It seems like we know the Prime Minister's position on this but we just can't tell how he's moving on it.
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Grading Trudeau on quantum computing
61–70 of 128 posts
Re: Grading Trudeau on quantum computing
#62I 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.
Imagine for a second that your roles were reversed and you were the politician who knew a lot about science, engineering and technology. Now it's your job to lead a nation, one of the worlds leading armed forces (yes Canada knows how to fight) and are responsible for trade policies that Impact all your constituents. Suddenly a terror group in > bombs a mall. How much do you know about the ethnic groups in > and what…
I would accept the same result in either an engineering or cultural challenge: assume you know nothing and find someone who does.
Re: Grading Trudeau on quantum computing
#63I'm wondering if massive bacterial computation will beat quantum computing on tasks like factorizing large integers. https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jul/24/bacteri...
Only if nobody ever builds any big quantum computer, or if factoring turns out to be polynomial.
If current understanding holds, no, bacteria has no standing chance.
Re: Grading Trudeau on quantum computing
#64I'm wondering if massive bacterial computation will beat quantum computing on tasks like factorizing large integers. https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jul/24/bacteri...
No, the amazing thing in the article you linked is that bacteria colonies can solve complex mathematical problems at all. No one said they will be faster than other classical computers.
If you like to read about this kind of problems: Many of Scott Aaronson's other post are about the limits of efficient computation. If you are interested especially in the limits of alternative approaches like protein folding, analog computing and anthropic computing I can recommend "NP-complete Problems and Physical Reality"[1].
Re: Grading Trudeau on quantum computing
#65For me the most interesting bit was Scott's "10 second" hypothetical reply to the reporter/general audience on what quantum computing is (found in one of his comments):
"I say something about how a QC is a proposed device that would solve certain specific problems much faster than we know how to solve them today, by taking advantage of quantum mechanics, which generalizes the laws of classical probability.
Then I talk about how you’d never talk about a -20% chance of rain tomorrow, but quantum mechanics is based on numbers called amplitudes, which can be positive or negative or even complex numbers.
And how, if an event can happen one way with a positive amplitude and another way with a negative amplitude, the two possibilities can “interfere destructively” and cancel each other out, so that the event never happens at all. And how the state of a QC with (say) 1000 bits would have one amplitude for each of 21000 possible settings of the bits—an astronomical amount of information, if one wanted to write it down classically, for example in order to simulate what the QC was doing classically.
But about how, when you measure the QC’s state, you just see a single random output (with its probability determined by its amplitude), not the gargantuan list of possibilities. And about how the goal, in QC, is always to choreograph things so that the possible paths leading to each wrong answer interfere destructively and cancel each other out, (say) some having positive amplitudes and others negative, whereas the paths leading to right answer reinforce.
And how this is a very weird and specialized capability—it’s not nearly as simple as “trying all the answers in parallel” (if you did that, you’d simply observe a random answer), nor is it just a smaller or faster version of ordinary computing (a QC might even be “bigger” or “slower” than an ordinary one; all the hoped-for advantage comes from the QC’s ability to create interference patterns).
Finally I talk about how a QC is known to give huge advantages over any known classical algorithm for a few tasks of practical importance (quantum simulation, breaking almost all the crypto used today…), and it might also give some advantages for broader goals like optimization and machine learning, but that’s an active research topic, and if the advantages exist they’ll probably be more modest and/or specialized."
Re: Grading Trudeau on quantum computing
#66Jesus... I was hoping atleast HN wouldn't give Trudeau a press blowjob. I'm from Canada and he is the most incompetent PM we've ever had. If you want to know what the future has for Canada with him as PM, look no further than the most indebted sub-sovereign in the world: Ontario. These guys are corrupt as fuck
I agree as a fellow Canadian.
Re: Grading Trudeau on quantum computing
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 agree with the conclusion of the last paragraph. My problem with STEM majors is that the softer virtues, like humanity, mercy and a certain large-heartedness which are needed to govern a large group are missing. ("Govern a large country like you fry small fish" - Lao Tzu, meaning govern with minimal interference) I have found this disturbing view among many of the bay-area programmer friends I have - that life is a…
I don't think you should stereotype to all STEM majors (internationally) based on a small collection of your programmer friends.
Plenty of STEM majors appreciate soft virtues and are large-hearted. In fact, I'd argue that lawyers are far more likely to see the evil in everyone (it's practically their job_ and to be oppose to mercy.
Re: Grading Trudeau on quantum computing
#68Earlier 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…
Of course in those asian nations you describe there is also a stronger tendency to view society as something to be "engineered". Herbert Hoover was the US's most prominent Engineer-president, and although history has been revised to make him seem like a laissez-faire president, he was (especially compared to his predecessor Coolidge) an economically interventionist president. The Hoover presidency did not turn out so well.
Re: Grading Trudeau on quantum computing
#69Earlier 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…
I don't think any meaningful correlation can be drawn from what a head-of-state or high ranking politician studied in college or where they went to college to their aptitude/competence for governance. 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…
First of all, in the world scheme President Obama and President Bush are quite close together in their governing strategies and policies. That's the nature of the kind of politician we elect in the United States.
However, it extends far beyond the head of state. All levels of government in Chinese government are dominated by engineers instead of lawyers or career politicians.
> However, this doesn't really reflect on HOW someone chooses to implement policy or govern
Of course it does. We even have a word for it: technocracy. There are dramatic differences and if you don't think that then I'm curious why you delved into perpetrating negative stereotypes about engineers.
Re: Grading Trudeau on quantum computing
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> 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. Strictly speaking, I think he was reviled because the rescue attempt came late and didn't work. He made a joke within the last year - when announcing his cancer diagnosis, I think - about how he'd have been reelected if he…
I think I'm politically on pretty much the opposite side of Carter's "official position", but I would squarely put Carter in the top quarter of American Presidents (for reference, he beats out Polk, whom I appreciate quite a bit, I put Obama hovering about 50% and FDR and Wilson competing for the very bottom). Obviously, the whole affair was botched on many levels, but in the grand scheme of the Carter presidency it wasn't that big of a deal, I don't think the authority to take action was misplaced, and much of the grousing about it is monday-morning quarterbacking.