The MANIAC (2023)
BenjamĂn Labatut
rating fantastic
type fiction audiobook
concepts computer-science history
2025/09/06 đź‡đź‡şÂ Hungary book; a fictionalized biography of Hungarian polymath John von Neumann
- “Why are people like me condemned to keep living?”
- “The crisis of the foundations of mathematics” — is mathematics grounded in universally true axioms or logic? (also a goal of Hilbert)
- Caused some people to lose their minds
- For JvN, this area of interest was characteristic of his incredible unique style of thinking — abstract, reductionist— and also his moral blindness
- Cantor (Kantor?): established that there are multiple kinds of infinity (previously just a helpful yet fanciful idea), died in insane asylum
- Bertrand Russel: “logists” POV, basically deriving everything from Boolean logic?
- Gödel (Austrian): no way to axiomize mathematics, any fundamental system would be incomplete because it’s “truths” couldn’t be proven by that system → end of this quest… incompleteness theorems - Also eventually succumbed to paranoia/derangement: unclear whether this was a cause or effect of his genius
- JvN built on this to prove the opposite: any “complete” system would be inconsistent (Gödel had actually already formalized this in his second incompleteness theorems; always JvN’s only equal)
- Generally, JvN → playful, instantaneous intellect,always trying to understand the world
- Pre-WWI-era, Hungary = bread basket of Austro-Hungarian Empire; not particularly concerned with the war because not fought on their land and good economically
- 1930s: peak of JvN’s work; reluctant to leave Europe because of work in quantum physics, etc. happening there, but at risk bc Jewish background (although he was quite secular)
- Rise of Nazi Germany and persecution of Jews seen as evidence of the irrationality of the world (consistent with the uncomfortable new conclusions, lack of faith in mathematics stemming from Gödel)
- Once in America, became more practical and effective, but also more dangerous; “renegade” mathematician/mind for hire; seduced by power and money
- America “awoke a secret demon,” brought out the worst in him
- Worked with Manhattan Project
- Calculated personally the optimal height to detonate bombs for maximum blast impact
- Saw all life as a game — and mathematics is sort of related to the way animals play and learn to hunt when growing up? (not exactly sure that’s the analogy but something like that)
- Example of how dangerous this could be… invented principle of MAD (mutually assured discussion), which the US practiced through 4 decades of the Cold War.. what happens when “humanity becomes prisoner to reason”
- Chess is not a game, but a form of computation— there is a calculable best move for a given position/configuration, even if it’s hard to figure out
- True games require tactics of deception, “how to human beings make choices,” economics
- Minimax theorem: mathematically demonstrated that there is always a rationale course of action for two player games, provided their interests are diametrically opposed
- Expanded to multiple player games and overlapping motivations
- Believed only way to achieve peace during Cold War was to bomb the USSR, until they also got the bomb; game theory then lead to arms race via MAD
- Reflects JvN’s profoundly cynical and pessimistic view of humanity— is the central tenet (that there is truly a rationale choice in every situation) actually relevant beyond the minimax theorem? Assumes perfectly rationale and logical agents interested only in winning, total recall of all their past moves, flawless understanding of rules and ramifications of any action… not true for any real person
- This irrationality is also “a mercy, a strange angel that protects us from the mad dreams of reason”
- Scientists involved in this and Manhattan Project weren’t just motivated by the power and money or war, but mainly by “the joy of thinking the unthinkable, and doing the impossible, pushing past all human limits by burning Prometheus’s gift to its utmost incandescence”
- Especially the Hungarians! Due to the fundamental uncertainty and insecurity in that region of Central Europe?
- The MANIAC = first actual “computer,” implementation of Turing machine
- Funded by military efforts, but JvN knew it would have much broader impacts
- Enabled computations required to build first hydrogen bomb
- JvN’s obscure work on the requirements for a self-replicating “autonoma” precisely describe DNA/RNA and preceded Watson & Crick’s work by a decade — abstract to concrete, not the direction science normally works!!
- “Cavemen created the gods. I see no reason why we shouldn’t do the same.”
- For a machine to behave and think like a human, “it would have to grow, not b built… and it would need to play, like a child.” → ability to make mistakes, sometimes behave unpredictably (“mutate”) required to evolve new behaviors
- Go = unimaginably more complex than chess in terms of number of possible moves and games, value of each piece, etc
- Now days, chess-playing computers make decisions by brute force, which is intractable for Go