11 ms·

Interview with Scott Aaronson

192 points by robinhouston 11y ago

plesiv 11y ago
I want to congratulate the person who invited Scott Aaronson to speak (New York university, about integrated information theory) and didn't record and publish it on youtube. /sarcasm Seriously guys, we only have that many people like Scott. Please don't take their smarts, wisdom and time for granted.
- T-A 11y ago
  http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1823 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1823 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1893 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1893
kingsleymani 11y ago
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ced 11y ago
In social sciences, there’s an absolutely massive bias in favor of publishing results that confirm current educated opinion, or that deviate from the consensus in ways that will be seen as quirky or interesting rather than cold or cruel or politically tone-deaf. Isn't that a massive problem for meta-analyses? If there are 15 studies supporting the consensus/politically-correct position and 5 against it, that might be evidence against the consensus, if less than a third of researchers with against-consensus results have dared to publish their results.
- elcapitan 11y ago
  How does meta-analysis in a highly opinion based field like the social sciences, where there are different, mutually exclusive schools of thought even make sense in the first place?
  - pron 11y ago
    And how does a lack of even rudimentary knowledge of a specific field of study qualify one to reject it wholesale? The difficulties in meta-analysis in the social sciences vary from field to field -- psychology is qualitatively different from anthropology or history -- but if we had to generalize, they have more to do with the sheer dimensionality of the problem combined with the difficulty of precise measurement (and sometimes obtaining a large-enough sample), than with the field being "opinion based" or the existence of "mutually exclusive schools of thought" (I don't know how this differs from many other, more tractable research areas, and I don't see how this can be reconciled with saying that there's too much consensus).
    - mafribe 11y ago
      I'd say that scientific fields being "opinion based" or forming around "mutually exclusive schools of thought" is a reaction to "the sheer dimensionality of the problem combined with the difficulty of precise measurement". You see similar social phenomena in other fields with a measurement problem, for example programming language research ...
      - pron 11y ago
        > You see similar social phenomena in other fields with a measurement problem, for example programming language research ... Touché! :) (although there's plenty of social science research that is much more empirically rigorous than PL research, and the certainty/evidence ratio is certainly higher in PL)
- pron 11y ago
  With all due respect to Aaronson (with whom I find myself agreeing on many things), I wouldn't take his evaluation on the state of social science and his analysis of its core problems as correct. He's not a social scientist, and I don't think he'd appreciate an anthropologist evaluating the state of affairs in quantum computing research.
  - privong 11y ago
    > He's not a social scientist, and I don't think he'd appreciate an anthropologist evaluating the state of affairs in quantum computing research. But, from things I have read elsewhere, there does seem to be a reasonably convincing body of evidence that there are systematic biases in social sciences. Some of this perhaps stems from discrimination (e.g., in hiring practices) based on political allegiance. Jonathan Haidt (a social scientist) has spoken out on this topic[0], including specifically on sociology[1]. While that issue likely affects academics in general, political leaning likely has a much smaller influence on one's research in physics and chemistry, compared to one's research in sociology. It's true that Aaronson is not a social scientist, but I don't think that means he is wrong. [0] http://people.stern.nyu.edu/jhaidt/postpartisan.html http://people.stern.nyu.edu/jhaidt/postpartisan.html [1] http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/02/a-conversation-with-jonathan-haidt/ http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/02/a-conversation-with-...
    - pron 11y ago
      > there does seem to be a reasonably convincing body of evidence that there is systematic biases in social sciences. But Aaronson makes a far more specific assertion than "there is evidence for systematic bias in social sciences". I agree that there is political bias in social science departments. It is painfully clear to anyone who ever sets foot in one, especially as an outsider (much like the sexism in SV). I think that overall it harms research, perhaps significantly, and it must be addressed. But outsiders sometimes view this (rather obvious) criticism as a complete refutation of the field(s), which it is most certainly not. To their credit, social researchers actively study this bias without need for external pressure, and even acknowledge it's a problem, something which cannot be said for other disciplines (one could argue that it is social researchers' job to study precisely such things, but at least you can see that they're not intellectually dishonest enough to avoid the issue or to dismiss it as inconsequential). BTW, in general, I think that outsiders usually tend to overestimate internal criticisms (in any discipline). When (internal) critics say "our estimate of the variable x to be 10 is far too