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I hope Scott Aaronson blogs about this article, because it espouses several of the wrong-facts he complains about and then cites him. - Limitations on computer
by Strilanc 12y ago
I hope Scott Aaronson blogs about this article, because it espouses several of the wrong-facts he complains about and then cites him.
- Limitations on computers within physics are not limitations on physics itself. Analogously, you can simulate system so simple that a computer can't be made in them without your computer unmaking itself. Relevant: xkcd.com/505
- We do understand why we don't observe superpositions. It all comes down to this thing we call "quantum mechanics", which precisely describes those sorts of situations.
- The article consistently mixes up NP-Hard and NP-Complete.
> "And how does the universe decide whether a system is going to be quantum or not?"
Seriously, is this article a satire?
- PeterisP 12y agoAn interesting point is that limitations on math (i.e., things that would be true regardless of the details of the physical world) would put limitations on any physics simulations - including hypothetical physics simulations done by someone outside of our universe with potentially different physical limitations. So the point of the article is something like - if phenomenon-X can't be simulated by anyone, no matter how good their computers become; and if our universe is a simulation (which is a possibility), then our universe won't contain phenomenon-X.
- TheLoneWolfling 12y agoThe problem is that there is no proof that there is any such thing as something that would be true regardless of the details of the physical world.