The Maniac
Running thoughts while reading. A strange book about genius, computation, weapons, games, and the machines Johnny helped bring into the world. Dec 2025
Initial Thoughts
It has been a while since I started this book, and I have thoughts.
Clearly, Von Neumann was a genius. What I thought this book would contain was a deeper excerpt into his life: his thought, his interests, the way he saw the world. What I got was more like a list of accomplishments, complemented by other great scientists saying, yes, this guy was terrifyingly smart. I get it. He was smart. Some people were terrified of him and his computations.
But I still feel there was much more there than what has been captured in books. Maybe he was much smarter, much more thoughtful than what is shown here as a charming, gregarious, playful personality. I wanted a little more depth, you know?
His inability to learn the bicycle because he was too deep into learning is very funny though. I am halfway through, and the book is fun.
Running Log
17-12-2025
The story of the creation of the hydrogen bomb, especially as narrated through Feynman, is truly interesting. It talks about the depths of what a scientist goes through while working on something like that. Not just the abstract physics, but the psychological condition of doing the work.
20-12-2025
Completed the part about Von Neumann, up until his screaming end.
One interesting situation was when Neumann was outsmarted by Godel with the theory of computing and the incompleteness theorem. At the very end, Godel was a tortured mind, and maybe that torture was part of what gave him the insight for his creativity.
Johnny and the Military
I think Von Neumann enjoyed his superstar personality in the US military very much. He liked being recognized and rewarded for his thoughts. He had some morbid thoughts about the USSR and the hydrogen bomb. The author suggests this came from Neumann’s complete logical thinking, which removed all humanity from his words. But again, he also seemed like a complete materialist xD.
His Cadillac, the military keys, the secrets, the whole roaming-around-with-access thing: this seems to have been the prime of his life. It is also funny that he would apparently just dump off the cards and walk into it lol. He seemed to handle wealth properly?
The American military-industrial complex tried to save him to the very last second and unfortunately could not do anything. Lewis Strauss being close to him made me read about Strauss too. Apart from his vindictiveness against Oppie, Strauss seems like mostly a good guy? A proud religious man, a competent administrator, a good banker person too lol. Proper rags-to-riches story, thwarted by one personal vendetta.
Johnny’s last few years were very painful. I think Teller captured it perfectly. It reminds me of John Nash’s argument. Nash was able to go through it, but I think Von Neumann with schizophrenia would have been much more dead than normal.
Johnny and Maths
Von Neumann left maths and went fully into computing, just like Oppie left physics for bombs and more.
His intense relation to mathematics made him feel almost machine-like. The scene with Nils Aall Barricelli also makes me think he went mad with automata theory and the nature of replicating digital life with computers. Anyone who first saw computers the way Von Neumann saw them might have started thinking in that direction.
His mathematical prowess gave him unprecedented clarity, but not humility. Maths is like the Library of Babel, but on a more universal scale. Johnny, drunk with power after being able to see the monster, did not consider the possibility that he might never fully understand it. We plebs cannot even see the being in its whole. I think this shows up in his work on automata, chaos, and more.
It feels right, then, when Wigner says that Einstein’s insight was deeper than Jansci’s.
In his last years, Von Neumann tried to think about life and the brain in relation to computers. Him trying to figure out how the brain worked compared to a computer feels so far ahead of time. It is like trying to connect LLM-based multimodal AGI before deep learning even properly arrives. It is a shame he did not get proper closure because of his disease.
His need to leave a legacy was very strong. Even though he is considered the father of many things, it still was not enough for him, was it? Damn. Even Eddie from Limitless probably could not have done what Von Neumann did, and yet he might still be forgotten within a century.
But by reading about him, I have developed great respect for a mind as lucid and penetrating as his.
The AlphaGo Ending
21-12-2025
I completed the book, and damn, what a thrill ride lol.
The last part about AlphaGo and Lee Sedol gave me a deeper thrill than watching the entire documentary itself. I had not caught this point earlier: Move 37 was AlphaGo’s “hand of God” move, and Move 78 was Lee’s. What an interesting debacle yeah?
What I did not know was that AlphaGo also beat the next reigning champion from China, and he did not think it was that great a deal. He said:
What he see is the whole universe, while what we see is just a pond right in front of us. So I’ll leave him with the task to explore the universe, while I, myself, prefer fishing in the pond.
After reading the book, and after reading about Johnny and what computing machines have become since Von Neumann’s time, this feels like the right ending. Johnny would be proud of his computing machines and what they have done, even though that would do nothing except please him, because the machines themselves would not care.
Even though he did not nurture them or program them by hand, I think they would have made him a very proud father. Unlike their illustrious father, they are immortal, eternal, watching, growing.