low!" they really mean "x is more likely to be 12", while outsiders interpret it as "x is probably 1000". > political leaning likely has a much smaller influence on one's research in physics and chemistry, compared to one's research in sociology True, but the correlation between political leaning and social research may very well be a reverse causal relationship: that one's research in sociology is far more likely to affect one's politics than research in physics. If there is an over-representation of a particular ideology in the social sciences (although it's hard for me to put all the social sciences in one category, because they are quite different from one another -- more different than, say, physics and chemistry), it may serve as evidence that some common and politically pertinent ideas arise from the research itself[1] as much as evidence of anything else. BTW, I've read the interview with Haidt that you linked to -- thank you for that -- it is truly horrifying. But I get the sense that this is a rather American phenomenon. I certainly didn't experience anything close to it in magnitude at my university. [1]: And I don't mean necessarily from the results, but possibly from the process.
- moultano 11y ago
  You can assess this using funnel plots. If publication bias were not a factor, then you expect effect size to be uncorrelated from sample size. If they are correlated, then it's likely publication bias is having some effect on the results.
  - ced 11y ago
    Clever solution. Is there a more general principle? I thought that most MNAR problems were hopeless, but maybe not.
    - moultano 11y ago
      It helps that we have a rough model of the publication process that we can correct for. It's kinda like assessing the underlying distribution with only access to the tail of it, which isn't ideal, but can be done.
Luc 11y ago
> [I]f you want me to rush to the Singularity community’s defense, the way to do it is to tell me that they’re a weirdo nerd cult that worships a high-school dropout and his Harry Potter fanfiction, so how could anyone possibly take their ideas seriously? Ha, good one! I really love his long rambling answers, very interesting.
pbw 11y ago
Wow he seems very smart but not very succinct.
- johngossman 11y ago
  It is an incredibly long interview, but I assume it was e-mail. And full of short gems like: "QM isn’t even “physics” in the usual sense: it’s more like an operating system that the rest of physics runs on as application software"
  - disconcision 11y ago
    that's a line straight out of his book 'quantum computing since Democritus'. highly recommended if you want to get a bird's eye view of the foundation of quantum logic without all that pesky physics (and physical history) getting in the way.
    - johngossman 11y ago
      I've actually read it, I just didn't remember this line. Thanks. And I agree, great read.
  - johngossman 11y ago
    "Speaking of which, when I look at the thrilling advances being achieved today in AI, I see all sorts of ethical issues that will need to be dealt with soon—like, how can a deep neural network justify to you why it turned down your loan application? Should self-driving cars handle crashes using utilitarian or deontological ethics?"
- lucb1e 11y ago
  I'm fairly certain that was not one of the defined goals.
lucb1e 11y ago
For those reading comments before the article: the title is rather silly, but it contains lots of interesting stuff. For example the answers to questions 14 and 15 sound very sane to me, compared to most people's views on it.
- johngossman 11y ago
  I agree: "I think that, if civilization lasts long enough, then sure: eventually we might need to worry about the creation of an AI that is to us as we are to garden slugs, and about how to increase the chance that such an AI will be “friendly” to human values (rather than, say, converting the entire observable universe into paperclips, because that’s what it was mistakenly programmed to want)."
fitzwatermellow 11y ago
News to me that he is moving to UTexas in Austin to build a center for quantum computing and theory. Terribly exciting! With the impetus being a state funded allocation of $4B+ for basic research. It really begs the question: are our governments spending way too little on moon shots? And what could have been accomplished in the last two generations if the focus had been on pure science rather than military technologies?
- cowsandmilk 11y ago
  > the focus had been on pure science rather than military technologies? I find your question a little funny in that Aaronson has said the DOD is where much of the funding for his research will come from for the next 5 years[1]. So, the $4 billion in Texas likely funded his recruitment package, but it is the military that is funding his research. [1] http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2687 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2687
  - fitzwatermellow 11y ago
    What constitutes a "good return" on research dollars spent? Is it mere value created? Or a breakthrough in fundamental human understanding? I'm actually quite intrigued now to mine some real data!
    - drumdance 11y ago
      I don't know that's really measurable except over very long periods of time. A discovery may be "interesting but useless" for many decades until engineering catches up, whether through improvements in engineering technology or subsequent discoveries that make the first discovery more actionable.
graycat 11y ago
Nice interview: Nice clarity on quantum computing and P versus NP.
- enriquto 11y ago
