> "Do not contradict, explain away, belittle or argue about what the person claims to have seen or heard," reads a short text that a hospice provides about the dying process. "Just because you cannot see or hear it does not mean it is not real to your loved one. Affirm his or her experience. They are normal and common."
Not all hospice or elder-care providers recommend affirming hallucinations.
Here's a quote from a nursing home guide that explores the ethical considerations of this practice:
> Lying to someone with dementia, often termed “therapeutic lying,” poses a nuanced ethical dilemma. While entering a person’s altered reality can indeed reduce their immediate distress, it’s important to acknowledge that lying is still lying.
> Over time, this practice may lead to confusion, especially in moments of clarity, and strain the trust and relationship between the patient and caregiver.
> This complexity has led caregivers and professionals to explore alternative communication strategies that honor the truth while providing comfort and reducing agitation. Two such approaches are reflection and redirection. Reflection involves acknowledging the person’s feelings and statements without directly affirming the distorted reality or lying. Redirection gently shifts the conversation or activity towards something positive and engaging without directly contradicting the person’s beliefs.
The point is to move beyond APIs. Being able to perform actions on a site, with the ability to perform the task successfully even if the site slightly changes under the hood, is a lot less brittle than interacting with an API.
Agreed. Now you're throwing in a presentation layer to wrangle with, and that presentation layer is HTML/CSS/JS, which is the thorniest presentation layer out there.
When my kids were little, we had glow in the dark pacifiers that lasted ALL NIGHT. I still don't know what sorcery was used to accomplish that, but if any of you have little ones, the MAM brand is what we used. Being able to spot the pacifier in the crib at 5am was a huge help some nights.
And now my kids each have an extra eyeball, which has proven very useful indeed.
This is outright not true, and I’m not sure where this rumor came from.
Source: I have firefly petunias, I have seeds from hand pollenating them, and I have volunteer plants growing in the pot from seed I didn’t collect.
They are simply not guaranteed to glow because they don’t breed true. 3 out of my 5 volunteer plants glow.
Light Bio is actually pleasantly realistic in how amenable they are to non-commercial breeding. I may have even seen pollination instructions on their instagram (normally certain moths pollenate petunias, and without those you need to do so by hand yo be sure seeds take)
Exactly. When’s the last time you’ve seen normal petunias being invasive.
Firefly petunias need a lot of light. The entire plant (roots too) are literally burning precious energy 24/7 for the glowing. There seems to be a direct correlation between the light they receive and how long the internodes are from what I’ve seen putting them under grow lights. More light, shorter internodes.
Here in the Pacific Northwest various worm (caterpillar) larvae also love shredding them and eating through seed pods, and they are susceptible to downy mildew complexes which seem to become persistent within the plant.
They also are finicky about warmth, water and fertilizer.
They are a princess of a plant, not the next kochia or pigweed.
Honestly it would be more viable to take invasive weeds and hamper them by introducing glow genes.
A bit of a tangent, one thing I observed is that petunias are fairly sticky to the touch, even if it's not really visible. While larger insect like loopers and cutworms are fine, small weak flying insects can get caught. Both harmful fungus gnats and helpful parasitic wasps (which would normally attack worm larvae) can get caught on the leaves.
Remember that about 3-4 years ago, we experienced the Great Migration. The percentage of tech workers who moved to new companies was very high compared with historical migration patterns. Interests rates were still very low, companies had been buoyed by pandemic-related assistance, and inflation hadn't yet set in, so the salaries that were being offered were very attractive.
In the years since, the incentives to leave one's current employer have decreased. Salaries have stagnated, there's been belt tightening and layoffs, the pool of applicants competing for the same jobs has become bigger, and a lot of folks who've gotten cushy benefits like permanent WFH arrangements would have to go back to the office if they changed jobs.
But that means that a lot of tech companies are experiencing lower than normal attrition, but there's still professional growth happening, and the only way the companies have been able to reward employees is through promotions. That has led to bloat at the management layer, which this year many companies have tried to address, either by letting managers go or sending them back into IC roles.
I predict that due to "tenure lock" (where a lot of people who moved in the Great Migration have the same tenure at their current company) we're likely to hit a watershed moment that leads to another Great Migration later in the decade.
The Great Migration wasn't as real as the headlines made it look, though. It was an artifact of time-shifting from the pandemic. Normal job switching didn't happen in 2020 and became pent-up demand in 2021. So the numbers looked high for a short duration, but it wasn't really any fundamental shift, just the same activity pushed into a shorter time period. Look at the total numbers from 2019-2024 and I bet it's about the same as any five-year period.
