It’s safe to say, that when it comes to spiritual or existential development, von Neumann was about average, like the most of us. He was exceptionally intelligent, but probably not exceptionally “wise”. Either way, we can’t all be like von Neumann in terms of smarts: It appears to necessitate a fluke of nature. Both IQ and MHC appear to have rather large genetic components. In a human population, both seem to be about 70% heredity, meaning that the IQ and stage of your parents explain a lot, but far from all of your own intelligence (but of course, the discussion is more complicated than
...more
