At first I wanted to say, “Please do, that would be awesome!”, but then I realized it may not be within the domain of ‘refining the art of rationality’. Anyone have any rationalizations so that we could talk about quantum computing at Less Wrong? There have been posts on the singularity, after all.
They’re definitely worth taking the time to watch, imho. I’ve gone through most of them over the past couple of weeks, and have just a handful more to watch (and will probably skip Kurzweill and the econ/vc ones). My favorites so far have been Schmidhuber, Hutter, Drescher, and Nielsen (Quantum Computing). Anna Saloman’s talks were both very good as well, as was Eliezer’s if you haven’t heard his existential risk and cognitive biases lecture many times before.
Learning more about quantum computing and physics would (for most of us) result in more accurate models/beliefs/priors, so it seems on-topic to me.
Having said that though, we have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise any scientific topic would be on-topic, such as “analysis of proteins contained in the albumen of chicken eggs”, which I doubt many of us think belongs on this site.
Since physics and computing are so foundational—witness their frequent discussion and the long sequences that Eliezer devoted to quantum physics—I think we could safely say that any general topic in physics or computing that has ramifications for rationality in other contexts (that we are likely to make use of), as is the case here with quantum computing, is welcome to be discussed, and that suggests a broader criterion for scientific topics as those that have ramifications for rationality in other contexts and that we are likely to make use of.
At first I wanted to say, “Please do, that would be awesome!”, but then I realized it may not be within the domain of ‘refining the art of rationality’. Anyone have any rationalizations so that we could talk about quantum computing at Less Wrong? There have been posts on the singularity, after all.
By the way, if you haven’t already viewed it, Michael Nielsen’s talk at the singularity summit is fascinating: Quantum Computing: What It Is, What It Is Not, What We Have Yet to Learn.
Ah, thanks for the link. The only summit video I’ve seen before was Jurgen Schmidhuber’s, perhaps I should watch more of ’em.
They’re definitely worth taking the time to watch, imho. I’ve gone through most of them over the past couple of weeks, and have just a handful more to watch (and will probably skip Kurzweill and the econ/vc ones). My favorites so far have been Schmidhuber, Hutter, Drescher, and Nielsen (Quantum Computing). Anna Saloman’s talks were both very good as well, as was Eliezer’s if you haven’t heard his existential risk and cognitive biases lecture many times before.
Learning more about quantum computing and physics would (for most of us) result in more accurate models/beliefs/priors, so it seems on-topic to me.
Having said that though, we have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise any scientific topic would be on-topic, such as “analysis of proteins contained in the albumen of chicken eggs”, which I doubt many of us think belongs on this site.
Since physics and computing are so foundational—witness their frequent discussion and the long sequences that Eliezer devoted to quantum physics—I think we could safely say that any general topic in physics or computing that has ramifications for rationality in other contexts (that we are likely to make use of), as is the case here with quantum computing, is welcome to be discussed, and that suggests a broader criterion for scientific topics as those that have ramifications for rationality in other contexts and that we are likely to make use of.
This reddit engine supports multiple categories or something, right? Why not have a “Physics” channel?