Correct, the pandemic led to pent-up demand, and the Great Migration was what happened when job switching became tenable again. But the effects of that pent-up demand are a larger than normal group of people who now have the same relative tenure at their new organizations, and demand is building up again, as more and more people who've been with their company for 3+ years are looking for a change, but can't find one in the current hiring climate. So I predict we'll see a similar wave of large-scale job hopping once conditions become more favorable.
With regards to wfh, I’m of the opinion that a large amount of why wfh is nice is because the office now sucks. I am an academic scientist but let me offer my perspective.
I have three appointments, one at a software company, one at the university as a research scientist, and one at a university I am visiting.
At the company we have an open office plan. Most people don’t have assigned desks and often time people are working with customers. However we have a core r&d group but because it’s all open office basically everyone does their own thing because it’s disrupting to talk. Therefore I go to the office when I want to have lunch with colleagues but that’s about it. Nobody much complains about this arrangement because most everyone is working at the customers and those in the office are not typically there every day. Also the company pays for home office setup so everyone is happy to work from home some days.
At the university I’m visiting everyone, professors included, are crammed into tiny offices that are shared. Nobody has their own office. Nobody is even allowed to have their own white board you must share it with office mates and it must be regulation size with is only one meter wide. I was even told that the white board should only be used in collaboration that if I was using it for myself I should better use paper at my desk. You are not allowed to move or rearrange the office in any way. There is an industrial coffee machine that logs which coffee you take and reports through its 5g enabled internal computer. So far this coffee remains free. The management often complains about how people are not allowed to work from home yet there is only shared meeting space which can only be used if it’s booked through the online system and often it’s all booked. Even though the building seems busy with people most prefer to work from home or a coffee shop.
At the university I am a research scientist at I have my own office. It has a couch and a giant white board for discussing projects with phds and postdocs. There’s room for my textbooks and I have lots of desk space. When I work there it seems as if I’m working at 10x speed compared to anywhere else because all my resources are right there. There is a nice espresso machine, there is a nice culture of lunches and there’s a research centre lunch space. Everyone in the Research centre seems to show up to work every day and often seem happy to be there. Is rare that people work from home and often times even if there is crunch time they simply close their office door.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that it is possible that people would like to work from an office if that office was a nice place to be. It’s also possible that work from home is a great solution for lots of people. But I think that a great many people experience an office space that is onerous. And so given the option they would prefer to never be there.
Pandemic WFH just gave us a break from the frog-in-the-pot gradual decline in the quality of working environment and reminded people (or introduced the younger generation) to a quieter, less distraction-filled work environment rather than the open-plan mess we'd devolved into
Yeah it’s kind of wild because if you watch the movie office space today, in some ways, you are like, what is the problem here? Haha. Quite sad actually.
I can't speak for the internals, but I've found it to be dead simple to spin up locally and use, with decent results on the docs I've tested it with.
That said, I think a lot of AI chat services have recognized that document search is table stakes and are building this functionality into their tools, so I don't know whether Kotaemon as a standalone tool will be needed for much longer.
For example, my company was originally going to push out Kotaemon for private document search, but we have now put that on pause because we're exploring whether we can get the same results through our primary AI chat service, without having to point users to a separate tool.
> whether Kotaemon as a standalone tool will be needed for much longer.
I think a lot of AI startups will find themselves in this situation. Searching and summarizing docs is a no-brainer for OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. The only issue they have right now is that their models might not be reliable enough due to the non-deterministic nature of LLMs. In the long term, I believe Google, Amazon and Microsoft will probably be the big winners in this area since they can offer multiple models from major providers to de-risk things.
Unless AI complements an existing solution that is unique and/or is done well by existing businesses, it will be very difficult to compete.
The problem is not that pediatric urgent care is not a viable business.
The problem is that it's not a great VC-funded business.
VC investors are hoping for huge growth and eventually earning back multiples of their investment.
That's going to be really hard to do in this segment of the health-care market.
We've got a wonderful pediatric urgent-care place in our area, backed by the best children's hospital in our metro region, and it seems to be doing great. But does that mean it could ever grow at the rate needed to satisfy VC investors? Probably not.
In Canada it has been the growth of old folks homes. I expect there will be a glut of them in 39 years or so. The companies behind them have likely made a killing.
One of the skills I already have is the ability to work with difficult people or take on projects that need to be rescued and turn them around. That has been a valuable skill and has allowed me to develop a brand around it.
