Not the person to whom you were speaking but their description reminds me of Scott Aaronson's work e.g. https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html https

Not the person to whom you were speaking but their description reminds me of Scott Aaronson's work e.g. https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html which has been discussed on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19161028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19161028