Sure, I'd agree. But this brings up the idea of autopoiesis, and then I think things get really murky.
One question that interests me is this: Does intelligence have as a prerequisite a living system, such as a cell? If so, what is our definition of the living system and why is that important? If not, what abstract qualities of intelligence are we really trying to capture?
> Behind every successful neural network is a human brain.
I've spent a lot of time trying to explain this to people, that there is a confluence between the human brain and the machine, people tend to look at the machine separately, which is a mistake. When I say unequivocally, 'there is no such thing as machine intelligence', I just get blank stares.
Where is it documented that it occurs in places with lower vaccination rates? From my reading, in one cluster, 8 out of 9 were up to date with their vaccinations.
The success of statistical machine learning is more limited than may be obvious. Try to think of problems these methods can't solve, then try to think of problems they can solve. Which stack is thicker? Then ask yourself, for the problems they can solve--can they really solve them as well as humans? Machine Translation, I'm looking at you, Image Recongition--I'm also looking at you. If they can solve them as well as humans, ask 'how much human intelligence is imprinted into this machine artifact?' Yes, AlphaGo, I'm looking right at you.
I'm a little worried about these companies over-hyping the current state of capability. For sure, this is an exciting time though, and I am certainly optimistic about the long-term prospects. Anyone interested would do well to read [0]
This is really great! For those interested, another book on the way is: http://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~noson/MCtext.html. I've read Noson's other book on Quantum Computing and it was really clear, with lot's of examples.
What about Gas Lamp in San Diego? Downtown Santa Barbara? Tons of Southern California communities have walkable downtowns...more than I can list...Montrose, Fullerton, Redondo, Huntington Beach, Santa Ana, Sierra Madre. Honestly, you could do a year of day trips just visiting them all. Way more than I can list here.
This is verbatim from 'Explorations in Quantum Computing' by Colin P. Williams:
"The utility of the Hadamard gate derives from that fact that by applying, in parallel, a separate Hadamard gate to each of n qubits, each initially in the state |0⟩,
1 H|0⟩⊗H|0⟩⊗···⊗H|0⟩= √
|j⟩ (2.20)
we can create an n-qubit superposition containing 2n component eigenstates. These eigenstates represent all the possible bit strings one can write using n bits. The importance of this capability is often overlooked. But, in reality, it is one of the most important tricks of quantum computing as it gives is the ability to load exponentially many indices into a quantum computer using only polynomially many operations. Had Nature been unkind, and had we had to enter the different bit-strings individually, as we do in classical computing, then quantum computing would have had far less potential for breakthroughs in computational complexity."
I'm just talking about loading a quantum register, there are other issues with gate times and decoherence.
> Yes, but my point is that if your input is an arbitrary collection of classical N-bits, then in general you will require an exponential number of quantum operations to set stuff it into an N-qubit initial state, which means you get zero speedup
Can you provide a reference for this? My understanding is that you can efficiently setup qubits using a hadamard transform
What do you mean exactly by starting distribution? I'm definitely not saying you get the answer to every problem in a single evaluation step, no one ever said that.
Yes, they are the theoretically the most elegant way to deal with decoherence. They rely on an exotic state of matter, non-abelian anyons(many still working on verifying their existence), and winding discrete non-abelian anyons into a topological braid, which disperses the quantum state spatially, making it much more resilient against decoherence(obvious simplifications made). This is the specific type of quantum computation that Microsoft is pursuing ala Michael Freedman and co.
Honestly, I don't understand the point you are making. If you can explain to me how the Deutsch-Joza algorithm works without making reference to the fact that a function evaluation happens on a qubit in superposition(and thus an expanded state-space, as the simplest example), sure. I sincerely don't understand your points about classical simulation, or input/output in classical computers.
Imagine you have a classical bit string 0101, there are 2^4 possible different configurations of this string, and the classical computer will always exist in ONE of them.
A quantum computer, with a qubit register 0101, can be put into a superposition state between all 4 qubits, where the state of the qubit register is ALL 2^4 different configurations simultaneously....now scale that up to 50-100-1000 qubits and you get the idea. The quantum computer has a ridiculous advantage in terms of holding state spaces.
I'm not sure it's useful anymore to point to quantum computers and say: 'Hey! You're not getting all your function evaluations back....so they're weak'. I feel this leads to misconceptions about quantum computing as well. You have to remember, the tensor product of N qubits is an exponentially expanding space...and the functions DO get evaluated in that space, the trick being you have to extract a JOINT property of the function evaluations, rather than the result of each one individually. Let's be clear, even with this caveat, the potential of quantum computing is enormous. I've personally read Kalai's papers and in my opinion, his objections boil down to 'it's just too good to be true'....but hey...we'll see :)
El Segundo would probably make the most sense....exact proximity to LAX, friendly business climate, lot's of warehouse space being converted into offices already.
I think it is tapping into the concerns of some, like for instance Alan Kay, that television, apps, screens, media, etc have successfully captured a good portion of the attention span of a very wide swath of our population. It questions whether or not this is a good thing, especially for kids, and whether they would be better served removed from this exposure, or if isolation in itself presents risks..ie social development. I guess I agree with the sentiment, but I don't think people need to go to the extremes. The 'extreme' thing I did was get rid of the T.V., so basically I'm the only person with kids that I know that does not have one in their living room...I guess that's weird enough?
