How do you feel about the state of higher education? Specifically, do you think expensive degrees, underpaid PhD/Postdoc positions, and shortage of tenured jobs may discourage students from joining academia and push them into industry instead? It feels to me our best brains are at Facebook and Google doing cutting-edge research on how best to manipulate our mammal brains into buying ever more crap...
I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA
51–60 of 373 posts
Re: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA
#52Hi Scott,
Why do we live in a universe where the Halting Problem is unsolvable?
Re: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA
#53Hi Scott, What's your current position on the likelihood of quantum computing working/being possible? P.s. I enjoyed your book 'Quantum Computing Since Democritus'.
That's a very wide question. How about something like: What's the likelihood of quantum computing being a practical method to solve some class of problem in the next ten years?
You're assuming it's possible without explicitly saying it?
Re: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA
#54What is your opinion on how advances in QC may advance our understanding of human consciousness? I remember that in your QCSD book you make few remarks about Penrose's microtubules theory, the one that tries addressing two questions about human mind:
1. Are mind processes Turing-computable?
2. If yes, at which level in the brain does the consciousness emerge?
Penrose's answers to that (as far as I know) are not generally accepted by the scientific community. What is your intuition about these two questions?
Re: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA
#55Hi Scott, hope you are doing well. A friend of friend worked with you and said that you are nice and they enjoyed it a lot. Hope you have a wonderful day
Re: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA
#56Hi Scott. I've read your 'Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity' - I found it to be a very nice read. Is your book 'Quantum Computing Since Democritus' worth getting my hands on? Is it not going to be too repetitive given that I've read your article?
Re: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA
#57You wrote this: > For example, breaking almost any cryptographic code can be phrased as an NP problem. So if P=NP—and if, moreover, the algorithm that proved it was “practical” (meaning, not n^1000 time or anything silly like that)—then all cryptographic codes that depend on the adversary having limited computing power would be broken. Can you explain this reasoning more precisely? The class P contains difficult prob…
He explicitly says «not n^1000 time or anything silly like that» in the sentence you quote, n^googolplex would be way more silly
Re: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA
#58What advice would you give for productivity/getting things done?
I'm like the worst person on earth to be giving anyone else advice about that!! Do you have any idea how much time I waste obsessively reading the news, or worrying about people saying mean things about me on social media, rather than doing research or anything else useful for the world? I suppose my advice would be: don't do what I do. As my former PhD adviser, Umesh Vazirani, likes to tell people, "concentrate on t…
I hear that. But followup question! What do you think of commitment devices (like Beeminder!) for imposing discipline on oneself?
Re: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA
#59Hi Scott. Thank you for doing this AMA. In your opinion what are some good universities across the world to look into if one wants to do graduate or post-graduate level research in quantum computing?
I already answered that in another comment, but briefly: Waterloo/Perimeter, Caltech, MIT, Berkeley, U. Maryland, Singapore, Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, CWI Amsterdam, Hebrew University, Tsinghua, UTS Sydney, McGill/Montreal, LRI Paris, and don't count out UT Austin -- we're planning to expand a lot! And many, many other places have at least one or two people in the field.
Re: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA
#60If I use a quantum random number to pick my actions does that mean there's a universe where I took each option?
This terrifies me