  But be careful, his interpretation of P versus NP is rather light-hearted (but OK, given that it's not his speciality). He says: For example, breaking almost any cryptographic code can be phrased as an NP problem. So if P=NP—and if, moreover, the algorithm that proved it was “practical” (meaning, not n1000 time or anything silly like that)—then all cryptographic codes that depend on the adversary having limited computing power would be broken. But the parenthetical remark is not a negligible detail. The class P contains those O(n^1000) algorithms, and also much, much slower ones. Being in P does not mean at all "efficient". This is one of the reasons why many people (e.g. Knuth) say that P=NP is not crazy. The class P is so huge, that it must certainly contain extremely clever algorithms that reduce NP to P. Yet, there are may be no practical implications of this equality.
  - graycat 11y ago
    Yes. So far nearly all our famous algorithms run in ln(n), n, ln(n)n, or n^2. So, we don't have much experience with algorithms that run in n^1000 or insight into what such algorithms might do. On the other hand, too commonly when we can't find an algorithm that runs in, say, n^2 or faster, we do have algorithms that run in 2^n. So, we suspect that there is something fundamental about exponential and fundamentally weak about polynomial. But as you point out, that is just something we detect sniffing with our nose. The point where I critique the P versus NP issue is the claim, implicit or explicit, that if we have a practical instance of a problem in NP-complete, then that instance has to be too hard to solve in practice. Not necessarily so: Many particular instances of an NP-complete problem, even with what appear for practice to be quite large values of n, might be fairly easy to solve. E.g., for an instance of the knapsack problem (IIRC in NP-complete), attack with a cute version of dynamic programming. For 0-1 a practical instance of integer linear programming (in NP-complete), attack with the simplex algorithm, maybe branch and bound, maybe Lagrangian relaxation, etc. And, a related issue for practice, in some optimization problems, the goal is to save money. So, in practice it can be fairly easy to save the first 15% of everything that is being spent and save all but that last $0.01 that can be saved even in theory (that is, come within a penny of optimality) and a total pain to save that last penny and know that we have done so. The OP said that if we have an algorithm that shows P = NP, then for each of the other Clay Math problems, say, problem X, and for positive integer n, we can ask: Is there a string of n or fewer characters that, in the sense of Whitehead and Russell, is a proof of problem X and let our P = NP algorithm answer that. Well, we'd be super happy for just anything that would give us such an answer for just one case of problem X and just a realistic value of n and to heck with the general case. More generally that is, the theory of NP-complete concentrates on worst case instances of problems, and not all real instances are worst case or nearly so. So, for the practical instances of problems in NP-complete that we can solve, exactly or close enough to save nearly all the money, just do so, take the money to the bank, and be happy. Then, sadly, we have to notice that currently in practice there is surprisingly little interest in such problems and solutions. Heck, someone could take a collection of the current, routine software for solving instances of problems in NP-complete, advertise (falsely) that they have an algorithm that shows that P = NP and also have corresponding software, run their software in the cloud, invite people to submit problems, and charge big bucks for solutions. Then, get paid for the practical instances their old, routine algorithms do solve and make some excuse for the rest -- money back guarantee. Problem is, I doubt that very many people much care. Why do I suspect that people don't care? Because I've see several important practical cases, and there people didn't much care. But, I confess, there is a lot of misunderstanding out there. E.g., once I was talking with some people who needed to solve, exactly, although approximately would be good, too, a lot of instances of some 0-1 integer linear programming problems (definitely in NP-complete). So I explained that I had recently solved an instance of a 0-1 integer linear programming that had 40,000 constraints and 600,000 variables. My solution was in 905 seconds on a 90 MHz PC, and the feasible solution found was within 0.025% of optimality and might have been optimal. The people I was talking to were happy? Nope: They had been told about the difficulty of the NP-complete problems, heard the big numbers 40,000 and 600,000, and concluded that I had to be lying. I wasn't lying. It's just that, while 0-1 integer linear programming is in NP-complete, not all instances of large 0-1 integer linear programming problems are difficult to solve; instead, in practice, a lot of instances are quite reasonable to solve exactly or plenty close enough for essentially everything of interest in practice. Right, 0-1 with 600,000 variables, so for total enumeration we're looking at 2^600,000. Gotta be impossible, right? Nope. Instead it was fairly easy. So, it boils down that the question of P versus NP is, say, except for the $1 million Clay prize, a pure math question heavily of long term philosophical interest instead of an engineering problem of current practical interest. For current practical interest, we should be attacking practical instances of problems which with current algorithms, software, and computing we can often do quite well.
foldr 11y ago
