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I think the take-away here is not what so much what PM Trudeau knows or doesn't know about quantum computing. It reveals how low our expectations are of our le

I think the take-away here is not what so much what PM Trudeau knows or doesn't know about quantum computing. It reveals how low our expectations are of our leaders.

dboreham 11y ago
I don't know for sure, but I think it is reasonable to assume Jimmy Carter knows a fair bit about quantum mechanics.
- cmrdporcupine 11y ago
  And is thus reviled in retrospect by the US public for being too smart.
  - dnautics 11y ago
    Carter isn't generally reviled for being too smart. The number one thing that he's reviled for (maybe unfairly) is planning and botching a hostage rescue attempt that turned out to be pointless later when the hostages were freed by their captors.
    - pilom 11y ago
      In the West he's also disliked for being viewed as being anti-dam building during the biggest dam building spree in history.
    - justin66 11y ago
      > The number one thing that he's reviled for (maybe unfairly) is planning and botching a hostage rescue attempt that turned out to be pointless later when the hostages were freed by their captors. Strictly speaking, I think he was reviled because the rescue attempt came late and didn't work. He made a joke within the last year - when announcing his cancer diagnosis, I think - about how he'd have been reelected if he had sent a few more helicopters on that mission, and that that would have been a mixed blessing for him personally. Both points were true, I think. (no idea why you were downvoted)
      - dnautics 11y ago
        I think I'm politically on pretty much the opposite side of Carter's "official position", but I would squarely put Carter in the top quarter of American Presidents (for reference, he beats out Polk, whom I appreciate quite a bit, I put Obama hovering about 50% and FDR and Wilson competing for the very bottom). Obviously, the whole affair was botched on many levels, but in the grand scheme of the Carter presidency it wasn't that big of a deal, I don't think the authority to take action was misplaced, and much of the grousing about it is monday-morning quarterbacking.
        russell 11y ago
        Wow! FDR at the bottom, below Buchanan, Harding, Fillmore, Pierce, and GW Bush. I shudder to think what your political views are.
        dnautics 11y ago
        FDR was a tyrant. He jailed thousands of american citizens for no reason other than their ethnic heritage (over the objecting counsel of his wife) , tried to swing his dick and pack the supreme Court, and at one point, closed the banks for several days and at the end of it, everyone came out poorer (screwing over the poor the hardest even though ostensibly it was for their sake). In all his actions Roosevelt was the epitome of hubris, never stopping to think as president, "should I really be doing this?". Don't worry, gwb is not that much higher than FDR - FDR is the worst because of the magnitude and unprecedented nature of his executive overreach and the fact that it served as inspiration to future presidents. One of the better presidents was William Henry Harrison; didn't last long enough to mess things up.
    - lazyant 11y ago
      The fact that Reagan (or his election people) negotiated with the enemy to keep the American hostages until literally the second he was president, I don't know how that's not treason. At least Carter tried.
- wnewman 11y ago
  Why would Carter know about QM? As far as I know, little in a nuclear reactor can be usefully analyzed at the quantum level even today. (And FWIW, even if some things in flight can be usefully analyzed in terms of simple limiting cases of the Navier-Stokes equations, I'd be surprised to hear someone assuming that a Republican president "knows a fair bit about fluid mechanics" just because he was an officer and pilot.) Most of the nuclear fission stuff that is simple enough that you might hope to analyze with back-of-the-envelope QM has so much energy that it tends to act like a classical particle of negligibly short wavelength (but not enough energy to bring QM back into the picture by QED creating new particles upon collision). And while there is probably various quantum mechanical stuff deeply involved in a power reactor in one way or another --- e.g., electrical conductivity tends to involve band theory, and water is often used as a working fluid and at a fundamental level its thermal properties depend on stuff like hydrogen bonds --- I doubt it was helpful for a naval nuclear reactors guy to try to analyze things at that level in the middle of the last century.
  - dnautics 11y ago
    The US Naval Academy has a pretty good science program, and (IIRC) during Carter's era, all midshipmen were trained as engineers first, with the requisite science background, including (presumably) what QM was known in 1946. Moreover, as a nuke officer during that era he was personally vetted by Adm. Hyman Rickover, who had placed legendarily[0] high demands on the intellect, technical skill, moral integrity, and ingenuity of the Nuclear corps.
