
Grading Trudeau on quantum computing - privong
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2694
======
beloch
In Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy the job of the galactic president, Zaphod
Beeblebrox, is described as being "not to wield power but to draw attention
away from it". Trudeau really reminds me of this quote quite a bit.

In terms of traditional metrics of performance, Trudeau was heavily outclassed
in leader debates during the last election. He demonstrated almost no ability
to address questions directly and instead resorted to pre-rehearsed sound-
bytes for nearly everything, often on topics not even tangentially related to
what was being discussed. His inability to stay on topic actually let the
encumbent PM off of particularly vicious hooks on more than one occasion.
However, those sound-bytes sounded great when taken out of context and chopped
up into bits for news broadcasts, even if they were somewhat baffling to the
very few people who apparently tuned into the full debates and paid attention
to how well answers addressed questions. That election probably lowered the
bar for quality discourse in Canadian politics by quite a bit. Next election,
everyone is going to be talking in sound-bytes. We might as well just have
debates on twitter, you know, "because it's 2019" or whatever the year will
be.

Ever since the election, Trudeau hasn't stopped campaigning. Vogue photo
spreads. Dining at the white-house. Touring the country. While the previous PM
was almost a shut-in, Trudeau is tireless in his press appearances. It's
almost as if somebody else is actually running the country and he's, well,
distracting the public's eye.

When pressed, Trudeau does have a tendency to promise the moon to just about
anyone though. He's been racking up unfulfillable promises left, right, and
center. No doubt he left Obama with some pretty wild promises too. This could
eventually come crashing down on him but, for now, the honeymoon is still
going pretty strong. Most Canadians love having a glamorous PM and the
international attention that brings. Would HN be upvoting this story if it was
Stephan Dion or Stephen Harper trying to teach QM?

~~~
benzor
While I agree with your points about him debating more in sound bytes than in
real answers...

In fairness he's actually been doing reasonably well on his promises, as
tracked by the TrudeauMetre[1]. Off the top of my head, unmuzzling scientists,
restoring the long form census, and legalizing marijuana are all big
contentious points that are either done or seriously underway. Given the
abysmal promise-to-result ratio of typical politicians he's earned a passing
grade in my books.

[]1 [https://www.trudeaumetre.ca/](https://www.trudeaumetre.ca/)

~~~
beloch
219 promises tracked: 29 achieved 15 broken 63 in progress 112 not started

So he's already broken 6.8% of his total promises just 1/8th of the way
through his term. That's not good. He's also broken just over half as many
promises as he's kept, which I'd say is pretty darned typical of politicians.

Legalizing marijuana is in progress, but I've heard nothing concrete.
Unmuzzling scientists and restoring the long form census were both good.
Reversing the transparency act was bad. I was most interested in his promises
to increase government transparency, but some are reporting it's actually
worse [1]. He also promised in an interview with Peter Mansbridge to reduce
the concentration of power in the PMO, but he's done nothing about that so
far.

We're just an eigth of the way through his term, so the jury is still out in
my opinion. He's done some good, some bad, but at this point he's still mostly
just a bundle of promises.

[1][http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thehouse/preston-manning-s-
prescript...](http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thehouse/preston-manning-s-prescription-
to-recharge-the-right-1.3463742/liberal-fiscal-plans-less-transparent-than-
under-harper-kevin-page-says-1.3464078)

~~~
kilotaras
>So he's already broken 6.8% of his total promises just 1/8th of the way
through his term. That's not good. He's also broken just over half as many
promises as he's kept, which I'd say is pretty darned typical of politicians.

Sadly that's not that bad. For example you can check Ukraines MP's
promises[1]. It's in Ukrainian, so yellow is WIP, green/red are self-
explanatory and black is total.

[1]
[http://www.slovoidilo.ua/ratings/persons/parliament/all/inde...](http://www.slovoidilo.ua/ratings/persons/parliament/all/index.html)

------
rectang
Even if Trudeau learned the definition the morning of, it speaks well of his
background in engineering and math that he was able to assimilate such
information and reformulate it coherently.

Presenting a technical subject at just the right level of sophistication for a
given audience is an invigorating intellectual exercise.

