The Many Worlds of John von Neumann (Robert Wright & Ananyo Bhattacharya)

0:25 Ananyo’s book, The Man from the Future, about game theory inventor and polymath John von Neumann 6:38 Early life as a mathematical wunderkind 10:16 Von Neumann’s foundational contributions to quantum physics 24:39 Was entanglement as "spooky" to von Neumann as it was to Einstein? 33:46 Building—and reckoning with—the atomic bomb 47:22 Did von Neumann really want to nuke the USSR? 52:30 Why was early game theory so zero-sum–focused? 1:05:44 Influence on Turing, the open source movement, and modern computing 1:22:27 How brushes with totalitarianism shaped von Neumann’s views 1:28:56 Programming pioneer Klára Dán von Neumann 1:33:26 The duality of von Neumann’s social life 1:39:58 Did von Neumann grok incompleteness before Gödel? 1:42:45 Unfinished work comparing computers and the brain 1:50:23 Von Neumann’s deathbed conversion: Pascal's wager or something more?

Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Ananyo Bhattacharya (The Man from the Future). Recorded January 17, 2023.

Comments on BhTV: http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/65817 Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods Facebook: https://facebook.com/bloggingheads/ Podcasts: https://bloggingheads.tv/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nonzero.org/subscribe