    - neurotech1 11y ago
      Rickover was promoted to the rank of vice admiral in 1958, the same year that he was awarded the first of two Congressional Gold Medals. Rickover exercised tight control for the next three decades over the ships, technology, and personnel of the nuclear Navy, interviewing and approving or denying every prospective officer being considered for a nuclear ship. Adm. Rickover [0] certainly set the standard with personal vetting of nuclear offices, but with the stakes of a reactor mishap being so high, who can really blame him? Contrast Adm. Rickover's tough stance with the managers in charge of the shuttle program [1] that led to STS-51L Challenger disaster. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster#O-ring_concerns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas...
- kuschku 11y ago
  And I’m sure Angela Merkel knows something about Quantum Mechanics as well – her doctoral thesis is about it.
  - dzhiurgis 11y ago
    It is about quantum chemistry. Also she worked as a researcher and published some papers after being awarded doctorate.
kingkawn 11y ago
Low expectations against what historical standard?
- stevehiehn 11y ago
  Well the fact that this is a viral news item implies that this is unexpected.
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Agreed. But... Honestly I love Justin but I couldn't care less if he understood quantum computing. As long as he has the sense to surround himself with the right people . JFK probably didn't know a single thing about the science of getting to the moon, if you catch my drift. i.e., I don't think our expectations ought to be much different, and not expecting a politician to understand quantum computing isn't a 'low expectation' to me.
- sayler 11y ago
  Not directly relevant, but see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIM-49_Nike_Zeus#Kennedy_and_Zeus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIM-49_Nike_Zeus#Kennedy_and_Z... "Kennedy was fascinated by the Zeus debate, especially the way that scientists were lined up on diametrically opposed positions for or against the system. He commented to Wiesner, 'I don’t understand. Scientists are supposed to be rational people. How can there be such differences on a technical issue?' His fascination grew and he eventually compiled a mass of material on Zeus which took up one corner of a room where he spent hundreds of hours becoming an expert on the topic. In one meeting with Edward Teller, Kennedy demonstrated that he knew more about the Zeus and ABMs than Teller. Teller then expended considerable effort to bring himself up to the same level of knowledge. Wiesner would later note that the pressure to make a decision built up until 'Kennedy came to feel that the only thing anybody in the country was concerned about was Nike-Zeus.''
godzillabrennus 11y ago
Imagine for a second that your roles were reversed and you were the politician who knew a lot about science, engineering and technology. Now it's your job to lead a nation, one of the worlds leading armed forces (yes Canada knows how to fight) and are responsible for trade policies that Impact all your constituents. Suddenly a terror group in <<insert war torn African country>> bombs a mall. How much do you know about the ethnic groups in <<insert war torn African country>> and what would your response be? Should you invade? What would happen if that government failed? Can you do startegic strikes? Hell, what do you do to prevent another bombing? I mean, it'd be great if our leaders all had a better understanding of STEM but Herbert Hoover was an engineer and it's wife's accepted that his economic policies deepened the Great Depression.
- duaneb 11y ago
  I would accept the same result in either an engineering or cultural challenge: assume you know nothing and find someone who does.
- PunchTornado 11y ago
  Like politicians know how to handle terrorists attack or something else. They have good or bad advisers. Politicians are usually lawyers, economists or engineers. The important thing is to be smart.
- Inthenameofmine 11y ago
  Sounds like a non-issue. How many of today's "policy heads" would know anything about the situation on the ground of that hypothetical nation? I personally think anybody with sufficient STEM background has a higher chance of assimilating and interpreting policy knowledge than pure policy-heads. You'll find plenty of Physics students with whom you can have an advanced policy or philosophy discussion, but I've never met a Policy or Philosophy student with any Physics knowledge.
  - jacalata 11y ago
    Well sure, plenty of physics students are willing to engage in an advanced policy discussion, but once you tell them that you will not assume the country is a sphere they have a lot less to offer.
chris_wot 11y ago
We have low expectations, and politicians know it, so they don't try to elevate debate. That's how the Donald Trump's of the world gain power - through apathy.

