Re:The Legend of von Neumann [pdf]
by alwa on Friday October 02, 2026 @03:58PM
(#49937900)
Isn’t history replete with examples of great minds who were received as crackpots until, after careers’ worth of labor to validate them, some of their crazy ideas turned out to be correct?
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The problem is the actual crackpots outnumber hidden gems by many orders of magnitude, so wasting time trying to sift through the noise is a losing proposition.
And I don’t know many, if any, examples of people received as crackpots that later were considered genius. At worst genius takes a little time to be recognized, which is a situation far more common.
I think maybe Srinivasa Ramanujan? Maybe not a full crackpot, but defo not worth spending time on because his work looked like Aliens came by and dropped a textbook.
I forget the quote, but one of the guys that recognized that he was worth looking into said something to the effect of "his work was too crazy for him to be crazy".