Knick Laux’s Reviews > The Maniac > Status Update
Knick Laux
is on page 126 of 368
The first chunk of this book gives us a short story about the physicist Paul Ehrenfest who had such intense depression that he ended up shooting his disabled son and then himself. Then the book describes the early career of John von Neumann from the perspective of his family and friends. He worked under Hilbert for a while even as the Nazis were taking control, but finally gave up that work after Gödel thwarted him.
— Jun 04, 2026 08:40PM
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Knick’s Previous Updates
Knick Laux
is on page 310 of 368
Von Neumann became obsessed with creating an AI that would carry a piece of his conscience forward. He ended up being diagnosed with cancer of the collar bone which quickly spread to his brain. He had been given security clearance on so many government projects that he was sequestered by the government in his last days to keep him from babbling secrets. The last part of the book is about an AI that mastered Go.
— 7 hours, 44 min ago
Knick Laux
is on page 219 of 368
The book moved on to von Neumann helping to build the atomic bomb with accounts from Feynman and computer scientists. Apparently von Neumann was very pro hydrogen bomb. He also helped build one of the first computers that could load software, which he assembled in Princeton. He spent much of the 50s trying to build some kind of artificial intelligence, which his technology was not advanced enough to support.
— Jun 05, 2026 09:11PM
