John von Neumann Shot Lightning From His Arse

The movie Braveheart has a great scene where, by whispers and tales, the legend grows of the Scottish rebellion leader William Wallace (played by Mel Gibson in one of his best roles).

First that he killed “50 men,” and then no, “100 men!” and was “seven feet tall;” he even, as Gibson jokes, shoots “fireballs from his eyes” and “bolts of lightning from his arse.”

And that’s what I think of when I hear the legends of John von Neumann.

“He could remember every book he’d ever read verbatim!”

No, of course he couldn’t. Indeed, as we will see, John von Neumann, despite being (inarguably) a genius, didn’t even invent the “von Neumann architecture” for computers. He’s just credited with it, as he is with so much else.

Why Does This Matter?

A decade ago, in the grand Nature vs. Nurture debates, proponents on the Nature side regularly said this about the “Blank Slate” side:

“Hey! Those blank slatists over there, those biased journalists and gatekeeping editors of scientific journals, they’re the unreasonable ones! We’re just arguing that Nature is non-zero!”

And that’s sympathetic, for who can argue with “non-zero?”

But with the rise of a new pop-hereditarianism, which has undergone virulent growth on social media websites like the former Twitter, the reverse is now just as true: Pop-hereditarians scoff at the very idea that Nurture’s contribution might be non-zero, fanatically dismissing that even the best education—gasp—could have an effect. Given an inch, they’ve taken a mile, and become annoyingly identical to the blank slatists they once criticized. Much like blank slatism, pop-hereditarianism is built on selective credulity: holding things like meta-analyses of the positive effect of education on IQ to the highest possible standards, while meanwhile, happily accepting the results of poorly-recorded half-century-old twin studies (where the “separated” twins already knew one another and self-selected into the research).

When it comes to the Nature vs. Nurture debate, the truth is in the middle. It will always be in the middle. Yet middles are unsatisfying.

Like most arguments online, facts matter less than symbology. And John von Neumann has become a symbol of pop-hereditarianism.

The funny thing is that, as one of the best educated people of all time, Johnny (as he preferred) is a poor choice as a symbol for pop-hereditarianism. He certainly wasn’t genetically perfect (as we will see), and he wouldn’t have agreed