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As smart as the Hacker News set may be, most people are not experts in the field and could do with a little context. Also, Aaronson's a well-known computer sci
by wging 15y ago
As smart as the Hacker News set may be, most people are not experts in the field and could do with a little context.
Also, Aaronson's a well-known computer scientist, so this helps establish that the result's both credible and important in the eyes of people who may not (forgive me) all be qualified to judge the paper on its merits.
- dbbo 15y agoContext: fair point. I can't say I'm familiar with Aaronson, however (of course I studied math and not CS).
- wging 15y ago"Well-known" in a particular field doesn't necessarily mean "household name"... do you know who Tim Gowers is, for example? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Aaronson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Aaronson A lot of people might know him from http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/bignumbers.html http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/bignumbers.html, which is the article about that topic. edit: Okay, rereading this article I recovered an insight that leads to a truer reason Aaronson's worth linking to. It is not that he's a famous professor (he is) so much that he is, in general, a great expositor. Read that big-number article and tell me he's not.