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The Maniac
From one of contemporary literature’s most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the impact of his singular legacy on the dreams and nightmares of the twentieth century and the nascent age of AI
Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.
A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake.
The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control.
A work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.
Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.
A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake.
The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control.
A work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published October 3, 2023
About the author
Benjamín Labatut
5 books2,051 followersBenjamin Labatut was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He spent his childhood in The Hague and Buenos Aires and when he was twelve years old he moved to Santiago de Chile, where he lives today.
La Antártica empieza aquí was his first book, being published in México, where it won Premio Caza de Letras 2009, delivered by Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM) and Editorial Alfaguara.
His second book is titled Después de la luz, appeared in 2016, published by Editorial Hueders. After a deep personal crisis, Labatut wrote this book, conformed by scientific, historical and filosofical notes about the void.
His third book Un verdor terrible, was published in spanish by Editorial Anagrama and also several countries such Germany, Italy, France, Netherlands, United Kingdom and Portugal
La Antártica empieza aquí was his first book, being published in México, where it won Premio Caza de Letras 2009, delivered by Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM) and Editorial Alfaguara.
His second book is titled Después de la luz, appeared in 2016, published by Editorial Hueders. After a deep personal crisis, Labatut wrote this book, conformed by scientific, historical and filosofical notes about the void.
His third book Un verdor terrible, was published in spanish by Editorial Anagrama and also several countries such Germany, Italy, France, Netherlands, United Kingdom and Portugal
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,671 reviews
September 25, 2023
The following paragraphs will be me fangirling over the genious of Benjamin Labatut. I mean, you have to be a genious to turn a book about quantum mechanics and high level mathematics into a page turner. I devoured the novel although through school I struggled to understand basic physics ( I was good at mathematics though).
I knew the novel was going to be a five stars from the beginning. Who would not be curious to read a novel which starts like this: „On the morning of the twenty-fifth of September 1933, the Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest walked into Professor Jan Waterink’s Pedagogical Institute for Afflicted Children in Amsterdam, shot his fifteen-year-old son Vassily in the head, then turned the gun on himself” He then starts to present the story of this physicist, who realizes the potential destructive power of quantum mechanics and slowly goes mad from the struggle with his brilliant intellect
The Maniac is a novel “based on fact”, as Labatut puts it. It follows the same themes as his first magical novel “When We Cease to Understand the World” (my review here). Science can be dangerous, it can destroy as much as it creates, it can lead to madness for the most brilliant minds, who cannot deal with all the pressure and possibility. From a stylist point of view, it is probably less experimental, however equally brilliant. I also have to mention that Benjamin Labatut, is a Chilean who lives in the Netherlands and who wrote the novel in English, his 3rd language. I could not detect any sign was not written in his native tongue.
The novel is structured in three parts. I already talked about the 1st chapter so I would not say more about it. The 2nd and most important part presents the life and work of John von Neumann, a genious mathematician who revolutionized most of the fields he explored, which were many. He wrote the most important piece on game theory, helped with the building of the atomic bomb and pioneering the Artificial intelligence field. His portrait is sketched by different people who were part of his life, his friends, teacher, wives, colleagues. Von Neumann was one of the smartest people who ever lived, charismatic but also scary. His sense of morality was questionable though, which fits with Labatut main theme.
The writing is urgent, feverish, poetic, it makes you turn page after page: “He once told me that, just as wild animals play when they are young in preparation for lethal circumstances arising later in their lives, mathematics may be, to a large extent, nothing but a strange and wonderful collection of games, an enterprise whose real purpose, beyond any one stated outright, is to slowly work changes in the individual and collective human psyche, as a way to prepare us for a future that nobody can imagine. The problem with those games, the many terrible games that spring forth from humanity’s unbridled imagination, is that when they are played in the real world—whose rules and true purpose 0are known only to God—we come face- to-face with dangers that we may not have the knowledge or the wisdom to overcome. I know this because my darling husband thought up one of the most dangerous ideas in human history, one so devilish and cynical that it is a miracle that we have so far managed to survive it.”
IMPORTANT: It is mandatory for this novel to be read together with the fantastic movie Oppenheimer. If you haven’t seen that movie you MUST. It is a masterpiece. Many of the characters and events from the 2nd part of this book are also present in the movie. For example, I got to revisit the famous words from Oppenheimer: „We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him takes on his multiarmed form and says, “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.””
The 3rd part tells the story of the first Artificial Intelligence program which Beat the best GO player in the world. It starts with the life of the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol, continues with the creation of AI program AlphaGo and explores the defeat of the human player by the AI with 4-1. As expected, it explores both the fantastic opportunities this creation represents but also its perils. „For progress there is no cure”, it is written somewhere earlier in the novel.
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! End of the eulogy!
I received an arc of this book from Netgalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review
I knew the novel was going to be a five stars from the beginning. Who would not be curious to read a novel which starts like this: „On the morning of the twenty-fifth of September 1933, the Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest walked into Professor Jan Waterink’s Pedagogical Institute for Afflicted Children in Amsterdam, shot his fifteen-year-old son Vassily in the head, then turned the gun on himself” He then starts to present the story of this physicist, who realizes the potential destructive power of quantum mechanics and slowly goes mad from the struggle with his brilliant intellect
The Maniac is a novel “based on fact”, as Labatut puts it. It follows the same themes as his first magical novel “When We Cease to Understand the World” (my review here). Science can be dangerous, it can destroy as much as it creates, it can lead to madness for the most brilliant minds, who cannot deal with all the pressure and possibility. From a stylist point of view, it is probably less experimental, however equally brilliant. I also have to mention that Benjamin Labatut, is a Chilean who lives in the Netherlands and who wrote the novel in English, his 3rd language. I could not detect any sign was not written in his native tongue.
The novel is structured in three parts. I already talked about the 1st chapter so I would not say more about it. The 2nd and most important part presents the life and work of John von Neumann, a genious mathematician who revolutionized most of the fields he explored, which were many. He wrote the most important piece on game theory, helped with the building of the atomic bomb and pioneering the Artificial intelligence field. His portrait is sketched by different people who were part of his life, his friends, teacher, wives, colleagues. Von Neumann was one of the smartest people who ever lived, charismatic but also scary. His sense of morality was questionable though, which fits with Labatut main theme.
The writing is urgent, feverish, poetic, it makes you turn page after page: “He once told me that, just as wild animals play when they are young in preparation for lethal circumstances arising later in their lives, mathematics may be, to a large extent, nothing but a strange and wonderful collection of games, an enterprise whose real purpose, beyond any one stated outright, is to slowly work changes in the individual and collective human psyche, as a way to prepare us for a future that nobody can imagine. The problem with those games, the many terrible games that spring forth from humanity’s unbridled imagination, is that when they are played in the real world—whose rules and true purpose 0are known only to God—we come face- to-face with dangers that we may not have the knowledge or the wisdom to overcome. I know this because my darling husband thought up one of the most dangerous ideas in human history, one so devilish and cynical that it is a miracle that we have so far managed to survive it.”
IMPORTANT: It is mandatory for this novel to be read together with the fantastic movie Oppenheimer. If you haven’t seen that movie you MUST. It is a masterpiece. Many of the characters and events from the 2nd part of this book are also present in the movie. For example, I got to revisit the famous words from Oppenheimer: „We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him takes on his multiarmed form and says, “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.””
The 3rd part tells the story of the first Artificial Intelligence program which Beat the best GO player in the world. It starts with the life of the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol, continues with the creation of AI program AlphaGo and explores the defeat of the human player by the AI with 4-1. As expected, it explores both the fantastic opportunities this creation represents but also its perils. „For progress there is no cure”, it is written somewhere earlier in the novel.
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! End of the eulogy!
I received an arc of this book from Netgalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review
April 22, 2024
Una chingonería.
Labatut nos sumerge en el mundo de la física, las matemáticas y lo hace increíblemente atractivo. Los recursos que utilizan nos obligan a pensar en un ensayo/biografía/crónica de otro nivel.
Magistralmente bien construida y con la capacidad de hacer interesantes temas muy complejos.
La última parte de este libro es la clara muestra de cómo la IA se está apoderando del mundo.
Labatut nos sumerge en el mundo de la física, las matemáticas y lo hace increíblemente atractivo. Los recursos que utilizan nos obligan a pensar en un ensayo/biografía/crónica de otro nivel.
Magistralmente bien construida y con la capacidad de hacer interesantes temas muy complejos.
La última parte de este libro es la clara muestra de cómo la IA se está apoderando del mundo.
July 29, 2023
Not as stylistically ambitious as WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD, but perhaps an even greater book. Damn. I’m dizzy.
This book is downright chilling at times, especially the middle section that deals with John von Neumann (the best section). This section is spectacular and spellbinding, telling the story of von Neumann, but through the viewpoints of everyone who knew him. We don’t get into his head himself; we hear from others. This stylistic choice helps us understand all of the various facets of his character, while also providing us with some much-needed insight, depth, and empathy (especially after you read about some of his terrifying choices). This section would make for a compelling companion piece to the film OPPENHEIMER (the central figure of that movie makes an experience in this book).
Labatut seems to love his themes of brilliant men who descend into madness. What is it like when your mind is in constant overdrive? When it is never satisfied with its results? When it is in constant need to push boundaries and enter the depths of the unknown? When it always needs to be in control? When it is searching for some sort of higher being?
What are the possibilities (and dangers) when mathematics and science go too far? There is a lot to unpack here, and I’m going to have a lot of fun unloading. But damn, this is a fantastic read. It was riveting, compulsively readable, eye-opening, exhilarating, and in a way hits a bit too close to home (that last section)
Labatut, keep doing what you’re doing.
This book is downright chilling at times, especially the middle section that deals with John von Neumann (the best section). This section is spectacular and spellbinding, telling the story of von Neumann, but through the viewpoints of everyone who knew him. We don’t get into his head himself; we hear from others. This stylistic choice helps us understand all of the various facets of his character, while also providing us with some much-needed insight, depth, and empathy (especially after you read about some of his terrifying choices). This section would make for a compelling companion piece to the film OPPENHEIMER (the central figure of that movie makes an experience in this book).
Labatut seems to love his themes of brilliant men who descend into madness. What is it like when your mind is in constant overdrive? When it is never satisfied with its results? When it is in constant need to push boundaries and enter the depths of the unknown? When it always needs to be in control? When it is searching for some sort of higher being?
What are the possibilities (and dangers) when mathematics and science go too far? There is a lot to unpack here, and I’m going to have a lot of fun unloading. But damn, this is a fantastic read. It was riveting, compulsively readable, eye-opening, exhilarating, and in a way hits a bit too close to home (that last section)
Labatut, keep doing what you’re doing.
September 1, 2024
Disturbing contemplation on the nature of progress and how values that we see as quintessential human are at risk of being supplanted and left behind in a quest for ever greater (artificial) intelligence
Technological power as such is always an ambivalent achievement and science is neutral all through, providing only means of control applicable to any purpose, and indifferent to all. It is not the particular perverse destructiveness of one specific invention that creates danger, the danger is intrinsic. For progress there is no cure.
After a brief prologue on brilliant physicists and mathematicians going crazy or homicidal while laying the foundations to quantum mechanics in the interbellum, we largely follow John (János) von Neumann his life, a brilliant Hungarian mathematician far ahead of his time. For me as a Dutch man, the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, Schiermonksoog and physics department in Leiden University coming back quite a few time at the start of the book was fun. Neumann himself had less fun, despite his astounding achievements in quantum mechanics, game theory, computing, machine learning and theorising DNA before its actual discovery, his personal life and interactions with other humans were often fractious and sad.
Von Neumann, absolutely brilliant from his childhood onwards, solves mathematical equations that his father who was academically accomplished as well was stuck on for weeks, at only 10. He had an early fascination with the precursor to the computer, also already alluding to the Luddite reactions against such technology. He had a doctorate in Mathematics and Master in Chemical Engineering plus a professor position at 22. Even though the scientific and societal upheaval in his adolescence, he published 32 major scientific papers in less than 2 years, culminating into writing the seminal work on quantum mechanics in 1932.
The MANIAC consists of chapters of people around Von Neumann reflect on his remarkable talent. These were varied and impressive, but we also learn that Von Neumann was the one who calculated the optimal height on which the atomic bombs above Nagasaki and Hiroshima could be detonated for maximal damage. Initially, developing computing power was mainly driven by the desires to perform the calculations for the hydrogen bombs, 500 times more destructive than the bombs that wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Von Neumann also was the developer of MAD, mutual assured destruction doctrine based on game theory while also forecasting the existence of DNA and mRNA in a 1940 conceptual paper about self replication.
The theme of intelligence and progress being anathema to happiness and human values is something that also was at the heart of the previous book of Benjamín Labatut. I am also wondering if the book doesn't suffer, despite von Neumann being obviously brilliant, of a "Great men" syndrome. Would the confluence of societal unrest not have led to the breakthroughs one way or the other? In how far is scientific progress really dependent on one brilliant mind? Machines like Me by Ian McEwan and off course The Three-Body Problem raise similar questions, to which we will probably never get a definitive answer.
The third part of the book meanwhile left me underwhelmed, it is basically a literal rendition (would be funny if created by using AI actually!) of this documentary I watched for my MBA elective on AI: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6ge...
Still an impressive and thought provoking work by Benjamín Labatut, very topical and a dire warning against techno utopianism, since the computer was initially developed to not just crack codes of the nazis (as we have seen often portrayed in respect to Turing his contributions. Alan Turing coincidentally almost became the assistant to Von Neumann in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton) but also to calculate a way to invent the hydrogen bomb.
Quotes and some further observations:
Mathematics is hostile to life
His mind was in a constant state of hunger
Only he was fully awake
So accustomed to privilege that nothing but the very best being good enough for him
Lost faith is worse than no faith at all
The smartest man of the 20th century
An ontological limit, something we could not think past
Mathematics is so ethereal to me
One of his professors from the university of Vienna, who met him when he was a very young man, said that he could not figure out if it was the nature of his work that made him unstable, or that you actually had to be unstable to think in the way that Gödel did. I believe there is truth in both views. The few times I spoke to him I could sense how logic and logical thinking were inextricably bound to his mounting derangement, because in some sense paranoia is logic run amok. Every chaos is a wrong appearance wrote Gödel. He was of the firm belief there was a reason for everything. If you think that way it is a small step to begin to see hidden machinations and agents operating to manipulate the most common everyday occurrences.
It’s a miracle that a man so idiotic could be so smart
And serves a personal reminder that neither the natural nor the social sciences are ever neutral, even if they aspire to be that way
A strange angel that protects us from the mad dreams of reason
Human guided Machine learning foretold by Alan Turing in the 1950s
Understanding by way of destruction
They could no longer look at the world without seeing its shadow
Within the limitations of my horrible nature I want to make you happy.
Dying in 1957 of cancer
Technological power as such is always an ambivalent achievement and science is neutral all through, providing only means of control applicable to any purpose, and indifferent to all. It is not the particular perverse destructiveness of one specific invention that creates danger, the danger is intrinsic. For progress there is no cure.
Lee Sedol, the go master who won 1 match of AI AlphaGO, created by a team led by Sam Altman, currently CEO of OpenAI, being overall crushed
Go styles changing after the death of a parent
Deepmind being bought by Google in 2014 for $625m
Prunes branches from a Monte Carlo tree of options for moves of the opponent, with probability calculations for every move to increase the overall chance of winning, playing “lazy” moves that increases its chance of winning by 1 stone difference
I think the future belongs to AI - top Go players
AlphaZero, not burdened by any human examples mastered chess in 8 hours, playing more games against itself than available in all of recorded history and only took 12 hours to learn a more complex Japanese version of chess and go, becoming beyond the skill level of any human in those three games.
Technological power as such is always an ambivalent achievement and science is neutral all through, providing only means of control applicable to any purpose, and indifferent to all. It is not the particular perverse destructiveness of one specific invention that creates danger, the danger is intrinsic. For progress there is no cure.
After a brief prologue on brilliant physicists and mathematicians going crazy or homicidal while laying the foundations to quantum mechanics in the interbellum, we largely follow John (János) von Neumann his life, a brilliant Hungarian mathematician far ahead of his time. For me as a Dutch man, the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, Schiermonksoog and physics department in Leiden University coming back quite a few time at the start of the book was fun. Neumann himself had less fun, despite his astounding achievements in quantum mechanics, game theory, computing, machine learning and theorising DNA before its actual discovery, his personal life and interactions with other humans were often fractious and sad.
