[reddog]

von Neumann also advocated for an immediate, surprise U.S. nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union: “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?”. According to game theory you see, it was only rational.

The genius's genius.

[keiferski]

Yes, the genius hero worship can be tiring. The man was intelligent, no doubt – but that doesn’t seem to have translated into any real world ethical understanding. A good example of why “meritocratic” systems based on raw intelligence probably don’t lead to wise outcomes.

[latency-guy2]

> but that doesn’t seem to have translated into any real world ethical understanding.

Why? Ethics gets muddy, inconsistent, and nonsensical quite quickly and I am not so certain you have figured it all out compared to anyone else, so you'll find it hard for me to believe this position.

von Neumann may have had a certain game theory understanding of the world at the time, and you might as well in the opposite direction today, which one is correct is still up in the air and you won't know, and maybe in fact, you will never know.

von Neumann's fear was that nuclear war was inevitable and that the entire world would die from it should the communist parties of the world, especially the one that ran in the Soviet Union were maintained. I don't think he was far off given a few years after his death the Cuban missle crisis. Then the decades after with the US and Soviet Union clashing in various capacities and interfering respectively reducing each other's influence, or failing to do so. And today with the Soviet Union's successor.

[batushka3]

Living in once soviet ocupied country, I would rather taken nukes. The Great chance to erase the malignance missed.

[viciousvoxel]

It's a bit funny to imagine him as so sophomoric that he really thought this was the optimal game-theoretic strategy, which is true only in the most simplistic scenario.

[jandrese]

Reading that passage I’m not sure if he wasn’t just pointing out a danger of game theory simplifications leading people to absurd conclusions.