Added: 394 days ago by By Jingo | Posted in: Nerdcore | 10 Comments

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<div align='center'><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog/16124/Geniuses-Who-Were-Actually-Crazy-Part-II/'>Geniuses Who Were Actually Crazy Part II</a><br><div align='center'></div><br><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog'>See more like this on kontraband.com</a></div>

This is a follow up to a piece written a few months back about scientist dudes who verge on the slightly batty.

Charles Babbage 1791-1871

Why he was a genius:
Babbage has quite an eclectic variety of inventions to his name including a cowcatcher, the dynamometer, standard railroad gauge, uniform postal rates, Greenwich time signals, the heliograph ophthalmoscope and was an expert in code creating and code breaking, although his crowning achievement was undoubtedly the Difference Engine: a mechanical computer capable of quite complex calculations. It was potent enough to plot artillery shell trajectory incredibly accurately for example. This was the first programmable computer. He even designed a printer for it but probably baulked when he saw the price of the ink.

Ah, but:
Babbage really, really, really liked things to be neat, tidy, precise and measured. Insanely so actually. He kept ledgers of everything, he counted the number of broken windows in a factory for fun, studying the way in which they had been broke in order to work out which percentage had been broke by vandalism. He kept a notebook entitled "Observations of Street Nuisances" in which he pedantically detailed everything he found irksome to and from his office. He particularly loathed street musicians and estimated that he was 25% less productive than he could have been were it not for their aural pollutions. He took umbrage at these two lines in Alfred Tennyson's poem "The Vision of Sin"

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.

And mailed him the following letter:

"... If this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death. I would suggest [that the next version of your poem should read]:

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment 1 1/16 is born.

Strictly speaking, the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry."

He wasn't much fun a parties.

His first design for the difference engine was capable of calculating to six decimal places which was more than enough for any practical purpose anyone could think of at the time, but upon receiving his £1500 advance from the British government to build the thing, he decided that it simply wasn't accurate enough and began a complete redesign that would be precise to twenty decimal places. The Exchequer sunk almost £17,000 into the Difference Engine and its sibling the Analytical Engine before finally tiring of them and their designer's prickly manner, who railed against his baby getting dumped and spent the rest of his life embittered. The Difference Engine, had it been actually finished would have given the British forces in WWI a staggering advantage and would very likely have shortened the war dramatically. His funeral was attended by less people than you can fit in a family saloon car.


Charles Darwin 1809-1882

Why he was a genius:
Using logical conjecture based on overwhelming physical evidence he was able to perpetrate one of the most detailed frauds ever committed in the world of science. Using nothing more than meticulous research and a keen mind he fabricated the most complex and enduring falsehood since Copernicus fooled the world into thinking the Earth went round the Sun. His deranged theory was so convincing that to this day it still bamboozles all the smartest people on the planet, however a small but vocal group of Christians have managed to remain uncontaminated by Darwin's lies by avoiding the years of training, study and the natural intellects of the world's top minds to keep the torch of truth - that man is made from dirt and lightning - alive against the onslaught of Darwinian garbage.

Ah, but:
He thought he was a monkey! His beard also suggests he thought he was Santa.


John Nash 1928 -

Why he was a genius:
Nash started off solving Brouwer's fixed point theorem, then moved onto a bunch of other f#cked up theoretical mathematical bullsh#t that you've never heard of. He was also a key architect of "Game Theory." It was principally used to predict what the dirty commie bast#rds were planning to do with our precious fluids during the Cold War and it worked pretty well. The gist of it is this: by ascribing values to behaviours and incentives for behaviours you can predict the outcome of any situation. For superpowers it resulted in the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.) even though it sounds totally, well, mad. Although you can't argue with: Number of thermonuclear wars = 0. He then won a Nobel Prize for applying this theory to individual human beings. The Nash Equilibrium states that all people, like the superpowers, are self interested and are constantly looking to shaft one another at all times and it is only the threat of strong reprisals that prevent this.

Ah, but:
Well it didn't f#cking work for one thing. When Nash tried out some experiments designed to test his equilibrium on the secretaries in his office they all confounded his theory by not trying to bum rape each other. Altruism ruled. But who cares what a bunch of secretaries would do? Nash's genius was so great he managed to convince people, people in high offices I might add, that the way we interact with each other, let's say for example that you and a friend have agreed to car share and you're trying to work out a fair way of sharing the driving, you will treat that in the same way as you would the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And the reason the Nash Equilibrium was based on such a paranoid view of human interactions was because John Nash was a f#cking Paranoid Schizophrenic. Well duh. He thought the people who wore red ties were commie spies out to get him and that he was part of a secret organisation that was going to save the world. Or at least that's what the voices in his head were saying.

Modern political thought is heavily influenced by Nash, Tony Blair's laughably ineffective "Meritocracy" was deep in Game Theory and although Nash, now medicated and sane again, no longer believes that you can describe human behaviour in equations of self interest, alas, his theory lives on in the corridors of power around the world.

Added: 394 days ago by By Jingo | Posted in: Nerdcore | 10 Comments

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