Blog Profile / Shtetl-Optimized
| URL : | http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Academics / Physics | |
| Posts on Regator: | 179 | |
| Posts / Week: | 0.8 | |
| Archived Since: | December 19, 2008 | |
Blog Post Archive
D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge
Two years ago almost to the day, I announced my retirement as Chief D-Wave Skeptic. But—as many readers predicted at the time—recent events (and the contents of my inbox!) have given me no choice except to resume my post. In an all-too-familiar pattern, multiple rounds of D-Wave-related hype have made it all over the world [...]
Ask Me Anything! Tenure Edition
By popular request, for the next 36 hours—so, from now until ~11PM on Tuesday—I’ll have a long-overdue edition of “Ask Me Anything.” (For the previous editions, see here, here, here, and here.) Today’s edition is partly to celebrate my new, tenured “freedom to do whatever the hell I want” (as well as the long-overdue publication of [...]
The Tenured Toll-Taker
On Friday afternoon—in the middle of a pizza social for my undergrad advisees—I found out that I’ve received tenure at MIT. Am I happy about the news? Of course! Yet even on such a joyous occasion, I found myself reflecting on a weird juxtaposition. I learned about MIT’s tenure decision at the tail end of [...]
“Closer to Truth”
Two years ago, when I attended the FQXi conference on a ship from Norway to Denmark, I (along with many other conference participants) was interviewed by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, who produces a late-night TV program called “Closer to Truth.” I’m pleased to announce (hat tip: Sean Carroll) that three videos from my interview are finally [...]
Quantum Computing Since Democritus now out in the US! 20% discount for Shtetl-Optimized readers
OK, this will be my last blog post hawking Quantum Computing Since Democritus, at least for a while. But I do have four pieces of exciting news about the book that I want to share. Amazon is finally listing the print version of QCSD as available for shipment in North America, slightly ahead of schedule! [...]
Superiority of the Latke: The Unexpected Convergence of Quantum Mechanics and Common Sense
Back in February, I gave a talk with the above title at the Annual MIT Latke-Hamentaschen Debate. I’m pleased to announce that streaming video of my talk is now available! (My segment starts about 10 minutes into the video, and lasts for 10 minutes.) You can also download my PowerPoint slides here. Out of hundreds [...]
I was right: Congress’s attack on the NSF widens
Last month, I blogged about Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) passing an amendment blocking the National Science Foundation from funding most political science research. I wrote: This sort of political interference with the peer-review process,...Show More Summary
My fortune-cookie wisdom for the day
On Sunday afternoon, Dana, Lily, and I were in Copley Square in Boston for a brunch with friends, at the Mandarin Oriental hotel on Boylston Street. As I now recall, I was complaining bitterly about a number of things. First, I’d lost my passport (it’s since been found). Second, we hadn’t correctly timed Lily’s feedings, [...]
QStart conference in Jerusalem, June 24-27
Friend-of-the-blog Dorit Aharonov asked me to advertise the QStart Conference, which will be held at Hebrew University of Jerusalem June 24-27 of this year, to celebrate the opening of Hebrew University’s new Quantum Information Science...Show More Summary
“So You Think Quantum Computing Is Bunk?”
On Wednesday, I gave a fun talk with that title down the street at Microsoft Research New England. Disappointingly, no one in the audience did seem to think quantum computing was bunk (or if they did, they didn’t speak up): I was basically preaching to the choir. My PowerPoint slides are here. There’s also a [...]
Pigs sprouted wings, Hell froze over, and I guest-posted on Luboš Motl’s blog
Furthermore, the last of those things actually happened. What won’t I do to promote Quantum Computing Since Democritus? Enjoy!
Two P vs. NP updates (neither of them technical)
First news item: it’s come to my attention that yesterday, an MIT professor abused his power over students for a cruel April Fools’ Day prank involving the P vs. NP problem. His email to the students is below. I assume most of you already heard the news that a Caltech grad student, April Felsen, announced [...]
Sen. Tom Coburn, the National Science Foundation, and Antarctican Jello Wrestling
As some of you probably heard, last week Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) managed to get an amendment passed prohibiting the US National Science Foundation from funding any research in political science, unless the research can be “certified” as “promoting national security or the economic interests of the United States.” This sort of political interference with [...]
Quantum Computing Since Democritus: The Buzz Intensifies
It seems like wherever I go these days, all anyone wants to talk about is Quantum Computing Since Democritus—the sprawling new book by Scott Aaronson, published by Cambridge University Press and available for order now. Among leading figures in quantum information science—many of them well-known to Shtetl-Optimized readers—the book is garnering the sort of hyperbolic [...]
John Preskill: My Lodestar of Awesomeness
I got back a couple days ago from John Preskill‘s 60th birthday symposium at Caltech. To the general public, Preskill is probably best known for winning two bets against Stephen Hawking. To readers of Shtetl-Optimized, he might be known for his leadership in quantum information science, his pioneering work in quantum error-correction, his beautiful lecture [...]
Silvio and Shafi win Turing Award
Today I break long radio silence to deliver some phenomenal news. Two of the people who I eat lunch with every week—my MIT CSAIL colleagues Silvio Micali and Shafi Goldwasser—have won a well-deserved Turing Award, for their fundamental contributions to cryptography from the 1980s till today. (I see that Lance just now beat me to [...]
Collaborative Refutation
At least eight people—journalists, colleagues, blog readers—have now asked my opinion of a recent paper by Ross Anderson and Robert Brady, entitled “Why quantum computing is hard and quantum cryptography is not provably secure.” Where to begin? Based on a “soliton” model—which seems to be almost a local-hidden-variable model, though not quite—the paper advances the [...]
TCS+ online seminars
Good news, everyone! Anindya De, Oded Regev, and my postdoc Thomas Vidick are launching an online theoretical computer science seminar series called TCS+, modeled after the successful Q+ quantum information seminars run by Daniel Burgarth and Matt Leifer. The inaugural TCS+ lecture will be on Wednesday Feb. 6, at noon Eastern Standard Time. Ronald de [...]
“Quantum Information and the Brain”
A month and a half ago, I gave a 45-minute lecture / attempted standup act with the intentionally-nutty title above, for my invited talk at the wonderful NIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems) conference at Lake Tahoe. Video of the talk is now available at VideoLectures net. That site also did a short written interview with [...]
Lily Rebecca Aaronson
In 7+ years of blogging, one lesson I’ve learned is to go easy on the highly-personal stuff. But sometimes one does need to make an exception. Lily Rebecca Aaronson was born today (Jan. 20), at 6:55am, to me and Dana, weighing 3.3kg. (After seeing her placenta, the blog category “Adventures in Meatspace” never seemed more [...]