~scottaaronson_blog | Bookmarks (13)

A few years ago, scientists feared they’d lose their jobs if they said anything against diversity programs. I was against that. Now scientists fear they’ll lose their jobs if they say anything for diversity programs. I’m against that too. A few years ago, if you didn’t list your pronouns, you were on the wrong side […]

It’s been almost impossible to get reliable information this week, but here’s what my sources are telling me: There is still a complete freeze on money being disbursed from the US National Science Foundation. Well, there’s total chaos in the federal government much more broadly, a lot of it more immediately consequential than the science […]

Update: In the comments, Craig Gidney points out that Ronit’s O(n log2 n) quantum circuits for the exact QFT were already published by Cleve and Watrous in 2000 (in a paper whose main point was something else, parallelization). Ronit’s O(n (log log n)2) circuits for the approximate QFT still appear to be new (Gidney says […]

Did Elon Musk make a Nazi salute? Well, not exactly. As far as I can tell, the truth is that he recklessly and repeatedly made a hand gesture that the world’s millions of Nazi sympathizers eagerly misinterpreted as a Nazi salute. He then (the worse part) declined to clarify or apologize in any way, opting […]

Err, happy MLK Day! This week represents the convergence of so many plotlines that, if it were the season finale of some streaming show, I’d feel like the writers had too many balls in the air. For the benefit of the tiny part of the world that cares what I think, I offer the following […]

Apparently Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, opined on an analyst call this week that quantum computing was plausibly still twenty years away from being practical. As a direct result, a bunch of publicly-traded quantum computing companies (including IonQ, Rigetti, and D-Wave) fell 40% or more in value, and even Google/Alphabet stock fell on the […]

Yesterday I arrived in Santa Clara for the Q2B (Quantum 2 Business) conference, which starts this morning, and where I’ll be speaking Thursday on “Quantum Algorithms in 2024: How Should We Feel?” and also closing the conference via an Ask-Us-Anything session with John Preskill. (If you’re at Q2B, reader, come and say hi!) And to […]

Do you like watching me spout about AI alignment, watermarking, my time at OpenAI, the P versus NP problem, quantum computing, consciousness, Penrose’s views on physics and uncomputability, university culture, wokeness, free speech, my academic trajectory, and much more, despite my slightly spastic demeanor and my many verbal infelicities? Then holy crap are you in […]

I’m thankful to the thousands of readers of this blog.  Well, not the few submit troll comments from multiple pseudonymous handles, but the 99.9% who don’t. I’m thankful that they’ve stayed here even when events (as they do more and more often) send me into a spiral of doomscrolling and just subsisting hour-to-hour—when I’m left […]

Important Announcement: I don’t in any way endorse voting for Jill Stein, or any other third-party candidate. But if you are a Green Party supporter who lives in a swing state, then please at least vote for Harris, and use SwapYourVote.org to arrange for two (!) people in safe states to vote for Jill Stein […]

I was sure my next post would be about the election—the sword of Damocles hanging over the United States and civilization as a whole. Instead, I have sad news, but also news that brings memories of warmth, humor, and complexity-theoretic insight. Steven Rudich—professor at Carnegie Mellon, central figure of theoretical computer science since the 1990s, […]

Yes, he’s the guy from The Elegant Universe book and TV series. Our conversation is 1 hour 40 minutes; as usual I strongly recommend listening at 2x speed. The topics, chosen by Brian, include quantum computing (algorithms, hardware, error-correction … the works), my childhood, the interpretation of quantum mechanics, the current state of AI, the […]

In nearly twenty years of blogging, I’ve unfortunately felt more and more isolated and embattled. It now feels like anything I post earns severe blowback, from ridicule on Twitter, to pseudonymous comment trolls, to scary and aggressive email bullying campaigns. Reflecting on this, though, I came to see that such strong reactions are an understandable […]