{"id":1385,"date":"2013-05-06T09:42:55","date_gmt":"2013-05-06T14:42:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=1385"},"modified":"2017-01-12T16:24:18","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T21:24:18","slug":"ask-me-anything-tenure-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=1385","title":{"rendered":"Ask Me Anything! Tenure Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update (5\/7):<\/strong><\/span> Enough!<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0 Thanks, everyone, for asking so many imaginative questions, and please accept my apologies if yours remains unaddressed.\u00a0 (It’s nothing personal: they simply came fast and furious, way faster than I could handle in an online fashion—so I gave up on chronological order and simply wrote answers in whatever order they popped into my head.)\u00a0 At this point, I’m no longer accepting any new questions.<\/strong>\u00a0 I’ll try to answer all the remaining questions by tomorrow night.<\/p>\n

\n

By popular request, for the next 36 hours—so, from now until ~11PM on Tuesday—I’ll have a long-overdue edition of “Ask Me Anything.”\u00a0 (For the previous editions, see here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>.)\u00a0 Today’s edition is partly to celebrate\u00a0my new, tenured “freedom to do whatever the hell I want” (as well as the publication after 7 years of Quantum Computing Since Democritus<\/a><\/em>), but is mostly just to have an excuse to get out of changing diapers (“I’d love<\/em> to, honey, but the world is demanding answers!”).\u00a0 Here are the ground rules:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. One question per person, total.<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. Please check to see whether your question was already asked in one of the previous editions—if it was, then I’ll probably just refer you there.<\/li>\n
  3. No questions with complicated backstories, or that require me to watch a video, read a paper, etc. and comment on it.<\/li>\n
  4. No questions about D-Wave.\u00a0 (As it happens, Matthias Troyer will be giving a talk at MIT this Wednesday about his group’s experiments on the D-Wave machine, and I’m planning a blog post about it—so just hold your horses for a few more days!)<\/li>\n
  5. If your question is offensive, patronizing, nosy, or annoying, I reserve the right to give a flippant non-answer or even delete the question.<\/li>\n
  6. Keep in mind that, in past editions, the best questions have almost always been the most goofball ones (“What’s up with those painting elephants?”).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    That’s it: ask away!<\/p>\n

    \n

    Update (5\/12):<\/strong><\/span> I’ve finally answered all ~90 questions, a mere 4 days after the official end of the “Ask Me Anything” session!\u00a0 Thanks so much to everyone for all the great questions.\u00a0 For your reading convenience, here’s a guide to my answers (personal favorites are in bold):<\/p>\n