Ask Me Anything: Apocalypse Edition
Wednesday, March 18th, 2020So far, I confess, this pandemic is not shaping up for me like for Isaac Newton. It’s not just that I haven’t invented calculus or mechanics: I feel little motivation to think about research at all. Or to catch up on classic literature or films … or even to shower, shave, or brush my teeth. I’m quarantined in the house with my wife, our two kids, and my parents, so certainly there’s been plenty of family time, although my 7-year-daughter would inexplicably rather play fashion games on her iPad than get personalized math lessons from the author of Quantum Computing Since Democritus.
Mostly, it seems, I’ve been spending the time sleeping. Or curled up in bed, phone to face, transfixed by the disaster movie that’s the world’s new reality. Have you ever had one of those nightmares where you know the catastrophe is approaching—whether that means a missed flight, a botched presentation at your old high school, or (perhaps) more people dying than in any event since WWII—but you don’t know exactly when, and you can do nothing to avert it? Yeah, that feeling is what I now close my eyes to escape. And then I wake up, and I’m back in bizarro-nightmare-land, where the US is in no rush whatsoever to test people or to build ventilators or hospitals to cope with the coming deluge, and where ideas that could save millions have no chance against rotting institutions.
If nothing else, I guess we now have a decisive answer to the question of why humanity can’t get its act together on climate change. Namely, if we can’t wrap our heads around a catastrophe that explodes exponentially over a few weeks—if those who denied or minimized it face no consequences even when they’re dramatically refuted before everyone’s eyes—then what chance could we possibly have against a catastrophe that explodes exponentially over a century? (Note that I reject the view that the virus was sent by some guardian angel as the only possible solution to climate change, one crisis cancelling another one. For one thing, I expect emissions to roar back as soon as this new Black Death is over; for another, the virus punishes public transportation but not cars.)
Anyway, I realized I needed something, not necessarily to take my mind off the crisis, but to break me out of an unproductive spiral. Also, what better time than the present for things that I wouldn’t normally have time for? So, continuing a tradition from 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2018, we’re going to do an Ask Me Anything session. Questions directly or tangentially related to the crisis (continuing the discussion from the previous thread) are okay, questions totally unrelated to the crisis are even okayer, goofball questions are great, and questions that I can involve my two kids in answering are greatest of all. Here are this year’s ground rules:
- 24 hours or until I get bored
- One question per person total
- Absolutely no multi-part questions
- Self-contained questions only—nothing that requires me to read a paper, watch a video, etc.
- Scan the previous AMAs to see if your question is already there
- Any sufficiently patronizing, hostile, or annoying questions might be left in the moderation queue, 100% at my discretion
So ask away! And always look on the bright side of life.
Update (March 19): No more questions, please. Thanks, everyone! It will take me a few days just to work through all the great questions that are already in the queue.
Update (March 24): Thanks again for the 90-odd questions! For your reading convenience, here are links to all my answers, with some answers that I’m happy with bolded.
- Could non-biological entities be conscious? (Short answer: presumably)
- Is online teaching here to stay, even after coronavirus passes?
- Would a parliament of randomly-chosen high SAT-scorers be better than the current US government? (Short answer: probably. Low bar!)
- Am I optimistic about NISQ algorithms like QAOA? (Short answer: no)
- Have I tried sitting under an apple tree? (Answer: No, only laying under the covers)
- Something something about radical bio-isolationism to defend against engineered super-plagues?
- Will the corona crisis help teach people about climate change?
- Will the crisis make academics reevaluate the need for so many conferences?
- How should we teach undergrad Theory of Computation?
- How do I feel about the progress in TCS over the last decade? (Short answer: good)
- Is MIP*=RE evidence for quantum being stronger in general? (Short answer: no)
- Should voters be blamed, or only politicians? (Short answer: voters)
- Could quantum computing help with future pandemics? (Short answer: conceivably but let’s start with masks and ventilators)
- What’s my estimate for the number of COVID victims?
- Will Trump’s debased response to the pandemic make him lose the election? (Short answer: I hope so!)
- What recently-read books do I recommend?
- What are my daughter’s favorite fashion games?
- Are there quantum size-depth tradeoffs for problems in NC or RNC?
- How do I combat the feeling that the pandemic makes all my research useless? (Short answer: my research was useless already!)
- Is time already involved at the commutator level in QM?
- What potential use of QCs brings me the most joy? (Short answer: disproving people who claimed QCs were impossible!)
- Why aren’t I more terrified of the flu than of coronavirus? (Short answer: Do you live in a frigging cave?)
