Labatut, the science and the cost of progress

review: of Maniac by Benjamín labatut

Talking about this book isn’t an easy matter, because I’m going to try to resume in a review what the book made me feel. At the moment is my favourite book of the year 2024.

It isn’t easy to set this book in a literature gender because it could be an essay, it could be a thriller, it could be historical fiction. The story is divided in 3 parts, first one about  physicist Paul Ehrenfest, second one about Johnny von Neumann, and third one about Lee Sedol, a South Korean master of the game Go, faces down the artificial intelligence program AlphaGo from the company Deepmind.

This book is about the passion for science and how talented people, the genius of our times don’t care about fame, money, about power. Can get manipulated by other people in power when they just want to prove their theories are right.

My favourite part of the book is the whole description of von Neumann not just as a person, but as a teacher, as a working college. How literally he was a danger to the entire humanity for the way his brain used to get obsessed with the theories that he was working on. 

When the book he enters at the last part setted at the 2017 and bring the artificial intelligence and how the machine was more powerful than the genius and how Deep mind is a real thing in our times was fascinating for me. Science is completely evolved to make a reality most of the dreams of the genius in the past.

What I enjoyed most about this book was the sensibility, Labatut had to describe each of the characters and how their minds work and their hearts. Of course, using some fiction. Made me see humanity and how hard it probably was to live a life as a genius because your mind will take you to a place where you will lose control of the danger you can cause. Literally, the connection you have with sanity can get broken forever, and that’s why most of the genius in our story end up treat for psychiatric illness or suicide. 

This book is about science. The Progress as humanity, and how genius people with their ideas made the progress a reality, but it cost us so much pain and damage. The real cost of progress is the loss of the minds of brilliant geniuses.