“Von Neumann’s Fallacy and You” by incident-recipient

I am a knowledge worker. Over the course of my life I've felt insecure about not knowing more than I already do. I took a general cognitive ability test that placed me in the 98% percentile of the population. I don't know how accurate the test was; I know that there are better ones out there. Assuming it's accurate-ish I would be 2 standard deviations above the mean.

I have also been described as a genius more than once, including by peers whose intellect I admire myself. I've also made software contributions and libraries that have stunned my peers. Despite the external signals I often don't really feel smart enough, but this changed when I learned some details about the life of Dr. John von Neumann.

Von Neumann was a true genius. He was certainly smarter than I'll ever be by an insurmountable margin. He made so many discoveries [...]

---

First published:

August 28th, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yNhJKBdtucBL2uXb5/von-neumann-s-fallacy-and-you

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.