24 ms·

This is from 2014. In this post, Scott describes various reasonings why one might consider that lead one to suspect that P!=NP. A surprising amount of verbiage

This is from 2014. In this post, Scott describes various reasonings why one might consider that lead one to suspect that P!=NP. A surprising amount of verbiage of this post is devoted towards responding to/shaming a particular person who used to comment frequently on Scott's blog, and who thinks it is not safe to assume that P!=NP. I find this off-putting. But sometimes people engage in mini-crusades on the internet... the interested reader can read the prequel and subsequent exchanges between Scott and Lubos throughout comment sections of a number of blogs.

acqq 9y ago
He does no shaming. If you claim that, you have to quote his words with which he does that, and I believe it will be obvious that your statement is biased. He responds, and explains why: "Anyway, my goal here was never to convince Luboš. I was writing, not for him, but for my other readers: especially for those genuinely unfamiliar with these interesting issues, or intimidated by Luboš’s air of certainty. I felt like I owed it to them to set out, clearly and forcefully, certain facts that all complexity theorists have encountered in their research, but that we hardly ever bother to articulate."
- mjburgess 9y ago
  You can sympathize with the sentiment of the article, but there is a preoccupied ("shaming"?) quality in places that moves this from an article about P/NP to an article about showing-up a person who believes something about P/NP. Perhaps they needed to be shamed? Who knows. But it is transparent... Quoting: At one point in his post, Luboš actually compares computer scientists who find P≠NP a plausible working hypothesis to his even greater nemesis: the “climate cataclysmic crackpots.” (Strangely, he forgot to compare us to feminists, Communists, Muslim terrorists, or loop quantum gravity theorists.) Even though the P versus NP and global warming issues might not seem closely linked, part of me is thrilled that Luboš has connected them as he has. If, after seeing this ex-physicist’s “thought process” laid bare on the P versus NP problem—how his arrogance and incuriosity lead him to stake out a laughably-absurd position; how his vanity then causes him to double down after his errors are exposed—if, after seeing this, a single person is led to question Lubošian epistemology more generally, then my efforts will not have been in vain. Anyway, now that I’ve finally unmasked Luboš
  - mannykannot 9y ago
    Preoccupied ≠ shaming. If you look at the whole debate, you will see that Aaronson is merely responding in the style established by Luboš, and that style uses ridicule (which is also not shaming, though it may be used in it) quite freely.
    - mjburgess 9y ago
      Ridiculing is a form of shaming. It might even be the purest form of shaming. Shaming is to make one "embarrassed or guilty because of one's actions, characteristics, or associations." He's literally holding up this guy's character, "vanity, arrogance, incuriosity, laughably-abusrd..." I'm not sure what those characteristics have to do with the P=NP problem. I'm not saying, perhaps, this guy ought not to feel shame for his prior comments. Possibly he should. But this article is a shaming article. It isnt absolved of that because someone else started it.
      - throwanem 9y ago
        "Shaming" denotes ridicule, sure, but is generally used to connote iniquity, i.e. that the one doing the "shaming" is wrong so to do. I think you're getting the pushback you are because you're using this word, with this connotation, to describe a deployment of ridicule whose degree of virtue seems less to you than to others, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15578837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15578837. Perhaps using other words might improve the light:heat ratio here. And even then the fact merits consideration that, in some cases, ridicule is earned.