However, that doesn't mean that I enjoy working with difficult people or cleaning up other people's messes. I find those people just as off-putting as everyone else; I just happen to be better at masking it. And I find cleaning up messes just as tedious and challenging as everyone else; I just happen to be able to do it anyway.
So I think one of the skills I want to better develop in 2025 is being able to strike a better balance between the things I'm recognized for being good at and the things I actually enjoy doing.
(And if anyone has tips for how to make use of this skill set in a way that's genuinely fulfilling rather than draining, I'm all ears!)
I use this same (or similar) skill to solve the unsolvable problems by listening to a customers needs, which usually somebody hasn't done by the time they get to me, and then work on fulfilling that need in a way the customer never would have expected. It's very rewarding and turns a negative interaction into a positive one. It's customer service 101 type stuff, but when you get the technical side involved, and you're competent, you become more than a punching bag and become the solution. It's so fun.
> One of the skills I already have is the ability to work with difficult people or take on projects that need to be rescued and turn them around.
That is one damn good Superpower! Develop it further and charge/ask more for the job. Advertise it in big bold letters to management/clients/everybody. As you say, that is your "brand".
> And if anyone has tips for how to make use of this skill set in a way that's genuinely fulfilling rather than draining, I'm all ears!
My strategy, to avoid getting frustrated, is usually to work around them or not take them seriously, rather than work with them. I speak from experience (generally a people pleaser).
That said, sometimes people feel difficult at first, but after giving what they say or do some thought, it starts to make sense.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it sounds like you should look into stoic philosophy. I think it is overly hyped, and actually caused me some damage when I applied it too much, for too long, but definitely one of several worthwhile perspectives to have deeply internalized.
Those are great skills. Would another course of action work for you ? For example selecting projects that bring more money, so as to spend less time on those boring projects (saved time could be used on things you enjoy then)
Maybe work with difficult high performers? Talented people who are difficult because they're brash rather than untalented people who are difficult because they're messy.
I have no idea who put it there, but I can assure you the actual paper contains no such nonsense.
I would have thought whoever writes the google tech blogs is more competent than bottom tier science journalists. But in this case I think it is more reasonable to assume malice, as the post is authored by the Google Quantum AI Lead, and makes more sense as hype-boosting buzzword bullshit than as an honest misunderstanding that was not caught during editing.
There are compelling arguments to believe in the many-worlds interpretation.
No sign of a Heisenberg cut has been observed so far, even as experiments involving entanglement of larger and larger molecules are performed, which makes objective-collapse theories hard to consider seriously.
Bohmian theories are nice, but require awkward adjustments to reconcile them with relativity. But more importantly, they are philosophically uneconomical, requiring many unobservable — even theoretically — entities [0].
That leaves either many-worlds or a quantum logic/quantum Bayesian interpretations as serious contenders [1]. These interpretations aren't crank fringe nonsense. They are almost inevitable outcomes of seriously considering the implications of the theory.
I will say that personally, I find many-worlds to focus excessively on the Schrödinger-picture pure state formulation of quantum mechanics. (At least to the level that I understood it — I expect there is literature on the connection with algebraic formulations, but I haven't taken the time to understand it.) So I would lean towards quantum logic–type interpretations myself.
The point of this comment was to say that many-worlds (or "multiverses", though I dislike the term) isn't nonsense. But it also isn't exactly the kind of sci-fi thing non-physicists might picture. Given how easy it is to misinterpret the term, however, I must agree with you that a self-aware science communicator would think twice about whether the term should be included, and that there may be not-so-scrupulous intentions at play here.
Quick edit: I realise the comment I've written is very technical. I'm happy to try to answer any questions. I should preface it by stating that I'm not a professional in the field, but I studied quantum information theory at a Masters level, and always found the philosophical questions of interest.
---
[0] Many people seem to believe that many-worlds also postulates the existence of unobservable parallel universes, but this isn't true. We observe the interaction of these universe's every time we observe quantum interference.
While we're here, we can clear up the misconception about "branching" — there is no branching in many-worlds, just the coherent evolution of the universal wave function. The many worlds are projections out of that wave function. They don't discretely separate from one another, either — it depends on your choice of basis. That choice is where decoherence comes in.
[1] And of course, there is the Copenhagen "interpretation" — preferred among physicists who would rather not think about philosophy. (A respectable choice.)