Von Neumann, absolutely brilliant from his childhood onwards, solves mathematical equations that his father who was academically accomplished as well was stuck on for weeks, at only 10. He had an early fascination with the precursor to the computer, also already alluding to the Luddite reactions against such technology. He had a doctorate in Mathematics and Master in Chemical Engineering plus a professor position at 22. Even though the scientific and societal upheaval in his adolescence, he published 32 major scientific papers in less than 2 years, culminating into writing the seminal work on quantum mechanics in 1932.
The MANIAC consists of chapters of people around Von Neumann reflect on his remarkable talent. These were varied and impressive, but we also learn that Von Neumann was the one who calculated the optimal height on which the atomic bombs above Nagasaki and Hiroshima could be detonated for maximal damage. Initially, developing computing power was mainly driven by the desires to perform the calculations for the hydrogen bombs, 500 times more destructive than the bombs that wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Von Neumann also was the developer of MAD, mutual assured destruction doctrine based on game theory while also forecasting the existence of DNA and mRNA in a 1940 conceptual paper about self replication.
The theme of intelligence and progress being anathema to happiness and human values is something that also was at the heart of the previous book of Benjamín Labatut. I am also wondering if the book doesn't suffer, despite von Neumann being obviously brilliant, of a "Great men" syndrome. Would the confluence of societal unrest not have led to the breakthroughs one way or the other? In how far is scientific progress really dependent on one brilliant mind? Machines like Me by Ian McEwan and off course The Three-Body Problem raise similar questions, to which we will probably never get a definitive answer.
The third part of the book meanwhile left me underwhelmed, it is basically a literal rendition (would be funny if created by using AI actually!) of this documentary I watched for my MBA elective on AI: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6ge...
Still an impressive and thought provoking work by Benjamín Labatut, very topical and a dire warning against techno utopianism, since the computer was initially developed to not just crack codes of the nazis (as we have seen often portrayed in respect to Turing his contributions. Alan Turing coincidentally almost became the assistant to Von Neumann in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton) but also to calculate a way to invent the hydrogen bomb.
Quotes and some further observations:
Mathematics is hostile to life
His mind was in a constant state of hunger
Only he was fully awake
So accustomed to privilege that nothing but the very best being good enough for him
Lost faith is worse than no faith at all
The smartest man of the 20th century
An ontological limit, something we could not think past
Mathematics is so ethereal to me
One of his professors from the university of Vienna, who met him when he was a very young man, said that he could not figure out if it was the nature of his work that made him unstable, or that you actually had to be unstable to think in the way that Gödel did. I believe there is truth in both views. The few times I spoke to him I could sense how logic and logical thinking were inextricably bound to his mounting derangement, because in some sense paranoia is logic run amok. Every chaos is a wrong appearance wrote Gödel. He was of the firm belief there was a reason for everything. If you think that way it is a small step to begin to see hidden machinations and agents operating to manipulate the most common everyday occurrences.
It’s a miracle that a man so idiotic could be so smart
And serves a personal reminder that neither the natural nor the social sciences are ever neutral, even if they aspire to be that way
A strange angel that protects us from the mad dreams of reason
Human guided Machine learning foretold by Alan Turing in the 1950s
Understanding by way of destruction
They could no longer look at the world without seeing its shadow
Within the limitations of my horrible nature I want to make you happy.
Dying in 1957 of cancer
Technological power as such is always an ambivalent achievement and science is neutral all through, providing only means of control applicable to any purpose, and indifferent to all. It is not the particular perverse destructiveness of one specific invention that creates danger, the danger is intrinsic. For progress there is no cure.
Lee Sedol, the go master who won 1 match of AI AlphaGO, created by a team led by Sam Altman, currently CEO of OpenAI, being overall crushed
Go styles changing after the death of a parent
Deepmind being bought by Google in 2014 for $625m
Prunes branches from a Monte Carlo tree of options for moves of the opponent, with probability calculations for every move to increase the overall chance of winning, playing “lazy” moves that increases its chance of winning by 1 stone difference
I think the future belongs to AI - top Go players
AlphaZero, not burdened by any human examples mastered chess in 8 hours, playing more games against itself than available in all of recorded history and only took 12 hours to learn a more complex Japanese version of chess and go, becoming beyond the skill level of any human in those three games.
May 3, 2023
With the creation of the atom bomb physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge that they cannot lose ~ J. Robert Oppenheimer.
By its very nature the hydrogen bomb cannot be confined to a military objective, but becomes a weapon which, in every practical effect, is almost one of genocide ~ Enrico Fermi.
In a second, battle-hardened soldiers who had fought and bled in World War II dropped to their knees and prayed. They sensed that something unspeakably wrong was occurring when they saw their bones appear as shadows through their flesh ~ on the testing of the first hydrogen bomb that was 700 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
At around the same time von Neumann became enamored with biology and self-replication, Alan Turing considered what it would take to birth a nonhuman intelligence.
Labatut has written a book which is utterly compulsive... and wholly terrifying. His theme is the development of scientific learning, both the incomparable glory of human inventiveness and pure intellectual brilliance, and the horrifying spectre of what happens when that search for knowledge has no moral or humanistic bounds or limitations.
The ultimate journey is towards AI but there's already a gap between where the book ends and our world, ending as it does with self-learning Go/chess computers. The itinerary takes some time to get there though with much time spent with Janos/John von Neumann, mathematician, physicist and computer scientist. His contributions to twentieth-century knowledge are jaw-dropping: from pure mathematics and quantum mechanics to the development of the atom and hydrogen bombs, from game theory and the mathematical basis of rational decision-making as harnessed during the Cold War to the development of non-human/digital intelligence.
But what is chilling is von Neumann's eradication of all moral limits: he stands against other international nuclear physicists who sign a joint letter to Eisenhower saying that the atom bomb should never be used; he is the one who works out precisely how high above Hiroshima and Nagasaki the bombs should be detonated to cause maximum destruction and death; and he came up with the acronym MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) during the Cold War with advice to launch a pre-emptive strike on the USSR in line with his game theory model.
The story is told via narratives from von Neumann's colleagues, friends, wives, and intellectual enemies. I wish there had been an afterword detailing what is fact and what fiction: Labatut notes his sources but otherwise doesn't comment on this point.
For me, though, the book changes once von Neumann dies and the focus turns to the development of AI gaming computers - I struggled to maintain much interest in the detailed game-by-game record of Go and chess against international masters. Up until this point, about 70-75% of the way through, this would have been a 5-star book for me but, somehow, despite the importance of the topic, the final quarter fell away.
Still, for most of the time this is a veritable page-turner, albeit one which I found stressful to read. It feels more wholly 'factual' than When We Cease to Understand the World and reveals those scary scenarios lucidly without any need for authorial comment.
Many thanks to Pushkin Press for an ARC via NetGalley
December 22, 2023
“When future historians look back at our time and try to pin down the first glimmer of a true artificial intelligence, they may well find it in a single move during the second game between Lee Sedol and AlphaGo, played on the tenth of March 2016: move 37.”
I am in utter shock. Serious, mind-numbing shock. Benjamín Labatut is unbelievable. In no universe should moves made on a Go board be enough to send rippling waves of goosebumps down the back of my head and my neck. Nor should Lee Sedol’s Herculean response cause tears to well up in my eyes. When Labatut writes, anything is possible.
As for the other two sections in this book, those surrounding Paul Ehrenfest and John von Neumann? I am obsessed, and I need not go too far into the minute details there. Simply astounding.
Goodreads friends: I am literally begging you all to come together so we can set up a fund and commission translations of Labatut’s other three books. I don’t read or speak Spanish. Short of that, I will have to learn Spanish. But let’s save that for now.
I am in utter shock. Serious, mind-numbing shock. Benjamín Labatut is unbelievable. In no universe should moves made on a Go board be enough to send rippling waves of goosebumps down the back of my head and my neck. Nor should Lee Sedol’s Herculean response cause tears to well up in my eyes. When Labatut writes, anything is possible.
As for the other two sections in this book, those surrounding Paul Ehrenfest and John von Neumann? I am obsessed, and I need not go too far into the minute details there. Simply astounding.
Goodreads friends: I am literally begging you all to come together so we can set up a fund and commission translations of Labatut’s other three books. I don’t read or speak Spanish. Short of that, I will have to learn Spanish. But let’s save that for now.
January 19, 2024
Phenomenal. I know this is billed as fiction, but if everyone wrote like this, I would read a lot more historical biography. If you loved the Oppenheimer film and have yet to read The MANIAC, get on it.
July 4, 2024
Absolutely brilliant..... I'm at a loss for words.
August 1, 2024
Arranqué la lectura de forma poco decidida a pesar de las buenas referencias que me había dado alguna amiga (creo que recelo de los súper ventas). ¿Que trataba de contar Labatut con ese título tan gráfico y esos personajes tan icónicos como misteriosos del siglo pasado? Por el libro circulan físicos, matemáticos y cerebros privilegiados puestos al servicio de la causa más macabra imaginable a los ambos lados del Atlántico. Digamos que la genialidad no está discutida con algún toque de locura.
Me he encontrado un libro que se deja leer muy bien. La estructura ayuda y esa multiplicidad de narradores arropando y pintando a un protagonista principal, suele funcionar, aunque no sea muy original. La temática es su punto fuerte: nadie había contado de forma novelada (mezcla tercera persona del narrador, con la primera persona al estilo T. Capote) cuestiones científicas tales como matemáticas, física o robótica, o ese momento histórico que rodea al desarrollo nuclear.
El personaje central, J. von Neumann, es tremendamente atractivo para el lector: esa mente con dotes cuasi robóticas que parece el gran gurú del siglo pasado en cuestiones científicas, de defensa y militares. Lo hace más interesante el hecho de tener un punto siniestro por su participación y asesoramiento al Pentágono en la carrera nuclear; resultan inquietantes y producen pánico sus opiniones en cuanto al uso preventivo del armamento nuclear, así como al final de su vida las opiniones deshumanizadas con respecto a la inteligencia artificial a desarrollarse en el futuro. Enorme mente, enorme ego, enorme monstruo falto de ética.
Hasta hace no tanto, siempre me sorprendió la extraña relación que existía entre la filosofía y las matemáticas. Nunca acababa de entender la relación; a base de lecturas lo he ido captando. Lo cierto es que con ese cerebro privilegiado que fue von Neumann, nunca se le produjeron esos conflictos morales y filosóficos, como indicaba antes y que siempre vi que alteraba a otros matemáticos coetáneos suyos con muchos menos temas delicados entre manos. Pareciera tratarse más de un ciborg carente de sentimientos hacia el colectivo humano, o ajeno a las consecuencias que sus opiniones y métodos pudieran producir, que de una persona. La parte final de su vida, también tiene el toque siniestro: ese afán por trabajar denodadamente en el lecho de muerte, con esas ideas que mezclan biología, matemáticas, AI, esa infantilización, apuntarse a las filas católicas a la desesperada y la falta de aceptación de la muerte.
Juega muy bien el autor con el título y esa dualidad a la que alude, y que habrá que investigar a quien le interese.
Me he encontrado un libro que se deja leer muy bien. La estructura ayuda y esa multiplicidad de narradores arropando y pintando a un protagonista principal, suele funcionar, aunque no sea muy original. La temática es su punto fuerte: nadie había contado de forma novelada (mezcla tercera persona del narrador, con la primera persona al estilo T. Capote) cuestiones científicas tales como matemáticas, física o robótica, o ese momento histórico que rodea al desarrollo nuclear.
El personaje central, J. von Neumann, es tremendamente atractivo para el lector: esa mente con dotes cuasi robóticas que parece el gran gurú del siglo pasado en cuestiones científicas, de defensa y militares. Lo hace más interesante el hecho de tener un punto siniestro por su participación y asesoramiento al Pentágono en la carrera nuclear; resultan inquietantes y producen pánico sus opiniones en cuanto al uso preventivo del armamento nuclear, así como al final de su vida las opiniones deshumanizadas con respecto a la inteligencia artificial a desarrollarse en el futuro. Enorme mente, enorme ego, enorme monstruo falto de ética.
Hasta hace no tanto, siempre me sorprendió la extraña relación que existía entre la filosofía y las matemáticas. Nunca acababa de entender la relación; a base de lecturas lo he ido captando. Lo cierto es que con ese cerebro privilegiado que fue von Neumann, nunca se le produjeron esos conflictos morales y filosóficos, como indicaba antes y que siempre vi que alteraba a otros matemáticos coetáneos suyos con muchos menos temas delicados entre manos. Pareciera tratarse más de un ciborg carente de sentimientos hacia el colectivo humano, o ajeno a las consecuencias que sus opiniones y métodos pudieran producir, que de una persona. La parte final de su vida, también tiene el toque siniestro: ese afán por trabajar denodadamente en el lecho de muerte, con esas ideas que mezclan biología, matemáticas, AI, esa infantilización, apuntarse a las filas católicas a la desesperada y la falta de aceptación de la muerte.
Juega muy bien el autor con el título y esa dualidad a la que alude, y que habrá que investigar a quien le interese.
October 22, 2023
I loved the structure of this novel. We start with a chapter about Paul Ehrenfest, who grew increasingly concerned over the progress and implications of mathematics and quantum mechanics to the point of committing a murder-suicide. That's not a spoiler either, as Labatut gives us the physicists' fate in the opening line.
The meat of the book is dedicated to the life and accomplishments of John von Neumann, perhaps the most celebrated scientist of the 20th century. Today, Neumann is largely credited with laying the groundwork for computing power and artificial intelligence.
Interestingly, the novel oftentimes reads like a history book, with very little dialogue. That is not to say it is dry. Labatut is a talented writer and he utilizes this structure to great success. Each chapter is written in first person by a colleague, acquaintance, or loved one. There is never a chapter written by Neumann himself. This reminded me a little bit of Hernan Diaz's "Trust", although Labatut pulls it off better than Diaz.
After Neumann's death, the book switches gears dramatically to the game of Go and a competition between the best Go players in the world and AI machines. While completely distinct from the rest of the book, the point of including these chapters becomes pretty apparent. We went from an early physicist’s concerns about the future of science, to the scientific accomplishments of the middle twentieth century, and finally to the present day implications of what humans have created over the last several decades.
It is a timely novel. AI has become the new darling of the stock market, with billions of dollars being invested in new AI startups. Labatut's novel raises the question, what happens when our creations exceed human capabilities? What happens when our technology assumes godlike powers? I loved the book. High four stars.
The meat of the book is dedicated to the life and accomplishments of John von Neumann, perhaps the most celebrated scientist of the 20th century. Today, Neumann is largely credited with laying the groundwork for computing power and artificial intelligence.
Interestingly, the novel oftentimes reads like a history book, with very little dialogue. That is not to say it is dry. Labatut is a talented writer and he utilizes this structure to great success. Each chapter is written in first person by a colleague, acquaintance, or loved one. There is never a chapter written by Neumann himself. This reminded me a little bit of Hernan Diaz's "Trust", although Labatut pulls it off better than Diaz.
After Neumann's death, the book switches gears dramatically to the game of Go and a competition between the best Go players in the world and AI machines. While completely distinct from the rest of the book, the point of including these chapters becomes pretty apparent. We went from an early physicist’s concerns about the future of science, to the scientific accomplishments of the middle twentieth century, and finally to the present day implications of what humans have created over the last several decades.
It is a timely novel. AI has become the new darling of the stock market, with billions of dollars being invested in new AI startups. Labatut's novel raises the question, what happens when our creations exceed human capabilities? What happens when our technology assumes godlike powers? I loved the book. High four stars.
April 16, 2024
Scarily good.
Chilean writer Benjamín Labatut is excellent at writing about the minds of geniuses and how those minds can tip into madness. I am always here for a story of scientists going rogue, acting unhinged and then making an insight so profound it changes the course of history. I also like a novel that presents the darker side of scientific progress ( or rather the sometimes unknowable consequences of progress ) without creating a white-coated "evil-genius" .
Lots of reviews have said if you enjoyed Oppenheimer then Maniac is for you and while this does have a picture of what I thought was a mushroom cloud* on the cover and spends plenty of time establishing John von Neumann's contributions to nuclear warfare
" If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o'clock, I say why not one o'clock? " )
I think this is primarily a book about the emergence of A.I. In that regard Maniac might be one of the most frightening things you read this year.