- Why are physicists so ignorant of theoretical CS, if all their experiments rely on computers?
- How much economic cost should we bear to flatten the curve?
- Which two historical figures would I like to watch debating the human condition? (Answer: Bertrand Russell and Jesus)
- Is CRISPR being used to help search for coronavirus vaccines?
- Have I ever grown a beard? (Short answer: sadly, yes)
- Why are hard-to-simulate Mikado sticks not “Mikado supremacy”?
- What advice would I give a postdoc who dreams of pursuing big questions? (Short answer: do it!)
- What recent research idea did I have that didn’t pan out?
- How will QCs help advance materials science? (Short answer: no one knows)
- Are Parity Games in P?
- Boxers or briefs?
- How do I know I retain transtemporal identity?
- What positives will come out of this pandemic?
- Will I try Beeminder?
- Am I worried about dysgenic fertility trends?
- How do you know if something’s conscious? (Short answer: you don’t)
- What non-political decree would I issue as king?
- Do Borel determinacy and the measurability of projective sets have metaphysical truth-values? (Short answer: dunno)
- Why haven’t we previously seen lots of viruses with asymptomatic spread?
- How is Gil Kalai faring now that his worldview has been shattered? (Short answer: he’s fine)
- Have things gotten so awful that we should stop working on fundamental questions?
- Do non-physical realms exist?
- Is consciousness a quantum phenomenon?
- Can one separate the completeness and soundness aspects of MIP*?
- Why do I still feel the need to bring up Amanda Marcotte? (Short answer: Because ironically, she showed the world why my teenage fears weren’t completely delusional)
- How would I apportion money to different research areas?
- Can one end music infringement lawsuits by putting 68 billion computer-generated melodies into the public domain?
- What’s the second piece of information people should take from this blog?
- How likely am I to win a Nobel Prize?
- What research area would I choose were I starting today?
- Will my math lessons for my daughter be made more widely available? (Short answer: That’s the plan!)
- How should Turing-universality be defined for dynamical systems?
- Has the coronavirus crisis inspired me to take existential risks in general, including AI risks, more seriously? (Short answer: yes)
- Why do world leaders say we’re now in a war? (Short answer: because we are)
- Why doesn’t chemistry get more respect?
- What other catastrophes do I worry might hit us in the next decade?
- Have I ever experienced “true free will”?
- Why do many top PhD programs now expect applicants to already have research experience? (Short answer: arms race)
- Do I believe in telepathy? (Answer: no)
- Is what’s mathematically possible a strict subset of what’s logically possible?
- What do I think of the Law of the Excluded Middle? (Short answer: 100% for, 0% against)
- What do I think of bounded arithmetic and proof complexity?
- Who are leading candidates for the next Turing Award?
- Could an infinite amount of computation be done just before a Big Rip?
- What is quantum discord and is it useful for anything?
- What do I think of academics having to write diversity statements? (Short answer: for diversity, against mandatory statements)
- What’s my frank opinion of geometry-from-entanglement, and what does the new replica wormhole result tell us?
- What do I think of Sabine Hossenfelder’s view that impossibility theorems are only about theories, not about nature itself?
- Do I own a gun, or have I considered getting one? (Short answer: no and no)
- Are the asymptotically best quantum error-correcting codes likely to be stabilizer codes?
- What was the flavor of the last piece of cake I ate?
- Why is it called computer science if we don’t do experiments? (Short answer: for starters, we do do experiments)
- Is there such a thing as non-maximal entanglement? (Short answer: yes)
- At what fatality rate do you order shelter-in-place?
- Are logistics and optimization promising applications of QC?
- What problems in quantum complexity do I think will be solved next?
- What changes would I (and my kids) make to elementary education in the US?
- What do my kids think that my wife and I do at work?
- Do I think Theory A and Theory B will join forces to tackle the P=?NP problem? (Short answer: No, I think Theory A will tackle it, while Theory B explains how it could’ve been tackled more elegantly)
- What’s a good quantum computing project idea?
- What’s the role of error-correcting codes in the PCP Theorem?
- Is the Blum Speedup Theorem true? (Answer: yes)
- Which type of entanglement better captures the real world: tensor-product or commuting-operator?
- Is Ewin Tang’s algorithm practical?
- What motivates me to get out of bed? (Answer: Dana yelling at me to come help with the kids)
- Would George Washington’s descendants, ruling as kings, be preferable to Trump?
- What big question would I love to solve?
- Am I planning a revision of Quantum Computing Since Democritus? (Short answer: no)