Comment by munchler

Comment by munchler 14 hours ago

4 replies

This is an excellent talk by Scott Aaronson, although it's not something that can be digested as quickly as the typical HN post. The summary slide at the end is perhaps a good introduction to the scope of the topic:

* In math, we are finite beings trying to apprehend the infinite

* The Busy Beaver function actually quantifies that (!)

* Even the finite can exceed the scope of the cosmos. That's where we need physics and complexity theory

* Quantum computers look like they're already slightly expanding the scope of what mathematical statements we can know

* Can we know even more than that? Depends what the ultimate laws of physics are

analog31 2 hours ago

>>> In math, we are finite beings trying to apprehend the infinite

Watched the entire lecture. Fascinating. An amusing aside is that this is the first time I've encountered that statement, where it wasn't just an empty assertion, but actually had some meat on the bones.

jerf 13 hours ago

"although it's not something that can be digested as quickly as the typical HN post"

I really want a view of HN that is something like the upvotes divided by the number of comments (although, not necessarily linear). Those aren't necessarily the "best" by every metric, not saying this is the "best" view or anything, but it would be an interesting one.

  • gsf_emergency 12 hours ago

    Pretty sure dang (or other mods) has that view as a sidebar or something, maybe you can request that as an exclusive feature for top karmies. It would, as a bonus, already cover the edge cases you haven't thought about..