The discussion of whether or not we have free will strikes me as confused. Aaronson suggests that we would clearly not have free will in a scenario where “Everything [we] did could be fully traced to causal antecedents external to [us], plus pure randomness—not in some philosophical imagination, but for real, and on a routine basis”. The caveat “external to [us]” is doing a lot of work here, but it really has no discernible meaning. (Is a cause “external to us” if it’s not within our brains? Why would that matter? What is the status of chains of causation that lead from the outside world to goings on in our brains?) Without that essentially meaningless caveat, the statement is simply a trivially true disjunction of the logical possibilities given physicalism. Of course, if physicalism is true, then everything that we do is either determined by the laws of physics or not determined by anything. If that entails that we don’t have free will, then Aaronson should just say that he thinks physicalism is true and that he thinks that physicalism entails the absence of free will. On the other hand, if we don’t simply assume physicalism, then the fact that our behavior is determined by the laws of physics really does nothing to argue against free will. Everything would hang on how minds interact with physical reality, and we simply know nothing about how that might work. For example, it might be that God ensures that the physical world operates so as to respect the free decisions made by our minds. Or it might be that phenomena which are random from the point of view of physics are (sometimes) linked to free decisions made by minds. Nothing is known, so nothing can be concluded. I'd also have to say that Aaronson lacks imagination in a crucial respect. He claims that in any "imaginable" universe it will hold that "if you knew the complete state of the universe, you could use it to calculate [either deterministically or probabilistically] everything I’d do in the future." But of course it's very easy to imagine a universe where this is not the case. E.g., any universe where minds make free decisions that lack physical causes. We know that people have in fact imagined this sort of universe.
- wfo 11y ago
  Yes, very well put. I really enjoyed his technical answers, but when he dives into the philosophy I was disappointed to see the same very naive and narcissistic attitudes so many scientists have (that are even alluded to at the beginning of the article): you don't need to try to understand philosophy, just use your superior STEM brain and technical intuitions and if you think about it for a few minutes, with a healthy splash of "assuming my thesis, it is obvious my thesis is correct" , the problem is trivial -- why have people been thinking about it for centuries?
devilsavocado 11y ago
I'd recommend Scott Aaronson's book Quantum Computing Since Democritus to anyone interested in quantum computing, mathematics, and computer science in general. It covers a vast array of material, from the basics of set theory to Godel and Turing, cryptography, quantum computing, free will and time travel. It doesn't go very in depth into any specific topic, but for an engineer who's been out of college for a few years, it was at a perfect level to rekindle a love of learning and interest in a variety of topics.
Xcelerate 11y ago
> I’m friendly with many of the people who spend their lives that way [thinking about how to transfer consciousness into a computer]; I enjoy talking to them when they pass through town (or when I pass through the Bay Area, where they congregate). ^ I think that's my favorite quote from his interview. The Bay Area certainly has a reputation.
eachro 11y ago
Does anyone know why he's leaving MIT for UT Austin?
- zodiac 11y ago
  He has a blog post about it - http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2620 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2620
  - hkmurakami 11y ago
    > I wasn’t forced to leave MIT over anything here on Shtetl-Optimized. > Bizarre as it sounds, CS departments mostly cared about what actual research we were doing and could bring to them! So students and faculty afraid to debate anything controversial online under their real names, however politely, should know that even in 2016, the banner of academic freedom yet waves. I wish we could say the same about private industry -- most notably our employers and our funders. I am reminded of this: >I think the web has made us all write more defensively, and it’s a shame, because we’re effectively contorting our communication style to defend against a small minority of mean-spirited and uncharitable actions by some. Actually, as I say that, I instinctively feel the need to hedge myself–I don’t believe that people are really mean-spirited (well, perhaps some are–gak I’ve done it again!), but there’s something about commenting about stuff on the internet with people you’ve never met that seems to bring out the worst in people. (https://pchiusano.github.io/2014-10-11/defensive-writing.html https://pchiusano.github.io/2014-10-11/defensive-writing.htm...)
  - eachro 11y ago
    Maybe I should've just asked the question I really wanted to ask: did MIT deny him tenure? If so, why? From what I've heard, Scott Aaronson is one of the rising stars of theoretical CS, so him moving on from MIT was very surprising to hear.
    - qms 11y ago
      No: http://www.csail.mit.edu/node/2041 http://www.csail.mit.edu/node/2041
tim333 11y ago
>6. What hype about quantum computers really drives you nuts? Was good for me. I've usually found articles about quantum computing not really seeming to make sense and his reply is good for explaining why that often is.

