The MANIAC (book)
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''The MANIAC'' is a 2023 novel by Chilean author
Benjamín Labatut Benjamín Labatut (born 1980) is a Chilean writer. Early life Labatut was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He spent his childhood in The Hague, Buenos Aires, and Lima. He moved to Santiago at the age of 14. Writing Labatut's first book of stor ...
, written in English. It is a fictionalised biography of
polymath A polymath or polyhistor is an individual whose knowledge spans many different subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. Polymaths often prefer a specific context in which to explain their knowledge, ...
John von Neumann John von Neumann ( ; ; December 28, 1903 â€“ February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer. Von Neumann had perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time, in ...
, whom Labatut calls "the smartest human being of the 20th century". The book focuses on von Neumann, but is also about physicist
Paul Ehrenfest Paul Ehrenfest (; 18 January 1880 – 25 September 1933) was an Austrian Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist who made major contributions to statistical mechanics and its relation to quantum physics, quantum mechanics, including the theory ...
, the history of
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
, and
Lee Sedol Lee Sedol (; born 2 March 1983), or Lee Se-dol, is a South Korean former professional Go player of 9 dan rank. As of February 2016, he ranked second in international titles (18), behind only Lee Chang-ho (21). His nickname is "The Stro ...
's Go match against AlphaGo. The book received mostly positive reviews from critics.


Background

John von Neumann John von Neumann ( ; ; December 28, 1903 â€“ February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer. Von Neumann had perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time, in ...
was a Jewish Hungarian-born polymath who was a prodigy from an early childhood. Von Neumann worked in multiple fields of science, theoretical (mathematical foundations of
quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is the fundamental physical Scientific theory, theory that describes the behavior of matter and of light; its unusual characteristics typically occur at and below the scale of atoms. Reprinted, Addison-Wesley, 1989, It is ...
,
game theory Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions. It has applications in many fields of social science, and is used extensively in economics, logic, systems science and computer science. Initially, game theory addressed ...
,
cellular automata A cellular automaton (pl. cellular automata, abbrev. CA) is a discrete model of computation studied in automata theory. Cellular automata are also called cellular spaces, tessellation automata, homogeneous structures, cellular structures, tessel ...
) and applied (
nuclear weapons A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either nuclear fission, fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and nuclear fusion, fusion reactions (thermonuclear weap ...
research during the
Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...
in
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, computer architecture later named after him, and many other subjects). Labatut calls him "the smartest human being of the 20th century". The title of the book is derived from an early computer based on von Neumann architecture, built after the war at Los Alamos laboratory, called
MANIAC I __NOTOC__ The MANIAC I (Mathematical Analyzer Numerical Integrator and Automatic Computer Model I) was an early computer built under the direction of Nicholas Metropolis at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. It ...
.
Benjamín Labatut Benjamín Labatut (born 1980) is a Chilean writer. Early life Labatut was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He spent his childhood in The Hague, Buenos Aires, and Lima. He moved to Santiago at the age of 14. Writing Labatut's first book of stor ...
is a Chilean author known for his 2020 book ''When We Cease to Understand the World'', a collection of fictionalised stories about famous scientists that received positive reviews and was translated into multiple languages from
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...
. ''The MANIAC'' is Labatut's first book written in
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...
. In an interview, Labatut said he prefers to write in English:
English is my preferred form of thought. ... English is the language I do most if not all my reading it. And it is a far better language than Spanish, in so many ways. Writing "clean" prose in Spanish is almost impossible, because so many of its sounds clash.
Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo ( ; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known w ...
said that he found English "a far finer language than Spanish" because it's both Germanic and Latin; because of its wonderful vocabulary ("Regal is not exactly the same thing as saying kingly," he explained); because of its physicality; and because you can do almost anything with verbs and prepositions.
Labatut was inspired to write ''The MANIAC'' by George Dyson's book '' Turing's Cathedral''.


