
NP-complete Problems and Physical Reality (2005) - wfunction
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0502072
======
thret
"Most people who quote Einstein’s declaration that “God does not play dice”
seem not to realize that a dice-playing God would be an /improvement/ over the
actual situation." (5.1)

~~~
bcombinator
As if there were an actual ''situation''.

~~~
coldtea
There IS a physical universe, in case you somehow missed that.

The quote about god playing dice doesn't imply god exists -- it's actually
about the laws of nature (how the universe operates). God's playing dice is
just the phrasing it uses to make it more understandable.

------
lisper
Here's a hidden gem:

"The key point is that seeing a hidden variable’s history would effectively
let us simulate non- collapsing measurements."

This fact allows one to dismiss all hidden-variables theories (including
Bohm's of course) as having no metaphysical relevance. Hidden variables are
the invisible pink unicorn of physics. If you can't measure it, it doesn't
exist. Deal with it.

------
xnull2guest
This is classic Scott Aaronson - in fact, he's suggested on more than one
occasion that we should adopt 'NP-hard problems are infeasible for the
physical universe to solve' as a law of thermodynamics, arguing that the
evidence for this is at least as good as other laws and that a disproof of
this would be just as revolutionary.

Other Aaronson classics include "Who can name the bigger number?" [1], "Shor,
I'll do it" (his layman's explanation of Shor's algorithm for finding hidden
abelian subgroups) [2], "Is Quantum Mechanics An Island In Theoryspace?" [3],
and his blog turned class turned book "Quantum Computing Since Democritus"
[4]. But really there's a ton of gold. He has a really neat explanation of the
AKS primality testing algorithm [5] and modeled an imaginary easier-to-build
(?) less-powerful-but-probably-more-powerful-than-classic-computers computing
machine based on the quantum effects of light [6].

In general his blog tends to accumulate a lot of drama and controversy in its
comments (because Prof. Aaronson is very opinionated), which he handles very
hilariously.

It's worth following him over at Shtetl-Optimized [7]. MIT was smart to have
given him tenure.

[1]
[http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/bignumbers.html](http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/bignumbers.html)

[2]
[http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=208](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=208)

[3]
[http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/island.pdf](http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/island.pdf)

[4]
[http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/](http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/)

[5]
[http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/prime.pdf](http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/prime.pdf)

[6]
[http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/optics.pdf](http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/optics.pdf)

[7] [http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/)

~~~
scottlocklin
Aaronson has a gift for popularization, but the fact of the matter is,
mathematicians can be astoundingly impractical. Practically speaking, NP hard
problems are solved constantly, at least in an approximate sense, by physical
reality and computer algorithms; soap bubbles, chemical dynamics, airline
scheduling. The exact solution to any problem is uninteresting, just as the
exact value of a real number is uninteresting.

~~~
xnull2guest
Scott Aaronson I think himself would agree, as do I. He has some legitimate
counterpoints though too on NP-Hard problems being solved. He points out the
canonical instance of such problems "folding protein" (chemical dynamics) can
not really count, as proteins that misfold (pryons) are in extremely dangerous
molecules: evolution has heavily selected to find proteins that it can fold
quickly and reliably. He'll also point out that rocks don't find global
minimums - that there are in fact a plethora of these examples. He tests soap
bubbles and finds many 'easy' instances where it fail. Namely, he's responded
to that criticism countless times - once with an actual physical experiment
(the paper itself announces).

It very likely is interesting to see to what degree other physical processes
can approximately compute otherwise hard problems. It's just not fair to pick
Aaronson to do it; he himself would be the first to admit that it isn't his
area and that you'd want someone like Champagne to do it.

In summary, yeah definitely his work is on a very theoretical and abstract
level. He proudly admits this. Nobody would be more excited about others
performing experiments than he would be.

------
raverbashing
Already posted and killed yesterday

~~~
phreeza
I posted the medium article yesterday and deleted it myself when I realised it
was actually bogus science from reading the comments.

~~~
gone35
Why delete it though? The discussion that followed[1] alone was worth it,
don't you think?

Anyway, for those curious about the medium article[2] (and for posterity's
sake), see [3].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8939750](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8939750)

[2] It's from their "physics arxiv blog", by the way --so at the very least
_someone_ , somewhere in the discipline found it entertaining enough despite
its comic flaws!

[3] [https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-astounding-
lin...](https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-astounding-link-between-
the-p-np-problem-and-the-quantum-nature-of-universe-7ef5eea6fd7a)

