If you’ve visited Shtetl-Optimized lately — which, uh, I suppose you have — you may have noticed that your URL was redirected from www.scottaaronson.com/blog to scottaaronson.blog. That’s because Automattic, which owns WordPress, volunteered to move […]
In my last post, I wrote (among other things) about an ongoing scientific debate between the group of Chaoyang Lu at USTC in China, which over the past year has been doing experiments that seek […]
1. Huge congratulations to the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics: Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann for climate modelling, and separately, Giorgio Parisi for statistical physics. While I don’t know the others, I […]
Please enjoy an hourlong panel discussion of that question on YouTube, featuring yours truly, my former MIT colleague Will Oliver, and political scientist and China scholar Elsa Kania. If you’re worried that the title sounds […]
Here’s yesterday’s clickbait offering from Scientific American, the once-legendary home of Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Games column: Why the Term ‘JEDI’ Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion The sad thing […]
This Erev Yom Kippur, I wish to repent for not putting enough quantum computing content on this blog. Of course, repentance is meaningless unless accompanied by genuine reform. That being the case, please enjoy the […]
Way back in 2005, I posed Ten Semi-Grand Challenges for Quantum Computing Theory, on at least half of which I’d say there’s been dramatic progress in the 16 years since (most of the challenges were […]
Normally, early fall is the time when I’d use this blog to advertise positions in quantum information and theoretical computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, for prospective PhD students, postdocs, and faculty. […]
[Warning: spoilers follow!] Last week Dana and I watched the full first season of The Chair, the Netflix drama that stars Sandra Oh as Ji-Yoon Kim, incoming chairwoman of the English department at the fictional […]
I’m depressed that, all over the world, the values of the Enlightenment are humiliated and in retreat, while the values of the Taliban are triumphant. The literal Taliban of course, but also a thousand mini-Talibans […]
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