5 ms·

This Week's Hype

78 points by Luc 4y ago

dang 4y ago
Related: Physicists have purportedly created a wormhole using a quantum computer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33802613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33802613
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  All accounts seem pretty sneering and dismissive. Quantum wormholes, whether they exist of not are quite beyond me. But the gap in space-time that does interest me is the one between theoretical physicists and application engineers. The former seem to crave the light of publicity while the latter inhabit dark university basements. The theoreticians may as well have a publicist, broadcasting weekly "Oh hi. We're still here. Haven't discovered anything actually useful yet. But please keep sending grant money".... And then boom! Suddenly someone invents a transistor, or laser from the stuff everyone was mocking as unhinged science fiction. I think there are very, very few people who can make the connection between these worlds, and even less of them are science journalists.
jeffparsons 4y ago
> “The most important thing I’d want New York Times readers to understand is this,” Scott Aaronson, a quantum computing expert at the University of Texas in Austin, wrote in an email. “If this experiment has brought a wormhole into actual physical existence, then a strong case could be made that you, too, bring a wormhole into actual physical existence every time you sketch one with pen and paper.” I love it. This "wormhole in a computer" business is a very long leap beyond the kind of is-it-or-isn't-it of, e.g., the "Chinese room".
- krick 4y ago
  Not sure what you mean. I don't see a connection. Anyway, I didn't remember what that "Chinese room" business is, so I had to google it, and funnily, while I vaguely remember seeing it before and probably not having much of an opinion (as I didn't remember it), this time I got immediately annoyed by how such obviously stupid logical fallacy can deserve a Wikipedia page of its own and be a famous "thought experiment".
  - reidjs 4y ago
    I looked it up because of what you said. It’s a pretty substantial article. What part of it is a fallacy? The part about computers obviously not having intelligence? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
    - antiatheist 4y ago
      There's no "part about computers obviously not having intelligence" The most grating part of the article is involving political names into the explanation of the argument, and that the writings by Liebniz and Dneprov seemingly would offer far more interesting material to base the topic on. Wikipedia can be terrible source of misaligned atheist theology sometimes.
    - krick 4y ago
      Searle is proposing what he supposes to be a proof of a computer being unable to have mind in the same sense humans have mind, and thus human intelligence being something more than a "mere computation". While in fact his argument proves absolutely nothing, and I'm honestly surprised that anyone buys into this bullshit. Actually, I think that the question itself is meaningless, but it's besides the point what I think, I'll just try to explain where's the fallacy. And since his argument is "reductio ad absurdum" it's easiest to counter by assuming the opposite, and showing that there's nothing absurd about it, i.e. there's no self-contradiction here. Just keep in mind that I'm not trying to prove the opposite, I'm only assuming it for the sake of argument. So, the opposite assumption is that there's nothing more to intelligence than a "mere computation", and all that stuff like inner dialog and "a sense of self" are just side-effects of it. That way, there's no difference between "strong AI" and "weak AI" in his terminology, no difference between "understanding" and "simulation of understanding". Then, of course, a digital computer has a mind and understands Chinese, and also the Chinese room has a mind and understands Chinese. But Searle doesn't understand Chinese and this is supposed to be a contradiction. But there's no contradiction here, because Searle is not the Chinese room. He isn't the mind, in this model he is to Chinese room what electricity is to a digital computer, or what neurotransmitters are to human brain. So, yeah, electricity doesn't understand Chinese, serotonin doesn't understand Chinese, single human neuron doesn't understand Chinese, but Turing-test-passing computer, Chinese brain and Chinese room all do. Searle is just a detail in the Chinese room — tiny and insignificant compared to a book, containing a complete description of a program that speaks Chinese and is able to form coherent (and persistent!) opinions on every possible topic in the world. So, the fallacy is equating Searle's role in the hypothetical Chinese room to the whole digital computer that speaks Chinese and passes Turing test with breeze.
- daxfohl 4y ago
  I created a 11-dimensional array on my laptop, thus proving string theory.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
zachf 4y ago
