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Superconductivity. I did four PhD projects regarding superconductivity properties at nanoscale without really getting hold on the concept. For instance, how zer
by JanisErdmanis 4y ago
Superconductivity. I did four PhD projects regarding superconductivity properties at nanoscale without really getting hold on the concept. For instance, how zero resistance is related to cooper pair tunnelling and BdG Hamiltonian. Only when I was forced to write introduction a month before my thesis submission I gave my best last try for the farewell and it clicked. Note the title of my thesis “Quantum effects of superconducting phase” ;)
Quantum computers. I was so deceived by all the hype that it took me long to see it as SU(N) matrix product accelerator.
Zero knowledge proofs and Shamir transform to non-interactive protocol. The tunnel analogy did quite a harm to me, also the math was just unbearable (defining set of languages and etc). Only a year ago when I got an old paper on “Observational wallets” describing how to prove ‘log_g A = a’ and ‘log_g A = log_g B’ the whole ‘proving statement without revealing secret’ after long frustration and angst made sense to me. If I had encountered finding Vodo analogy first, It would have clicked much quicker to me.
- peterfirefly 4y agoOld papers are great. I have often deliberately sought out old papers to get a quick and good introduction to a subject. It doesn't always work -- sometimes a newer paper with better abstractions/examples/terminology wins, of course. I no longer know when I figured out this trick, but I have been using it for at least twenty years. I wish I had known about it earlier.
- TimPC 4y agoThere are tradeoffs. Most of the time I find terminology has drifted so substantially over time that reading old papers isn't worth the effort. I instead usually look for literature review type of papers that often have good summaries of relevant results in modern terminology.
- liketochill 4y agoI have also found old papers to be the best for learning a new concept - they make it as simple as it can be. A colleague of mine wrote a paper that proves that negative numbers exist and would often cite archimedes, Galileo, newton, etc in his bibliographies. I think he loved crediting the first person to come up with whatever idea or concept he was using.
- eternalban 4y agoWould love to read that paper but search is not turning up any papers with that title for me. What's the exact cite?
- JanisErdmanis 4y agoDavid Chaum, Torben Pryds Pedersen, Wallet Databases with Observers, 1993.
- eternalban 4y agoThanks!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]