I think the take-away here is not what so much what PM Trudeau knows or doesn't know about quantum computing. It reveals how low our expectations are of our leaders.

dboreham 11y ago

I don't know for sure, but I think it is reasonable to assume Jimmy Carter knows a fair bit about quantum mechanics.

cmrdporcupine 11y ago
And is thus reviled in retrospect by the US public for being too smart.
- dnautics 11y ago
  Carter isn't generally reviled for being too smart. The number one thing that he's reviled for (maybe unfairly) is planning and botching a hostage rescue attempt that turned out to be pointless later when the hostages were freed by their captors.
  - pilom 11y ago
    In the West he's also disliked for being viewed as being anti-dam building during the biggest dam building spree in history.
  - justin66 11y ago
    > The number one thing that he's reviled for (maybe unfairly) is planning and botching a hostage rescue attempt that turned out to be pointless later when the hostages were freed by their captors. Strictly speaking, I think he was reviled because the rescue attempt came late and didn't work. He made a joke within the last year - when announcing his cancer diagnosis, I think - about how he'd have been reelected if he had sent a few more helicopters on that mission, and that that would have been a mixed blessing for him personally. Both points were true, I think. (no idea why you were downvoted)
    - dnautics 11y ago
      I think I'm politically on pretty much the opposite side of Carter's "official position", but I would squarely put Carter in the top quarter of American Presidents (for reference, he beats out Polk, whom I appreciate quite a bit, I put Obama hovering about 50% and FDR and Wilson competing for the very bottom). Obviously, the whole affair was botched on many levels, but in the grand scheme of the Carter presidency it wasn't that big of a deal, I don't think the authority to take action was misplaced, and much of the grousing about it is monday-morning quarterbacking.
      - russell 11y ago
        Wow! FDR at the bottom, below Buchanan, Harding, Fillmore, Pierce, and GW Bush. I shudder to think what your political views are.
        dnautics 11y ago
        FDR was a tyrant. He jailed thousands of american citizens for no reason other than their ethnic heritage (over the objecting counsel of his wife) , tried to swing his dick and pack the supreme Court, and at one point, closed the banks for several days and at the end of it, everyone came out poorer (screwing over the poor the hardest even though ostensibly it was for their sake). In all his actions Roosevelt was the epitome of hubris, never stopping to think as president, "should I really be doing this?". Don't worry, gwb is not that much higher than FDR - FDR is the worst because of the magnitude and unprecedented nature of his executive overreach and the fact that it served as inspiration to future presidents. One of the better presidents was William Henry Harrison; didn't last long enough to mess things up.
  - lazyant 11y ago
    The fact that Reagan (or his election people) negotiated with the enemy to keep the American hostages until literally the second he was president, I don't know how that's not treason. At least Carter tried.
wnewman 11y ago
Why would Carter know about QM? As far as I know, little in a nuclear reactor can be usefully analyzed at the quantum level even today. (And FWIW, even if some things in flight can be usefully analyzed in terms of simple limiting cases of the Navier-Stokes equations, I'd be surprised to hear someone assuming that a Republican president "knows a fair bit about fluid mechanics" just because he was an officer and pilot.) Most of the nuclear fission stuff that is simple enough that you might hope to analyze with back-of-the-envelope QM has so much energy that it tends to act like a classical particle of negligibly short wavelength (but not enough energy to bring QM back into the picture by QED creating new particles upon collision). And while there is probably various quantum mechanical stuff deeply involved in a power reactor in one way or another --- e.g., electrical conductivity tends to involve band theory, and water is often used as a working fluid and at a fundamental level its thermal properties depend on stuff like hydrogen bonds --- I doubt it was helpful for a naval nuclear reactors guy to try to analyze things at that level in the middle of the last century.
- dnautics 11y ago
  The US Naval Academy has a pretty good science program, and (IIRC) during Carter's era, all midshipmen were trained as engineers first, with the requisite science background, including (presumably) what QM was known in 1946. Moreover, as a nuke officer during that era he was personally vetted by Adm. Hyman Rickover, who had placed legendarily[0] high demands on the intellect, technical skill, moral integrity, and ingenuity of the Nuclear corps.
  - neurotech1 11y ago
    Rickover was promoted to the rank of vice admiral in 1958, the same year that he was awarded the first of two Congressional Gold Medals. Rickover exercised tight control for the next three decades over the ships, technology, and personnel of the nuclear Navy, interviewing and approving or denying every prospective officer being considered for a nuclear ship. Adm. Rickover [0] certainly set the standard with personal vetting of nuclear offices, but with the stakes of a reactor mishap being so high, who can really blame him? Contrast Adm. Rickover's tough stance with the managers in charge of the shuttle program [1] that led to STS-51L Challenger disaster. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster#O-ring_concerns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas...
kuschku 11y ago
And I’m sure Angela Merkel knows something about Quantum Mechanics as well – her doctoral thesis is about it.
- dzhiurgis 11y ago
  It is about quantum chemistry. Also she worked as a researcher and published some papers after being awarded doctorate.