Synopsis

The book has three chapters. The first chapter, "Paul or the Discovery of the Irrational", written in the
third person Third person, or third-person, may refer to: * Third person (grammar), a point of view (in English, ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', and ''they'') ** Illeism, the act of referring to oneself in the third person * Third-person narrative, a perspective in p ...
, is about physicist
Paul Ehrenfest Paul Ehrenfest (; 18 January 1880 – 25 September 1933) was an Austrian Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist who made major contributions to statistical mechanics and its relation to quantum physics, quantum mechanics, including the theory ...
. The chapter opens with Ehrenfest shooting dead his son Vassily, who suffered from Down syndrome, and then himself. It then recounts Ehrenfest's life story, describing his relationships with his wife
Tatyana Tatiana (or Tatianna, also romanized as Tatyana, Tatjana, Tatijana, etc.) is a female name of Sabine-Roman origin that became widespread in Eastern Europe. Origin Tatiana is a feminine, diminutive derivative of the Sabine—and later Latinâ ...
, his mistress Nelly Meyjes, and his eminent physicist colleagues. It chronicles his descent into despair and depression over his marriage's disintegration, the advent of
quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is the fundamental physical Scientific theory, theory that describes the behavior of matter and of light; its unusual characteristics typically occur at and below the scale of atoms. Reprinted, Addison-Wesley, 1989, It is ...
, and the direction Europe was heading in with the
Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...
's rise to power in Germany, looping back to the initial scene of the chapter. The second chapter, "John or the Mad Dreams of Reason", is about
John von Neumann John von Neumann ( ; ; December 28, 1903 â€“ February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer. Von Neumann had perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time, in ...
, and is written as a series of interviews of his family members, wives, friends, and colleagues, each in a distinctive voice. It is divided into three parts. Part I, "The Limits of Logic", is about his early life, as told by von Neumann's childhood friend
Eugene Wigner Eugene Paul Wigner (, ; November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of th ...
, mother Margrit Kann, brother Nicholas von Neumann, first wife Mariette Kövesi, and scientists
Theodore von Karman Theodore may refer to: Places * Theodore, Australian Capital Territory, Australia * Theodore, Queensland, Australia * Theodore, Saskatchewan, Canada * Theodore, Alabama, United States * Theodore Reservoir, in Saskatchewan People * Theodore (g ...
,
George Polya George may refer to: Names * George (given name) * George (surname) People * George (singer), American-Canadian singer George Nozuka, known by the mononym George * George Papagheorghe, also known as Jorge / GEØRGE * George, stage name of Gior ...
, and
Gábor SzegÅ‘ Gábor SzegÅ‘ () (January 20, 1895 – August 7, 1985) was a Hungarian-American mathematician. He was one of the foremost mathematical analysts of his generation and made fundamental contributions to the theory of orthogonal polynomials and ...
. It climaxes with von Neumann's participation in
David Hilbert David Hilbert (; ; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician and philosopher of mathematics and one of the most influential mathematicians of his time. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental idea ...
's program to create a logical basis for mathematics based on a consistent set of axioms, a quest ultimately scuppered by
Kurt Gödel Kurt Friedrich Gödel ( ; ; April 28, 1906 â€“ January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel profoundly ...
. Part II, "The Delicate Balance of Terror", discusses von Neumann's role in the
Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...
(as told by
Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of t ...
); his development of
game theory Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions. It has applications in many fields of social science, and is used extensively in economics, logic, systems science and computer science. Initially, game theory addressed ...
and the doctrine of
mutual assured destruction Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy which posits that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by an attacker on a nuclear-armed defender with second-strike capabilities would result in ...
(MAD) (as told by
Oskar Morgenstern Oskar Morgenstern (; January 24, 1902 – July 26, 1977) was a German-born economist. In collaboration with mathematician John von Neumann, he is credited with founding the field of game theory and its application to social sciences and strategic ...
); and his creation of the
MANIAC I __NOTOC__ The MANIAC I (Mathematical Analyzer Numerical Integrator and Automatic Computer Model I) was an early computer built under the direction of Nicholas Metropolis at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. It ...
computer and the
von Neumann architecture The von Neumann architecture—also known as the von Neumann model or Princeton architecture—is a computer architecture based on the '' First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC'', written by John von Neumann in 1945, describing designs discus ...
