Dave 🥓

Gone skiing No longer here try @dabacon.tachyon.institute
"There is enough room in the unknown to absorb our dreams, so let us make them."

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

I wrote a little semi-popular account of the Bell inequalities say here: https://t.co/LSfdy6cbDt

Just a little high school mathematics is need to understand the core ideas.

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

This paragraph is fascinating, & I've reread it multiple times. The conclusions seem rather repugnant. I've often wondered at the alienating effect of big science on individuals, & this seems like an example of alienating forces

(Not a critique of the paper, quite the reverse!)

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

The Schroedinger equation is a linear matrix equation, i d psi / dt = H psi. The solution isn't quite a series of multiplications - you need additions too!

If matrix addition and multiplication can't support sentience, then you've just "proved" human beings aren't sentient.

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

What are the most beautiful titles you know?

A few I love:

"All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" (Richard Brautigan)

"The Peace of Wild Things" (Wendell Berry)

"The Language Instinct" (Stephen Pinker)

"Desert Solitaire" (Edward Abbey)

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

I enjoyed this interview with Dorit Aharonov: https://t.co/d9jul3PJuY (by @Liv_Lanes & Robert Davis)

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

In general, it's very striking: https://t.co/fK9WPCbEvV

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

This entire thread is very, very good, on the impact of machine learning & business models & social media on culture. See also: https://t.co/WXJCKIjqIF

First we train our machines, then they train us.

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

I believe this is John Wheeler's original "It from bit" paper. Anything earlier? https://t.co/TXjSWUzyw1

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

I didn't know this - Starry Night apparently was inspired in part by a line in Hugo's "Les Miserables", "lighted like a lamp in the center of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the universal radiance of creation".

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

The genetic code is redundant in many interesting ways: for instance, 64 different codons are used to code (redundantly) for 20 different amino acids.

Last year, a group actually removed some of this redundancy in E. coli(!) https://t.co/SIngx743D2

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

@dabacon I love that this is true for fundamental reasons!

"If you could see me, I would be destroyed. So I hide, invisible, to do my computation. And only if you look at the complete totality can you find me."

Which sounds like mysticism, but is literally what is happening...

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

MIT has ended its contract with Elsevier: https://t.co/cpq9MFrYG5

[Sarah Cooper @sarahcpr]

How to lobster

[Thankful Musgrave 🦃 @profmusgrave]

Protesters Say Statue Tripped, Fell Into Water

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

@wolfejosh I suppose the natural consequences are: (a) a lot of money will be lost in this area, on companies that will never ever have any chance; & (b) investors with a good technical baseline have a chance at making some good - possibly extraordinary - investments

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

Read the horror that is Scott Aaronson's account of how quantum computing is discussed at Davos: https://t.co/StgdnYKBAf

Here is a quote from a senior vice president at IBM:

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

Was just thinking about the (many!) reasons elections are often so close. One thought which keeps recurring is that the media have an incentive for elections to be nailbiters.