I read this article from Scott Alexander and I was struck by some things.
This article mentions the claim that people made of Von Neumann that he memorized everything he read. By everything, they really seem to mean everything.
“Still, he was far from under-resourced during this time; his cosmpolitan governesses taught him every major European language, and he had access to his father’s spectacular library (this may have been when he memorized a 44-volume German-language history of the world, which he would later freak people out by quoting during historical discussions).”
He also mentions Von Neumann quoting A Tale of Two Cities.
OK.
Seriously?
I mean, it seems likely that he memorized some of his favorite parts of that 44 volume history, and just loved to proclaim it in conversations to get attention and adulation.
As for A Tale of Two Cities, everybody knows that it has one of the most beautiful openings of all time; it’s kind of a classic. So it makes sense that Von Neumann would like to memorize it to wow people.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”
In fact, Scott Alexander gives reasonable evidence that Von Neumann had exactly the kind of gregarious, cocky personality that does this sort of stuff. For example, he loved to joke about nuking the Russians, which Scott mentions in his paragraph about psycopathy. Haven’t we all met somebody like this? But, in my childhood, these kids got “humbled” by the other kids, which maybe isn’t great, looking back.
I knew this really smart gay kid who memorized PI to like 300 digits or something. He was full of insane tricks like this. He also did impressive things. Throughout it all, he was enamored with himself.
So I think that this is hitting at a very great phenomenon, particularly about these Jewish geniuses. I think that their stories are mostly fiction. I think they are buoyed by the fact that they are excellent conversationalists and good at boosting themselves socially. I think that they boost each other by pushing absurd myths of impossible genius.
My expectation is that they utilize the work of many other people in a social network of intellects working together, and ultimately take credit for the work of the many. This is easy to do in science.
Einstein’s “contributions” to special relativity and mass-energy equivalence come to mind as some really obvious examples of one genius guy getting credit for something he barely contributed to…and indeed in the case of mass-energy equivalence, his claim to precedence was just a lie.
We see the same cocky genius pattern with Feinmann: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - Wikipedia.
The takeaway lessons here are that good personality and good relationships goes a VERY long way. It actually probably helps you to have a better mind, too, since you will have less stress from personal problems.
The good part of the article is the description of Von Neumann’s childhood. We can see how he was raised very well, and given the greatest atmosphere for intellectual growth imaginable.
I think this quote is also good:
Edward Teller wrote that "Von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us.“
I think that in general, parents don’t need to treat children like children. You can just treat them like adults, and they will probably mature faster and get smarter. This is what I would advocate. I think this is one of the secrets of Asian parenting. They don’t encourage their kids to be wild and hyper-emotional in hopes that it will make the kid have fun.