Much like Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World there is the potential to lose readers in the heady world of quantum physics, game theory and self evolving bits of code, but hang in there. The final section relates the story of South Korean Go champion Lee Sedol's showdown with DeepMind Technologies "Alpha Go". This story was entirely new to me and I was fascinated and not a little unsettled that Google now owns this handy bit of kit ...
* A note about the cover which I was intrigued by -
The image on this cover was created by film director Bennett Miller, using OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 software. He arrived at the final product by making extensive edits on variations of an image generated using the following prompt: a vintage photograph of huge plumes of smoke coming from an enormous UFO crashed in the desert. - Lit Hub
Chilean writer Benjamín Labatut is excellent at writing about the minds of geniuses and how those minds can tip into madness. I am always here for a story of scientists going rogue, acting unhinged and then making an insight so profound it changes the course of history. I also like a novel that presents the darker side of scientific progress ( or rather the sometimes unknowable consequences of progress ) without creating a white-coated "evil-genius" .
Lots of reviews have said if you enjoyed Oppenheimer then Maniac is for you and while this does have a picture of what I thought was a mushroom cloud* on the cover and spends plenty of time establishing John von Neumann's contributions to nuclear warfare
" If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o'clock, I say why not one o'clock? " )
I think this is primarily a book about the emergence of A.I. In that regard Maniac might be one of the most frightening things you read this year.
Much like Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World there is the potential to lose readers in the heady world of quantum physics, game theory and self evolving bits of code, but hang in there. The final section relates the story of South Korean Go champion Lee Sedol's showdown with DeepMind Technologies "Alpha Go". This story was entirely new to me and I was fascinated and not a little unsettled that Google now owns this handy bit of kit ...
* A note about the cover which I was intrigued by -
The image on this cover was created by film director Bennett Miller, using OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 software. He arrived at the final product by making extensive edits on variations of an image generated using the following prompt: a vintage photograph of huge plumes of smoke coming from an enormous UFO crashed in the desert. - Lit Hub
July 9, 2023
85th book of 2023.
4.5. Right now, I don't think it's quite as good as Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World that just blew me away. I still think about that novel's opening "Prussian Blue" and his pure skill in executing that chapter. In fact, at work this week I tried to explain it to someone I work with, S., and failed. S. is an incredible listener; he's the quiet sort. He's training as an art teacher. He's taller than me (and I'm tall), wears round tortoise-shell glasses and pastel shirts. I've discovered you could, probably, talk for an infinite amount of time and he would listen. Even when you pause to gather your thoughts, he stands patiently and waits. When it's certainly his time to speak, he proceeds as if playing chess (which he plays, and is topical, in part, to this novel), with great caution. Sometimes whole seconds will pass in the middle of a sentence as he weighs up his next word choice. I told him I was reading Labatut's newest, his English language debut, which is out in September and told him to read it when he came out. He said he would (and I believe him, for I've mentioned things in passing before and he's told me, on seeing him later in the same week, that he read/watched/ate whatever I had recommended. A rare breed).
At the heart of The MANIAC is the Manhattan Project. This book almost felt like an accidental precursor to Nolan's upcoming Oppenheimer. But, instead, focussing on one of the greatest minds to walk the planet: Jon Von Neumann. His programming machine was named Mathematical Analyser, Numerical Integrator and Computer, or, as the full-caps title alludes to, MANIAC for short. Labatut, as he did with his last novel, explores the often married ideas of genius and madness. Neumann was the man who calculated the exact distance to explode the bomb above Hiroshima (rather than at ground level) to cause the maximum amount of destruction. For the scientists, it seemed, the matter of lives meant nothing: the science was too exciting; they were pioneering their field and the results, mass destruction and death, appeared almost inconsequential. It is the largest part of the three in the book, and is constructed with many short chapters, all from a different perspective drawing a wide and sweeping image of Neumann's intellect and cold genius.
I'm reviewing this out of order, but part one is about Paul Ehrenfest. As Labatut tells us in the first sentence: he kills his additional needs son and then himself. This is the result of the Second World War's use and advancement in science and physics as a way of creating mass destruction. Part three accelerates to the 21st century and shows a number of geniuses who created AI systems for playing chess and Go. Demis Hassabis spearheads these creations after seeing the late work of Neumann. So Labatut jumps to here to see how science has progressed even further, away from weaponry, perhaps, but just as terrifyingly, in some ways, to artificial intelligence. The ultimate question in this part is the same old: can it ever replace or outdo human thought? I thought after leaving the madness of Neumann's world and the atomic bombs, reading about a man playing Go against a machine would be dull, but I suppose Labatut is incapable of writing anything in a boring matter. Probably one of my favourite writers working today. This is his field: madness, genius and destruction. A haunting, compulsive book about what human beings do for science.
Cannot express enough thanks to Pushkin Press for sending me this advance copy for review.
4.5. Right now, I don't think it's quite as good as Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World that just blew me away. I still think about that novel's opening "Prussian Blue" and his pure skill in executing that chapter. In fact, at work this week I tried to explain it to someone I work with, S., and failed. S. is an incredible listener; he's the quiet sort. He's training as an art teacher. He's taller than me (and I'm tall), wears round tortoise-shell glasses and pastel shirts. I've discovered you could, probably, talk for an infinite amount of time and he would listen. Even when you pause to gather your thoughts, he stands patiently and waits. When it's certainly his time to speak, he proceeds as if playing chess (which he plays, and is topical, in part, to this novel), with great caution. Sometimes whole seconds will pass in the middle of a sentence as he weighs up his next word choice. I told him I was reading Labatut's newest, his English language debut, which is out in September and told him to read it when he came out. He said he would (and I believe him, for I've mentioned things in passing before and he's told me, on seeing him later in the same week, that he read/watched/ate whatever I had recommended. A rare breed).
At the heart of The MANIAC is the Manhattan Project. This book almost felt like an accidental precursor to Nolan's upcoming Oppenheimer. But, instead, focussing on one of the greatest minds to walk the planet: Jon Von Neumann. His programming machine was named Mathematical Analyser, Numerical Integrator and Computer, or, as the full-caps title alludes to, MANIAC for short. Labatut, as he did with his last novel, explores the often married ideas of genius and madness. Neumann was the man who calculated the exact distance to explode the bomb above Hiroshima (rather than at ground level) to cause the maximum amount of destruction. For the scientists, it seemed, the matter of lives meant nothing: the science was too exciting; they were pioneering their field and the results, mass destruction and death, appeared almost inconsequential. It is the largest part of the three in the book, and is constructed with many short chapters, all from a different perspective drawing a wide and sweeping image of Neumann's intellect and cold genius.
I'm reviewing this out of order, but part one is about Paul Ehrenfest. As Labatut tells us in the first sentence: he kills his additional needs son and then himself. This is the result of the Second World War's use and advancement in science and physics as a way of creating mass destruction. Part three accelerates to the 21st century and shows a number of geniuses who created AI systems for playing chess and Go. Demis Hassabis spearheads these creations after seeing the late work of Neumann. So Labatut jumps to here to see how science has progressed even further, away from weaponry, perhaps, but just as terrifyingly, in some ways, to artificial intelligence. The ultimate question in this part is the same old: can it ever replace or outdo human thought? I thought after leaving the madness of Neumann's world and the atomic bombs, reading about a man playing Go against a machine would be dull, but I suppose Labatut is incapable of writing anything in a boring matter. Probably one of my favourite writers working today. This is his field: madness, genius and destruction. A haunting, compulsive book about what human beings do for science.
Cannot express enough thanks to Pushkin Press for sending me this advance copy for review.
January 28, 2024
Genius, Madness, Bombs, AI....... Labatut, once again!!!!!
Although the major part of the book concentrates on John Neumann, it also goes to visit other scientists; other geniuses. The underlying link for these geniuses is that madness is the other side of the coin to genius. Genius and Madness are interlinked, and one leads to the other in a never-ending cycle. Geniuses reach an elevation which gives them a different perspective but also a God complex which allows them to think that it is right to play around with the building blocks of our world and tweak here and there in the name of knowledge, advancement etc. As a mathematician John Neaumann thought that the needs of the many far outweighed the needs of the few and that in certain ways the end justified the means, hence the dropping of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki of which he was a prime mover.
Limits, patterns, make us feel safe. Boundaries are safe, and we defend them. However, in the realm of ideas which open up to more ideas and more, ad infinitum. It becomes like Ouroboros chasing its own tale, leading to madness because the noise is too loud. Like a vessel, the human brain cannot fully handle the enormity of the ideas conceived.
What happens then when we create AI which has this touch of genius, will it too become mad? If AI is being built by geniuses with their inherent link to madness, then will that madness be, even subliminally, coded into the AI?
Creating something more intelligent than we are and ceding what control we have to, it sounds rather mad to me.
Although the major part of the book concentrates on John Neumann, it also goes to visit other scientists; other geniuses. The underlying link for these geniuses is that madness is the other side of the coin to genius. Genius and Madness are interlinked, and one leads to the other in a never-ending cycle. Geniuses reach an elevation which gives them a different perspective but also a God complex which allows them to think that it is right to play around with the building blocks of our world and tweak here and there in the name of knowledge, advancement etc. As a mathematician John Neaumann thought that the needs of the many far outweighed the needs of the few and that in certain ways the end justified the means, hence the dropping of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki of which he was a prime mover.
Limits, patterns, make us feel safe. Boundaries are safe, and we defend them. However, in the realm of ideas which open up to more ideas and more, ad infinitum. It becomes like Ouroboros chasing its own tale, leading to madness because the noise is too loud. Like a vessel, the human brain cannot fully handle the enormity of the ideas conceived.
What happens then when we create AI which has this touch of genius, will it too become mad? If AI is being built by geniuses with their inherent link to madness, then will that madness be, even subliminally, coded into the AI?
Creating something more intelligent than we are and ceding what control we have to, it sounds rather mad to me.
February 4, 2024
Este trasunto de ensayo, biografía, e historia novelada, es una gozada. Si bien tiene una primera parte breve, que está bien, pero que no invita a tirar cohetes, la segunda, principal y más larga, es una maravilla que te sumerge en el interior de la cabeza de una de las mentes más fascinantes del pasado siglo, la de John Von Neumann, vista a través de los ojos de sus allegados más cercanos, amigos, compañeros y familiares. Un acercamiento a un episodio trascendental de la historia, el desarrollo de la física cuántica, la computación y la creación de la bomba atómica. Cierto es que algunos pasajes resultan confusos por la complejidad de los temas que se tratan. Pero que a veces no te enteres ni papa, no hace que no quieras seguir leyendo. La fascinación sobrepasa con mucho al desconcierto, y estando ya rendido a lo que cuenta Labatut, y sobre todo a cómo lo cuenta, enlaza con una tercera parte, que simplemente es magistral. El desarrollo de la inteligencia artificial enfrentada al juego ancestral del Go: la batalla entre las computadoras y sus algoritmos matemáticos, contra la intuición, las emociones y la lógica del cerebro humano.
Espectacular.
Espectacular.
March 8, 2024
"Este libro es una obra de ficción basada en hechos reales". Y vaya qué ficción. Esta cita está tomada de la parte de los agradecimientos, al final de libro. Pero es algo que ya sabemos desde el principio; y en eso radica el poder de la narrativa de Labatut, a quien considero uno de los mejores escritores contemporáneos, pues ha creado un estilo propio que une la ficción y la no-ficción, la ciencia y la literatura, de una forma única.
Resulta un poco difícil describir ese estilo único, pero parte de un instinto literario propio del autor, que es una especie de intérprete de la poesía que puede contener el hecho científico y sus artífices, los científicos. Pero también se debe al hallar un parangón en su propio ser -el de Labatut- con el delgado límite entre la genialidad y la locura. Se podría decir que por sus dos últimos libros (Un verdor terrible y Maniac), Labatut se ha convertido en un especialista del tema (extrema inteligencia y delirio) pero no cualquier especialista, sino uno que desentraña y toca la profundidad de esa anomalía del ser que resultan ser los genios. Quizás no todos -por el hecho de la anomalía- rocen o se sumerjan en la locura, pero para Labatut esos son los que le valen para sus ficciones.
Ficciones que resultan tan encarnadas y verosímiles que parecería que son verdaderos testimonios de la realidad. Y lo son, pero están tocadas por la vara mágica de la magnífica prosa del autor. Por la magia de la Literatura. Y para eso Labatut es diestro. Su prosa es a la vez objetiva y poética, a veces en estructura algo experimental pero nunca hasta llegar a lo desconcertante por el puro hecho de la deconstrución de la forma. No. Labatut no deconstruye, más bien, vuelve a construir la ficción con los mismos elementos conocidos por siglos de tradición narrativa, pero ordena esos elementos de una manera sutilmente diferente y por eso sorprende.
Esta vez, la primera mitad de la narración (huele a novela, sabe a novela, pero no es novela) es una especie de biografía coral-testimonial del matemático John Von Neumann, quizás el mayor responsable de la detonación de la bomba atómica en Hiroshima y Nagasaki, pero también el padre de la computación y el abuelo de la inteligencia artificial, además del artífice de cruciales contribuciones en el campo de la física cuántica, la teoría de conjuntos, la estadística y la cibernética, entre otros. También fue el responsable de la gigantesca máquina, se podría decir la segunda computadora, MANIAC, en la que se hicieron los cálculos para las explosiones de las bombas atómicas en Japón durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Por otro lado, su delirante idea, aunque robada de otro científico que pasó sin pena ni gloria (Barricelli) sobre seres autorreplicantes, autómatas celulares, simbiontes que podrían autorreplicarse artificialmente gracias a cálculos y mecanismos computacionales, sería la idea madre de lo que se especula que algún día podría alcanzar la inteligencia artificial.
En este libro Neumann es retratado con todas sus contradicciones, brillanteces y oscuridades, desde las voces de su hermana, su hija, sus esposas y otros colegas científicos como Eugene Wigner y Richard Feynman. Labatut toma prestadas las voces de estos personajes para armar la historia de Neumann, siguiendo una temporalidad no cronológica pero con una lógica lineal según su construcción narrativa. Esta parte del libro es realmente una genialidad.
Ahora viene la segunda parte, por la cual le he bajado una estrella a la puntuación que durante toda la anterior iba a ser de cinco. Y esto es simplemente porque el ritmo y estructura narrativa cambian, y esto no es que esté mal per se, pues ya en su anterior libro lo hizo y salió muy bien librado, sino porque esta segunda parte no tiene el nivel de trabajo literario que tiene la primera y eso crea un desbalance. Por supuesto que Labatut lo hace de forma intencional y no es un copia y pega gratuito ni al apuro, y tampoco es que esta segunda parte esté mal escrita o carezca de interés, para nada. Es sumamente pertinente ingeniosamente hilvanada dentro de la proyección de la historia general que Labatut nos quiere contar: la del cambio hacia los oscuros sitios impensados a los que nos puede llevar (o se puede llevar a sí misma ) la inteligencia artificial.
Y así concluye este libro, que deja un "continuará" inquietante y algo escalofriante que deberá resolverse en la realidad, pues ya sabemos que los avances en el tema I.A. están recién en pañales. Y esta segunda parte es quizás el génesis de aquello: trata primordialmente sobre el AlphaGo, un sistema de inteligencia artificial que se constituyó en el campeón invencible del juego de mesa Go, originado en China hace unos 4000 mil años, el cual venció al mejor jugador, Lee Sedo, en 2016, quien no sería el mismo después de esas partidas... También una versión mejorada, El maestro, derrotaría unos años después a otro gran campeón del go, Ke Jie, quien luego de ello sentenciaba que "el futuro pertenece a la inteligencia artificial". Lo que diferenciaba a estos sistemas de I.A. es que se basaban en el autoaprendizaje, así que su perfeccionamiento dependía -y depende- de sí mismos. Al poco, sus inventores avanzaron aún un escalón más con resultados que si quieren conocerlos, mejor lean el libro (para no spoilear).
Y este final se empataría con lo que alguna vez dijo Neumann: "Los hombres de las cavernas inventaron los dioses -me dijo-. No veo nada que nos impida hacer lo mismo".