I think the key point that makes the quoted statement sciencey gibberish is that the Many Worlds Interpretation is just that - an interpretation. There is no way to prove or disprove it (except if you proved that the world is not actually quantum mechanical, in which case MWI might not be a valid interpretation of the new theory). Saying "this is more evidence for MWI" is thus true of any quantum mechanical experiment, but anything that is evidence for MWI is also exactly as much evidence for Pilot Waves (well, assuming it is possible to reconcile with quantum field theory), the Copenhagen Interpretation, QBism, and so on.
As a side note, there is still a huge gap between the largest system we've ever observed in a superposition and the smallest system we've ever observed to behave only classically. So there is still a lot of room for objective collapse theories, even though that space has shrunk by some orders of magnitude since it was first proposed. Of course, objective collapse has other, much bigger, problems, such as being incompatible with Bell's inequalities.
Edit: I'd also note some things about MWI. First, there are many versions of it, some historical, some current. Some versions, at least older ones, absolutely did involve explicit branching. And the ones that don't have a big problem still with explaining why, out of the many ways to choose the basis vectors for a measurement, we always end up with the same classical measurables in every experiment we perform on the world at large. Especially given that we know we can measure quantum systems in another other basis if we want to. It also ultimately doesn't answer the question of why we need the Born rule at all, it still postulates that an observer only has access to one possible value of the wave function and not to all at once. And of course, the problem of defining probabilities in a world where everything happens with probability 1 is another philosophically thorny issue, especially when you need the probabilities to match the amplitude of the wave function.
So the MWI is nice, and it did spawn a very useful and measurable observation, decoherence. But it's far from a single, satisfying, complete, self-consistent account of the world.
This would be true if we were talking about something like String Theory, or Loop Quantum Gravity.
But it is not true for MWI: MWI was designed from the ground up as an interpretation of the mathematics and experimental results of quantum mechanics.
It is designed specifically to not match all of the predictions of quantum mechanics, and to not make any new predictions. Other interpretations are also designed in the same way.
So, if the people creating these interpretations succeeded in their goals when making them, then they will never be experimentally verifiable.
I think the point about it being unscientific is completely fair, as far as a press release aiming to appear scientific is concerned.
However, I also think there is a tendency among well-educated people in physics to dismiss philosophical questions out of hand. It's fair enough when the point is "let's focus on the physics as it's hard enough", but questions of interpretation have merit in their own right.
MWI or Parallel Worlds is an interpretation of QM, it is one of the 15-20 major interpretations of QM. Nothing at all wrong with MWI. Sean Carrol speaks kindly towards WMI and I have tended to agree with his views over the years. I don't see any wild claims being made that would warrant a major reaction, but I would agree Willow's results are so impressive that it should lead one to consider at minimum that it counts as evidence in favor of the WMI. I don't see how this doesn't count as evidence for MWI.
Thank you for this clarification -- for me it addresses a good part of the crank/fringe/sci-fi aspect
> While we're here, we can clear up the misconception about "branching" — there is no branching in many-worlds, just the coherent evolution of the universal wave function. The many worlds are projections out of that wave function.
That's right, I agree that Multiple Worlds isn't any less correct/falsifiable than quantum mechanics as a whole.
I've never heard about quantum logic before. The "Bayesian" part makes sense because of how it treats the statistics, but the logic? Is that what quantum computer scientists do with their quantum circuits, or is it an actual interpretation?
"Many-world interpretation" is just a religion, it has nothing to do with physics. Pilot Wave is an example of a physical theory, Copenhagen is an administrative agreement.
I'm pretty sure pilot wave is the same kind of unfalsifiable interpretation of the experimental results that MWI is. Also I think people are making too big a deal out of the comment in the article. I took it as kind of tongue-in-cheek. An expert would know MWI is unfalsifiable and inconsequential.
I'm sure they meant it refutes pilot-wave theory, though it seems that's not precisely true if you consider a non-local hidden variable to explain instantaneous interaction.
Quantum computation done in done multiple universes is the explanation given by David Deutsch the father of Quantum Computing. He invented the idea of a quantum computer to test the idea of parallel universes.
If you are okay with a single universe coming to existence out of nothing you should be able to handle parallel universes as well just fine.
Also your comment does not have any useful information. You assumed hype as the reason why they mentioned parallel computing. It's just a bias you have on looking at world. Hype does helps explain a lot of things. So it can be tempting to use it as a placeholder for anything that you don't accept based on your current set of beliefs.