        mjburgess 9y ago
        Well I've said several times that he may deserved to be shamed. > ridicule is earned Your comment only emphasises part of what I've already said. Of course however, he may not. A person who deploys the ridicule of a person's character (over said, the ridiculing of the idea that P=NP) is one who should be aware that this itself has moral downsides and is open to fair criticism.
omegaham 9y ago
It reminds me of disses in old rap songs. Eminem yelling at Lynne Cheney[1]. "Who? Oh yeah, she had some kind of thing about rap lyrics 15 years ago." The dispute is long since forgotten, but the bickering is still there, and it's confusing and pointless to people who weren't around when it happened. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsBYblypL38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsBYblypL38
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lisper 9y ago
I can personally attest to the truth of Scott's characterization of Lubos Motl's personality. Lubos once publicly called me a "category 5 loon" [1] for something I said in a presentation on quantum mechanics [2]. What he didn't seem to realize was that the thing he was attacking me for was presented as a straw man. There's a lengthy introduction where I said, "The thing I am about to tell you is clearly false, but it seems to follow logically from the things they tell you in quantum mechanics 101. The trick is to figure out where the flaw in the reasoning lies." (And BTW, I can still fool card-carrying physicists with this puzzle even today.) AFAIK Lubos has never apologized (not that I ever really gave a lot of weight to his opinion). [1] https://motls.blogspot.com/2012/10/evading-quantum-mechanics-again.html https://motls.blogspot.com/2012/10/evading-quantum-mechanics... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc
- Bromskloss 9y ago
  You have linked to the same thing twice. I would like to hear the puzzle.
  - lisper 9y ago
    Oops, sorry about that. Turns out that YouTube hijacks cmd-C on a Mac. :-( I fixed the link. Here's the corresponding paper if you don't want to sit through the video. The puzzle is presented in section 3: http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf
- thethirdone 9y ago
  > What he didn't seem to realize was that the thing he was attacking me for was presented as a straw man. There's a lengthy introduction where I said, "The thing I am about to tell you is clearly false, but it seems to follow logically from the things they tell you in quantum mechanics 101. Could you give me a time stamp for that? When I originally watched that video I didn't catch that, and I can't find it now going back through. I thought you were just describing the "rabbithole" and what going down and coming up taught you. So I thought you clearly understand much more about QM than most software people, but also said blatantly wrong and unsubstantiated things. And I think you are also missing Motl's final point. He gets the core idea of what you were trying to do, but thought that it made a poor presentation. > At that moment, I became totally unable to say which of his statements he made are meant seriously and which of them are ironic or statements he wants to disprove. I suppose he essentially understands those things, he just encapsulates them in a completely confused story.
fjsolwmv 9y ago
Lubos Motl has that effect on people. http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/08/lubo-motl.html?m=1 http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/08/lubo-motl.html?m=1