192 points by robinhouston 11y ago

I want to congratulate the person who invited Scott Aaronson to speak (New York university, about integrated information theory) and didn't record and publish it on youtube. /sarcasm Seriously guys, we only have that many people like Scott. Please don't take their smarts, wisdom and time for granted.

T-A 11y ago
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1823 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1823 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1893 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1893

kingsleymani 11y ago

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ced 11y ago

In social sciences, there’s an absolutely massive bias in favor of publishing results that confirm current educated opinion, or that deviate from the consensus in ways that will be seen as quirky or interesting rather than cold or cruel or politically tone-deaf. Isn't that a massive problem for meta-analyses? If there are 15 studies supporting the consensus/politically-correct position and 5 against it, that might be evidence against the consensus, if less than a third of researchers with against-consensus results have dared to publish their results.

elcapitan 11y ago
How does meta-analysis in a highly opinion based field like the social sciences, where there are different, mutually exclusive schools of thought even make sense in the first place?
- pron 11y ago
  And how does a lack of even rudimentary knowledge of a specific field of study qualify one to reject it wholesale? The difficulties in meta-analysis in the social sciences vary from field to field -- psychology is qualitatively different from anthropology or history -- but if we had to generalize, they have more to do with the sheer dimensionality of the problem combined with the difficulty of precise measurement (and sometimes obtaining a large-enough sample), than with the field being "opinion based" or the existence of "mutually exclusive schools of thought" (I don't know how this differs from many other, more tractable research areas, and I don't see how this can be reconciled with saying that there's too much consensus).
  - mafribe 11y ago
    I'd say that scientific fields being "opinion based" or forming around "mutually exclusive schools of thought" is a reaction to "the sheer dimensionality of the problem combined with the difficulty of precise measurement". You see similar social phenomena in other fields with a measurement problem, for example programming language research ...
    - pron 11y ago
      > You see similar social phenomena in other fields with a measurement problem, for example programming language research ... Touché! :) (although there's plenty of social science research that is much more empirically rigorous than PL research, and the certainty/evidence ratio is certainly higher in PL)
pron 11y ago
With all due respect to Aaronson (with whom I find myself agreeing on many things), I wouldn't take his evaluation on the state of social science and his analysis of its core problems as correct. He's not a social scientist, and I don't think he'd appreciate an anthropologist evaluating the state of affairs in quantum computing research.
- privong 11y ago
  > He's not a social scientist, and I don't think he'd appreciate an anthropologist evaluating the state of affairs in quantum computing research. But, from things I have read elsewhere, there does seem to be a reasonably convincing body of evidence that there are systematic biases in social sciences. Some of this perhaps stems from discrimination (e.g., in hiring practices) based on political allegiance. Jonathan Haidt (a social scientist) has spoken out on this topic[0], including specifically on sociology[1]. While that issue likely affects academics in general, political leaning likely has a much smaller influence on one's research in physics and chemistry, compared to one's research in sociology. It's true that Aaronson is not a social scientist, but I don't think that means he is wrong. [0] http://people.stern.nyu.edu/jhaidt/postpartisan.html http://people.stern.nyu.edu/jhaidt/postpartisan.html [1] http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/02/a-conversation-with-jonathan-haidt/ http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/02/a-conversation-with-...
  - pron 11y ago
    > there does seem to be a reasonably convincing body of evidence that there is systematic biases in social sciences. But Aaronson makes a far more specific assertion than "there is evidence for systematic bias in social sciences". I agree that there is political bias in social science departments. It is painfully clear to anyone who ever sets foot in one, especially as an outsider (much like the sexism in SV). I think that overall it harms research, perhaps significantly, and it must be addressed. But outsiders sometimes view this (rather obvious) criticism as a complete refutation of the field(s), which it is most certainly not. To their credit, social researchers actively study this bias without need for external pressure, and even acknowledge it's a problem, something which cannot be said for other disciplines (one could argue that it is social researchers' job to study precisely such things, but at least you can see that they're not intellectually dishonest enough to avoid the issue or to dismiss it as inconsequential). BTW, in general, I think that outsiders usually tend to overestimate internal criticisms (in any discipline). When (internal) critics say "our estimate of the variable x to be 10 is far too low!" they really mean "x is more likely to be 12", while outsiders interpret it as "x is probably 1000". > political leaning likely has a much smaller influence on one's research in physics and chemistry, compared to one's research in sociology True, but the correlation between political leaning and social research may very well be a reverse causal relationship: that one's research in sociology is far more likely to affect one's politics than research in physics. If there is an over-representation of a particular ideology in the social sciences (although it's hard for me to put all the social sciences in one category, because they are quite different from one another -- more different than, say, physics and chemistry), it may serve as evidence that some common and politically pertinent ideas arise from the research itself[1] as much as evidence of anything else. BTW, I've read the interview with Haidt that you linked to -- thank you for that -- it is truly horrifying. But I get the sense that this is a rather American phenomenon. I certainly didn't experience anything close to it in magnitude at my university. [1]: And I don't mean necessarily from the results, but possibly from the process.
moultano 11y ago
You can assess this using funnel plots. If publication bias were not a factor, then you expect effect size to be uncorrelated from sample size. If they are correlated, then it's likely publication bias is having some effect on the results.
- ced 11y ago
  Clever solution. Is there a more general principle? I thought that most MNAR problems were hopeless, but maybe not.
  - moultano 11y ago
    It helps that we have a rough model of the publication process that we can correct for. It's kinda like assessing the underlying distribution with only access to the tail of it, which isn't ideal, but can be done.