I disagree that it is "the best explanation we have". It's a nice theory, but like all theories in quantum foundations / interpretations of quantum mechanics, it is (at least currently) unfalsifiable.
I didn't "assume" hype, I hypothesized it based on the evidence before me: There is nothing in Google's paper that deals with interpretations of quantum mechanics. This only appears in the blog post, with no evidence given. And there is nothing google is doing with it's quantum chip that would discriminate between interpretations of QM, so it is simply false that "It lends credence to ... parallel universes" over another interpretation.
From what I understand, David Deutsch invented the idea of quantum computer as a way to test Parallel Universes. And later people went on and built the quantum computer. Are you saying that the implementation of a quantum computer does not require any kind of assumption on computations being run in parallel universes?
It's just not how it works. All this type of quantum computer can do is test some of the more dubious objective collapse theories. Those are wrong anyway, so all theories that are still in the running agree.
> If you are okay with a single universe coming to existence out of nothing you should be able to handle parallel universes as well just fine.
I can handle it, sure, and the idea of the multiverse is attractive to me from a philosophical standpoint.
But we have no evidence that there are any other universes out there, while we do have plenty of evidence that our own exists. Just because one of something exists, it doesn't automatically follow that there are others.
I believe their point was that, if you accept the reality of _this_ universe being created from nothing, why wouldn't you also accept the notion of _other_ universes similarly existing too.
I can get on board with that: that there may be other, distinct universes, but I do not understand how this would lead to the suggestion they would be necessarily linked together with quantum effects.
Disagree with that. The fact that we reasonably accept a well-proven theory (ie the observed universe exists) that has some unexplained parts (we don't currently have a reasonable explanation for where does that universe comes from) doesn't mean that we should therefore accept any unproven theory, especially a unfalsifiable one.
Presumably the 'nonsense' is the supposed link between the chip and MW theory.
Let me add a recommendation for David Wallace's book The Emergent Multiverse - a highly persuasive account of 'quantum theory according to the Everett Interpretation'. Aside from the technical chapters, much of it is comprehensible to non-physicists. It seems that adherents to MW do 'not know how to refute an incredulous stare'. (From a quotation)
Everett interpretation simply asserts that quantum wavefunctions are real and there's no such thing as "wavefunction collapse". It's the simplest interpretation.
People call it "many worlds" because we can interact only with a tiny fraction of the wavefunction at a time, i.e. other "branches" which are practically out of reach might be considered "parallel universes".
But it would be more correct to say that it's just one universe which is much more complex than what it looks like to our eyes. Quantum computers are able to tap into this complexity. They make a more complete use of the universe we are in.
This might turn into a debate of defining "simplest", but I think the ensemble/statistical interpretation is really the most minimal in terms of fancy ideas or concepts like "wavefunction collapse" or "multiverses". It doesn't need a wavefunction collapse nor does it need multiverses.
A poll of 72 "leading quantum cosmologists and other quantum field theorists" conducted before 1991 by L. David Raub showed 58% agreement with "Yes, I think MWI is true".[85]
Max Tegmark reports the result of a "highly unscientific" poll taken at a 1997 quantum mechanics workshop. According to Tegmark, "The many worlds interpretation (MWI) scored second, comfortably ahead of the consistent histories and Bohm interpretations."[86]
In response to Sean M. Carroll's statement "As crazy as it sounds, most working physicists buy into the many-worlds theory",[87] Michael Nielsen counters: "at a quantum computing conference at Cambridge in 1998, a many-worlder surveyed the audience of approximately 200 people... Many-worlds did just fine, garnering support on a level comparable to, but somewhat below, Copenhagen and decoherence." But Nielsen notes that it seemed most attendees found it to be a waste of time: Peres "got a huge and sustained round of applause…when he got up at the end of the polling and asked 'And who here believes the laws of physics are decided by a democratic vote?'"[88]
A 2005 poll of fewer than 40 students and researchers taken after a course on the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics at the Institute for Quantum Computing University of Waterloo found "Many Worlds (and decoherence)" to be the least favored.[89]
A 2011 poll of 33 participants at an Austrian conference on quantum foundations found 6 endorsed MWI, 8 "Information-based/information-theoretical", and 14 Copenhagen;[90] the authors remark that MWI received a similar percentage of votes as in Tegmark's 1997 poll.[90]
i think if these polls were anonymous, copenhagen would lose share. there's a reason why MWI is disproportionately popular among people who basically have no professional worries because they are already uber-distinguished.
No, but as non-experts in a given field, the best information we have to go on is the consensus among scientists who are experts in the field.