This is a very cool and important result. Here's a rough analogy to what's happening. You take two drums, and you hit one of them. Then you wait for a while. After waiting, you hook up a special kind of wire between the drums, and then quickly unhook it. Then, you wait the same amount of time again. And bizarrely, you hear the original sound coming from the other drum! How did this happen? It seems like no wire would be capable of moving the excitation from one to the other in a clean way. But if the system is set up correctly, it's because your "drums" obey identical mathematics to a pretty interesting gravity setup. Each drum individually represents a region of space, and the two spaces are initially unconnected. The wire is a way of establishing a traversable wormhole between them. These wormholes are very unstable, so to actually send something through it is a delicate affair. But with the right kind of entanglement, you can send the excitation through, to emerge on the other side after a propagation delay. (Nothing is happening "faster than the speed of light", though, even in the gravity setup. It takes time to pass through the wormhole. It's tricky to show there's no problems with causality, but the "wire" is already messing with the ordinary story about causality, so it does all work out.) This is a lovely example of how string theory, via AdS/CFT, can produce fascinating insights into the nature of spacetime. It's an extremely nontrivial bit of stringy math that leads to this connection between quantum mechanics and gravity. Of course, if one's prior is "string theory can never be useful for anything", it makes sense to downplay the importance of the result. I think that's a shame--AdS/CFT is an extraordinarily fascinating and powerful tool. (I didn't know this result was coming out today, but I did talk excitedly about the possibility of this experiment earlier this week on this very website! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33735328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33735328 )
- zachf 4y ago
  Since this comment was more controversial than I expected, let me add a few notes. 1. Everything done on the quantum computer here can be (and was) also simulated on a classical computer. The most interesting part of the story here is the algorithm, which is derived from a string theory argument. 2. Even so, since entanglement plays a key role, a quantum computer is way more natural to implement this on than a classical computer. 3. There are some profound philosophical consequences of AdS/CFT. A lot of the discussion about simulation vs reality here would be better served by taking some time to deeply understand the topic in detail, because it is extremely counterintuitive and interesting. The argument that “everything done on a computer is by definition a simulation so it is not interesting” is far from the end of the story.
mcint 4y ago
> I just saw that the New York Times also has a big story about this: Physicists Create ‘the Smallest, Crummiest Wormhole You Can Imagine’. At least this article has some sensible skeptical quotes, including: >> “The most important thing I’d want New York Times readers to understand is this,” Scott Aaronson, a quantum computing expert at the University of Texas in Austin, wrote in an email. “If this experiment has brought a wormhole into actual physical existence, then a strong case could be made that you, too, bring a wormhole into actual physical existence every time you sketch one with pen and paper.”
soupfordummies 4y ago
Wifi is a wormhole. Wireless charging is a wormhole. Someone recording a concert 50 years ago, that concert now being freely available on Archive, and me blasting it on my home stereo, via Bluetooth, from my wirelessly charged pocket computer with wifi is a wormhole. And also a miracle.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Talking to someone in person is also a wormhole too then?
sriku 4y ago
By Will Kinney - "A better summary: Physicists created an entangled system of qubits in a quantum computer in a way that is well understood in conventional quantum mechanics, and some physicists have speculated that entangled particles are connected by wormholes." https://twitter.com/WKCosmo/status/1598018899509137408 https://twitter.com/WKCosmo/status/1598018899509137408
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
baxtr 4y ago
The important parts of the article: The two senior physicists behind this, Joe Lykken and Maria Spiropulu, have histories that go way back of successfully promoting to the press nonsense about exotic space-time structures appearing in experiments that have nothing to do with them. and Update: Andreas Karch on Twitter I think has an accurate characterization of this “mostly a publicity stunt”: Experimentally it’s of course cool they can do SYK – as a demonstration they have control over their device. They can couple 9 qbits in a pre-specified way. But I guess we knew they could do this before. Going after SYK in particular, in my mind, is mostly a publicity stunt.
quantum_state 4y ago
it is only a toy … not much to do with the spacetime … computer simulation != nature.
mellosouls 4y ago
I'm sad to say I used to really like Quanta magazine pieces but I've become adept at knowing immediately from a Hacker News discussion title (the direct links, not this one) that it's about a Quanta piece, and it's going to be a letdown when you drill in. I'm not sure if they've become more clickbaity or less discriminating, or if it's just me moving on.

