Richard Preston

Software engineer with an interest in quantum computing. Views expressed here are my own and do not represent my employer.

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

Arguments that can be used to explain anything, explain nothing.

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@peterrhague A common misunderstanding is thinking that players who vote red “win the game” if red wins the vote. The cost of voting red is in feeling bad that blue voters die if red wins. So the optimal outcome (least cost) for both red and blue players is for blue to win.

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@meaning_enjoyer @DavidDeutschOxf (To be clear, the statement “the simplest explanation is the most likely” is false, as OP implied.)

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@meaning_enjoyer Not really. It’s that *unnecessarily* complicated explanations/theories are, by definition, worse than the same explanation with the unnecessary complications removed. @DavidDeutschOxf discusses this in his books.

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@DXVEXRS @RealMaayazi @veritasium Could be better worded, but I think the intention is pretty clear. Just need to make a few inferences/assumptions.

https://t.co/2A8D3lYai1

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@veritasium Assumptions (cont.):

3. The only way to check whether an egg will break on a given floor is by dropping it from that floor.

4. We are looking for a procedure that finds the exact answer no matter what n is, and counting the worst case.

(5/5)

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@DXVEXRS @RealMaayazi @veritasium I assume floor 1 is the ground floor.

https://t.co/X36DlG0hns

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@veritasium Assumptions:

1. The floors are numbered 1 to 100, with 1 being the ground floor.

2. There exists a highest floor N where 1 < N ≤ 100 such that an egg never breaks when dropped from floor N or below.

(4/5)

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@RealMaayazi @veritasium I assume 1 is the ground floor, so it does not need to be tested. If 0 is the ground floor, one would assume 99 is the top floor; in that case, you can shift everything down by one and it still works.

https://t.co/X36DlG0hns

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@veritasium Assumptions:

1. The floors are numbered 1 to 100, with 1 being the ground floor.

2. There exists a highest floor N where 1 < N ≤ 100 such that an egg never breaks when dropped from floor N or below.

(4/5)

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@RealMaayazi @veritasium You can improve the worst case by starting with a larger step size and decreasing as you go.

https://t.co/N8eJAyrKCE

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@veritasium The optimal floors to drop egg B are: 15, 28, 40, 51, 61, 70, 78, 85, 91, 96, 100. This guarantees a worst case of 14 drops.

For example, if the target floor is 40, then we will drop egg B from floors 15, 28, and 40 (3 times), then egg A from floors 29-39 (11 times).

(3/5)

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@veritasium Assumptions (cont.):

3. The only way to check whether an egg will break on a given floor is by dropping it from that floor.

4. We are looking for a procedure that finds the exact answer no matter what n is, and counting the worst case.

(5/5)

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@veritasium Assumptions:

1. The floors are numbered 1 to 100, with 1 being the ground floor.

2. There exists a highest floor N where 1 < N ≤ 100 such that an egg never breaks when dropped from floor N or below.

(4/5)

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@Kristofknight @BernardJBaars being unaware you are breathing = not conscious

being aware you are breathing = conscious

being aware of your own awareness = “meta-conscious” (as you seem to be defining it)

dreaming = conscious but usually you don’t remember the experience afterward

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@Kristofknight @BernardJBaars Senses causally affect the organism of which they are a part, most of the time unconsciously in most organisms. For example, if you trip, your sense of balance will save you from falling long before you become aware of it.

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@RationalPanthe1 @JSubris @BernardJBaars *How can sight “emerge by degrees”? Non pan-sightism at some point requires a supernatural all or nothing emergence of sight from nowhere.* Sight evolved gradually beginning with photosensitive cells. So it is with consciousness, albeit less-well-understood.

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@Kristofknight @BernardJBaars What is “full throated consciousness”? And why should it be necessary for any sense to work?

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@BernardJBaars For those who doubt this, how did consciousness emerge if it did not evolve gradually? Why should it be different than other capabilities, such as sight, hearing, or flight?

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@maria__violaris Lastly, there are severe limitations to what we can do with the QCs available today because they are not fault tolerant, i.e., they produce random errors. We know how to make QCs fault tolerant in theory, but the physical error rates are too high to implement the theory yet.

[Richard Preston @R_H_Preston]

@maria__violaris There are ways of getting around the asterisk for some problems. For example, there is a quantum algorithm that iteratively boosts the probability of measuring the password rather than finding it directly.