Resulta un poco difícil describir ese estilo único, pero parte de un instinto literario propio del autor, que es una especie de intérprete de la poesía que puede contener el hecho científico y sus artífices, los científicos. Pero también se debe al hallar un parangón en su propio ser -el de Labatut- con el delgado límite entre la genialidad y la locura. Se podría decir que por sus dos últimos libros (Un verdor terrible y Maniac), Labatut se ha convertido en un especialista del tema (extrema inteligencia y delirio) pero no cualquier especialista, sino uno que desentraña y toca la profundidad de esa anomalía del ser que resultan ser los genios. Quizás no todos -por el hecho de la anomalía- rocen o se sumerjan en la locura, pero para Labatut esos son los que le valen para sus ficciones.
Ficciones que resultan tan encarnadas y verosímiles que parecería que son verdaderos testimonios de la realidad. Y lo son, pero están tocadas por la vara mágica de la magnífica prosa del autor. Por la magia de la Literatura. Y para eso Labatut es diestro. Su prosa es a la vez objetiva y poética, a veces en estructura algo experimental pero nunca hasta llegar a lo desconcertante por el puro hecho de la deconstrución de la forma. No. Labatut no deconstruye, más bien, vuelve a construir la ficción con los mismos elementos conocidos por siglos de tradición narrativa, pero ordena esos elementos de una manera sutilmente diferente y por eso sorprende.
Esta vez, la primera mitad de la narración (huele a novela, sabe a novela, pero no es novela) es una especie de biografía coral-testimonial del matemático John Von Neumann, quizás el mayor responsable de la detonación de la bomba atómica en Hiroshima y Nagasaki, pero también el padre de la computación y el abuelo de la inteligencia artificial, además del artífice de cruciales contribuciones en el campo de la física cuántica, la teoría de conjuntos, la estadística y la cibernética, entre otros. También fue el responsable de la gigantesca máquina, se podría decir la segunda computadora, MANIAC, en la que se hicieron los cálculos para las explosiones de las bombas atómicas en Japón durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Por otro lado, su delirante idea, aunque robada de otro científico que pasó sin pena ni gloria (Barricelli) sobre seres autorreplicantes, autómatas celulares, simbiontes que podrían autorreplicarse artificialmente gracias a cálculos y mecanismos computacionales, sería la idea madre de lo que se especula que algún día podría alcanzar la inteligencia artificial.
En este libro Neumann es retratado con todas sus contradicciones, brillanteces y oscuridades, desde las voces de su hermana, su hija, sus esposas y otros colegas científicos como Eugene Wigner y Richard Feynman. Labatut toma prestadas las voces de estos personajes para armar la historia de Neumann, siguiendo una temporalidad no cronológica pero con una lógica lineal según su construcción narrativa. Esta parte del libro es realmente una genialidad.
Ahora viene la segunda parte, por la cual le he bajado una estrella a la puntuación que durante toda la anterior iba a ser de cinco. Y esto es simplemente porque el ritmo y estructura narrativa cambian, y esto no es que esté mal per se, pues ya en su anterior libro lo hizo y salió muy bien librado, sino porque esta segunda parte no tiene el nivel de trabajo literario que tiene la primera y eso crea un desbalance. Por supuesto que Labatut lo hace de forma intencional y no es un copia y pega gratuito ni al apuro, y tampoco es que esta segunda parte esté mal escrita o carezca de interés, para nada. Es sumamente pertinente ingeniosamente hilvanada dentro de la proyección de la historia general que Labatut nos quiere contar: la del cambio hacia los oscuros sitios impensados a los que nos puede llevar (o se puede llevar a sí misma ) la inteligencia artificial.
Y así concluye este libro, que deja un "continuará" inquietante y algo escalofriante que deberá resolverse en la realidad, pues ya sabemos que los avances en el tema I.A. están recién en pañales. Y esta segunda parte es quizás el génesis de aquello: trata primordialmente sobre el AlphaGo, un sistema de inteligencia artificial que se constituyó en el campeón invencible del juego de mesa Go, originado en China hace unos 4000 mil años, el cual venció al mejor jugador, Lee Sedo, en 2016, quien no sería el mismo después de esas partidas... También una versión mejorada, El maestro, derrotaría unos años después a otro gran campeón del go, Ke Jie, quien luego de ello sentenciaba que "el futuro pertenece a la inteligencia artificial". Lo que diferenciaba a estos sistemas de I.A. es que se basaban en el autoaprendizaje, así que su perfeccionamiento dependía -y depende- de sí mismos. Al poco, sus inventores avanzaron aún un escalón más con resultados que si quieren conocerlos, mejor lean el libro (para no spoilear).
Y este final se empataría con lo que alguna vez dijo Neumann: "Los hombres de las cavernas inventaron los dioses -me dijo-. No veo nada que nos impida hacer lo mismo".
January 31, 2025
A fascinating, interesting, and above all intriguing book about people I had barely heard of. Of course, the part about John von Neumann (1903-1957) was by far the most appealing. And that was also the reason why I read this book. I knew that the Hungarian-American mathematician Von Neumann was one of the founders of cybernetics, the study of very complex systems, but that is only addressed indirectly in this book. Labatut focuses on the unlikely genius that was von Neumann, his contribution to the development of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, and his steps towards artificial intelligence. In the form of docu-fiction, and via all kinds of people who knew him from up close to further away, we get a kaleidoscopic portrait of an impressive, but enigmatic man. That formula has been cleverly applied, with of course also a lot of contradictory information and views. This is not a hagiography, because the view we get of the man von Neumann is not really flattering. Moreover, the very extensive von Neumann section is preceded by a short section on the Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest (1880-1931), and an epilogue on the development of the first AI systems that defeated human grandmasters in both chess and 'go'.
As said, all fascinating and interesting, but I was left with the question of where exactly Labatut was heading with this book: is it purely documentary (raising up a forgotten history)?, is it a warning against groundbreaking, but unstable geniuses? Or a warning against Artificial Intelligence itself? I am not sure. And I had a similar ambiguous feeling with his previous well-known work, When We Cease to Understand the World, which focused on the downside of great scientific inventions and insights. Perhaps this weakness is precisely its strength, and Labatut deliberately leaves room for the reader to develop his own interpretation.
As said, all fascinating and interesting, but I was left with the question of where exactly Labatut was heading with this book: is it purely documentary (raising up a forgotten history)?, is it a warning against groundbreaking, but unstable geniuses? Or a warning against Artificial Intelligence itself? I am not sure. And I had a similar ambiguous feeling with his previous well-known work, When We Cease to Understand the World, which focused on the downside of great scientific inventions and insights. Perhaps this weakness is precisely its strength, and Labatut deliberately leaves room for the reader to develop his own interpretation.
September 4, 2023
Dertien A4-tjes had ik. Vol met citaten uit het boek, uit interviews met de schrijver, met aanvliegroutes om dit weefwerk samen te vatten, gedachten bij de diffuse lijn tussen non-fictie en proza, kronkels bij Labatuts omtovering van droge kost tot smeuïge smulpartij én tientallen manieren om mijn enthousiasme uit te drukken. Het is tegelijk doodzonde én een geweldige uitdaging om dit te moeten destilleren tot een brouwseltje van tweehonderd woorden.
‘De MANIAC’ is de vierde roman van Benjamín Labatut, die pas met zijn derde ook buiten het eigen taalgebied furore begon te maken. Net zoals in de briljante voorganger ‘Het blinde licht’ kruipt de Chilleen door de donkerste krochten van de 20e-eeuwse wetenschapswereld en laat hij zien dat de werkelijkheid vaak gekker is dan fictie. Centraal staat John von Neumann (1903-1957), de Hongaars-Amerikaanse pionier in wiskunde en kwantumfysica. Via licht gefictionaliseerde getuigenissen van familieleden en beroemde collega’s beleven we zijn hardnekkige speurtocht naar sluitende axioma’s en zijn verblindende geloof in de wetenschap. Alles wat uitgevonden kan worden, moet ook gerealiseerd worden, vindt hij, inclusief de atoombom én MANIAC, de eerste computer, een hulpmiddel voor oorlogvoering.
Fast forward naar 2016, wanneer de wereldkampioen in het Chinese bordspel Go onverwacht verliest van de door artificiële intelligentie aangestuurde AlphaGo. Met die verwerkelijking van Von Neumanns waanzinnigste wensdroom houdt Labatut ons een angstaanjagende spiegel voor: AI, ruimtevaart en genetica, de stoutmoedigste bouwstenen van onze technocratie, zijn mee ontwikkeld door een enggeestig, megalomaan genie.
De Maniac’ is een niet te missen bravourestuk, complex maar uiterst leesbaar, een veelkantige biografie, nucleaire thriller, geraffineerde vingerwijzing, WK-waardige sportverslaggeving en een onvergelijkbare filosofische bespiegeling over de tussen natuur en computer geplette mensheid.
5 sterren
https://www.humo.be/achter-het-nieuws...
‘De MANIAC’ is de vierde roman van Benjamín Labatut, die pas met zijn derde ook buiten het eigen taalgebied furore begon te maken. Net zoals in de briljante voorganger ‘Het blinde licht’ kruipt de Chilleen door de donkerste krochten van de 20e-eeuwse wetenschapswereld en laat hij zien dat de werkelijkheid vaak gekker is dan fictie. Centraal staat John von Neumann (1903-1957), de Hongaars-Amerikaanse pionier in wiskunde en kwantumfysica. Via licht gefictionaliseerde getuigenissen van familieleden en beroemde collega’s beleven we zijn hardnekkige speurtocht naar sluitende axioma’s en zijn verblindende geloof in de wetenschap. Alles wat uitgevonden kan worden, moet ook gerealiseerd worden, vindt hij, inclusief de atoombom én MANIAC, de eerste computer, een hulpmiddel voor oorlogvoering.
Fast forward naar 2016, wanneer de wereldkampioen in het Chinese bordspel Go onverwacht verliest van de door artificiële intelligentie aangestuurde AlphaGo. Met die verwerkelijking van Von Neumanns waanzinnigste wensdroom houdt Labatut ons een angstaanjagende spiegel voor: AI, ruimtevaart en genetica, de stoutmoedigste bouwstenen van onze technocratie, zijn mee ontwikkeld door een enggeestig, megalomaan genie.
De Maniac’ is een niet te missen bravourestuk, complex maar uiterst leesbaar, een veelkantige biografie, nucleaire thriller, geraffineerde vingerwijzing, WK-waardige sportverslaggeving en een onvergelijkbare filosofische bespiegeling over de tussen natuur en computer geplette mensheid.
5 sterren
https://www.humo.be/achter-het-nieuws...
January 17, 2024
It's insane and perhaps says a lot about our world that the greatest minds of their time were brought together to work on a project and that project was to create a bomb that could destroy the planet. One of those men was John Van Neumann and he is the hub of this novel which redefines the border between fiction and non-fiction. But essentially it charts the endeavours of mathematical genius from the war years through to the present day, thus we are taken from the bomb to the computer to AI. It's a novel that is as educational as it is compellingly readable and inspired.
November 24, 2023
Si en la fabulosa Un verdor terrible Labatut trazó una suerte genealogía de los pilares del pensamiento racional del siglo XX (física, matemáticas, etcétera) para al final exponer como el conocimiento humano había encontrado la frontera de lo incognoscible, dónde lo racional y lo irracional resultan difíciles de distinguir, en esta continuación Labatut se focaliza en otro infinito más allá de lo humano: la inteligencia artificial.
En alguna entrevista el escritor chileno ha declarado que seguramente MANIAC será considerada una novela y que eso para él será una vergüenza. Yo no voy a abundar en ese derrota moral porque en verdad es un libro de narrativa, que al igual que en Un verdor terrible toma hechos reales y los trata como ficción en diferentes grados y a través de varios formatos (novela corta, relato y ensayo). En Maniac también emplea esta estrategia, aunque sin ese sentido de la maravilla, quizá porque Labatut ya no parte de la nada, tiene un precedente con el que debe dirimir méritos y deméritos. En cambio, dónde sí que creo ha crecido ha sido en el vigor de su prosa, pues en Maniac las frases son largas, cadenciosas, mucho más intrincadas que anteriormente y eso que, en un primer momento, Labatut lo escribió y lanzó en inglés (él fue educado en colegios ingleses en las diferentes ciudades dónde vivió en sus años de formación). Por lo tanto tiene cierto mérito que el texto español, aún y siendo una 'adaptación' posea esa riqueza y colorido en su escritura, que se ofrece como uno de sus principales atractivos.
El libro se divide en tres bloques. El primero es el más breve y nos habla del científico austríaco Paul Ehrenfest, cuando el 25 de Septiembre de 1933 acudió al colegio de su hijo discapacitado y lo asesinó para luego suicidarse él. Una acción irracional por parte de alguien que dedicó gran parte de su vida al conocimiento científico y su enseñanza. Labatut traza con honestidad y vigor el trayecto de ese hombre devastado, sumamente perdido, que con los descubrimientos de su siglo, tales como la mecánica cuántica, la singularidad, etcétera, se sintió fuera de lugar, absolutamente desorientado. Eso, unido al ascenso de los nazis en Alemania se fue cocinando dolorosamente en su cabeza hasta que su existencia se convirtió en insoportable.
De ahí se salta al personaje central del libro, el húngaro John von Neumann, por contra alguien de una inteligencia extraordinaria, luminosa y de potencia ilimitada. Es uno de los padres de la computación y predecesor de la inteligencia artificial. De joven quiso contener en una ecuación la composición matemática del mundo, hasta que descubrió que no era posible. Estuvo en Los Alamos con Oppenheimer y luego se acercó a las esferas de poder para trazar los puntos específicos de la destrucción mutua asegurada que caracterizaría y amenazaría la Guerra Fría. Luego ya vino la construcción del ordenador MANIAC y sus avances en la computación. Si alguien ha visto antes el Oppenheimer de Nolan sin duda le será útil para enmarcar a esos personajes, comprender la época, los límites éticos con los que limaron sus proyectos y demás conflictos.
Labatut esboza en ese tramo central de su libro una biografía oblicua, cada capítulo está narrado en primera persona por alguien que lo conoció en esas diferentes fases de su vida. Ex-Mujeres, amigos, colegas. Muchos puntos convergen, otros difieren y entre medio se traza ese recorrido vital hasta los 53 años, que fue cuando el científico húngaro sucumbió al cáncer. Si alguien ha leído la maravillosa novela El ojo de Nabakov ya habrá comprobado esa verdad que Labatut vuelve a probar: que somos los que otros han visto de nosotros. Hay que decir que algunas voces funcionan mejor que otras, aunque no se nota el mismo aplomo que la potente escritura del primer bloque. En todo caso hay que valorar la esforzada labor para dotar de verosimilitud a personajes de ámbitos y formaciones muy diversas, desde húngaros del imperio austro-húngaro hasta norteamericanos de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, en cada caso persiste esa sensación de homogeneidad, que todos esos seres pertenecen a un mismo mundo, todos han recibido su voz y hay no poca seguridad en ese gesto.
La tercera curiosamente trata sobre el juego oriental del Go, definido casi como un prodigio mental, un verdadero arte. Ese juego es el que ha de aprender la inteligencia artificial AlphaGo, creada por DeepMind, y se bate con el maestro coreano Lee Sedol. A pesar del alcance de lo que explica, de cómo la inteligencia artificial está adquiriendo la capacidad de doblarle el brazo al ser humano, y por lo tanto un futuro potencialmente espeluznante, al centrarse tanto en esas biografías y en explicar casi paso por paso ese trascendental campeonato dónde Sedol y AlphaGo se enfrentaron, la verdad es que es más un ejercicio de destreza literaria, de encontrarle interés a algo alejado del campo de intereses de muchos lectores, pero que tampoco encuentro vibrante o memorable.
En todo caso un gran libro que cumple las expectativas que muchos de los lectores que finalizamos Un verdor terrible con gran asombro y la confirmación que Labatut está construyendo una obra tan dotada literariamente como ambiciosa en su fondo.