(as told by
Julian Bigelow Julian Himely Bigelow (March 19, 1913 – February 17, 2003) was a pioneering American computer engineer. Life Bigelow was born in 1913 in Nutley, New Jersey. He obtained a master's degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying el ...
). In Part III, "Ghosts in the Machine",
Sydney Brenner Sydney Brenner (13 January 1927 â€“ 5 April 2019) was a South African biologist. In 2002, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with H. Robert Horvitz and Sir John E. Sulston. Brenner made significant contributions to wo ...
discusses von Neumann's contributions to biology, his theoretical work on self-replicating and self-repairing machines, and his vision of
Von Neumann probes The concept of self-replicating spacecraft, as envisioned by mathematician John von Neumann, has been described by futurists and has been discussed across a wide breadth of hard science fiction novels and stories. Self-replicating probes are som ...
exploring the universe.
Nils Aall Barricelli Nils Aall Barricelli (24 January 1912 – 27 January 1993) was a Norwegians, Norwegian-Italians, Italian mathematician. Biography Nils Aall Barricelli was born on 24 January 1912, in Rome. When he was a student at the Sapienza University of Ro ...
talks about his ideas of digital life and his disagreements with von Neumann. Von Neumann's wife Klára Dán, daughter
Marina A marina (from Spanish , Portuguese and Italian : "related to the sea") is a dock or basin with moorings and supplies for yachts and small boats. A marina differs from a port in that a marina does not handle large passenger ships or cargo ...
, and Wigner talk about his final years, personal life, and death. The third chapter, "Lee or The Delusions of Artificial Intelligence", is about
Lee Sedol Lee Sedol (; born 2 March 1983), or Lee Se-dol, is a South Korean former professional Go player of 9 dan rank. As of February 2016, he ranked second in international titles (18), behind only Lee Chang-ho (21). His nickname is "The Stro ...
's Go match against AlphaGo. The narrative reverts to the third person. The chapter also tells the story of
Demis Hassabis Sir Demis Hassabis (born 27 July 1976) is a British artificial intelligence (AI) researcher, and entrepreneur. He is the chief executive officer and co-founder of Google DeepMind, and Isomorphic Labs, and a UK Government AI Adviser. In 2024, Ha ...
, a chess prodigy in childhood who decided to work on
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
and founded
DeepMind DeepMind Technologies Limited, trading as Google DeepMind or simply DeepMind, is a British–American artificial intelligence research laboratory which serves as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Founded in the UK in 2010, it was acquired by Go ...
, the company behind
AlphaGo AlphaGo is a computer program that plays the board game Go. It was developed by the London-based DeepMind Technologies, an acquired subsidiary of Google. Subsequent versions of AlphaGo became increasingly powerful, including a version that c ...
. The way is pointed to the future, as artificial intelligence's growing capabilities outpace the human mind. The book ends with Lee Sedol's retirement from Go, and new version of DeepMind's program,
AlphaZero AlphaZero is a computer program developed by artificial intelligence research company DeepMind to master the games of chess, shogi and Go (game), go. This algorithm uses an approach similar to AlphaGo Zero. On December 5, 2017, the DeepMind ...
, that did not train on human games but nevertheless became the strongest player in Go, chess, and
Shogi , also known as Japanese chess, is a Strategy game, strategy board game for two players. It is one of the most popular board games in Japan and is in the same family of games as chess, Western chess, chaturanga, xiangqi, Indian chess, and janggi. ...
.


