von Neumann Was The Smartest Person Ever
5:49 - Why Is He Not A Household Name?
11:12 - What Would He Think About The World Today?
17:46 - Why Have You Been So Interested In Him?
22:37 - What Was His Personality Like?
25:19 - How Did Writing The Book Change You?
30:13 - What Work & Leisure Do You Engage In?
36:06 - What Does It Mean To Live A Good Life?
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ORDER OF CONVERSATION:
0:00 - Intro
0:24 - Top 3 Arguments Von Neumann Was The Smartest Person Ever
5:49 - Why Is He Not A Household Name?
11:12 - What Would He Think About The World Today?
17:46 - Why Have You Been So Interested In Him?
22:37 - What Was His Personality Like?
25:19 - How Did Writing The Book Change You?
30:13 - What Work & Leisure Do You Engage In?
36:06 - What Does It Mean To Live A Good Life?
Being smart at math does not mean you are smart in other areas. Many math bofins suck at logic, language, business, creative thinking, common sense, imagination, understanding other abstractions apart from numbers, planning, speculative thinking, spacial thinking, objective thought, accumulation of knowledge, strategy(chess will display) and so much more in which others are genius at. There are criminals who are brilliant at what they do in so much that they develop whealth and thrive. There are people who are not that good at math but have powerful intuitive thinking that they are able to get rich and make a living through gambling and other unknown sources e.g Mikki Maze. There are people who sucked at school but are brilliant businessmen. Shake spear couldn't do math to save his life, but John Neumann would dream to write like him. The gifts of men are endless, but society only supports these gifts like math as it has importance to the growth of the whole economy, not just to help the individual. Find your gifts God has given you and be yourself. Become the best version of you, try your hand at everything and so you will discover who you really are and how you are to minister to the world while getting paid crazy amounts of money for it.
I worked for "Big Blue". The largest computer company in the world at the time.
They hired "Johnny" as a consultant in 1951.
I never saw any mention of him on company documentation or the term "von Neumann architecture".
John von Neumann made contributions to quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, computing, statistics, economics and game theory, lattice theory, group theory, and the hydrogen bomb.
A phenomenal memory and a phenomenal computational ability. A polyglot, and the greatest mathematician, who covered the most areas of mathematics, of the 20th century!
Thanks for your interesting comment Mike :) Hope you enjoyed the episode.
@@TheHumanPodcast.
I have very much enjoyed this video!
Thank You so much for posting!
@@MikeFuller-ok6ok So pleased to hear you enjoyed the episode!
My pleasure.
Hope you enjoy future episodes!
There is so many smart people. Einstein, Von Humboldt or Haber or many unknown Indian people.
@@stofjes4204
Thanks for the reply!
There are people working on the unification with gravity into the quantum world who are the most intelligent people on the planet who I'd say 99% or more of the general population have never heard of.
Fascinating conversation. Thank you.
I have always believed that Von Neumann is criminally under appreciated. Probably because he was labeled a mathematician. He also died relatively young.
Thanks for your comment 😊 If you fancy checking out the full episode you’ll find at 5:49 that I ask Ananyo why he’s not a household name. If you enjoy the episode and would consider subscribing to support the show that would be very much appreciated 😊 Thanks, Joe
He wasn't that young when he died. 57 to be exact. Others like Alan Turing and Ramanujan died way younger.
Waves and matrix mechanics are very related. Waves are simply sine and cosine and complex exponentials. Matrix mechanics is linear algebra on complex variable systems, which has some modified arithmetic rules.
Thanks for your interesting comment Lydell! Hope you enjoyed the show.
@@TheHumanPodcast. Yes, very engaging and thought provoking. 🙏🏽
@@LydellAaron Glad to hear you think so!
I haven't read his book yet, but I recently finished "The Maniac" by Benjamin Labatut. It's brilliantly written. A must for anyone interested in this man. The comparison with Gauss is appropriate. I will add Euler. I had no idea Von Neumann was connected to Bronowski and Mandelbrot.
Thanks for your comment and the recommendation! I recently heard Demis Hassabis recommend Labatut's book "When We Cease to Understand the World", so I'll definitely check your one out too. Hope you enjoyed the episode :)
Bronowski talks in his series The ascent of man about von Neumann as the absolut most intelligent man he ever met and Enrico Fermi as a distant second. By the way Fermi said about Neumann that his speed thinking was unfathomable
Neumann was the Bruce Lee of mathematics.
Thanks for your comment! I like the metaphor.
Walter Pitts was in a group with Von Neumann working on cybernetics and AI with people like Norbert Wiener and they considered him on another level even compared to John and Norbert it would seem. He unfortunately had a premature downward spiral and died young. Look up the details of his intellect and you'll see his analytical intelligence was perhaps deeper than Von Neumann. Also intuitive intelligence is perhaps more important.
I would put Aristotle, Peirce, Gödel, Gauss, Euler, Newton, and Einstein at the very least on a tier above Von Neumann just due to this. Von Neumann was a jack of all trades and made important contributions everywhere it would seem but the depth of these contributions are not as significant as even those made by geniuses like Shannon, R.A. Fisher, Grothendieck, Dirac, Kolmogorov, Weyl, Fermi.
By FAR
Wittgenstein
Podcasters: practice a little every day not saying "erm", "you know", and "I mean". It's actually easy to replace these with silence. Thank you.
Lol he spoke just fine
Am smarter
John von Neumann = smartest person in history? 🤔
Hey David, thanks for your comment. Do you reckon he was? If not, who would you put above him? 😊
@@TheHumanPodcast. Von Neumann was probably in the top ten smartest people ever. The smartest person in history was probably Isaac Newton or Christian Heinrich Heineken.
This isn't about Newton or Einstein???