{"id":4145,"date":"2019-03-13T11:45:04","date_gmt":"2019-03-13T16:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=4145"},"modified":"2019-09-24T21:21:14","modified_gmt":"2019-09-25T02:21:14","slug":"quantum-computing-and-the-meaning-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=4145","title":{"rendered":"“Quantum Computing and the Meaning of Life”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Manolis Kellis<\/a> is a computational biologist at MIT, known as one of the leaders in applying big data to genomics and gene regulatory networks. Throughout my 9 years at MIT, Manolis was one of my best friends there, even though our research styles and interests might seem distant. He and I were in the same PECASE<\/a> class; see if you can spot us both in this photo<\/a> (in the rows behind America’s last sentient president). My and Manolis’s families also became close after we both got married and had kids. We still keep in touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today Manolis will be celebrating his 42nd birthday, with a symposium on the meaning of life<\/a> (!). He asked his friends and colleagues to contribute talks and videos reflecting on that weighty topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s a 15-minute video interview<\/a> that Manolis and I recorded last night, where he asks me to pontificate about the implications of quantum mechanics for consciousness and free will and whether the universe is a computer simulation—and also about, uh, how to balance blogging with work and family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, here’s a 2-minute birthday video<\/a> that I made for Manolis before I really understood what he wanted. Unlike the first video, this one has no academic content, but it does involve me wearing a cowboy hat and swinging a makeshift “lasso.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happy birthday Manolis!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Manolis Kellis is a computational biologist at MIT, known as one of the leaders in applying big data to genomics and gene regulatory networks. Throughout my 9 years at MIT, Manolis was one of my best friends there, even though our research styles and interests might seem distant. He and I were in the same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[10,12,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures-in-meatspace","category-metaphysical-spouting","category-quantum"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4146,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4145\/revisions\/4146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}