Certainly this isn't a perfect metric, and consensus-smashing evidence sometimes comes to light, but unless and until that happens, we should assume that the people who study this sort of thing as their life's work are probably more correct than we are.
I think the idea here is that the choice on which hypothesis to verify is based on the risk assessment of the scientist whose goal is to optimize successful results and hence better theories are more likely to surface. In this way one does not need to form a consensus around the theory but instead make consensus on what constitutes a successful result.
Ideally this would be true, but funding agencies are already preloaded with implicit asssumptions what constitutes a scientific progress.
I assume this is a rhetorical question, since you are perfectly capable of doing a search for "the scientific method" on your own.
MWI has not led to any verifiably-correct predictions, has it? At least not any that other interpretations can also predict, and have other, better properties.
Okay. I have a hypothesis that the rain is controlled by a god called Ringo. If you pray to Ringo and he listens to your prayer it will rain in next 24 hours. If he doesn't listen it won't rain. You can also test this experimentally by praying and observing the outcomes.
i don’t really view “shut up and calculate” or very restrained copenhagenism as a real view at all.
i think if you were to ask people to make a real metaphysical speculation, majority might be partial to everett - especially if they felt confident the results were anonymous
I believe the vast majority of researchers in quantum computing* spend almost no time on metaphysical speculation,
*Well, those on the "practical side" that thinks about algorithms and engineering quantum systems like the Google Quantum AI team and others. Not the computer science theorists knee-deep in quantum computational complexity proofs nor physics theorists working on foundations of quantum mechanics. But these last two categories are outnumbered by the "practical" side.
not metaphysically equivalent. also, i’m not so certain it will always be untestable. i would have thought the same thing about hidden variables but i underestimated the cleverness of experimentalists
I think "experimentally equivalent" is what GP meant, and as of today, it holds true. Google's results are predicted by other interpretations just as well as by Everett. Maybe someday there will be a clever experiment to distinguish the models but just "we have a good QC" is not that.
You don't even have to get to the point where you're reading a post off Scott Aaronson's blog[1] at all; his headline says "If you take nothing else from this blog: quantum computers won't solve hard problems instantly by just trying all solutions in parallel."
In the same way people believe P != NP, most quantum computing people believe BQP != NP, and NP-complete problems will still take exponential time on quantum computers. But if we had access to arbitrary parallel universes then presumably that shouldn't be an issue.
The success on the random (quantum) circuit problem is really a valdiation of Feynman's idea, not Deutsch: classical computers need 2^n bits to simulate n qubits, so we will need quantum computers to efficiently simulate quantum phenomena.
Does access to arbitrary parallel universes imply that they divide up the computation and the correct answer is distributed to all of the universes or in such a collection, there will be sucker universes which will always receive wrong answers ?
Good question! The whole magic of quantum computation versus parallel computation is that the “universe” probabilities interfere with each other so that wrong answers cancel each other out. So I suppose the wrong ”universes” still exist somewhere. But it’s a whole lot less confusing if you view QC as taking place in one universe which is fundamentally probabilistic.
I don't understand the jump from: classical algorithm takes time A -> quantum algorithm takes time B -> (A - B) must be borrowed from a parallel universe.
Maybe A wasn't the most efficient algorithm for this universe to begin with?
Right, and that's part of the argument against quantum computing being a proof (or disproof) of the many-worlds interpretation. Sure, "(A-B) was borrowed from parallel universes" is a possible explanation for why quantum computing can be so fast, but it's by far not the only possible explanation.
> It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch.
That's in line with a religious belief. One camp believes one thing, other believes something else, others refuse to participate and say "shut up and calculate". Nothing wrong with religious beliefs of course, it's just important to know that is what it is.
The Schrödinger equation inherently contains a multiverse. The disagreement is about whether the wave function described by the equation collapses to a single universe upon measurement (i.e. whether the equation stops holding upon measurement), or whether the different branches continue to exist (i.e. the equation continues to hold at all times), each with a different measurement outcome. Regardless, between measurements the different branches exist in parallel. It’s what allows quantum computation to be a thing.
> The Schrödinger equation inherently contains a multiverse.
A simple counterexample is superdeterminism, in which the different measurement outcomes are an illusion and instead there is always a single pre-determined measurement outcome. Note that this does not violate Bell's inequality for hidden variable theories of quantum mechanics, as Bell's inequality only applies to hidden variables uncorrelated to the choice of measurement: in superdeterminism, both are predetermined so perfectly correlated.