Reception

The book received mostly positive reviews. In his review for ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' Tom McCarthy noted the ambiguity of genre: "At its best, as in the stunning opening sequence reconstructing the murder-suicide of the physicist Paul Ehrenfest and his disabled son, or in the final section's gripping account of a computer defeating the world's best human Go player, you just throw up your hands and think, ''Who cares what discourse label we assign this stuff? It's great.''" Becca Rothfeld of the ''
Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'' praised the book, writing that it is "Labatut's latest virtuosic effort, at once a historical novel and a philosophical foray": "''The MANIAC'' is a work of dark, eerie and singular beauty." She noted that the book "can also be difficult to read" because of its unusual narrative structure: "The book is narrated by a cluttered polyphony of characters, among them both of von Neumann's wives and a number of his teachers and colleagues. ... Like von Neumann, ''The MANIAC'' strives to adopt the impartial standpoint of the universe." Killian Fox of ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' sees the book as "darkly fascinating novel", and notes Labatut's "impressive dexterity, unpicking complex ideas in long, elegant sentences that propel us forward at speed (this is his first book written in English). Even in the more feverish passages, when yet another great mind succumbs to madness, haunted by the spectres they've helped unleash on the world, he feels in full control of his material." Sam Byers of ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' praises the book and the author's style: "The opening chapter of Benjamín Labatut's second novel is such a perfect distillation of his technique that it could serve as a manifesto." and "Readers ... will recognise the sense of breathlessness his best writing can evoke. Seemingly loosened from the laws of physics they describe, his sentences range freely through time and space, connecting not only characters and events, but the delicate tissue of intellectual history, often with a lightness of touch that belies their underlying complexity." He writes on the narrative structure: "Through a cascade of staccato chapters, an ensemble of narrators offer their piecemeal insights." Byers adds that "a brilliant novel is not quite what we end up with" and sees the problem in the "diffusion": "Labatut simply spreads himself too thin. Too many years in too few pages; too many voices with far too little to distinguish them. Initially intriguing, the bite-size monologues quickly come to feel inadequate." Some reviewers did not see the book as a biography. In an essay for the ''
Cleveland Review of Books The ''Cleveland Review of Books'' is an annual, Ohio-based little magazine of literary & art criticism, essays, fiction, and poetry. It is published both in print and online. The magazine was founded in 2018 by writers Billy Lennon and Robert G ...
'', Ben Cosman juxtaposes the book with
Christopher Nolan Sir Christopher Edward Nolan (born 30 July 1970) is a British and American filmmaker. Known for his Cinema of the United States, Hollywood Blockbuster (entertainment), blockbusters with complex storytelling, he is considered a leading filmma ...
's biopic ''
Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (born Julius Robert Oppenheimer ; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist who served as the director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. He is often ...
'', and writes that it "follows the development of artificial intelligence—first as an idea at the beginning of the twentieth century, and then as a practicality at the beginning of the twenty-first—through the lives of three men who faced it." He also compared the book's structure to "witness testimony". Another reviewer called the book "perfect for anyone thirsting for more nuclear anxiety after watching ''Oppenheimer''". * Garrett Biggs of the ''
Chicago Review of Books The ''Chicago Review of Books'' is an online literary publication of StoryStudio Chicago that reviews recent books covering diverse genres, presses, voices, and media. The magazine was started in 2016 by founding editor Adam Morgan. It is consi ...
'' writes of the book's style: "Labatut writes about scientists the way Roberto Bolaño writes about poets. They are near mythical figures, captured at the corner of the novel's eye. They become historical in the most fraught sense of the term: subject to rumor and speculation and, eventually, the novel's form inflates their personas into something so large they can only be understood as narrative, never known in any objective capacity." Biggs criticises the last chapter: "the story of artificial intelligence has yet to be written. And so when Labatut's narration editorializes about artificial intelligence as 'a future that inspires hope and horror,' ''The MANIAC'' disassembles as a novel and starts to sound like a stale thinkpiece. AlphaGo might represent the first glimmer of a true artificial intelligence, as Labatut suggests. It also could one day be considered nothing more than a souped-up cousin to IBM's DeepBlue. We just don't know yet." But, Biggs writes, that doesn't "obscure Labatut's own brilliance. His prose is crisp, and he is able to render momentum where many writers might fail." Ed Simon of the ''
Los Angeles Review of Books The ''Los Angeles Review of Books'' (''LARB'' is a literary review magazine covering the national and international book scenes. A preview version launched on Tumblr in April 2011, and the official website followed one year later in April 201 ...