En alguna entrevista el escritor chileno ha declarado que seguramente MANIAC será considerada una novela y que eso para él será una vergüenza. Yo no voy a abundar en ese derrota moral porque en verdad es un libro de narrativa, que al igual que en Un verdor terrible toma hechos reales y los trata como ficción en diferentes grados y a través de varios formatos (novela corta, relato y ensayo). En Maniac también emplea esta estrategia, aunque sin ese sentido de la maravilla, quizá porque Labatut ya no parte de la nada, tiene un precedente con el que debe dirimir méritos y deméritos. En cambio, dónde sí que creo ha crecido ha sido en el vigor de su prosa, pues en Maniac las frases son largas, cadenciosas, mucho más intrincadas que anteriormente y eso que, en un primer momento, Labatut lo escribió y lanzó en inglés (él fue educado en colegios ingleses en las diferentes ciudades dónde vivió en sus años de formación). Por lo tanto tiene cierto mérito que el texto español, aún y siendo una 'adaptación' posea esa riqueza y colorido en su escritura, que se ofrece como uno de sus principales atractivos.
El libro se divide en tres bloques. El primero es el más breve y nos habla del científico austríaco Paul Ehrenfest, cuando el 25 de Septiembre de 1933 acudió al colegio de su hijo discapacitado y lo asesinó para luego suicidarse él. Una acción irracional por parte de alguien que dedicó gran parte de su vida al conocimiento científico y su enseñanza. Labatut traza con honestidad y vigor el trayecto de ese hombre devastado, sumamente perdido, que con los descubrimientos de su siglo, tales como la mecánica cuántica, la singularidad, etcétera, se sintió fuera de lugar, absolutamente desorientado. Eso, unido al ascenso de los nazis en Alemania se fue cocinando dolorosamente en su cabeza hasta que su existencia se convirtió en insoportable.
De ahí se salta al personaje central del libro, el húngaro John von Neumann, por contra alguien de una inteligencia extraordinaria, luminosa y de potencia ilimitada. Es uno de los padres de la computación y predecesor de la inteligencia artificial. De joven quiso contener en una ecuación la composición matemática del mundo, hasta que descubrió que no era posible. Estuvo en Los Alamos con Oppenheimer y luego se acercó a las esferas de poder para trazar los puntos específicos de la destrucción mutua asegurada que caracterizaría y amenazaría la Guerra Fría. Luego ya vino la construcción del ordenador MANIAC y sus avances en la computación. Si alguien ha visto antes el Oppenheimer de Nolan sin duda le será útil para enmarcar a esos personajes, comprender la época, los límites éticos con los que limaron sus proyectos y demás conflictos.
Labatut esboza en ese tramo central de su libro una biografía oblicua, cada capítulo está narrado en primera persona por alguien que lo conoció en esas diferentes fases de su vida. Ex-Mujeres, amigos, colegas. Muchos puntos convergen, otros difieren y entre medio se traza ese recorrido vital hasta los 53 años, que fue cuando el científico húngaro sucumbió al cáncer. Si alguien ha leído la maravillosa novela El ojo de Nabakov ya habrá comprobado esa verdad que Labatut vuelve a probar: que somos los que otros han visto de nosotros. Hay que decir que algunas voces funcionan mejor que otras, aunque no se nota el mismo aplomo que la potente escritura del primer bloque. En todo caso hay que valorar la esforzada labor para dotar de verosimilitud a personajes de ámbitos y formaciones muy diversas, desde húngaros del imperio austro-húngaro hasta norteamericanos de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, en cada caso persiste esa sensación de homogeneidad, que todos esos seres pertenecen a un mismo mundo, todos han recibido su voz y hay no poca seguridad en ese gesto.
La tercera curiosamente trata sobre el juego oriental del Go, definido casi como un prodigio mental, un verdadero arte. Ese juego es el que ha de aprender la inteligencia artificial AlphaGo, creada por DeepMind, y se bate con el maestro coreano Lee Sedol. A pesar del alcance de lo que explica, de cómo la inteligencia artificial está adquiriendo la capacidad de doblarle el brazo al ser humano, y por lo tanto un futuro potencialmente espeluznante, al centrarse tanto en esas biografías y en explicar casi paso por paso ese trascendental campeonato dónde Sedol y AlphaGo se enfrentaron, la verdad es que es más un ejercicio de destreza literaria, de encontrarle interés a algo alejado del campo de intereses de muchos lectores, pero que tampoco encuentro vibrante o memorable.
En todo caso un gran libro que cumple las expectativas que muchos de los lectores que finalizamos Un verdor terrible con gran asombro y la confirmación que Labatut está construyendo una obra tan dotada literariamente como ambiciosa en su fondo.
January 1, 2025
This is an extraordinary book on so many levels - themes, structure, language, imagination, research - that I scarcely know where to begin with a review. I suppose I could start by pointing out that although this is classified as fiction, it is only a very small step over the line from non-fiction. For instance, Labatut builds a profile of John Von Neumann, the individual whose life forms the central portion of the book, using impressions of him presented by his family members, teachers, and colleagues. Labatut's extensive research into primary materials lends an authenticity to these sections that allows them to integrate smoothly with the verifiable factual material.
The theme is a continuation of and expansion on ideas that were present in Labatut's earlier book, When We Cease to Understand the World: the impact of advances in science, mathematics and logic on both the individuals who pursue these subjects and on the future of life on earth. The MANIAC (it should be all in caps because the title refers to an acronym for the name of a computer) is more precise in both concept and presentation.
The structure has a flow that swept me along. The first part is a narrative profile of Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest, who in 1933 killed himself and his son (who had Down syndrome), an event that is described in the opening sequence of the book. Ehrenfest had been suffering from depression for several years, triggered, in Labatut's telling, by his unease at having his understanding of physics disrupted by the introduction of quantum theory.
What a vivid way to set the stage for the topic that dominates the remainder of the book: the troubling downsides of the inexorable forward movement of science! And what better representative of this phenomenon than John von Neumann, the Hungarian mathematician and physicist whose brilliant work went beyond those fields into economics (game theory), computer science (programmable computer) and biology (self-replication).
Labatut describes von Neumann's sometimes terrifying intellect, occasionally ruthless personality, often kind behaviors, and generally amoral approach to the outcomes of his discoveries, through the impressions he created on others. This approach is effective at developing a picture of a multi-faceted man, who could grasp complex ideas and follow them to their logical conclusions more quickly than anyone else in the brain trusts at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study or at Los Alamos, but who also peeked under secretaries' skirts, told crude jokes and bought a new Cadillac each year.
It is his insistence on pursuing ideas regardless of where they took him - or those interacting with him - that is most significant to Labatut. A well known example is von Neumann's recommendation to the US military in 1945 that the atomic bombs should be exploded above Japan because the range of their impact would be much broader than if they detonated on impact. This was overkill on a completely unnecessary level, and yet he pushed for the idea because it was the most logical use of the technology behind the bombs.
Von Neumann's consulting for various think tanks, corporations, and arms of the government did not end with WWII. His work on a programmable computer led to the development of the nuclear bomb, and concurrently, his work on game theory led to the concept of mutually assured destruction, which he was confident would insure peace since it would not be logical to take any action that would lead to one's undoing. Von Neumann died of cancer in 1957, presumably as a result of exposure to nuclear radiation at Los Alamos. It is impossible to know whether, had his life been longer, the concepts that emerged from his fertile brain would have been a blessing, or as they say, a curse, for humanity.
Von Neumann's interest in self-replication is the entrée to the third part of the book, which took me by surprise. Oh, I knew ahead of time that the focus of this section was a match in the ancient game of Go between Lee Sedol, the finest player in South Korea, and a computer known as AlphaGo. But I assumed I would feel my ears go numb as I listened. After all, I have never been able to work up enthusiasm for chess; my brain just isn't interested in trying to anticipate several moves ahead. And Go is far more complicated than chess.
As it turned out, I found it fascinating. Labatut initially engaged me with the backstories of Lee Sedol and Demis Hassabis, a former child prodigy in chess whose fascination with artificial intelligence led to the development of AlphaGo. The AI behind AlphaGo (and its successors) is based on Monte Carlo simulations, and is far beyond the capabilities of chess-playing computers. Programming for Go is challenging because of its "strategic and aesthetic nature". AlphaGo learned as it played and won 4 of 5 games in the match.
Although Lee Sedol successfully returned to Go competition following his encounter with AlphaGo, he ultimately retired from the sport because a computer running AI is "an entity that cannot be defeated".
Which provides a satisfying end to a book that began with a man intimidated by the "unknowability" of quantum science, and continues on to ponder the implications of the "unknowability" of other scientific advances of the past century. By the time I finished I felt a combination of mental exhilaration and exhaustion. I am SO glad to have read it. Even though my understanding of things-quantum and other arcane aspects of hard science and math is superficial, Labatut gets his message through brilliantly. 5, bordering on 10, stars.
A couple of side notes: This is Labatut's first book written in English. Sheesh. And the narrators are Hungarian; their accents seem appropriate for the many Hungarians (and other middle Europeans) in the story.
UPDATE: I recently (finally) watched Oppenheimer. It was interesting to see so many of the people in this book featured in the movie, but surprising that von Neumann was completely absent. Well, there was probably only room for so many intellects and egos, even in a 3 hour movie.
The theme is a continuation of and expansion on ideas that were present in Labatut's earlier book, When We Cease to Understand the World: the impact of advances in science, mathematics and logic on both the individuals who pursue these subjects and on the future of life on earth. The MANIAC (it should be all in caps because the title refers to an acronym for the name of a computer) is more precise in both concept and presentation.
The structure has a flow that swept me along. The first part is a narrative profile of Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest, who in 1933 killed himself and his son (who had Down syndrome), an event that is described in the opening sequence of the book. Ehrenfest had been suffering from depression for several years, triggered, in Labatut's telling, by his unease at having his understanding of physics disrupted by the introduction of quantum theory.
What a vivid way to set the stage for the topic that dominates the remainder of the book: the troubling downsides of the inexorable forward movement of science! And what better representative of this phenomenon than John von Neumann, the Hungarian mathematician and physicist whose brilliant work went beyond those fields into economics (game theory), computer science (programmable computer) and biology (self-replication).
Labatut describes von Neumann's sometimes terrifying intellect, occasionally ruthless personality, often kind behaviors, and generally amoral approach to the outcomes of his discoveries, through the impressions he created on others. This approach is effective at developing a picture of a multi-faceted man, who could grasp complex ideas and follow them to their logical conclusions more quickly than anyone else in the brain trusts at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study or at Los Alamos, but who also peeked under secretaries' skirts, told crude jokes and bought a new Cadillac each year.
It is his insistence on pursuing ideas regardless of where they took him - or those interacting with him - that is most significant to Labatut. A well known example is von Neumann's recommendation to the US military in 1945 that the atomic bombs should be exploded above Japan because the range of their impact would be much broader than if they detonated on impact. This was overkill on a completely unnecessary level, and yet he pushed for the idea because it was the most logical use of the technology behind the bombs.
Von Neumann's consulting for various think tanks, corporations, and arms of the government did not end with WWII. His work on a programmable computer led to the development of the nuclear bomb, and concurrently, his work on game theory led to the concept of mutually assured destruction, which he was confident would insure peace since it would not be logical to take any action that would lead to one's undoing. Von Neumann died of cancer in 1957, presumably as a result of exposure to nuclear radiation at Los Alamos. It is impossible to know whether, had his life been longer, the concepts that emerged from his fertile brain would have been a blessing, or as they say, a curse, for humanity.
Von Neumann's interest in self-replication is the entrée to the third part of the book, which took me by surprise. Oh, I knew ahead of time that the focus of this section was a match in the ancient game of Go between Lee Sedol, the finest player in South Korea, and a computer known as AlphaGo. But I assumed I would feel my ears go numb as I listened. After all, I have never been able to work up enthusiasm for chess; my brain just isn't interested in trying to anticipate several moves ahead. And Go is far more complicated than chess.
As it turned out, I found it fascinating. Labatut initially engaged me with the backstories of Lee Sedol and Demis Hassabis, a former child prodigy in chess whose fascination with artificial intelligence led to the development of AlphaGo. The AI behind AlphaGo (and its successors) is based on Monte Carlo simulations, and is far beyond the capabilities of chess-playing computers. Programming for Go is challenging because of its "strategic and aesthetic nature". AlphaGo learned as it played and won 4 of 5 games in the match.
Although Lee Sedol successfully returned to Go competition following his encounter with AlphaGo, he ultimately retired from the sport because a computer running AI is "an entity that cannot be defeated".
Which provides a satisfying end to a book that began with a man intimidated by the "unknowability" of quantum science, and continues on to ponder the implications of the "unknowability" of other scientific advances of the past century. By the time I finished I felt a combination of mental exhilaration and exhaustion. I am SO glad to have read it. Even though my understanding of things-quantum and other arcane aspects of hard science and math is superficial, Labatut gets his message through brilliantly. 5, bordering on 10, stars.
A couple of side notes: This is Labatut's first book written in English. Sheesh. And the narrators are Hungarian; their accents seem appropriate for the many Hungarians (and other middle Europeans) in the story.
UPDATE: I recently (finally) watched Oppenheimer. It was interesting to see so many of the people in this book featured in the movie, but surprising that von Neumann was completely absent. Well, there was probably only room for so many intellects and egos, even in a 3 hour movie.
Read
October 10, 2024Today I found out that Dr. Demis Hassabis won the 2024 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Goggle DeepMind and AlphaFold2.
The book’s title comes from the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratories’ computer, called MANAIC, developed by John von Neumann.
“We christened our machine the Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and Computer. MANIAC, for short.”
The Maniac is a fictional account of the life and work of the polymath John von Neumann. Some of his many achievements include the development of the three axioms of quantum physics with Paul Dirac, working with Oskar Morgenstern and using game theory to describe decision making strategies in economics, formulating the architecture of an electronic digital computer based on Alan Turing’s theoretical machine, describing a self-replicating digital automata before the discovery of DNA, developing a mathematical description of a shock wave following an explosion, and working with Klaus Fuchs to develop a design for the hydrogen bomb.
When I got to the last fifth of the book, von Neumann’s story came to an end. Or did it? Instead amazingly the last pages presented a case where his theoretical models of a digital computer reached a high point. Here began the account of the computer scientists and artificial intelligence researchers, Demi Hassabis’ and David Silver’s attempts to produce a computer program that was able to play the Chinese board game Go. They spearheaded the development of the program, AlphaGo, and challenged the world champion Lee Sedol to five games. During the competition, Sedol lost the first two matches and during the third match, AlphaGo played the unexpected move 37. Sedol then came back to win the fourth match where he played the legendary move 78.
“Outside in the hall and in the streets of South Korea, perfect strangers who had been watching the game hugged each other, while others were moved to tears—it was as if Lee Sedol had just won a victory for our entire species.”
The following day, Lee Sedol lost the fifth and final match.
“When Lee Sedol finally bowed to everyone present and stepped down from the stage, Demis Hassabis and David Silver stayed on to receive, on behalf of their entire team, a certificate from South Korea's Go Association, awarding AlphaGo an honorary 9 dan ranking, the highest level a grandmaster can achieve, a title reserved for those players whose ability at the ancient game borders on the supernatural. The citation on the certificate—the first one of its kind ever produced carried the serial number 001, and stated that it was given out in recognition of AlphaGo's sincere efforts to master Go's Taoist foundations and reach a level close to the territory of divinity.”
Three years later, Sedol announced his retirement from competitive play.
“With the debut of Al, I've realized that I cannot be at the top, even if I make a spectacular comeback and return to being the number one player through frantic efforts. Even if I become the best that the world has ever known, there is an entity that cannot be defeated."
After the competition Hassabis and Silver rebuilt the computer program, stripping away all the inputs of previous games played by masters, leaving behind only the rules of Go. The result was AlphaGo Zero which remains undefeated to this day.
My fascination with the mapping of the atom and then nuclear fission began with When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatute earlier this year. It is fitting that the year comes to an end with the same author and his new book exploring many of the same scientific principles.
The book’s title comes from the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratories’ computer, called MANAIC, developed by John von Neumann.
“We christened our machine the Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and Computer. MANIAC, for short.”
The Maniac is a fictional account of the life and work of the polymath John von Neumann. Some of his many achievements include the development of the three axioms of quantum physics with Paul Dirac, working with Oskar Morgenstern and using game theory to describe decision making strategies in economics, formulating the architecture of an electronic digital computer based on Alan Turing’s theoretical machine, describing a self-replicating digital automata before the discovery of DNA, developing a mathematical description of a shock wave following an explosion, and working with Klaus Fuchs to develop a design for the hydrogen bomb.