78 points by Luc 4y ago

dang 4y ago

Related: Physicists have purportedly created a wormhole using a quantum computer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33802613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33802613

nonrandomstring 4y ago
All accounts seem pretty sneering and dismissive. Quantum wormholes, whether they exist of not are quite beyond me. But the gap in space-time that does interest me is the one between theoretical physicists and application engineers. The former seem to crave the light of publicity while the latter inhabit dark university basements. The theoreticians may as well have a publicist, broadcasting weekly "Oh hi. We're still here. Haven't discovered anything actually useful yet. But please keep sending grant money".... And then boom! Suddenly someone invents a transistor, or laser from the stuff everyone was mocking as unhinged science fiction. I think there are very, very few people who can make the connection between these worlds, and even less of them are science journalists.

jeffparsons 4y ago

> “The most important thing I’d want New York Times readers to understand is this,” Scott Aaronson, a quantum computing expert at the University of Texas in Austin, wrote in an email. “If this experiment has brought a wormhole into actual physical existence, then a strong case could be made that you, too, bring a wormhole into actual physical existence every time you sketch one with pen and paper.” I love it. This "wormhole in a computer" business is a very long leap beyond the kind of is-it-or-isn't-it of, e.g., the "Chinese room".

krick 4y ago
Not sure what you mean. I don't see a connection. Anyway, I didn't remember what that "Chinese room" business is, so I had to google it, and funnily, while I vaguely remember seeing it before and probably not having much of an opinion (as I didn't remember it), this time I got immediately annoyed by how such obviously stupid logical fallacy can deserve a Wikipedia page of its own and be a famous "thought experiment".
- reidjs 4y ago
  I looked it up because of what you said. It’s a pretty substantial article. What part of it is a fallacy? The part about computers obviously not having intelligence? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
  - antiatheist 4y ago
    There's no "part about computers obviously not having intelligence" The most grating part of the article is involving political names into the explanation of the argument, and that the writings by Liebniz and Dneprov seemingly would offer far more interesting material to base the topic on. Wikipedia can be terrible source of misaligned atheist theology sometimes.
  - krick 4y ago
    Searle is proposing what he supposes to be a proof of a computer being unable to have mind in the same sense humans have mind, and thus human intelligence being something more than a "mere computation". While in fact his argument proves absolutely nothing, and I'm honestly surprised that anyone buys into this bullshit. Actually, I think that the question itself is meaningless, but it's besides the point what I think, I'll just try to explain where's the fallacy. And since his argument is "reductio ad absurdum" it's easiest to counter by assuming the opposite, and showing that there's nothing absurd about it, i.e. there's no self-contradiction here. Just keep in mind that I'm not trying to prove the opposite, I'm only assuming it for the sake of argument. So, the opposite assumption is that there's nothing more to intelligence than a "mere computation", and all that stuff like inner dialog and "a sense of self" are just side-effects of it. That way, there's no difference between "strong AI" and "weak AI" in his terminology, no difference between "understanding" and "simulation of understanding". Then, of course, a digital computer has a mind and understands Chinese, and also the Chinese room has a mind and understands Chinese. But Searle doesn't understand Chinese and this is supposed to be a contradiction. But there's no contradiction here, because Searle is not the Chinese room. He isn't the mind, in this model he is to Chinese room what electricity is to a digital computer, or what neurotransmitters are to human brain. So, yeah, electricity doesn't understand Chinese, serotonin doesn't understand Chinese, single human neuron doesn't understand Chinese, but Turing-test-passing computer, Chinese brain and Chinese room all do. Searle is just a detail in the Chinese room — tiny and insignificant compared to a book, containing a complete description of a program that speaks Chinese and is able to form coherent (and persistent!) opinions on every possible topic in the world. So, the fallacy is equating Searle's role in the hypothetical Chinese room to the whole digital computer that speaks Chinese and passes Turing test with breeze.
daxfohl 4y ago
I created a 11-dimensional array on my laptop, thus proving string theory.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

