3 ms·

I feel that this is so important that I'll just quote the central part of Aaronson's response: OK everyone: At several people’s request, I’ve now taken a l

• allendoerfer 10y ago
  Before reading the page I thought the combination of headline and domain looked fishy, so I decided to check the HN comments first. It isn't that I have anything against Medium but I do not trust it enough for a claim like that and the following potentially demanding but underwhelming read. I am always astonished by how good humans are at pattern matching. And also: I live in a severe filter bubble.
• chx 10y ago
  > As additional problems, the author appears to conflate the P vs. NP problem with the question of whether NP-complete problems can be efficiently solved in the physical world, a common novice mistake. This occurred to me as well just reading the article. Take an algorithm taking roughly G * x time and another taking e ^ (x/G) where G is the Graham number. Just because the first is growing in a linear fashion and the latter in exponential it doesn't mean the first will be quicker for any number physicians need to deal with.
• arde 10y ago
  Curiously he singled out D-wave as an example of other people who made the same mistake the author supposedly makes. But since then, quite recently in fact, I read that the D-wave quantum computer has finally been recognized to really speed up calculations as it should if it were indeed a quantum computer. I wonder to what extent that could invalidate Aaronson's criticism.