Perhaps we should all read this, or at least look at it from a different perspective, as I confess I do not study these issues carefully, but I don't think any type of neo-Malthusianism is worthwhile.
We struggled quite a bit with this question. I think our initial instinct was to be a bit militant about it, but the reality is there is so much of this in our society that unless you're willing to go full Captain Fantastic they will inevitably be exposed to these types of things growing up. It happens through relatives, well-meaning friends, birthday parties, school, media, etc, it's impossible to try and weed it all out. I guess now we take the approach where if someone gives them something we wouldn't, we don't make a big deal about it, especially not in front of the kids. Kids are very malleable and fickle, and as soon as they forget about it(maybe an hour, a day, whatever), we just throw it away. We do make it clear to our immediate family what we don't find appropriate, but at the same time, we're fully conscious of the culture we are a part of. It's not necessarily an easy line to walk, and there isn't really much guidance out there, but we feel it's important to be strong in our course, without being so inflexible given the realities.
This is a pretty charged topic, and it's difficult to make the case unequivocally. In our family, it got to the point where people were emailing research papers(academics and doctors in the family) back and forth and Christmas was ruined. I don't have time to cite all the papers on both sides of this, but for us(my wife feels even more strongly about this than I do), it came down to the realization that AT BEST all the girl's toys and clothes could do no harm to their psyche. AT WORST, it could possibly instill in them a type of inferiority with respect to boys in terms of technical ability, and a diminished sense of their place in the world with respect to boys. As a scientist, I have to consider all the evidence, and as a parent, I have to make the decisions I think will help make my children stronger. My wife and I basically came to the conclusion that "girl's toys" and "girl's clothes" were bullshit, and an unnecessary risk to their psyche. Unfortunately pink is collateral damage in this war, as it is so ubiquitously used in our culture to demarcate girl from boy. I can in no way say that we are right, not in a scientific sense, I can only say that after spending hours and hours in toy and clothes aisles, I would say as a culture it's time to rethink gender neutrality, and the way we are separating boys and girls with clothes and toys from a very young age.
Fair enough question I suppose. I am a millennial, and I think many of our generation, and especially the younger generation are afraid of having more than say two or three kids, if they plan on having kids. This is certainly reasonable given the economic challenges we face and most principal among those housing costs. Short answer: We are punks I guess, we didn't want to let any of those economic factors dictate what size family we could have. Our condo is 1400 square ft., and costs exactly half what a 1200 square ft. house costs. In general, people I think way overvalue the quintessential American home. Parks and malls are free and work great, and it's nice to get out of the house more often. We live 1.2 miles from the beach, another great resource made possible for us only because of the decision to live in a condo. For us it made sense and it works great. We wanted a bigger family and we just did it, no regrets.
Raising children with technology is certainly a challenge. I have 5 kids, oldest 8 years old, youngest 15 months, living in a condo in LA because...you know......f'ing real estate prices, single family homes with 1200 square feet are 1.3 million in our district. So how do you let kids be free if they can't even go outside really?...and multiple kids in a condo without some kind of T.V. or tablet is utter insanity.
It's been very tough, but we don't have a T.V., we do let our kids use the tablet, with restricted apps and time. Our neighbors below us hate us and are moving....because you know....five kids stomping around above them, but I guess this is the new reality. The best thing we did was smooth coat all the walls with plaster and then make 2 large chalkboard walls. I am constantly surprised by how well this worked out. I think the tactility of the chalk has been an important factor, one that I overlooked, as I always used dry erase markers. I'm a convert to chalk now and my kids only use the best, Hagaromo full-touch. Working on math homework is a dream now as I can easily sketch out geometric concepts and have them trace over it with their fingers. Sure you could do it on paper, but something about standing in front of the chalkboard makes it more compelling. Aside from that setting up a folding table on the balcony and buying them a bunch of mid-grade chemistry stuff has also worked out surprisingly well. A couple days ago they created a catalytic reaction that actually gave off quite a good bit of heat. Could they have injured themselves? Probably. I'd rather have them experiment and explore.
4 of my kids are girls, and this raises special challenges. We fought a war with both sets of grandparents about not buying them dresses or pink gender defining toys. I was shocked how much resistance we got on this, but I strongly advise parents of girls to consider what the value of gender neutrality is, and whether or not it makes sense for them to try and abide by it when buying toys or clothes. If you do, be prepared to meet with a lot of resistance, both from your parents and public school. Just my two cents.
Quantum computing will not replace your word processor, and we don't need it for things like building websites, apps, or really most software...of course, there are potential applications in AI, but that aside it's not generally applicable in that sense. However, when it comes to scientific computing, or the development of new technologies, materials, medicines, etc...it's potential applications within those domains are likely transformative. Without going into too much detail, everything you see around you(chemicals, compounds, etc) can be broken down within the theory of QED(quantum electrodynamics) ultimately, and quantum computers can do calculations for QED/quantum chemistry much better than classical computers...so the question becomes...what can you do now that you can simulate reality much more accurately? These are likely to be the most important applications for the next 5-10-15 years.
Agreed, I renovated basically my entire condo using this process, hiring out the jobs that looked unreasonable to try and do myself. I was able to do quite a bit though, youtube is awesome for this.