~~~
JamilD
> Presenting a technical subject at just the right level of sophistication for
> a given audience

I don't think the limiting factor here was the intelligence of the _audience_
, given that he was presenting at the Perimeter Institute.

That being said, I agree completely on your first point, and it's incredibly
refreshing to see a politician make an effort to learn about a technical
subject.

~~~
morgante
> I don't think the limiting factor here was the intelligence of the audience,
> given that he was presenting at the Perimeter Institute.

As the PM, his audience is always far larger than those in the immediate
vicinity. Not to mention the gaggle of non-technical journalists who _were_
there.

------
stevehiehn
I think the take-away here is not what so much what PM Trudeau knows or
doesn't know about quantum computing. It reveals how low our expectations are
of our leaders.

~~~
godzillabrennus
Imagine for a second that your roles were reversed and you were the politician
who knew a lot about science, engineering and technology. Now it's your job to
lead a nation, one of the worlds leading armed forces (yes Canada knows how to
fight) and are responsible for trade policies that Impact all your
constituents. Suddenly a terror group in <<insert war torn African country>>
bombs a mall. How much do you know about the ethnic groups in <<insert war
torn African country>> and what would your response be? Should you invade?
What would happen if that government failed? Can you do startegic strikes?
Hell, what do you do to prevent another bombing?

I mean, it'd be great if our leaders all had a better understanding of STEM
but Herbert Hoover was an engineer and it's wife's accepted that his economic
policies deepened the Great Depression.

~~~
Inthenameofmine
Sounds like a non-issue. How many of today's "policy heads" would know
anything about the situation on the ground of that hypothetical nation? I
personally think anybody with sufficient STEM background has a higher chance
of assimilating and interpreting policy knowledge than pure policy-heads.

You'll find plenty of Physics students with whom you can have an advanced
policy or philosophy discussion, but I've never met a Policy or Philosophy
student with any Physics knowledge.

~~~
jacalata
Well sure, plenty of physics students are willing to engage in an advanced
policy discussion, but once you tell them that you will not assume the country
is a sphere they have a lot less to offer.

------
martythemaniak
Trudeau did complete two years of engineering at a decent school and worked as
a math teacher.

While we don't know if he was prepped or regurgitated a paragraph, he probably
has the faculties and interest to have a general understanding of what he was
talking about. Oftentimes it's easier to actually learn something than to
cheat convincingly.

~~~
canistr
I can't seem to find much information with regards to his time studying
engineering at Montreal. One article (albeit, the Toronto Sun so take it with
a grain of salt) claims he dropped out. And I can't find anything that
mentions what type of engineering he studied. It does seem a bit strange to go
from studying English Literature, to becoming a teacher, to suddenly studying
engineering before switching to environmental geography.

~~~
rybosome
Is that strange? I switched from radiology to music composition to business to
computer science.

------
ourmandave
To me, he's sending a huge message that science is valued, not denied. And
it's inspiring, which I think is one of the PM's jobs.

So what's the reporter's next question? "When will Canada start dropping
quantum bombs on ISIL?" =(

~~~
rybosome
> To me, he's sending a huge message that science is valued

I find it surreal that such a thing needs to be done, as if science has not
proven its worth time and time again, but here we are.

~~~
justratsinacoat
Given his direct political predecessor's attitude toward things like funding
experimental reactors, or funding NSERC, or funding basic research, any
message that validates science is a good and probably necessary one.

------
GuiA
Jonathan Blow tweeted about this last night - I particularly agree with him
about how everyone ridiculed the old politician who said the Internet was a
"series of pipes", but here everyone is praising the young, hot Trudeau for
his knowledge of quantum computing when really the two display a similar level
of basic understanding about that subject.

In any case, it's not about the politicians' knowledge - it's not Trudeau's
job to know about QC - but how the public's .

