I’d even go further—I think we’re still recovering from Von Neumann’s biggest mistakes:
1. Implicitly basing game theory on causal decision theory 2. Founding utility theory on the independence axiom 3. Advocating for nuking the USSR as soon as possible
I’m not confident in my argument, but it suggests the possibility that von Neumann’s concern about his legacy was tracking something important (though, even if so, it’s unlikely that feeling insecure was a good response).
Reading this post led me to find a twitter thread arguing (with a bunch of examples):
I then responded to it with my own thread arguing:
I’m not confident in my argument, but it suggests the possibility that von Neumann’s concern about his legacy was tracking something important (though, even if so, it’s unlikely that feeling insecure was a good response).