kingkawn 11y ago

Low expectations against what historical standard?

stevehiehn 11y ago
Well the fact that this is a viral news item implies that this is unexpected.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

Agreed. But... Honestly I love Justin but I couldn't care less if he understood quantum computing. As long as he has the sense to surround himself with the right people . JFK probably didn't know a single thing about the science of getting to the moon, if you catch my drift. i.e., I don't think our expectations ought to be much different, and not expecting a politician to understand quantum computing isn't a 'low expectation' to me.

sayler 11y ago
Not directly relevant, but see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIM-49_Nike_Zeus#Kennedy_and_Zeus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIM-49_Nike_Zeus#Kennedy_and_Z... "Kennedy was fascinated by the Zeus debate, especially the way that scientists were lined up on diametrically opposed positions for or against the system. He commented to Wiesner, 'I don’t understand. Scientists are supposed to be rational people. How can there be such differences on a technical issue?' His fascination grew and he eventually compiled a mass of material on Zeus which took up one corner of a room where he spent hundreds of hours becoming an expert on the topic. In one meeting with Edward Teller, Kennedy demonstrated that he knew more about the Zeus and ABMs than Teller. Teller then expended considerable effort to bring himself up to the same level of knowledge. Wiesner would later note that the pressure to make a decision built up until 'Kennedy came to feel that the only thing anybody in the country was concerned about was Nike-Zeus.''

godzillabrennus 11y ago

Imagine for a second that your roles were reversed and you were the politician who knew a lot about science, engineering and technology. Now it's your job to lead a nation, one of the worlds leading armed forces (yes Canada knows how to fight) and are responsible for trade policies that Impact all your constituents. Suddenly a terror group in <<insert war torn African country>> bombs a mall. How much do you know about the ethnic groups in <<insert war torn African country>> and what would your response be? Should you invade? What would happen if that government failed? Can you do startegic strikes? Hell, what do you do to prevent another bombing? I mean, it'd be great if our leaders all had a better understanding of STEM but Herbert Hoover was an engineer and it's wife's accepted that his economic policies deepened the Great Depression.

duaneb 11y ago
I would accept the same result in either an engineering or cultural challenge: assume you know nothing and find someone who does.
PunchTornado 11y ago
Like politicians know how to handle terrorists attack or something else. They have good or bad advisers. Politicians are usually lawyers, economists or engineers. The important thing is to be smart.
Inthenameofmine 11y ago
Sounds like a non-issue. How many of today's "policy heads" would know anything about the situation on the ground of that hypothetical nation? I personally think anybody with sufficient STEM background has a higher chance of assimilating and interpreting policy knowledge than pure policy-heads. You'll find plenty of Physics students with whom you can have an advanced policy or philosophy discussion, but I've never met a Policy or Philosophy student with any Physics knowledge.
- jacalata 11y ago
  Well sure, plenty of physics students are willing to engage in an advanced policy discussion, but once you tell them that you will not assume the country is a sphere they have a lot less to offer.

chris_wot 11y ago

We have low expectations, and politicians know it, so they don't try to elevate debate. That's how the Donald Trump's of the world gain power - through apathy.