[https://mobile.twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/721407108852...](https://mobile.twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/721407108852232192)

~~~
archgoon
Well, here's the original Steven's quote.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE)

He was mocked more at the time for the email bit, namely the idea that the
reason why he didn't get his email for 4 days was because of people streaming
videos on the internet.

However, it's not clear that he had a good understanding of the analogy
himself (I'm sure that revisionists like Mr. Blow, who do understand how the
internet work, can justify it, but it's not Mr. Blow's understanding that
we're interested in here, as Mr. Blow is not proposing legislation to block
Net Neutrality). In addition to the email bit, he seems to believe that the
internet used to be a point to point communication network, whereas now the
"industry wisely provided streaming, in effect, a kind of long distance, which
is what we've got now". Given this, it's really not clear at all what "it's
not a truck, it's a series of tubes" is supposed to clarify.

Now, if Mr. Trudeau was using his understanding of Quantum Computing to
justify a large government subsidy of DWave, there would be good cause to look
at this throwaway quote in more detail.

~~~
SilasX
>Given this, it's really not clear at all what "it's not a truck, it's a
series of tubes" is supposed to clarify.

I always assumed that was distinguishing between "quantized" and continuous
network systems. That is, adding one more load to a truck ("just dump"ing
something on it), one more person to a bus, doesn't make the roads any more
congested, but trying to send one more gallon of water through a pipe system
will slow it down or add to the queue length.

The internet, then, is more like the latter, in that every piece of
information carries some opportunity cost to sending, rather than being a
bunch of trucks with spare, underutilized capacity.

~~~
archgoon
> but trying to send one more gallon of water through a pipe system.

If you actually forced an additional gallon of water into a pipe, you make
everything flow out faster.

~~~
SilasX
Right but the relevant user action here would be turning on a faucet, which
slows things down for everyone else.

~~~
archgoon
>I'm sure that revisionists like Mr. Blow, who do understand how the internet
work, can justify it, but it's not Mr. Blow's understanding that we're
interested in here, as Mr. Blow is not proposing legislation to block Net
Neutrality.

------
joaorico
For me the most interesting bit was Scott's "10 second" hypothetical reply to
the reporter/general audience on what quantum computing is (found in one of
his comments):

"I say something about how a QC is a proposed device that would solve certain
specific problems much faster than we know how to solve them today, by taking
advantage of quantum mechanics, which generalizes the laws of classical
probability.

Then I talk about how you’d never talk about a -20% chance of rain tomorrow,
but quantum mechanics is based on numbers called amplitudes, which can be
positive or negative or even complex numbers.

And how, if an event can happen one way with a positive amplitude and another
way with a negative amplitude, the two possibilities can “interfere
destructively” and cancel each other out, so that the event never happens at
all. And how the state of a QC with (say) 1000 bits would have one amplitude
for each of 21000 possible settings of the bits—an astronomical amount of
information, if one wanted to write it down classically, for example in order
to simulate what the QC was doing classically.

But about how, when you measure the QC’s state, you just see a single random
output (with its probability determined by its amplitude), not the gargantuan
list of possibilities. And about how the goal, in QC, is always to choreograph
things so that the possible paths leading to each wrong answer interfere
destructively and cancel each other out, (say) some having positive amplitudes
and others negative, whereas the paths leading to right answer reinforce.

And how this is a very weird and specialized capability—it’s not nearly as
simple as “trying all the answers in parallel” (if you did that, you’d simply
observe a random answer), nor is it just a smaller or faster version of
ordinary computing (a QC might even be “bigger” or “slower” than an ordinary
one; all the hoped-for advantage comes from the QC’s ability to create
interference patterns).

Finally I talk about how a QC is known to give huge advantages over any known
classical algorithm for a few tasks of practical importance (quantum
simulation, breaking almost all the crypto used today…), and it might also
give some advantages for broader goals like optimization and machine learning,
but that’s an active research topic, and if the advantages exist they’ll
probably be more modest and/or specialized."

------
Walkman
Someone on FB speculated that it was a trick just for this video:

> the person asking the question probably works for Trudeau and Trudeau had
> previously memorized the whole quantum explanation just for this video.

and after reading an article about this claimed that:

> Trudeau had actually learned the definition of quantum computing that very
> morning before this conference and admitted to the fact.

Source:
[https://www.facebook.com/boeree.liv/posts/1092245874166258?c...](https://www.facebook.com/boeree.liv/posts/1092245874166258?comment_id=1092263554164490&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R9%22%7D)

~~~
pj_mukh
How dare he educate himself on the subject of his government's funding?! /s

P.S: I didn't mean to be snarky. Any politician that educates himself to even
appear smart , instead of trying come off as anti-intellectual "joe six-pack"
or simply a spin master (see: Trudeau's predecessor) is progress to me.

~~~
cthor
You don't think him reciting a canned script made to give the impression of
expertise and closing with "I could talk about this for ages..." is deceptive?

He was talking like he was well-versed in the subject, when he had really just
read some cliff notes.