Luc 11y ago

> [I]f you want me to rush to the Singularity community’s defense, the way to do it is to tell me that they’re a weirdo nerd cult that worships a high-school dropout and his Harry Potter fanfiction, so how could anyone possibly take their ideas seriously? Ha, good one! I really love his long rambling answers, very interesting.

pbw 11y ago

Wow he seems very smart but not very succinct.

johngossman 11y ago
It is an incredibly long interview, but I assume it was e-mail. And full of short gems like: "QM isn’t even “physics” in the usual sense: it’s more like an operating system that the rest of physics runs on as application software"
- disconcision 11y ago
  that's a line straight out of his book 'quantum computing since Democritus'. highly recommended if you want to get a bird's eye view of the foundation of quantum logic without all that pesky physics (and physical history) getting in the way.
  - johngossman 11y ago
    I've actually read it, I just didn't remember this line. Thanks. And I agree, great read.
- johngossman 11y ago
  "Speaking of which, when I look at the thrilling advances being achieved today in AI, I see all sorts of ethical issues that will need to be dealt with soon—like, how can a deep neural network justify to you why it turned down your loan application? Should self-driving cars handle crashes using utilitarian or deontological ethics?"
lucb1e 11y ago
I'm fairly certain that was not one of the defined goals.

lucb1e 11y ago

For those reading comments before the article: the title is rather silly, but it contains lots of interesting stuff. For example the answers to questions 14 and 15 sound very sane to me, compared to most people's views on it.

johngossman 11y ago
I agree: "I think that, if civilization lasts long enough, then sure: eventually we might need to worry about the creation of an AI that is to us as we are to garden slugs, and about how to increase the chance that such an AI will be “friendly” to human values (rather than, say, converting the entire observable universe into paperclips, because that’s what it was mistakenly programmed to want)."

fitzwatermellow 11y ago

News to me that he is moving to UTexas in Austin to build a center for quantum computing and theory. Terribly exciting! With the impetus being a state funded allocation of $4B+ for basic research. It really begs the question: are our governments spending way too little on moon shots? And what could have been accomplished in the last two generations if the focus had been on pure science rather than military technologies?

cowsandmilk 11y ago
> the focus had been on pure science rather than military technologies? I find your question a little funny in that Aaronson has said the DOD is where much of the funding for his research will come from for the next 5 years[1]. So, the $4 billion in Texas likely funded his recruitment package, but it is the military that is funding his research. [1] http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2687 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2687
- fitzwatermellow 11y ago
  What constitutes a "good return" on research dollars spent? Is it mere value created? Or a breakthrough in fundamental human understanding? I'm actually quite intrigued now to mine some real data!
  - drumdance 11y ago
    I don't know that's really measurable except over very long periods of time. A discovery may be "interesting but useless" for many decades until engineering catches up, whether through improvements in engineering technology or subsequent discoveries that make the first discovery more actionable.

graycat 11y ago

Nice interview: Nice clarity on quantum computing and P versus NP.