When I got to the last fifth of the book, von Neumann’s story came to an end. Or did it? Instead amazingly the last pages presented a case where his theoretical models of a digital computer reached a high point. Here began the account of the computer scientists and artificial intelligence researchers, Demi Hassabis’ and David Silver’s attempts to produce a computer program that was able to play the Chinese board game Go. They spearheaded the development of the program, AlphaGo, and challenged the world champion Lee Sedol to five games. During the competition, Sedol lost the first two matches and during the third match, AlphaGo played the unexpected move 37. Sedol then came back to win the fourth match where he played the legendary move 78.
“Outside in the hall and in the streets of South Korea, perfect strangers who had been watching the game hugged each other, while others were moved to tears—it was as if Lee Sedol had just won a victory for our entire species.”
The following day, Lee Sedol lost the fifth and final match.
“When Lee Sedol finally bowed to everyone present and stepped down from the stage, Demis Hassabis and David Silver stayed on to receive, on behalf of their entire team, a certificate from South Korea's Go Association, awarding AlphaGo an honorary 9 dan ranking, the highest level a grandmaster can achieve, a title reserved for those players whose ability at the ancient game borders on the supernatural. The citation on the certificate—the first one of its kind ever produced carried the serial number 001, and stated that it was given out in recognition of AlphaGo's sincere efforts to master Go's Taoist foundations and reach a level close to the territory of divinity.”
Three years later, Sedol announced his retirement from competitive play.
“With the debut of Al, I've realized that I cannot be at the top, even if I make a spectacular comeback and return to being the number one player through frantic efforts. Even if I become the best that the world has ever known, there is an entity that cannot be defeated."
After the competition Hassabis and Silver rebuilt the computer program, stripping away all the inputs of previous games played by masters, leaving behind only the rules of Go. The result was AlphaGo Zero which remains undefeated to this day.
My fascination with the mapping of the atom and then nuclear fission began with When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatute earlier this year. It is fitting that the year comes to an end with the same author and his new book exploring many of the same scientific principles.
December 7, 2024
This book is a work of fiction, based on fact.
The Maniac is Benjamín Labatut's first book written directly in English and follows his brilliant When We Cease to Understand the World in Adrian Nathan West's translation.
Javier Cercas's The Blind Spot: An Essay on the Novel, in Anne McLean's translation, explained the idea of the "novel-without-fiction". Labutut's project is subtly different - a book of fiction that isn't a novel. Per Publisher's Weekly:
And in this he follows in the footsteps of WG Sebald:
The MANIAC connects 20th century theoretical physics, and the development of the atomic bomb, to the rise of artificial intelligence. It comes in three distinct sections - two shorter ones containing a longer middle section.
The first focuses on the tragic figure of Paul Ehrenfest, a theoretical physicist who came to question the use of mathematics in the field:
Mathematics is inhuman like every truly diabolic machine and it kills everyone whose spinal marrow isn’t conditioned to fit the movement of its wheels. On the streets of the modern metropolis too, all people who need their cerebral cortex to apply the traffic rules are run over.
to Tanja Ehrenfest as cited in Paul Ehrenfest and the Dilemmas of Modernity By Frans H. van Lunteren and Marijn J. Hollestelle (and quoted in a slightly different form by Labutut).
The "diabolic machine" being a key thread running through the work.
The middle sections focuses on the figure of John von Neumann (Neumann János Lajos), via a series of fictionalised vox-pops from those who worked with him - this from Oskar Morgenstern:
The minimax theorem that underlies our entire framework presupposes perfectly rational and logical agents, agents who are interested only in winning, agents who pose a perfect understanding of the rules and a total recall of all their past moves, agents who also have a flawless awareness of the possible ramifications of their own actions, and of their opponents' actions, at every single step of the game. The only person I ever met who was exactly like that was Johnny von Neumann. Normal people are not like that at all. Yes, they lie, they cheat, deceive, connive, and conspire, but they also cooperate, they can sacrifice themselves for others, or simply make decisions on a whim. Men and women follow their guts. They heed hunches and make careless mistakes. Life is so much more than a game. Its full wealth and complexity cannot be captured by equations, no matter how beautiful or perfectly balanced. And human beings are not the perfect poker players that we envisioned. They can be highly irrational, driven and swayed by their emotions, subject to all kinds of contradictions. And while this sparks off the ungovernable chaos that we see all around us, it is also a mercy, a strange angel that protects us from the mad dreams of reason.
Labutut's book takes its name from one of the first computer's designed consistently with modern devices - the "Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator And Computer". The novel has Julian Bigelow claiming he and John Von Neumann coined the retronym, although other sources attribute it to Nicholas Metropolis, who built a computer using Von Neumann's architecture at Los Alamos, and who said he chose a silly name to try to stop the use of acronyms. George Gamow, a physicist, is said to have joked that the name stood for "Metropolis And Neumann Invent Awful Contraption".
A lot of this section is relatively well-trodden territory - indeed the parts around the Los Alamos project will be very familiar to everyone who has seen Oppenheimer, and it wasn't really till around page 179 that I encountered a figure I was unfamiliar with, Nils Aall Barricelli, who first raised von Neumann's interest in the idea of artificial life and intelligence. And the different voices aren't always particularly distinct (Richard Feynman an exception).
The last section re-tells the relatively well-trodden story of the encounter between 이세돌 and the Alpha Go program, and the style is closer to reportage than to a novel, and only very lightly fictionalised.
Overall, while I loved reading the novel, I did feel much of the material has been covered elsewhere and this was not as impressive as When We Cease to Understand the World.
The Maniac is Benjamín Labatut's first book written directly in English and follows his brilliant When We Cease to Understand the World in Adrian Nathan West's translation.
Javier Cercas's The Blind Spot: An Essay on the Novel, in Anne McLean's translation, explained the idea of the "novel-without-fiction". Labutut's project is subtly different - a book of fiction that isn't a novel. Per Publisher's Weekly:
“A novel to me is just the worst possible form,” Labatut says. “If I was a dictator, I would outlaw them.”
[What is it then?]
“Nothing. A book. A novel is just a novel. But books are wonderful, books are weird, books are rare. To write a book is a difficult thing. I know I did it with my last book—I am absolutely sure of that. I think I failed with this one. People will call it a novel, and I will be ashamed.”
And in this he follows in the footsteps of WG Sebald:
His melancholy and humor, the density of information that they hold, the beauty of his prose—which has a deeply strange effect, somniferous and hallucinogenic, that prevents you from remembering everything you’ve read, no matter how much you try—make him a complete exception. His oeuvre is an unreachable monolith, a summit that exits our world. In my opinion, he’s the best writer of the 20th century.
The MANIAC connects 20th century theoretical physics, and the development of the atomic bomb, to the rise of artificial intelligence. It comes in three distinct sections - two shorter ones containing a longer middle section.
The first focuses on the tragic figure of Paul Ehrenfest, a theoretical physicist who came to question the use of mathematics in the field:
Mathematics is inhuman like every truly diabolic machine and it kills everyone whose spinal marrow isn’t conditioned to fit the movement of its wheels. On the streets of the modern metropolis too, all people who need their cerebral cortex to apply the traffic rules are run over.
to Tanja Ehrenfest as cited in Paul Ehrenfest and the Dilemmas of Modernity By Frans H. van Lunteren and Marijn J. Hollestelle (and quoted in a slightly different form by Labutut).
The "diabolic machine" being a key thread running through the work.
The middle sections focuses on the figure of John von Neumann (Neumann János Lajos), via a series of fictionalised vox-pops from those who worked with him - this from Oskar Morgenstern:
The minimax theorem that underlies our entire framework presupposes perfectly rational and logical agents, agents who are interested only in winning, agents who pose a perfect understanding of the rules and a total recall of all their past moves, agents who also have a flawless awareness of the possible ramifications of their own actions, and of their opponents' actions, at every single step of the game. The only person I ever met who was exactly like that was Johnny von Neumann. Normal people are not like that at all. Yes, they lie, they cheat, deceive, connive, and conspire, but they also cooperate, they can sacrifice themselves for others, or simply make decisions on a whim. Men and women follow their guts. They heed hunches and make careless mistakes. Life is so much more than a game. Its full wealth and complexity cannot be captured by equations, no matter how beautiful or perfectly balanced. And human beings are not the perfect poker players that we envisioned. They can be highly irrational, driven and swayed by their emotions, subject to all kinds of contradictions. And while this sparks off the ungovernable chaos that we see all around us, it is also a mercy, a strange angel that protects us from the mad dreams of reason.
Labutut's book takes its name from one of the first computer's designed consistently with modern devices - the "Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator And Computer". The novel has Julian Bigelow claiming he and John Von Neumann coined the retronym, although other sources attribute it to Nicholas Metropolis, who built a computer using Von Neumann's architecture at Los Alamos, and who said he chose a silly name to try to stop the use of acronyms. George Gamow, a physicist, is said to have joked that the name stood for "Metropolis And Neumann Invent Awful Contraption".
A lot of this section is relatively well-trodden territory - indeed the parts around the Los Alamos project will be very familiar to everyone who has seen Oppenheimer, and it wasn't really till around page 179 that I encountered a figure I was unfamiliar with, Nils Aall Barricelli, who first raised von Neumann's interest in the idea of artificial life and intelligence. And the different voices aren't always particularly distinct (Richard Feynman an exception).
The last section re-tells the relatively well-trodden story of the encounter between 이세돌 and the Alpha Go program, and the style is closer to reportage than to a novel, and only very lightly fictionalised.
Overall, while I loved reading the novel, I did feel much of the material has been covered elsewhere and this was not as impressive as When We Cease to Understand the World.
January 28, 2024
He knew the real challenge was not building the thing but asking it the right questions in a language intelligible to the machine. And he was the only one who spoke the language.
We christened our machine the Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and Computer.
MANIAC, for short.
On its surface, the title of The MANIAC would appear to refer to the early computer tucked away in the basement of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, but metaphorically, it refers to those geniuses whose ability to see further and understand more deeply than us ordinary humans can appear as a form of madness (or mania) to those around them. Primarily the story of genius polymath John von Neumann — the overwhelming majority of this novel, sandwiched between the stories of Paul Ehrenfest (quantum physicist and friend of Einstein, who literally could not live with understanding reality at the subatomic level) and South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol (whose unrivalled mastery of mankind’s most complicated game was bested by early AI) — this reads like nonfiction, with the stories of these three men straightforwardly related by those around them. I was interested in everything that author Benjamin Labatut compiled here, could understand the warning to humanity that grouping these stories together provides, but something about it didn’t really feel like a novel. Still enjoyed the read and am happy to have picked it up. (Note: I read an ARC and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
He was a fifty-three-year-old Jewish mathematician who had emigrated from Hungary to America in 1937, and yet at his bedside, hanging on his every word, sat Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission; the Secretary of Defense; the Secretaries of Air, Army, and Navy; and the military Chiefs of Staff — all waiting for a final spark, one more idea from the mind that had birthed the modern computer, laid down the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics, written the equations for the implosion of the atomic bomb, fathered the Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, heralded the arrival of digital life, self-reproducing machines, artificial intelligence, and the technological singularity, and promised them godlike control over the Earth’s climate, now wasting away before their eyes, screaming in agony, lost in delirium, dying, just like any other man.
John von Neumann’s biography is incredible — from his earliest days, his spooky ability to understand and make connections was recognised and encouraged — and for the most part, this is the story of his education and career; from working with Kurt Gödel on the basic truths of mathematics (writing sixty some pages on how we know that 1+1=2, eventually coming to the conclusion that there are no fundamental truths) to his work on the Manhattan Project and early computers (building on Alan Turing’s work to create Artificial Intelligence in the 1950s), von Neumann’s superhuman mental abilities, coupled with obsessive focus, does seem a brand of ‘maniac’. And as I wrote above, we learn von Neumann’s story from those who knew him, from his oldest friend, Nobel Prize winner Eugene Wigner (‘There are two kinds of people in this world: Jancsi von Neumann and the rest of us’), his first wife Mariette (‘I married Johnny because, idiot that he was, he made me laugh, and we remained in lust during our entire lives’), co-founder of Game Theory Oskar Morgenstern (‘He wasn’t a man who sat down to think, he would be thinking continuously, so that by the time it was ready in his mind, it all came rushing out; infallible, he would dictate these carefully constructed sentences without a moment’s hesitation and making absolutely no mistakes’), Nils Aall Barricelli, whose use of MANIAC to replicate evolution on number sets was adapted by von Neumann, uncredited (‘Ire and fury, bile and hatred for that magpie, that smiling devil of a man’), and his second wife, Klara:
The thing about my husband that people don’t understand is that he truly saw life as a game, he regarded all human endeavors, no matter how deadly or serious, in that spirit. He once told me that, just as wild animals play when they are young in preparation for lethal circumstances arising later in their lives, mathematics may be, to a large extent, nothing but a strange and wonderful collection of games, an enterprise whose real purpose, beyond any one stated outright, is to slowly work changes in the individual and collective human psyche, as a way to prepare us for a future that nobody can imagine.
I do wish I knew what quotes can actually be attributed to their speakers, and which were imagined by Labatut, but I did believe the overall narrative: I believed that the man who advised a first-strike hydrogen bomb attack against the Soviet Union in order to end the Cold War could be the same man calmly accepting the idea of unleashing an uncontrollable self-replicating AI into the universe as a kind of inevitability: the math was written into the foundation of the universe so it will happen. I guess we’re meant to see that, in the first section, Ehrenfest anticipated all of this (to his own detriment), and in the final section, we must recognise that forces unleashed are already beyond human oversight; all because of those maniacs who saw further and understood reality more deeply and have scienced away our future. Again: I really enjoyed what I learned, I think I understand the point, and while I do enjoy reading nonfiction, it’s hard to think of this as a novel.
January 20, 2024
Krachend, fesselnd, explosiv … aber knallhart, mit Wucht am Gegenstand vorbei geschrieben.
Ausführlicher, vielleicht begründeter auf kommunikativeslesen.com
Würde ich nochmal ein Buch von Benjamin Labatut lesen? Ja, aber hoffentlich geht es um Jugendbanden, um Boxkämpfe, um wütende Jünglinge, die sich die Hörner abstoßen und der Vergeblichkeit ihres Tuns innewerden. Ich wünsche mir, es spielt in Kolumbien, in den Banlieus von Paris, im Kreuzberg eines verwüsteten Berlins wie Tim Staffels „Terrordrom“, aber nicht in Harvard, am MIT, in Cambridge oder Oxford und reflektiert nicht wutentbrannt über Theoretische Physik, Kybernetik und künstliche Intelligenz, sondern wo der höchste und beste Kick zu finden ist und von welchem Hochhaus es sich mit einem Hängegleiter oder Deltasegler am besten zu springen lohnt, um einen heftigen und langen Ausblick auf die Stadt zu genießen. Doch leider passiert nachgerade das Gegenteil in „Maniac“
„[…] dabei verknüpfte er Konzepte aus den verschiedensten Bereichen, Vorstellungen, die er aus einer stetig anwachsenden Zahl von Büchern bezog und mit seiner schwammartigen Intelligenz gierig aufsog. Paul war in der Lage, unterschiedslos alles um sich herum zu absorbieren. Sein Verstand war ganz und gar durchlässig, vielleicht fehlte ihm eine entscheidende Membran, und so war es weniger ein Interesse an der Welt als vielmehr die Welt, die ihn mit ihren vielen Formen bestürmte.“
Vieles passt in dem Stil nicht zusammen, aber was vor allem stört, ist die fehlende inhaltliche Konsistenz, die das Leben Paul Ehrenfests mit dem von John von Neumann und Lee Sedol bzw. Demis Hassabi mehr als nur äußerlich verknüpft. Die über 350 Seiten des Buches bleiben insgesamt anekdotisch, besitzen weder eine Einheit in Raum und Zeit, noch eine konsequent durchgehaltene Erzählperspektive. Im Grunde dienen die Figuren nur als Sprachrohr, um zusammengebasteltes Wissen zu präsentieren, das leider nirgendwo im Buch auch nur im entferntesten in die Tiefe geht. Wie der Computer „Maniac“ funktioniert, wieso Transistoren so wichtig gewesen sind, warum John Bardeen zweifacher Nobelpreisgewinner gewesen ist, wie das Shannon Theorem in die Computerentwicklung und bei den Fehlerkorrekturverfahren hineinspielt, und was es mit dem Turing-Test auf sich hat. Nichts lässt sich aus dem Text heraus verstehen …
„Denn die moderne Kunst lasse keine Gesetze gelten, keine Methode, keine Wahrheit, nur ein blindes, unaufhaltsames Branden, eine Woge des Wahnsinns, die vor nichts und niemandem haltmache und uns vorantreibe, und sei es bis ans Ende der Welt.“
Der Clou von Labatut besteht in einem Zwei-Schritt. Erst wird der Nimbus eines Genies aufgebaut, und dann wird der Nimbus zerstört. Im Falle von Ehrenfest durch die ach so undurchschaubare Unschärfe der Natur (in der vermeintlichen Heisenbergschen Formulierung der Quantenphysik); im Falle von John von Neumann durch die Unvollständigkeit der Mathematik (repräsentiert hier von Kurt Gödels Theoremen); und bei dem nahezu göttlichen Go-Spieler Lee Sedol die künstliche Intelligenz AlphaGo. Hier spielt nur Aufbau und Fall, Triumph und Niederlage eine Rolle – nicht das wie, wieso, weshalb und warum:
„[John von Neumann] saß hinter seinem Schreibtisch, mit bloßem Oberkörper. Auf seiner Haut glänzte der Schweiß, die stolze Wampe ragte hervor, während er unbeholfen Anstalten machte, sich die schwarzen Lederriemen der Tefillin um den Arm zu wickeln, eine weitere Gebetskapsel hielt sich in wackliger Balance über seiner mächtigen Stirn.“
Da, wo Fernanda Melchor berauscht, Atmosphären im schwül-gewaltbereiten Jugendsprech schafft, die Verzweiflung, die Wut, die Unfähigkeit, die Impulse zu kontrollieren beschreibt und bspw. in „Paradais“ erforscht, da bleibt Benjamin Labatut in „Maniac“ oberflächlich und matt, aber nur aufgrund seines ihm entgleitenden Gegenstandes. Das Buch wirkt mechanisch, zusammengeflickt und leider passagenweise von Fachartikeln und Aufsätze abgeschrieben, die nur noch durch Superlative, die „krassesten“, „außergewöhnlichsten“, aufgepeppt und abgeschmeckt worden sind.