~~~
morgante
Nobody could watch the clip and thing Trudeau is _actually_ an expert in
quantum computing. He was clearly joking about being able to talk about it for
ages.

He came across as an intelligent and funny politician who had made the effort
to at least develop a modicum of understanding for something he's funding.
Nothing more and nothing less.

------
tosseraccount
It seems like we know the Prime Minister's position on this but we just can't
tell how he's moving on it.

~~~
afrancis
Well the Trudeau government just earmarked 50 million for five years to the
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

~~~
criley2
I think he's making a joke about a "quantum politician" :)

------
return0
I 've read this story in so many places. It's "good comedy", and I like the
guy, but he used it to gain some popularity points (he seems to be good at
that in general). I bet Angela Merkel could easily beat him in anything
quantum, but what is the point? We should expect world leaders to have these
abilities.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
Remember Obama and the bubble sort?

~~~
JamilD
From the article:

> One could also compare against Obama’s 2008 answer about bubblesort, which
> was just a mention of a keyword by comparison.

------
amelius
I'm wondering if massive bacterial computation will beat quantum computing on
tasks like factorizing large integers.

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jul/24/bacteri...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jul/24/bacteria-
computer)

~~~
weinzierl
No, the amazing thing in the article you linked is that bacteria colonies can
solve complex mathematical problems _at all_. No one said they will be faster
than other classical computers.

If you like to read about this kind of problems: Many of Scott Aaronson's
other post are about the limits of efficient computation. If you are
interested especially in the limits of alternative approaches like protein
folding, analog computing and anthropic computing I can recommend "NP-complete
Problems and Physical Reality"[1].

[1]
[http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/npcomplete.pdf](http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/npcomplete.pdf)

~~~
amelius
Well, thanks for the link, but I meant "faster" in the sense of being the
first to provide a practical solution. By the way, I'm assuming that with
bacterial computing, it (somehow) becomes simple to exponentially duplicate
your computation building blocks.

~~~
jholman
Once the bacteria reach some limit of saturation, they can only multiply as
fast as they can geographically spread to new area. If they have some maximum
speed of physical spread, then that limits them to a maximum speed of n^2 in
two dimensions, or n^3 in three dimensions. If you think they're going to keep
up exponential growth long enough to make a difference, that implies that you
think they'll spread faster and faster across the lab, like a bad movie.

------
verelo
I'm going to assume someone gave him notes prior to the interview and he read
them so he would sound like he knew what he was on about. Having said that, I
would pay for the comedic value of seeing GW Bush string that sentence
together (even if someone else did prepare it for him).

------
danbruc
I think that story gets blown way out of proportion. If you picked random
people on a street and asked them to integrate 4x³ from 0 to 2, you would
maybe get somewhere between 1% and 10% correct answers, probably way closer to
1%. Still this is something that maybe half of the people once learned how to
do in school, they just forget it because they don't need it in everyday life.
But spend an hour or two and you can certainly teach them once again how to do
it. And most of them will of course also forget it again pretty soon. Along
the same line it shouldn't be to hard to give someone a rough idea of the
difference between classical and quantum mechanics, notwithstanding that most
people will pretty soon only have faint memories.

~~~
khnd
i think "half the people" is an overestimate. i don't think most people learn
integration in school. i'd be surprised if half learn differential calculus.

~~~
danbruc
This is probably pretty country specific, I just looked up which proportion of
people in Germany reaches the qualification to enter university, about 50%,
and calculus is mandatory on that way, differential and integral. But I
ignored that this proportion increased over time, it was only 22% in 1980. So
let's call it a quarter of the population or make the differentiate or explain
something about plate tectonics.