When taking the entire universe as a quantum system governed by the Schrödinger equation, then ψ is the universal wavefunction, and its state vector can be decomposed into pointer states that represent the “branches” of MW.
Non of that honkey ponkey is needed if you just give up locality and a hard deterministic explanation like De-Broglie-Bohm gives all the same correct measurements and conclusions like Copenhagen interpretation without multiverses and "wave function collapses".
Copenhagen interpretation is just "easier" (like oops all our calculations about the univers don't seemt to fit, lets invent "dark matter") when the correct explanations makes any real world calculation practically impossible (thus ending most of physics further study) as any atom depends on every other atom at any time.
De Broglie–Bohm doesn’t remove anything from the wave function, and thus all the pointer states therein contained are still present. The theory basically claims that one of them is special and really exists, whereas the others only mathematically exist, but philosophically it’s not clear what the difference would be. The Broglie–Bohm ontology is bigger than MW rather than smaller.
I suspect the real issue is that Big Tech investors and executives (including Sundar Pichai) are utterly hopped up on sci-fi, and this sort of stuff convinces them to dedicate resources to quantum computing.
>Do quantum computing folks really think that we are borrowing capacity from other universes for these calculations?
Doesn't this also mean that other universes have civilizations that could potentially borrow capacity from our universe, and if so, what would that look like?
It's a perfectly legit interpretation of what's happening, and many physicists share the same opinion. Of course the big caveat is that you need to interfere those worlds so that they cancel out, which necessarily requires a lower algorithmic bound which prevents you from doing infinite amount of computation in an instant.
This is a viable interpretation of quantum mechanics, but currently there is no way to scientifically falsify or confirm any particular interpretation. The boundary between philosophy and science is fuzzy at times, but this question is solidly on the side of philosophy.
That being said, I think the two most commonly preferred interpretations of quantum mechanics among physicists are 'Many Worlds' and 'I try not to think about it too hard.'
Well. If you study quantum physics and the folks who found it like Max Planck, they believed in "a conscious and intelligent non-visible living energy force .. . the matrix mind of all matter".
I don't know much about multiverse, but we need something external to explain the magic we uncover.
Energy and quantum mechanics are really cool but dense to get into. Like Planck, I suspect there's a link between consciousness and matter. I also think our energy doesn't cease to exist when our human carcass expires.
"Just marketing" in science journalism and publications is basically at the root of the anti-intellectualism movement right now (other than the standard hyper-fundamentalist Christians that need to convince people that science in general is all fraud), everyone sees all these wild claims and conclusions made by "science journalists" with zero scientific training and literal university PR departments that are trivially disproved in the layman's mind simply by the fact that they don't happen, and they lose faith not in the journalists who have no idea what they are writing about, but in science itself
I used to love Popular Science magazine in middle school, but by high school I had noticed how much it's claims were hyperbole and outright nonsense. I can't fathom how or why, but most people blame the scientists for it.
You've mentioned this in another comment. I have to point out, even if this is his opinion, and he has been influential in the field, it does not mean that this specific idea of his has been influential.
Correct. The laws of quantum mechanics (used for building quantum computers among other things) make very little assumptions on the nature of the universe, and support multiple interpretations, many-worlds being only one of them.
Quantum mechanics is a tool to calculate observable values, and this tool works very successfully without needing to make strong assumptions about the nature of the universe.
> It performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 1025 or 10 septillion years. If you want to write it out, it’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
If it's not, what would be your explanation for this significant improvement then?
Quantum computing can perform certain calculations much faster than classical computing in the same way classical computing can perform certain calculations much faster than an abacus
> In 1942, during the Nazi occupation of France, Weil fled to the United States at the last possible moment, and only because she knew that her parents, bourgeois Jews, would not leave without her.
> her virulent, if complex anti-Semitism, a subject over which nearly all of her present-day commentators pass in silence
This is weird.
Her parents were Jews, yet she was virulently anti-Semetic?
And the essay's author, Jack Hanson, makes a point to note that her present-day commentators turn a blind eye to it ... yet he never mentions it again?
I read some of her books and it also sounds weird to me. The only thing that struck me is that she saw the tribe of Israel in the ancient testament as a nasty example of one group crushing another, something she also didn't like in the roman empire, and also in how french regions were culturally crushed at the expense of the center.