Ja, ich werde mir ein weiteres Buch anschauen, vielleicht sogar lesen, aber nicht, wenn es über Gentechnologie, DNA, und Cyborgs handelt, oder gar um Zeitreisen, Satelliten und Dunkle Materie. Dann lieber und immer wieder Douglas R. Hofstadters "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid."
Ausführlicher, vielleicht begründeter auf kommunikativeslesen.com
Würde ich nochmal ein Buch von Benjamin Labatut lesen? Ja, aber hoffentlich geht es um Jugendbanden, um Boxkämpfe, um wütende Jünglinge, die sich die Hörner abstoßen und der Vergeblichkeit ihres Tuns innewerden. Ich wünsche mir, es spielt in Kolumbien, in den Banlieus von Paris, im Kreuzberg eines verwüsteten Berlins wie Tim Staffels „Terrordrom“, aber nicht in Harvard, am MIT, in Cambridge oder Oxford und reflektiert nicht wutentbrannt über Theoretische Physik, Kybernetik und künstliche Intelligenz, sondern wo der höchste und beste Kick zu finden ist und von welchem Hochhaus es sich mit einem Hängegleiter oder Deltasegler am besten zu springen lohnt, um einen heftigen und langen Ausblick auf die Stadt zu genießen. Doch leider passiert nachgerade das Gegenteil in „Maniac“
„[…] dabei verknüpfte er Konzepte aus den verschiedensten Bereichen, Vorstellungen, die er aus einer stetig anwachsenden Zahl von Büchern bezog und mit seiner schwammartigen Intelligenz gierig aufsog. Paul war in der Lage, unterschiedslos alles um sich herum zu absorbieren. Sein Verstand war ganz und gar durchlässig, vielleicht fehlte ihm eine entscheidende Membran, und so war es weniger ein Interesse an der Welt als vielmehr die Welt, die ihn mit ihren vielen Formen bestürmte.“
Vieles passt in dem Stil nicht zusammen, aber was vor allem stört, ist die fehlende inhaltliche Konsistenz, die das Leben Paul Ehrenfests mit dem von John von Neumann und Lee Sedol bzw. Demis Hassabi mehr als nur äußerlich verknüpft. Die über 350 Seiten des Buches bleiben insgesamt anekdotisch, besitzen weder eine Einheit in Raum und Zeit, noch eine konsequent durchgehaltene Erzählperspektive. Im Grunde dienen die Figuren nur als Sprachrohr, um zusammengebasteltes Wissen zu präsentieren, das leider nirgendwo im Buch auch nur im entferntesten in die Tiefe geht. Wie der Computer „Maniac“ funktioniert, wieso Transistoren so wichtig gewesen sind, warum John Bardeen zweifacher Nobelpreisgewinner gewesen ist, wie das Shannon Theorem in die Computerentwicklung und bei den Fehlerkorrekturverfahren hineinspielt, und was es mit dem Turing-Test auf sich hat. Nichts lässt sich aus dem Text heraus verstehen …
„Denn die moderne Kunst lasse keine Gesetze gelten, keine Methode, keine Wahrheit, nur ein blindes, unaufhaltsames Branden, eine Woge des Wahnsinns, die vor nichts und niemandem haltmache und uns vorantreibe, und sei es bis ans Ende der Welt.“
Der Clou von Labatut besteht in einem Zwei-Schritt. Erst wird der Nimbus eines Genies aufgebaut, und dann wird der Nimbus zerstört. Im Falle von Ehrenfest durch die ach so undurchschaubare Unschärfe der Natur (in der vermeintlichen Heisenbergschen Formulierung der Quantenphysik); im Falle von John von Neumann durch die Unvollständigkeit der Mathematik (repräsentiert hier von Kurt Gödels Theoremen); und bei dem nahezu göttlichen Go-Spieler Lee Sedol die künstliche Intelligenz AlphaGo. Hier spielt nur Aufbau und Fall, Triumph und Niederlage eine Rolle – nicht das wie, wieso, weshalb und warum:
„[John von Neumann] saß hinter seinem Schreibtisch, mit bloßem Oberkörper. Auf seiner Haut glänzte der Schweiß, die stolze Wampe ragte hervor, während er unbeholfen Anstalten machte, sich die schwarzen Lederriemen der Tefillin um den Arm zu wickeln, eine weitere Gebetskapsel hielt sich in wackliger Balance über seiner mächtigen Stirn.“
Da, wo Fernanda Melchor berauscht, Atmosphären im schwül-gewaltbereiten Jugendsprech schafft, die Verzweiflung, die Wut, die Unfähigkeit, die Impulse zu kontrollieren beschreibt und bspw. in „Paradais“ erforscht, da bleibt Benjamin Labatut in „Maniac“ oberflächlich und matt, aber nur aufgrund seines ihm entgleitenden Gegenstandes. Das Buch wirkt mechanisch, zusammengeflickt und leider passagenweise von Fachartikeln und Aufsätze abgeschrieben, die nur noch durch Superlative, die „krassesten“, „außergewöhnlichsten“, aufgepeppt und abgeschmeckt worden sind.
Ja, ich werde mir ein weiteres Buch anschauen, vielleicht sogar lesen, aber nicht, wenn es über Gentechnologie, DNA, und Cyborgs handelt, oder gar um Zeitreisen, Satelliten und Dunkle Materie. Dann lieber und immer wieder Douglas R. Hofstadters "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid."
October 20, 2023
The Maniac of the title is not one of the several mathematicians, physicists or even game players that abound within, though certainly many of them lived a feverish life that could be viewed as crazy. No, the eponymous Maniac is a computer. Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and Computer. Mathematician humor.
Maniac was not the first computer, but it was the one meant to transform all areas of human thought and grab science by the throat by unleashing the power of unlimited computation. So thought its creator, John von Neumann. But first, since the military funded it, Maniac was used to develop the hydrogen bomb. Johnny was okay with that.
On his deathbed, von Neumann was asked what it would take for a computer to begin to think and behave like a human being. In a voice that was no louder than a whisper:
He said that it would have to grow, not be built.
He said that it would have to understand language, to read, to write, to speak.
And he said it would have to play, like a child.
This segued very nicely into the last part of this book, how artificial intelligence can be used to out-human humans. It culminates in the real matches of the game Go between the master Lee Sedol and the computer created AlphaGo. In other words, what von Neumann imagined is already here.
This is not a novel though at times it read like one. Like this opening sentence:
On the morning of the twenty-fifth of September 1933, the Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest walked into Professor Jan Waternik's Pedagogical Institute for Afflicted Children, shot his fifteen-year-old son, Vassily, in the head, then turned the gun on himself.
Maniacs.
Maniac was not the first computer, but it was the one meant to transform all areas of human thought and grab science by the throat by unleashing the power of unlimited computation. So thought its creator, John von Neumann. But first, since the military funded it, Maniac was used to develop the hydrogen bomb. Johnny was okay with that.
On his deathbed, von Neumann was asked what it would take for a computer to begin to think and behave like a human being. In a voice that was no louder than a whisper:
He said that it would have to grow, not be built.
He said that it would have to understand language, to read, to write, to speak.
And he said it would have to play, like a child.
This segued very nicely into the last part of this book, how artificial intelligence can be used to out-human humans. It culminates in the real matches of the game Go between the master Lee Sedol and the computer created AlphaGo. In other words, what von Neumann imagined is already here.
This is not a novel though at times it read like one. Like this opening sentence:
On the morning of the twenty-fifth of September 1933, the Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest walked into Professor Jan Waternik's Pedagogical Institute for Afflicted Children, shot his fifteen-year-old son, Vassily, in the head, then turned the gun on himself.
Maniacs.
March 3, 2024
Lo primero que tenéis que saber es que no es una novela, sino un libro con un hilo conductor común, narrativa de ficción basada en hechos históricos y personas reales dividida en tres partes muy diferenciadas en cuanto a contenido, estructura y longitud.
En la primera parte seguimos a Paul Ehrenfest es su desgracia personal que culmina a bocajarro con la primera frase de la novela. Me ha encantado cómo está escrito y he conectado con el personaje histórico en profundidad, tuvo una vida muy dolorosa que me ha conmovido.
"Para Ehrenfest la verdadera comprensión era fruto de una red sutil, una en la cual infinitos hilos dorados se unían por el derecho y el revés de la trama; la sabiduría real era una experiencia de cuerpo completo, algo que involucraba todo el ser, no solo la razón y la mente. Ateo, inquisidor, incrédulo y escéptico, se juzgaba a sí mismo bajo un estándar de verdad tan exigente que se volvía un blanco fácil para las burlas y bromas de sus colegas."
Vivió un verdadero infierno durante el auge del nazismo en Alemania, aunque salpicado por pequeños oasis y grandes logros de la mano del conocimiento, finalmente se derrumba ante la irracionalidad de la física cuántica entrelazada con su deterioro físico y mental. De toda esta primera parte me quedo con su personalidad y con el lema de su maestro Ludwig Boltzmann, que me parece excelente para un científico de esa época: expón la verdad, escríbela con claridad y defiéndela hasta tu muerte.
La segunda parte, y el grueso del libro, está dedicado a John/János Von Neumann, que se nos presenta a través de la visión en primera persona que de él tuvieron muchas personas de su círculo familiar, social y laboral.
Se divide en tres actos en los que Labatut se pone en la piel de sus dos mujeres, su madre, su hija, su hermano, su amigo de la infancia, sus maestros y sus compañeros: figuras de la talla de Feynman o Bigelow nos van mostrando a ese cerebro y personalidad que fue el vórtice de todos los avances tecnológicos, físicos y matemáticos durante la SGM y la Guerra Fría. Si no sabéis quién es, ya estáis saliendo de aquí y buscando en la Wikipedia, porque vais a alucinar.
"Su respuesta al dilema nuclear fue un reflejo perfecto de lo peor y lo mejor de él: implacablemente lógica, totalmente contraintuitiva, y tan racional que rayaba en lo psicopático."
Esta estructura no solo nos da una visión caleidoscópica del hombre, sino también de Europa y USA en el sXX en muchos aspectos; e inspira una reflexión profunda sobre la naturaleza humana, la ciencia y el progreso, el genio, la responsabilidad sobre lo creado, la ética, la salud mental, la metafísica y espiritualidad, la IA... vaya, que no nos deja aburrirnos.
Por culpa de mi agenda frenética y las otras lecturas, no había leído la última parte; la de Lee Sedol, hasta bastante después que las otras dos porque quería atacarla en un solo tiempo. Confieso que era la que menos me atraía y vuestros comentarios la habían dejado por los suelos, pero confié en Labatut y la he terminado esta tarde... me ha parecido muy intensa, frenética. Creo que es un buen broche al libro. Respeto las opiniones pesimistas al respecto de los avances científicos y tecnológicos, puedo llegar a entenderlas (siempre han existido, ante cualquier cambio), sin embargo a mí el libro me ha llenado no de temor sino de esperanza (o expectativa) ante lo que podemos hacer humanos e inteligencias artificiales en simbiosis como preconizaba Barricelli con su código.
Me ha resultado una lectura intensa, eminentemente científica y a su vez inspiradora. El estilo me ha gustado menos que "Un verdor terrible" pero la historia es arrolladora. Merece relectura, que es el mejor piropo que puede recibir de mí un libro. Me voy a leer todo lo que haga Labatut a partir de ahora, en esto no cabe la menor duda.
En mi último delirio he encontrado incluso un paralelismo entre el aprendizaje del Go por las inteligencias humanas y el intento por explicar la física de la turbulencia de Ehrenfest y Casimir, ¿cuánto les hubiera ayudado una IA con el problema teórico?
PS. Me alegro mucho, a pesar de todo, de que Von Neumann no haya trascendido en la cultura popular como personaje porque estaría revolviéndose en su tumba y se lo merece. MegaloMANIAC.
En la primera parte seguimos a Paul Ehrenfest es su desgracia personal que culmina a bocajarro con la primera frase de la novela. Me ha encantado cómo está escrito y he conectado con el personaje histórico en profundidad, tuvo una vida muy dolorosa que me ha conmovido.
"Para Ehrenfest la verdadera comprensión era fruto de una red sutil, una en la cual infinitos hilos dorados se unían por el derecho y el revés de la trama; la sabiduría real era una experiencia de cuerpo completo, algo que involucraba todo el ser, no solo la razón y la mente. Ateo, inquisidor, incrédulo y escéptico, se juzgaba a sí mismo bajo un estándar de verdad tan exigente que se volvía un blanco fácil para las burlas y bromas de sus colegas."
Vivió un verdadero infierno durante el auge del nazismo en Alemania, aunque salpicado por pequeños oasis y grandes logros de la mano del conocimiento, finalmente se derrumba ante la irracionalidad de la física cuántica entrelazada con su deterioro físico y mental. De toda esta primera parte me quedo con su personalidad y con el lema de su maestro Ludwig Boltzmann, que me parece excelente para un científico de esa época: expón la verdad, escríbela con claridad y defiéndela hasta tu muerte.
La segunda parte, y el grueso del libro, está dedicado a John/János Von Neumann, que se nos presenta a través de la visión en primera persona que de él tuvieron muchas personas de su círculo familiar, social y laboral.
Se divide en tres actos en los que Labatut se pone en la piel de sus dos mujeres, su madre, su hija, su hermano, su amigo de la infancia, sus maestros y sus compañeros: figuras de la talla de Feynman o Bigelow nos van mostrando a ese cerebro y personalidad que fue el vórtice de todos los avances tecnológicos, físicos y matemáticos durante la SGM y la Guerra Fría. Si no sabéis quién es, ya estáis saliendo de aquí y buscando en la Wikipedia, porque vais a alucinar.
"Su respuesta al dilema nuclear fue un reflejo perfecto de lo peor y lo mejor de él: implacablemente lógica, totalmente contraintuitiva, y tan racional que rayaba en lo psicopático."
Esta estructura no solo nos da una visión caleidoscópica del hombre, sino también de Europa y USA en el sXX en muchos aspectos; e inspira una reflexión profunda sobre la naturaleza humana, la ciencia y el progreso, el genio, la responsabilidad sobre lo creado, la ética, la salud mental, la metafísica y espiritualidad, la IA... vaya, que no nos deja aburrirnos.