enriquto 11y ago
But be careful, his interpretation of P versus NP is rather light-hearted (but OK, given that it's not his speciality). He says: For example, breaking almost any cryptographic code can be phrased as an NP problem. So if P=NP—and if, moreover, the algorithm that proved it was “practical” (meaning, not n1000 time or anything silly like that)—then all cryptographic codes that depend on the adversary having limited computing power would be broken. But the parenthetical remark is not a negligible detail. The class P contains those O(n^1000) algorithms, and also much, much slower ones. Being in P does not mean at all "efficient". This is one of the reasons why many people (e.g. Knuth) say that P=NP is not crazy. The class P is so huge, that it must certainly contain extremely clever algorithms that reduce NP to P. Yet, there are may be no practical implications of this equality.
- graycat 11y ago
  Yes. So far nearly all our famous algorithms run in ln(n), n, ln(n)n, or n^2. So, we don't have much experience with algorithms that run in n^1000 or insight into what such algorithms might do. On the other hand, too commonly when we can't find an algorithm that runs in, say, n^2 or faster, we do have algorithms that run in 2^n. So, we suspect that there is something fundamental about exponential and fundamentally weak about polynomial. But as you point out, that is just something we detect sniffing with our nose. The point where I critique the P versus NP issue is the claim, implicit or explicit, that if we have a practical instance of a problem in NP-complete, then that instance has to be too hard to solve in practice. Not necessarily so: Many particular instances of an NP-complete problem, even with what appear for practice to be quite large values of n, might be fairly easy to solve. E.g., for an instance of the knapsack problem (IIRC in NP-complete), attack with a cute version of dynamic programming. For 0-1 a practical instance of integer linear programming (in NP-complete), attack with the simplex algorithm, maybe branch and bound, maybe Lagrangian relaxation, etc. And, a related issue for practice, in some optimization problems, the goal is to save money. So, in practice it can be fairly easy to save the first 15% of everything that is being spent and save all but that last $0.01 that can be saved even in theory (that is, come within a penny of optimality) and a total pain to save that last penny and know that we have done so. The OP said that if we have an algorithm that shows P = NP, then for each of the other Clay Math problems, say, problem X, and for positive integer n, we can ask: Is there a string of n or fewer characters that, in the sense of Whitehead and Russell, is a proof of problem X and let our P = NP algorithm answer that. Well, we'd be super happy for just anything that would give us such an answer for just one case of problem X and just a realistic value of n and to heck with the general case. More generally that is, the theory of NP-complete concentrates on worst case instances of problems, and not all real instances are worst case or nearly so. So, for the practical instances of problems in NP-complete that we can solve, exactly or close enough to save nearly all the money, just do so, take the money to the bank, and be happy. Then, sadly, we have to notice that currently in practice there is surprisingly little interest in such problems and solutions. Heck, someone could take a collection of the current, routine software for solving instances of problems in NP-complete, advertise (falsely) that they have an algorithm that shows that P = NP and also have corresponding software, run their software in the cloud, invite people to submit problems, and charge big bucks for solutions. Then, get paid for the practical instances their old, routine algorithms do solve and make some excuse for the rest -- money back guarantee. Problem is, I doubt that very many people much care. Why do I suspect that people don't care? Because I've see several important practical cases, and there people didn't much care. But, I confess, there is a lot of misunderstanding out there. E.g., once I was talking with some people who needed to solve, exactly, although approximately would be good, too, a lot of instances of some 0-1 integer linear programming problems (definitely in NP-complete). So I explained that I had recently solved an instance of a 0-1 integer linear programming that had 40,000 constraints and 600,000 variables. My solution was in 905 seconds on a 90 MHz PC, and the feasible solution found was within 0.025% of optimality and might have been optimal. The people I was talking to were happy? Nope: They had been told about the difficulty of the NP-complete problems, heard the big numbers 40,000 and 600,000, and concluded that I had to be lying. I wasn't lying. It's just that, while 0-1 integer linear programming is in NP-complete, not all instances of large 0-1 integer linear programming problems are difficult to solve; instead, in practice, a lot of instances are quite reasonable to solve exactly or plenty close enough for essentially everything of interest in practice. Right, 0-1 with 600,000 variables, so for total enumeration we're looking at 2^600,000. Gotta be impossible, right? Nope. Instead it was fairly easy. So, it boils down that the question of P versus NP is, say, except for the $1 million Clay prize, a pure math question heavily of long term philosophical interest instead of an engineering problem of current practical interest. For current practical interest, we should be attacking practical instances of problems which with current algorithms, software, and computing we can often do quite well.