zachf 4y ago

This is a very cool and important result. Here's a rough analogy to what's happening. You take two drums, and you hit one of them. Then you wait for a while. After waiting, you hook up a special kind of wire between the drums, and then quickly unhook it. Then, you wait the same amount of time again. And bizarrely, you hear the original sound coming from the other drum! How did this happen? It seems like no wire would be capable of moving the excitation from one to the other in a clean way. But if the system is set up correctly, it's because your "drums" obey identical mathematics to a pretty interesting gravity setup. Each drum individually represents a region of space, and the two spaces are initially unconnected. The wire is a way of establishing a traversable wormhole between them. These wormholes are very unstable, so to actually send something through it is a delicate affair. But with the right kind of entanglement, you can send the excitation through, to emerge on the other side after a propagation delay. (Nothing is happening "faster than the speed of light", though, even in the gravity setup. It takes time to pass through the wormhole. It's tricky to show there's no problems with causality, but the "wire" is already messing with the ordinary story about causality, so it does all work out.) This is a lovely example of how string theory, via AdS/CFT, can produce fascinating insights into the nature of spacetime. It's an extremely nontrivial bit of stringy math that leads to this connection between quantum mechanics and gravity. Of course, if one's prior is "string theory can never be useful for anything", it makes sense to downplay the importance of the result. I think that's a shame--AdS/CFT is an extraordinarily fascinating and powerful tool. (I didn't know this result was coming out today, but I did talk excitedly about the possibility of this experiment earlier this week on this very website! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33735328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33735328 )

zachf 4y ago
Since this comment was more controversial than I expected, let me add a few notes. 1. Everything done on the quantum computer here can be (and was) also simulated on a classical computer. The most interesting part of the story here is the algorithm, which is derived from a string theory argument. 2. Even so, since entanglement plays a key role, a quantum computer is way more natural to implement this on than a classical computer. 3. There are some profound philosophical consequences of AdS/CFT. A lot of the discussion about simulation vs reality here would be better served by taking some time to deeply understand the topic in detail, because it is extremely counterintuitive and interesting. The argument that “everything done on a computer is by definition a simulation so it is not interesting” is far from the end of the story.

mcint 4y ago

> I just saw that the New York Times also has a big story about this: Physicists Create ‘the Smallest, Crummiest Wormhole You Can Imagine’. At least this article has some sensible skeptical quotes, including: >> “The most important thing I’d want New York Times readers to understand is this,” Scott Aaronson, a quantum computing expert at the University of Texas in Austin, wrote in an email. “If this experiment has brought a wormhole into actual physical existence, then a strong case could be made that you, too, bring a wormhole into actual physical existence every time you sketch one with pen and paper.”

soupfordummies 4y ago

Wifi is a wormhole. Wireless charging is a wormhole. Someone recording a concert 50 years ago, that concert now being freely available on Archive, and me blasting it on my home stereo, via Bluetooth, from my wirelessly charged pocket computer with wifi is a wormhole. And also a miracle.

quickthrower2 4y ago
Talking to someone in person is also a wormhole too then?

sriku 4y ago

By Will Kinney - "A better summary: Physicists created an entangled system of qubits in a quantum computer in a way that is well understood in conventional quantum mechanics, and some physicists have speculated that entangled particles are connected by wormholes." https://twitter.com/WKCosmo/status/1598018899509137408 https://twitter.com/WKCosmo/status/1598018899509137408

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

baxtr 4y ago

The important parts of the article: The two senior physicists behind this, Joe Lykken and Maria Spiropulu, have histories that go way back of successfully promoting to the press nonsense about exotic space-time structures appearing in experiments that have nothing to do with them. and Update: Andreas Karch on Twitter I think has an accurate characterization of this “mostly a publicity stunt”: Experimentally it’s of course cool they can do SYK – as a demonstration they have control over their device. They can couple 9 qbits in a pre-specified way. But I guess we knew they could do this before. Going after SYK in particular, in my mind, is mostly a publicity stunt.

quantum_state 4y ago

it is only a toy … not much to do with the spacetime … computer simulation != nature.

mellosouls 4y ago

I'm sad to say I used to really like Quanta magazine pieces but I've become adept at knowing immediately from a Hacker News discussion title (the direct links, not this one) that it's about a Quanta piece, and it's going to be a letdown when you drill in. I'm not sure if they've become more clickbaity or less discriminating, or if it's just me moving on.