Por culpa de mi agenda frenética y las otras lecturas, no había leído la última parte; la de Lee Sedol, hasta bastante después que las otras dos porque quería atacarla en un solo tiempo. Confieso que era la que menos me atraía y vuestros comentarios la habían dejado por los suelos, pero confié en Labatut y la he terminado esta tarde... me ha parecido muy intensa, frenética. Creo que es un buen broche al libro. Respeto las opiniones pesimistas al respecto de los avances científicos y tecnológicos, puedo llegar a entenderlas (siempre han existido, ante cualquier cambio), sin embargo a mí el libro me ha llenado no de temor sino de esperanza (o expectativa) ante lo que podemos hacer humanos e inteligencias artificiales en simbiosis como preconizaba Barricelli con su código.
Me ha resultado una lectura intensa, eminentemente científica y a su vez inspiradora. El estilo me ha gustado menos que "Un verdor terrible" pero la historia es arrolladora. Merece relectura, que es el mejor piropo que puede recibir de mí un libro. Me voy a leer todo lo que haga Labatut a partir de ahora, en esto no cabe la menor duda.
En mi último delirio he encontrado incluso un paralelismo entre el aprendizaje del Go por las inteligencias humanas y el intento por explicar la física de la turbulencia de Ehrenfest y Casimir, ¿cuánto les hubiera ayudado una IA con el problema teórico?
PS. Me alegro mucho, a pesar de todo, de que Von Neumann no haya trascendido en la cultura popular como personaje porque estaría revolviéndose en su tumba y se lo merece. MegaloMANIAC.
Read
May 29, 2024DNF@ 35%
Pelo que ouvi do audiobook, o inglês de Benjamín Labatut é irrepreensível, mas para mim é insípido e a narrativa não tem o fulgor do seu antecessor, “Um Terrível Verdor”, escrito em espanhol. Creio que estas biografias ficcionadas a que Labatut se dedica funcionam melhor em pequenos relatos, e a constante mudança de perspectiva não é algo que considere especialmente aliciante aqui.
Há, ainda assim, alguns apontamentos interessantes, como o facto de o pai de John von Neumann ter tentado dissuadi-lo de se tornar matemático, com a justificação de ser “uma arte que não dá de comer”, quando 100 anos depois se diz aos jovens exactamente o contrário: para seguirem Ciências e Tecnologia, onde abunda a matemática, porque com as Humanidades espera-os o desemprego.
Pelo que ouvi do audiobook, o inglês de Benjamín Labatut é irrepreensível, mas para mim é insípido e a narrativa não tem o fulgor do seu antecessor, “Um Terrível Verdor”, escrito em espanhol. Creio que estas biografias ficcionadas a que Labatut se dedica funcionam melhor em pequenos relatos, e a constante mudança de perspectiva não é algo que considere especialmente aliciante aqui.
Há, ainda assim, alguns apontamentos interessantes, como o facto de o pai de John von Neumann ter tentado dissuadi-lo de se tornar matemático, com a justificação de ser “uma arte que não dá de comer”, quando 100 anos depois se diz aos jovens exactamente o contrário: para seguirem Ciências e Tecnologia, onde abunda a matemática, porque com as Humanidades espera-os o desemprego.
August 1, 2024
Why did we spend so much time (a third of the book) with von Neumann in his younger years, only for me to have no idea who he is by the time we left it? Why did Labatut use eight POVs to tell this story from different perspectives, only for all of them to sound the same and quickly disappear? Why did we rush through so much history as if the faulty mouse wheel had cheetos stuck in it while on wikipedia? Where is Labatut rushing to? This is not a novel to ponder big ideas, because we need clap to keep clap moving. Yes, it is like Oppenheimer, but without great visuals, the only thing good about that movie. That I also abandoned in the middle.
June 20, 2023
Cavemen created the gods, I see no reason why we shouldn’t do the same”
.
Benjamin Labatut’s English language debut The Maniac is a monumental achievement in literature, the blend of fact and fiction throughout a tumultuous time in human history fascinates from the first section to the very tantamount ending in the third. Section two is seemingly the most use of fact and fiction to create a retelling bookended by the first and third that are deeply rooted in non fiction, the combination however is a stroke of genius. Like his first translated English language novel Labatut writes with such compulsion and terror about the scientific advancements, the unmitigated glory men pine after while having little to no regard or moralistic capacity of what sheer destruction their creations mean for the world we inhabit. The grand scheme is always heading toward the direction of AI but Labatut begins from what he assess as the turning point to getting there, a horrifying yet riveting story of men and women who have given almost everything for the destruction of the very world they were trying to conquer. One of the most impressive feats is how readable this novel is, it engulfs your thoughts and you become as obsessed with the scientist as they are with their work. I’ve never enjoyed learning about something while reading more in my life, easily my favorite book ill read this year
.
Part one focuses on Hungarian physicist Paul Ehrenfest who ( on page one) ultimately kills his special needs son then himself in a delirium brought on from depression stemming from the beginning of the Nazi rise in Europe and the fundamentally illogical use of physics and mathematics to garner control and weaponizing the human race. His insanity slowly eats away at him as his contemporaries, like Einstein, migrate to the United States seeking asylum from the eradication of Jews ( as majority of these men are) That combined with the advancements in his studies that he doesn’t agree with are the perfect storm to his untimely demise, a precursor of what others would soon begin to advance upon and cause more destruction then Ehrenfest could fathom
.
Part two focuses on the Hungarian prodigy Jancsik/Johnny/Jon Von Neumann who was a pioneer in physics, mathematics, credited with the invention of game theory, quantum mechanics, computer advancement leading to AI development. However before all this he was part of the Manhattan project, an integral cog in the creation of the atom bomb. His aspirations didn’t stop there even after witnessing the total destruction he helped create, even coining the term Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) during his time with the government during the Cold War. His peers could not stop his advancements as he kept creating weapons unlike any ever seen, his computer programming machine was christened Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and Computer, or MANIAC for short. This program would help create the hydrogen bomb that was tested off the pacific coast to his amazement, the destruction it created was even rebutted by Oppenheimer himself. JVN always had his gears winding, he is the reason we are where we are today, the compassion for human existence was overshadowed in his eyes by the technological advancements he could create with his mind, so a true genius or a complete maniac? The verdict is still out. Labatut uses second hand narratives from JVN’s family, wives, colleagues, and also adversaries to tell his story, the most heartbreaking accounts are retold towards his end from a friend, and then from his daughter, such an inventive way to tell this man/monsters story
.
Part three is the prologue and shows the advances we have made since the death of JVN. A young British boy named Demis Hassabis becomes so bored with being a chess master and prodigy by the age of 15 he searches for answers on where to go next. He reads JVN’s thesis’ and findings and further creates the group Deepmind which is a computer program AI that competes with humans in Chess and most famously Go, with the program named AlphaGo. A riveting section that one would otherwise assume to be dull, Go champions play against the AI and we see how scary the world could become, what’s worse is by the time the events of this novel have ended, we are much further advanced in AI, as each year progresses the future looks to be quite a scary place
.
Benjamin Labatut’s English language debut The Maniac is a monumental achievement in literature, the blend of fact and fiction throughout a tumultuous time in human history fascinates from the first section to the very tantamount ending in the third. Section two is seemingly the most use of fact and fiction to create a retelling bookended by the first and third that are deeply rooted in non fiction, the combination however is a stroke of genius. Like his first translated English language novel Labatut writes with such compulsion and terror about the scientific advancements, the unmitigated glory men pine after while having little to no regard or moralistic capacity of what sheer destruction their creations mean for the world we inhabit. The grand scheme is always heading toward the direction of AI but Labatut begins from what he assess as the turning point to getting there, a horrifying yet riveting story of men and women who have given almost everything for the destruction of the very world they were trying to conquer. One of the most impressive feats is how readable this novel is, it engulfs your thoughts and you become as obsessed with the scientist as they are with their work. I’ve never enjoyed learning about something while reading more in my life, easily my favorite book ill read this year
.
Part one focuses on Hungarian physicist Paul Ehrenfest who ( on page one) ultimately kills his special needs son then himself in a delirium brought on from depression stemming from the beginning of the Nazi rise in Europe and the fundamentally illogical use of physics and mathematics to garner control and weaponizing the human race. His insanity slowly eats away at him as his contemporaries, like Einstein, migrate to the United States seeking asylum from the eradication of Jews ( as majority of these men are) That combined with the advancements in his studies that he doesn’t agree with are the perfect storm to his untimely demise, a precursor of what others would soon begin to advance upon and cause more destruction then Ehrenfest could fathom
.
Part two focuses on the Hungarian prodigy Jancsik/Johnny/Jon Von Neumann who was a pioneer in physics, mathematics, credited with the invention of game theory, quantum mechanics, computer advancement leading to AI development. However before all this he was part of the Manhattan project, an integral cog in the creation of the atom bomb. His aspirations didn’t stop there even after witnessing the total destruction he helped create, even coining the term Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) during his time with the government during the Cold War. His peers could not stop his advancements as he kept creating weapons unlike any ever seen, his computer programming machine was christened Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and Computer, or MANIAC for short. This program would help create the hydrogen bomb that was tested off the pacific coast to his amazement, the destruction it created was even rebutted by Oppenheimer himself. JVN always had his gears winding, he is the reason we are where we are today, the compassion for human existence was overshadowed in his eyes by the technological advancements he could create with his mind, so a true genius or a complete maniac? The verdict is still out. Labatut uses second hand narratives from JVN’s family, wives, colleagues, and also adversaries to tell his story, the most heartbreaking accounts are retold towards his end from a friend, and then from his daughter, such an inventive way to tell this man/monsters story
.
Part three is the prologue and shows the advances we have made since the death of JVN. A young British boy named Demis Hassabis becomes so bored with being a chess master and prodigy by the age of 15 he searches for answers on where to go next. He reads JVN’s thesis’ and findings and further creates the group Deepmind which is a computer program AI that competes with humans in Chess and most famously Go, with the program named AlphaGo. A riveting section that one would otherwise assume to be dull, Go champions play against the AI and we see how scary the world could become, what’s worse is by the time the events of this novel have ended, we are much further advanced in AI, as each year progresses the future looks to be quite a scary place
April 15, 2024
No sé a ciencia cierta qué me gustó más de esta obra, si el asombroso contenido temático o la vertiginosa forma en que se aborda o bien la estructura del propio libro, pero lo cierto es que nuevamente Benjamín Labatut (1980) me ha deslumbrado. Pareciera que este libro le fue dictado por las mentes superiores de todos los científicos de quienes nos habla.
Una buena parte del libro se centra en ese maravilloso intelecto de Janos von Neumann (1903-1957), una criatura que pareciera haber sido parida por la tecnología del futuro o bien llegada a este planeta desde una brillante y lejana estrella que la hubiese arrojado hasta aquí.
Los recursos expositivos de Labatut son muy extensos y nos lleva a las entrañas de la física y las matemáticas de una forma accesible y emocionante, pero también sabe infundirle interés al relato con la vida cotidiana de muchos científicos que brillaron durante el siglo XX. El autor nos lleva a las prodigiosas mentes de ellos y no sólo a las honduras de sus procesos mentales sino también al lado oscuro de sus mentes que en algunos casos los condujeron a desmoronarse y a la depresión más profunda, o bien al suicidio, como es el caso de Paul Ehrenfest (1880-1933), con quien inicia de manera trepidante esta obra, o bien Kurt Gödel quien en sus ansias de explorar más allá de lo razonable se perdió a sí mismo.
Durante toda la parte dedicada a Janos (o John) von Neumann, el autor le da voz a diferentes narradores que en su tiempo fueron personas cercanas a él lo que nos permite acercarnos a esa mente prodigiosa desde diferentes puntos de vista ya fuese desde la esfera personal o desde la perspectiva técnica/laboral, dependiendo del grado de cercanía y rol que desempeñó cada una de ellos en la vida de von Neumann: compañeros científicos, rivales de pensamiento, esposa, hija, ayudantes.
“La mayor parte de las matemáticas prueban lo que pueden, von Neumann prueba lo que quiere”
Es enorme la cantidad de mentes brillantes que se describen en este texto, pero creo que destacan, entre otros: Albert Einstein (1879-1955), Kurt Gödel (1906-1978), Niels Bohr (1885-1962), Paul Dirac (1902-1984), Edward Teller (1908-2003) Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901-1976), Max Born (1882-1970), Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961), David Hilbert (1862-1943), Alan Turing (1912-1954) y obviamente Eugene Wigner (1902-1995) compañero y amigo de toda la vida de Janos.
La parte final del libro está dedicada al milenario juego oriental del “Go” y a través de éste llegamos a la inteligencia artificial y a un personaje destacado en este juego-arte mental llamado Lee Sedol (1983) quien nos advierte del paso y los progresos de lo que es capaz esta inteligencia.
“Nuestra existencia en la tierra puede que sólo sea un medio hacia la meta de otra existencia”.
Mientras leía este libro no pude dejar de pensar en la sinfonía 41 de Mozart llamada Júpiter por la cantidad de luz que siguen emitiendo todos esos cerebros que pasan por este texto, así como por la que sigue emitiendo esta célebre pieza musical.
Finalmente y sólo como dato curioso quiero agregar que entre las muchas hazañas que von Neumann y su equipo lograron, está el diseño de la computadora a la que llamaron Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and Computer, y cuyas iniciales le dan título a este libro.
“El cerebro de von Neumann podría indicar un paso evolutivo más allá del Homo Sapiens.”
Una buena parte del libro se centra en ese maravilloso intelecto de Janos von Neumann (1903-1957), una criatura que pareciera haber sido parida por la tecnología del futuro o bien llegada a este planeta desde una brillante y lejana estrella que la hubiese arrojado hasta aquí.
Los recursos expositivos de Labatut son muy extensos y nos lleva a las entrañas de la física y las matemáticas de una forma accesible y emocionante, pero también sabe infundirle interés al relato con la vida cotidiana de muchos científicos que brillaron durante el siglo XX. El autor nos lleva a las prodigiosas mentes de ellos y no sólo a las honduras de sus procesos mentales sino también al lado oscuro de sus mentes que en algunos casos los condujeron a desmoronarse y a la depresión más profunda, o bien al suicidio, como es el caso de Paul Ehrenfest (1880-1933), con quien inicia de manera trepidante esta obra, o bien Kurt Gödel quien en sus ansias de explorar más allá de lo razonable se perdió a sí mismo.
Durante toda la parte dedicada a Janos (o John) von Neumann, el autor le da voz a diferentes narradores que en su tiempo fueron personas cercanas a él lo que nos permite acercarnos a esa mente prodigiosa desde diferentes puntos de vista ya fuese desde la esfera personal o desde la perspectiva técnica/laboral, dependiendo del grado de cercanía y rol que desempeñó cada una de ellos en la vida de von Neumann: compañeros científicos, rivales de pensamiento, esposa, hija, ayudantes.
“La mayor parte de las matemáticas prueban lo que pueden, von Neumann prueba lo que quiere”
Es enorme la cantidad de mentes brillantes que se describen en este texto, pero creo que destacan, entre otros: Albert Einstein (1879-1955), Kurt Gödel (1906-1978), Niels Bohr (1885-1962), Paul Dirac (1902-1984), Edward Teller (1908-2003) Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901-1976), Max Born (1882-1970), Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961), David Hilbert (1862-1943), Alan Turing (1912-1954) y obviamente Eugene Wigner (1902-1995) compañero y amigo de toda la vida de Janos.
La parte final del libro está dedicada al milenario juego oriental del “Go” y a través de éste llegamos a la inteligencia artificial y a un personaje destacado en este juego-arte mental llamado Lee Sedol (1983) quien nos advierte del paso y los progresos de lo que es capaz esta inteligencia.
“Nuestra existencia en la tierra puede que sólo sea un medio hacia la meta de otra existencia”.
Mientras leía este libro no pude dejar de pensar en la sinfonía 41 de Mozart llamada Júpiter por la cantidad de luz que siguen emitiendo todos esos cerebros que pasan por este texto, así como por la que sigue emitiendo esta célebre pieza musical.
Finalmente y sólo como dato curioso quiero agregar que entre las muchas hazañas que von Neumann y su equipo lograron, está el diseño de la computadora a la que llamaron Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and Computer, y cuyas iniciales le dan título a este libro.
“El cerebro de von Neumann podría indicar un paso evolutivo más allá del Homo Sapiens.”
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