{"id":5114,"date":"2020-11-25T20:03:02","date_gmt":"2020-11-26T02:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=5114"},"modified":"2021-03-07T13:21:08","modified_gmt":"2021-03-07T19:21:08","slug":"happy-thanksgiving-yall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=5114","title":{"rendered":"Happy Thanksgiving Y’All!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

While a lot of pain is still ahead, this year I’m thankful that a dark chapter in American history might be finally drawing to a close. I’m thankful that the mRNA vaccines actually work. I’m thankful that my family has remained safe, and I’m thankful for all the essential workers who’ve kept our civilization running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Friend-of-the-blog Jelani Nelson<\/a> asked me to advertise an important questionnaire for theoretical computer scientists<\/a>, about what the future of STOC and FOCS should look like (for example, should they become all virtual?). It only takes 2 or 3 minutes to fill out (I just did).
    <\/li>
  2. Here’s a podcast<\/a> that I recently did with UT Austin undergraduate Dwarkesh Patel. (As usual, I recommend 2x speed to compensate for my verbal tics.)
    <\/li>
  3. Feel free to use the comments on this post to talk about recent progress in quantum computing or computational complexity! Like, I dunno, a (sub)exponential black-box speedup for the adiabatic algorithm<\/a>, or anti-concentration for log-depth random quantum circuits<\/a>, or an improved shadow tomography procedure<\/a>, or a quantum algorithm for nonlinear differential equations<\/a>, or a barrier to proving strong 3-party parallel repetition<\/a>, or equivalence of one-way functions and time-bounded Kolmogorov complexity<\/a>, or turning any hard-on-average NP problem into one that’s guaranteed to have solutions<\/a>.
    <\/li>
  4. It’s funny how quantum computing, P vs. NP, and so forth can come to feel like just an utterly mundane day job, not something anyone outside a small circle could possibly want to talk about while the fate of civilization hangs in the balance. Sometimes it takes my readers to remind me that not only are these topics what brought most of you here in the first place, they’re also awesome! So, I’ll mark that down as one more thing to be thankful for.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    While a lot of pain is still ahead, this year I’m thankful that a dark chapter in American history might be finally drawing to a close. I’m thankful that the mRNA vaccines actually work. I’m thankful that my family has remained safe, and I’m thankful for all the essential workers who’ve kept our civilization running. […]<\/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":[31,5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements","category-complexity","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\/5114","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=5114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5115,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114\/revisions\/5115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}