Robert Anton Wilson talks about John von Neumann and maybe logic

Robert Anton Wilson (born Robert Edward Wilson, January 18, 1932 January 11, 2007) was an American novelist, essayist, philosopher, polymath, psychonaut, futurologist and libertarian.

He described his work as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations—to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps and no one model elevated to the Truth." "My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything."

John von Neumann (Hungarian: margittai Neumann János Lajos) (December 28, 1903 February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian American mathematician who made major contributions to a vast range of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, continuous geometry, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis, hydrodynamics (of explosions), and statistics, as well as many other mathematical fields. He is generally regarded as one of the foremost mathematicians of the 20th century. The mathematician Jean Dieudonné called von Neumann "the last of the great mathematicians." Even in the city in the time that produced Szilárd (1898), Wigner (1902), and Teller (1908) his brilliance stood out. Most notably, von Neumann was a pioneer of the application of operator theory to quantum mechanics, a principal member of the Manhattan Project and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (as one of the few originally appointed), and a key figure in the development of game theory and the concepts of cellular automata and the universal constructor. Along with Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam, von Neumann worked out key steps in the nuclear physics involved in thermonuclear reactions and the hydrogen bomb.

Extended Biography:
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Von_Neumann.html

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[martinbill123321]

Von Neumann might have been the smartest person to have lived in the last 100 years. His friends joked that he wasn't human, but did a excellent job of inpersonating one.

[Pupak30]

He was speaking old greek language when he was 5 and was able to carry out

very difficult counts in his head without writings anything to a paper. He was a trully warm person who held huge parties in US for other scientist. He was a tue genious. Due to people like you we hungarians have a bad reputation in the world. You in the west look down everything which is not from your mind, but the thruth is that we are better workers than you are. You just have the many. that's it.

[gnossticc]

@Ericwvb2 Neumann, being so smart should've known that. Anyways, great prank! L0L

[Ericwvb2]

I remember reading a story about John Von Neumann. Two grad students wanted to play a prank on him. One of them spent a WEEK solving a very difficult physics or math problem (forget which) and memorized each step of the solution. Both approached John Von Neumann at a party and asked him to solve to the problem on the spot. Von Neumann proceeded to do so *in his head* but at every step the other grad student would blurt out info. First time anyone out-thought him in his life, it made him furious!

[lebol6]

I have to correct RAW :). As far as I know the first guy to "invent" many valued logic was polish mathematician Łukasiewicz (write in wiki Lukasiewicz logic)

His paper on three-value logic was published in 1920 (the translation came out in 1970). Hail BOB!

[FeelOfFriction]

He doesn't sound too healthy here.

[clubsandwedge]

Logic may only be applied when you're talking about a part or a whole. When you are talking about a whole, you are making statements like 'completely', like 'this chair is completely brown or not', I do not understand why RAW felt uncomfortable with the law of excluded middle.

[DeathShamans]

We dreamers and shamans call his description of: MAYBE as YIN or INTUITION (emotional body). Just like the God Religions called the Goddess Mystery or Holy Spirit. We all use our own language.

[borcer]

My friend, please don't confuse intelligence with morals, it's not the same thing. Your comments shows that you have preconceived ideas about people you've never met. I'm not from west, I just live here and btw, I have lived in Hungary in the 80's.

Listen to people who had worked with/for him on different projects and what they have to say about von Neumann: Stewart Swerdlow, Alfred Bielek, Dancun Cameron, Preston B. Nichols and others

Nationalism can be blind for the truth.