'' sees the book not just as a biography of von Neumann, but as a history of artificial intelligence. Simon connects the story of AI and von Neumann to an old story of "manufactured men, from Rabbi
Judah Loew ben Bezalel Judah Loew ben Bezalel (; 1512 – 17 September 1609), also known as Rabbi Loew ( Löw, Loewe, Löwe or Levai), the Maharal of Prague (), or simply the Maharal (the Hebrew language, Hebrew Hebrew abbreviations, acronym of "''Moreinu ha-Rav Loew'' ...
's golem to
Mary Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ( , ; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel ''Frankenstein, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an History of science fiction# ...
's monster in Frankenstein ... humanity was haunted by the possibility of artificial intelligence before it ever existed". Simon notes von Neumann's obscurity:
If it's true that von Neumann was the most brilliant human of the last century, then he has ironically dwindled into popular obscurity (a lifelong fear of his), perhaps because, as a character, he lacks the doomed romanticism of a J. Robert Oppenheimer, the paranoiac madness of his friend and foil Kurt Gödel, or even the (studied) avuncular saintliness of an Albert Einstein. Far from being an otherworldly anchorite, von Neumann was a womanizer and a drinker, a gambler and a lover of luxury cars, closer to the military brass who gave him a dozen different security clearances to work at the Atomic Energy Commission, the
Office of Scientific Research and Development The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was an agency of the United States federal government created to coordinate scientific research for military purposes during World War II. Arrangements were made for its creation during May ...
, the
Armed Forces Special Weapons Project The Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP) was a United States military agency responsible for those aspects of nuclear weapons remaining under military control after the Manhattan Project was succeeded by the Atomic Energy Commission on ...
, and so on, than he was to the genteel physicists of his Austro-Hungarian youth. Yet, as ''The MANIAC'' makes clear, von Neumann's was the animating spirit of our current technological epoch, an individual whose dogged work ethic and almost supernatural intelligence made our current moment possible.
Simon also sees in the book "Labatut's critique" of "the United States' antinomian rationalism, its instrumental, utilitarian, positivist, rapacious, anarchic logic that so often can appear as its exact opposite". Other reviewers harshly criticised the book. Alun David of ''
The Jewish Chronicle ''The Jewish Chronicle'' (''The JC'') is a London-based Jewish weekly newspaper. Founded in 1841, it is the oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper in the world. Its editor () is Daniel Schwammenthal. The newspaper is published every Fri ...
'' found it "clichéd ... in both thought and style". Multiple reviewers highlighted the last chapter, about Lee Sedol's match against AlphaGo. Rothfeld called it the book's "most extraordinary segment". Biggs finds that it "falls flat when compared to the first two parts of the triptych". Simon writes, "That the editors at ''Penguin'' were agreeable with Labatut's novel ending in an 84-page (admittedly riveting) synopsis of the strategies that underlie a complex 3,000-year-old Chinese game speaks to an admirable conception of what novels can do, the way that they can be pushed and can in turn push our conceptions." As Labatut's first book was mostly fiction, several reviewers commented on ''The MANIAC''s verifiability. Fox writes, "The details largely conform to what you'll read in the history books, but Labatut affords himself considerable latitude to imagine real lives from the inside." Byers calls it "a semi-fictional oral history"; Cosman writes, "Reading Labatut's nonfiction novels is an exercise in figuring out what is true, what isn't, and how much it matters either way." Simon writes, "The novel is ostensibly historical fiction ... but ''The MANIAC'' is actually something far rarer and more unusual—a bona fide experimental novel of ideas that has emerged from a publishing ecosystem that all too often only rewards dry literary fiction or lowest-common-denominator genre fiction. ... ''The MANIACs genre is better understood as historical creative nonfiction, philosophical argument, or some conjunction of the two". Labatut himself calls his books "fiction", but says that "All the science ... is true. Yet everything a writer writes is fiction."


References

{{Go (game) John von Neumann AlphaGo Books about scientists