foldr 11y ago

The discussion of whether or not we have free will strikes me as confused. Aaronson suggests that we would clearly not have free will in a scenario where “Everything [we] did could be fully traced to causal antecedents external to [us], plus pure randomness—not in some philosophical imagination, but for real, and on a routine basis”. The caveat “external to [us]” is doing a lot of work here, but it really has no discernible meaning. (Is a cause “external to us” if it’s not within our brains? Why would that matter? What is the status of chains of causation that lead from the outside world to goings on in our brains?) Without that essentially meaningless caveat, the statement is simply a trivially true disjunction of the logical possibilities given physicalism. Of course, if physicalism is true, then everything that we do is either determined by the laws of physics or not determined by anything. If that entails that we don’t have free will, then Aaronson should just say that he thinks physicalism is true and that he thinks that physicalism entails the absence of free will. On the other hand, if we don’t simply assume physicalism, then the fact that our behavior is determined by the laws of physics really does nothing to argue against free will. Everything would hang on how minds interact with physical reality, and we simply know nothing about how that might work. For example, it might be that God ensures that the physical world operates so as to respect the free decisions made by our minds. Or it might be that phenomena which are random from the point of view of physics are (sometimes) linked to free decisions made by minds. Nothing is known, so nothing can be concluded. I'd also have to say that Aaronson lacks imagination in a crucial respect. He claims that in any "imaginable" universe it will hold that "if you knew the complete state of the universe, you could use it to calculate [either deterministically or probabilistically] everything I’d do in the future." But of course it's very easy to imagine a universe where this is not the case. E.g., any universe where minds make free decisions that lack physical causes. We know that people have in fact imagined this sort of universe.

wfo 11y ago
Yes, very well put. I really enjoyed his technical answers, but when he dives into the philosophy I was disappointed to see the same very naive and narcissistic attitudes so many scientists have (that are even alluded to at the beginning of the article): you don't need to try to understand philosophy, just use your superior STEM brain and technical intuitions and if you think about it for a few minutes, with a healthy splash of "assuming my thesis, it is obvious my thesis is correct" , the problem is trivial -- why have people been thinking about it for centuries?

devilsavocado 11y ago

I'd recommend Scott Aaronson's book Quantum Computing Since Democritus to anyone interested in quantum computing, mathematics, and computer science in general. It covers a vast array of material, from the basics of set theory to Godel and Turing, cryptography, quantum computing, free will and time travel. It doesn't go very in depth into any specific topic, but for an engineer who's been out of college for a few years, it was at a perfect level to rekindle a love of learning and interest in a variety of topics.

Xcelerate 11y ago

> I’m friendly with many of the people who spend their lives that way [thinking about how to transfer consciousness into a computer]; I enjoy talking to them when they pass through town (or when I pass through the Bay Area, where they congregate). ^ I think that's my favorite quote from his interview. The Bay Area certainly has a reputation.

eachro 11y ago

Does anyone know why he's leaving MIT for UT Austin?

zodiac 11y ago
He has a blog post about it - http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2620 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2620
- hkmurakami 11y ago
  > I wasn’t forced to leave MIT over anything here on Shtetl-Optimized. > Bizarre as it sounds, CS departments mostly cared about what actual research we were doing and could bring to them! So students and faculty afraid to debate anything controversial online under their real names, however politely, should know that even in 2016, the banner of academic freedom yet waves. I wish we could say the same about private industry -- most notably our employers and our funders. I am reminded of this: >I think the web has made us all write more defensively, and it’s a shame, because we’re effectively contorting our communication style to defend against a small minority of mean-spirited and uncharitable actions by some. Actually, as I say that, I instinctively feel the need to hedge myself–I don’t believe that people are really mean-spirited (well, perhaps some are–gak I’ve done it again!), but there’s something about commenting about stuff on the internet with people you’ve never met that seems to bring out the worst in people. (https://pchiusano.github.io/2014-10-11/defensive-writing.html https://pchiusano.github.io/2014-10-11/defensive-writing.htm...)
- eachro 11y ago
  Maybe I should've just asked the question I really wanted to ask: did MIT deny him tenure? If so, why? From what I've heard, Scott Aaronson is one of the rising stars of theoretical CS, so him moving on from MIT was very surprising to hear.
  - qms 11y ago
    No: http://www.csail.mit.edu/node/2041 http://www.csail.mit.edu/node/2041

tim333 11y ago

>6. What hype about quantum computers really drives you nuts? Was good for me. I've usually found articles about quantum computing not really seeming to make sense and his reply is good for explaining why that often is.