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It seems like we know the Prime Minister's position on this but we just can't tell how he's moving on it.
Well the Trudeau government just earmarked 50 million for five years to the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
Damn, the Canadians must be so proud to have such an awesome leader. video link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZBLSjF56S8
Yes, this is a great achievement. But there are precedents - the Singapore PM is a Senior Wrangler [1], a former Indian president was a rocket scientist [2] - oh, and some nasty fellow in the middle east was an ophthalmologist in London [3], lest we forget. I believe technical competence is uncorrelated to adminisitrative effectiveness. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Hsien_Loong [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, this is a great achievement. But there are precedents - the Singapore PM is a Senior Wrangler [1], a former Indian president was a rocket scientist [2] - oh, and some nasty fellow in the middle east was an ophthalmologist in London [3], lest we forget. I believe technical competence is uncorrelated to adminisitrative effectiveness. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Hsien_Loong [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
> I believe technical competence is uncorrelated to adminisitrative effectiveness. I don't. Many Asian nations (including Singapore, China, etc.) are largely governed by engineering majors and I do believe this has been helpful for improving administrative effectiveness. This stands in stark contrast to countries where governance is dominated by either lawyers (the US) or military members (many other developing natio…
Law and politics warp your view of the world because everything becomes a subjective, debatable matter of opinion.
Politics is especially dangerous because the definition of a successful argument is one that increases your power. Facts are tangential at best, distracting and unwelcome at worst.
The corresponding problem for people with STEM backgrounds is a lack of understanding that this is how politics works. If your approach is based on facts, model-building, and reality testing, it's incredibly easy to be blindsided by a career politician - or career manager - who only cares about public opinion, and is perfectly prepared to lie professionally if they make more money and/or gain more power from it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And is thus reviled in retrospect by the US public for being too smart.
Carter isn't generally reviled for being too smart. The number one thing that he's reviled for (maybe unfairly) is planning and botching a hostage rescue attempt that turned out to be pointless later when the hostages were freed by their captors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an American, where most of our politicians eagerly jostle for the title of Stupidest Human, the fact that the PM was trying to appear smart raises him up several notches. He considers intelligence to be something worthy. That's refreshing and admirable.
As an American I would be far more concerned about a leader who knows little and makes airs of knowing more than an intelligent leader who dumbs themself down... The latter has an outside shot at being wise; the former has an outside shot at being dangerous .
"Fake it 'til you make it" is an individual endeavor, not a mantra that the leaders of a populace should embrace, I assume.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I believe technical competence is uncorrelated to adminisitrative effectiveness. I don't. Many Asian nations (including Singapore, China, etc.) are largely governed by engineering majors and I do believe this has been helpful for improving administrative effectiveness. This stands in stark contrast to countries where governance is dominated by either lawyers (the US) or military members (many other developing natio…
Or career-track politicians. (The UK.) Law and politics warp your view of the world because everything becomes a subjective, debatable matter of opinion. Politics is especially dangerous because the definition of a successful argument is one that increases your power. Facts are tangential at best, distracting and unwelcome at worst. The corresponding problem for people with STEM backgrounds is a lack of understanding…
I have found this disturbing view among many of the bay-area programmer friends I have - that life is a cut-and-dry game in which the losers in life deserve nothing - which I do not agree with. The animosity that the programmers face as a community in SFO may be down precisely to their view of others.
Someone on FB speculated that it was a trick just for this video: > the person asking the question probably works for Trudeau and Trudeau had previously memorized the whole quantum explanation just for this video. and after reading an article about this claimed that: > Trudeau had actually learned the definition of quantum computing that very morning before this conference and admitted to the fact. Source: https://ww…
> > the person asking the question probably works for Trudeau and Trudeau had previously memorized the whole quantum explanation just for this video.
The question was asked by a pool reporter from The Canadian Press (that's not a generic description, it's the name of a private news organization).
> and after reading an article about this claimed that:
> > Trudeau had actually learned the definition of quantum computing that very morning before this conference and admitted to the fact.
He said he was excited he had had a chance to learn more about quantum computing that morning while touring a quantum computing research institute to announce $50 million in funding for quantum computing.
How dare he display a modicum of intellectual curiosity and learn enough about the topic to explain it to a fellow layman along the way /s
This is a rather silly conspiracy theory.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, this is a great achievement. But there are precedents - the Singapore PM is a Senior Wrangler [1], a former Indian president was a rocket scientist [2] - oh, and some nasty fellow in the middle east was an ophthalmologist in London [3], lest we forget. I believe technical competence is uncorrelated to adminisitrative effectiveness. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Hsien_Loong [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
> I believe technical competence is uncorrelated to adminisitrative effectiveness. I don't. Many Asian nations (including Singapore, China, etc.) are largely governed by engineering majors and I do believe this has been helpful for improving administrative effectiveness. This stands in stark contrast to countries where governance is dominated by either lawyers (the US) or military members (many other developing natio…
Our last two presidents have professional degrees from the same institution (Harvard) and they do not govern in the same fashion in most areas other than counter-terrorism. China also doesn't choose it's politicians via elections, thus someone who is highly technical and let me stereotype here for a second... most likely not charismatic and/or having developed a sense of political empathy... facets that a lawyer or career manager (MBA) are more likely to develop, would be able to move up in the ranks (in the CCP in this case).
However, this doesn't really reflect on HOW someone chooses to implement policy or govern, comparing China vs U.S. is apples and oranges because you can't legitimately protest the CCP, this isn't the case of the major parties in the U.S. Thus the policies will be molded to some extent of popular opinion, which is normally not true in a dictatorship.
I think the take-away here is not what so much what PM Trudeau knows or doesn't know about quantum computing. It reveals how low our expectations are of our leaders.
I don't know for sure, but I think it is reasonable to assume Jimmy Carter knows a fair bit about quantum mechanics.
Most of the nuclear fission stuff that is simple enough that you might hope to analyze with back-of-the-envelope QM has so much energy that it tends to act like a classical particle of negligibly short wavelength (but not enough energy to bring QM back into the picture by QED creating new particles upon collision). And while there is probably various quantum mechanical stuff deeply involved in a power reactor in one way or another --- e.g., electrical conductivity tends to involve band theory, and water is often used as a working fluid and at a fundamental level its thermal properties depend on stuff like hydrogen bonds --- I doubt it was helpful for a naval nuclear reactors guy to try to analyze things at that level in the middle of the last century.
Someone on FB speculated that it was a trick just for this video: > the person asking the question probably works for Trudeau and Trudeau had previously memorized the whole quantum explanation just for this video. and after reading an article about this claimed that: > Trudeau had actually learned the definition of quantum computing that very morning before this conference and admitted to the fact. Source: https://ww…
If this is true, it's better to pretend to know about Quantum Computing than to pretend evolution isn't a thing...