Googling turned up this criticism:
- Simone Weil, whose life was devoted to witnessing oppression and injustice, and was almost silent about the persecution of Jews by Nazis — chose to instead focus on the fate of France at the hands of the Germans
https://levecenter.ucla.edu/mary-gordon-2013/
She converted to Christianity later in her life. The reasons why she did it would probably turn a lot of people towards Christ as well.
I don't think she converted to Christianity out of spite of Judaism, but rather out of love for Christ. In several of her writings she refers to Jesus as the absolute role model a human could ever strive to be.
She did write a couple things that were critical about Judaism, but she also wrote a lot of things that were critical about almost everything that came across her life, being a philosopher.
I wouldn't label her as anti-semitic, though, mainly because one of the main motives behind her whole life (not just her writings, and this is what sets her apart from other philosophers), is to exercise love for all human beings.
(I have read a lot about her but wouldn't consider myself an expert on Weil yet, so this is mostly my intuition about her.)
To add to this it should be noted that some consider Christianity inherently antisemitic, either because they believe all Christians blame all Jews for Christ's crucifixion, or because Christians believe the New Testament presents a new divine contract that replaces the old contract (Judaism).
There was a strong anti-semitic feeling in Europe in the past centuries (including the XXth) [0][1].
The theory that the Jews were conspiring to sacrifice Christian children had started to spread in the 11th century. The legend proliferated first in England and then in France. [2].
Martin Luther in his early days naively imagining that the Jews, to whom he was attracted by his studies, would flock to the Church in his reformed version. When nothing of the sort happened, he denounced them in a set of pamphlets written in vituperative fury. He had produced the early, favorable "That Christ Was Born a Jew" in 1523, but after he turned on this so-called "damned, rejected race," he wrote Against the Sabbatarians (1538) and On the Jews and Their Lies (1543) [3].
One of the main points of the New Testament is that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. If you're not a Christian, you'd say that Christianity was originally a sect of Judaism; but to a Christian like myself, Christianity is Judaism.
Of course, this sadly does not stop some people from being antisemitic, especially if you go back a few centuries. But for them, the Bible has a few paragraphs (Romans 11:11–32) specifically explaining why it is wrong for Gentile Christians to think that they are somehow "better" than the Israelites. For example, it was only through ancient Israel's rejection of Jesus that Paul (himself a Jew) went to preach to the Gentiles in the first place, and thus arrogance is unwarranted. Also, God will still save Israel in the end and has not abandoned them. To me, this last point feels like a slam dunk case against anyone who calls themselves a Christian and yet is antisemitic—why would a follower of God hate those whom God wants to save?[0]
All this to say, I think that Christianity's own scripture preaches the exact opposite of antisemitism, and so it's inaccurate to call Christianity "antisemitic on a rather deep level."
[0] Frankly, this applies more generally to Christian attitudes towards non-Christians in general. We have no grounds to be holier-than-thou, since no one is saved by their own goodness. And yet, at least on the internet, there's a general perception that that's how (American) Christians are towards others. That is precisely the opposite of what Jesus did (Mark 2:16–17), and He actually was holier than the rest of us.
Tell this to the catholic church and to the orthodox ones who pronounced themselves against the jews and we are talking a christian grownup in a catholic environment.
That’s great when what they want to do is aligned with what the organization needs. It’s essentially not-managing.
The issue is, many times high performers just aren’t aligned with what needs doing, and by not-managing them, inexperienced managers create a world where you have tons of “high performance” arriving absolutely nowhere. You see this at every bloated organization (in particular at big tech).
I’ve got a high performer on my team and I do think (okay, wouldn’t I ;) that in managing speed vs quality and explicit attention to the learning curve of others I’ve managed to create a few more golden nuggets. No high performer (perhaps: nobody, ever) has all professional skills in the same measure.
Not all hospice or elder-care providers recommend affirming hallucinations.
Here's a quote from a nursing home guide that explores the ethical considerations of this practice:
> Lying to someone with dementia, often termed “therapeutic lying,” poses a nuanced ethical dilemma. While entering a person’s altered reality can indeed reduce their immediate distress, it’s important to acknowledge that lying is still lying.
> Over time, this practice may lead to confusion, especially in moments of clarity, and strain the trust and relationship between the patient and caregiver.
> This complexity has led caregivers and professionals to explore alternative communication strategies that honor the truth while providing comfort and reducing agitation. Two such approaches are reflection and redirection. Reflection involves acknowledging the person’s feelings and statements without directly affirming the distorted reality or lying. Redirection gently shifts the conversation or activity towards something positive and engaging without directly contradicting the person’s beliefs.
reply