------
caiob
Jealous much?

------
wrong_variable
Damn, the Canadians must be so proud to have such an awesome leader. video
link -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZBLSjF56S8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZBLSjF56S8)

~~~
sn41
Yes, this is a great achievement. But there are precedents - the Singapore PM
is a Senior Wrangler [1], a former Indian president was a rocket scientist [2]
- oh, and some nasty fellow in the middle east was an ophthalmologist in
London [3], lest we forget.

I believe technical competence is uncorrelated to adminisitrative
effectiveness.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Hsien_Loong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Hsien_Loong)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._P._J._Abdul_Kalam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._P._J._Abdul_Kalam)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-
Assad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad)

~~~
morgante
> I believe technical competence is uncorrelated to adminisitrative
> effectiveness.

I don't. Many Asian nations (including Singapore, China, etc.) are largely
governed by engineering majors and I do believe this has been helpful for
improving administrative effectiveness. This stands in stark contrast to
countries where governance is dominated by either lawyers (the US) or military
members (many other developing nations).

~~~
adrenalinelol
I don't think any meaningful correlation can be drawn from what a head-of-
state or high ranking politician studied in college or where they went to
college to their aptitude/competence for governance.

Our last two presidents have professional degrees from the same institution
(Harvard) and they do not govern in the same fashion in most areas other than
counter-terrorism. China also doesn't choose it's politicians via elections,
thus someone who is highly technical and let me stereotype here for a
second... most likely not charismatic and/or having developed a sense of
political empathy... facets that a lawyer or career manager (MBA) are more
likely to develop, would be able to move up in the ranks (in the CCP in this
case).

However, this doesn't really reflect on HOW someone chooses to implement
policy or govern, comparing China vs U.S. is apples and oranges because you
can't legitimately protest the CCP, this isn't the case of the major parties
in the U.S. Thus the policies will be molded to some extent of popular
opinion, which is normally not true in a dictatorship.

~~~
morgante
First of all, in the world scheme President Obama and President Bush are quite
close together in their governing strategies and policies. That's the nature
of the kind of politician we elect in the United States.

However, it extends _far_ beyond the head of state. All levels of government
in Chinese government are dominated by engineers instead of lawyers or career
politicians.

> However, this doesn't really reflect on HOW someone chooses to implement
> policy or govern

Of course it does. We even have a word for it: technocracy. There are dramatic
differences and if you _don 't_ think that then I'm curious why you delved
into perpetrating negative stereotypes about engineers.

~~~
adrenalinelol
I don't agree that Bush and Obama share governing strategies. For example GWB
was very comfortable out-sourcing large problems to his lieutenants, whereas
Obama seems to do it only if he feels it'd result in a better outcome if he
wasn't personally involved. Items such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to
the VP/Rumsfeld, Mortgage crisis to Paulson/Bernanke, etc... Contrast this to
Obama where he held multiple cabinet meetings with regard troop levels in
Afghanistan early in his presidency. On foreign policy they also differ where
GWB seemed to be very decisive (or overly depending on who you ask). Whereas
Obama to this day exercises extreme caution, at least publicly. I could cite a
lot of examples, but of course this is more the realm of opinion.

On my somewhat poorly worded point about engineers on average being less
interpersonal than a typical lawyer/mba. I don't view such attributes
negatively; my intention was to point out that engineers' day-to-day jobs
don't normally involve work oriented social interaction with people they don't
know(i.e. someone other than their team). Putting it another way a
lawyer/manager without strong interpersonal skills has a lower career ceiling
than an engineer with personality trait. Thus it isn't unreasonable to assume
said fields attract different types of people. Thus governance being a partial
function of what subject someone opted for in school would in my opinion act
as a very small variable in contrast to why X person choose said subject.

> Of course it does. We even have a word for it: technocracy.

It's an apples to oranges comparison if it's China(or Singapore) vs. the U.S.
The governments of the former don't have anything close to real representation
for it's people(More China than Singapore), thus the policy makers don't have
to seriously consider popular opinion outside of keeping the populace from
revolting, which is a far cry from the American system where an individual
politician can be unseated within a short time frame.

