'Aristocratic Tutoring' Cannot Explain von Neumann's Success

1 pointsposted 12 hours ago
by paulpauper

2 Comments

PaulHoule

10 hours ago

This is hard to believe:

   I can attest to this, such as being the first to come up with the 
   idea of shorting Bitcoin to hedge the stock market (I profited big 
   this week doing this) despite not having any finance or Wall Street 
   background.

gsf_emergency_5

an hour ago

How does one reliably counter-signal competence? That would not just break social media, it would make nepo babies[0] obsolete in fields without straightforward measures of merit (like thought-leadership)

His other example of the decades-new identity makes it sound like special functions have seen better days, not that we should give him some brownies.

One type of counter-signal is being nuts and right at the same time, all the time. This is not anything I've seen in HN comments not to mention this blogger. (Nor from Neumann, really. He did point to people who were, though, like Szilard, Seth Neddermeyer, etc)

[0]"Precocity" is NOT a counter-signal, it's a bad system smell?

[1] I saw a YouTube comment today which observed that mathematicians agree [on whether something is a breakthrough] much more readily than philosophers (and physicists, I would add)