Tag: scottaaronson

The world is complicated, and the following things can all be true: (1) Trump and his minions would love to destroy American academia, to show their power, thrill their base, and exact revenge on people […]

The world is complicated, and the following things can all be true: (1) Trump and his minions would love to destroy American academia, to show their power, thrill their base, and exact revenge on people […]

Please enjoy Harvard’s Jacob Barandes and yours truly duking it out for 2.5 hours on YouTube about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and specifically Jacob’s recent proposal involving “indivisible stochastic dynamics,” with Curt Jaimungal as […]

Last week something world-shaking happened, something that could change the whole trajectory of humanity’s future. No, not that—we’ll get to that later. For now I’m talking about the “Emergent Misalignment” paper. A group including Owain […]

Because of a recent breakthrough by Cook and Mertz on Tree Evaluation, Ryan now shows that every problem solvable in t time on a multitape Turing machine is also solvable in close to √t space […]

Q1. Did you see Microsoft’s announcement?A. Yes, thanks, you can stop emailing to ask! Microsoft’s Chetan Nayak was even kind enough to give me a personal briefing a few weeks ago. Yesterday I did a […]

It now seems the switch of Cancel Culture has only two settings: everything is cancellable—including giving intellectual arguments against specific DEI policies, or teaching students about a Chinese filler word (“ne-ge”) that sounds a little […]

Part of me feels bad not to have written for weeks about quantum error-correction or BQP or QMA or even the new Austin-based startup that launched a “quantum computing dating app” (which, before anyone asks, […]

1. Trump’s proposal for the US to “take over” Gaza and expel its inhabitants is, like nearly everything else Trump has said and done over the past two weeks and indeed the past decade, completely […]

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. […]