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I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA

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Re: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA

#131

Post by davesque »

ScottAaronson wrote: post #49
nqureshi wrote: post #13

What 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…

It's actually really encouraging to hear that Scott has many of the same vices as me.

Re: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA

#133

Post by Koshkin »

JakeTyo wrote: post #126
andbberger wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it makes sense - a qubit is canonically a quantum spin system, which has two eigenstates, up and down.

What about superposition? Or is that not considered a 'state'?

One can justify the name using the fact that the state space is 2-dimensional.

Re: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA

#135

Post by mpodlasin »

What would be your advice for older (25+) people who want to get into science? Is it even possible? Or should I just accept that the train has left and focus on something else? Can you develop your math/logic/critical thinking skills at that point?

How about if you never excelled at these topics in school? Is hard work enough, or do you think some people are born with these talents?

Re: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA

#136

Post by code_coyote »

Hello,

As for "careers in science", what can someone later in life (I just turned 60, can't believe it) still do? I have a CS degree from ages ago, and have a scientific mindset (runs in my family, e.g., my sister was a research scientist [mathematician] before retirement). I don't want to retire anytime soon. But I'm unlikely to get into grad school. I can take MOOCs of course, and do. My interest in science tends toward neurology and embodiment.

Re: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA

#138

Post by lisper »

Y_Y wrote: post #114
schoen wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not Scott!) The Halting Problem's unsolvability is proven in a fully abstract mathematical way, and so the truth of this result is as logically necessary as the truth of other mathematical theorems. It doesn't refer to anything about physics. So it seems like this question might be better bifurcated into Why do we live in a world in which Turing machines are a good model for what computations we can physically perfo…

Who said anything about physics? I was thinking about axioms/logic systems and finitism.

> Who said anything about physics?

You did. You asked about why the universe we live in has a particular property. That's a question about physics.

Re: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA

#140

Post by ScottAaronson »

DC-3 wrote: post #3

Hi Scott, Shtetl-Optimized's tagline is famously "Quantum computers would not solve hard search problems instantaneously by simply trying all the possible solutions at once". What phrase do you think should replace 'trying all the possible solutions at once' in the public conciousness as a succinct description of the mechanisms of a quantum computer? Or is this topic simply too complex to be distilled into a neat syn…

A quantum computer is a device that exploits constructive and destructive interference among exponentially many amplitudes, which are numbers that are closely related to probabilities but can be positive, negative, or even complex.

If you feel that sentence wasn't clear enough, and it would take at least a few more paragraphs to flesh it out ... well, duh, what did you expect? :-D

For a SLIGHTLY longer account, see my attempt to explain quantum computing in 35 seconds or fewer, which Maclean's magazine challenged me and others to do in response to Justin Trudeau's quantum computing explanation: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2694

When I did a piece for the New York Times, I managed to get an explanation that I was reasonably happy with into ~6 paragraphs: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/science/scott-aaronson-qu...

Given that quantum mechanics is, famously, one of the most counterintuitive things that humanity ever discovered, I don't think it's that big of an ask for people to read 6 paragraphs about QC before they decide they basically know what it's about. :-)

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