acqq 9y ago

He does no shaming. If you claim that, you have to quote his words with which he does that, and I believe it will be obvious that your statement is biased. He responds, and explains why: "Anyway, my goal here was never to convince Luboš. I was writing, not for him, but for my other readers: especially for those genuinely unfamiliar with these interesting issues, or intimidated by Luboš’s air of certainty. I felt like I owed it to them to set out, clearly and forcefully, certain facts that all complexity theorists have encountered in their research, but that we hardly ever bother to articulate."

mjburgess 9y ago
You can sympathize with the sentiment of the article, but there is a preoccupied ("shaming"?) quality in places that moves this from an article about P/NP to an article about showing-up a person who believes something about P/NP. Perhaps they needed to be shamed? Who knows. But it is transparent... Quoting: At one point in his post, Luboš actually compares computer scientists who find P≠NP a plausible working hypothesis to his even greater nemesis: the “climate cataclysmic crackpots.” (Strangely, he forgot to compare us to feminists, Communists, Muslim terrorists, or loop quantum gravity theorists.) Even though the P versus NP and global warming issues might not seem closely linked, part of me is thrilled that Luboš has connected them as he has. If, after seeing this ex-physicist’s “thought process” laid bare on the P versus NP problem—how his arrogance and incuriosity lead him to stake out a laughably-absurd position; how his vanity then causes him to double down after his errors are exposed—if, after seeing this, a single person is led to question Lubošian epistemology more generally, then my efforts will not have been in vain. Anyway, now that I’ve finally unmasked Luboš
- mannykannot 9y ago
  Preoccupied ≠ shaming. If you look at the whole debate, you will see that Aaronson is merely responding in the style established by Luboš, and that style uses ridicule (which is also not shaming, though it may be used in it) quite freely.
  - mjburgess 9y ago
    Ridiculing is a form of shaming. It might even be the purest form of shaming. Shaming is to make one "embarrassed or guilty because of one's actions, characteristics, or associations." He's literally holding up this guy's character, "vanity, arrogance, incuriosity, laughably-abusrd..." I'm not sure what those characteristics have to do with the P=NP problem. I'm not saying, perhaps, this guy ought not to feel shame for his prior comments. Possibly he should. But this article is a shaming article. It isnt absolved of that because someone else started it.
    - throwanem 9y ago
      "Shaming" denotes ridicule, sure, but is generally used to connote iniquity, i.e. that the one doing the "shaming" is wrong so to do. I think you're getting the pushback you are because you're using this word, with this connotation, to describe a deployment of ridicule whose degree of virtue seems less to you than to others, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15578837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15578837. Perhaps using other words might improve the light:heat ratio here. And even then the fact merits consideration that, in some cases, ridicule is earned.
      - mjburgess 9y ago
        Well I've said several times that he may deserved to be shamed. > ridicule is earned Your comment only emphasises part of what I've already said. Of course however, he may not. A person who deploys the ridicule of a person's character (over said, the ridiculing of the idea that P=NP) is one who should be aware that this itself has moral downsides and is open to fair criticism.

omegaham 9y ago

It reminds me of disses in old rap songs. Eminem yelling at Lynne Cheney[1]. "Who? Oh yeah, she had some kind of thing about rap lyrics 15 years ago." The dispute is long since forgotten, but the bickering is still there, and it's confusing and pointless to people who weren't around when it happened. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsBYblypL38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsBYblypL38

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

lisper 9y ago

I can personally attest to the truth of Scott's characterization of Lubos Motl's personality. Lubos once publicly called me a "category 5 loon" [1] for something I said in a presentation on quantum mechanics [2]. What he didn't seem to realize was that the thing he was attacking me for was presented as a straw man. There's a lengthy introduction where I said, "The thing I am about to tell you is clearly false, but it seems to follow logically from the things they tell you in quantum mechanics 101. The trick is to figure out where the flaw in the reasoning lies." (And BTW, I can still fool card-carrying physicists with this puzzle even today.) AFAIK Lubos has never apologized (not that I ever really gave a lot of weight to his opinion). [1] https://motls.blogspot.com/2012/10/evading-quantum-mechanics-again.html https://motls.blogspot.com/2012/10/evading-quantum-mechanics... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc

Bromskloss 9y ago
You have linked to the same thing twice. I would like to hear the puzzle.
- lisper 9y ago
  Oops, sorry about that. Turns out that YouTube hijacks cmd-C on a Mac. :-( I fixed the link. Here's the corresponding paper if you don't want to sit through the video. The puzzle is presented in section 3: http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf
thethirdone 9y ago
> What he didn't seem to realize was that the thing he was attacking me for was presented as a straw man. There's a lengthy introduction where I said, "The thing I am about to tell you is clearly false, but it seems to follow logically from the things they tell you in quantum mechanics 101. Could you give me a time stamp for that? When I originally watched that video I didn't catch that, and I can't find it now going back through. I thought you were just describing the "rabbithole" and what going down and coming up taught you. So I thought you clearly understand much more about QM than most software people, but also said blatantly wrong and unsubstantiated things. And I think you are also missing Motl's final point. He gets the core idea of what you were trying to do, but thought that it made a poor presentation. > At that moment, I became totally unable to say which of his statements he made are meant seriously and which of them are ironic or statements he wants to disprove. I suppose he essentially understands those things, he just encapsulates them in a completely confused story.

fjsolwmv 9y ago

Lubos Motl has that effect on people. http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/08/lubo-motl.html?m=1 http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/08/lubo-motl.html?m=1