[jackpirate]

Keep in mind that Scott Aaronson is about as famous as CS professors come. He no longer can get anymore famous by doing great work himself. Instead, he gets more famous by having his students do great work and having them become famous as well. A more junior researcher (or a researcher outside the theory community), on the other hand, would have more incentive to claim research as their own to become more famous themselves.

That's not to diminish Aaronson's generosity here, just to put it in the context of his actual career motivations.

[jlg23]

> just to put it in the context of his actual career motivations.

Unless you have some deeper insights into his psychology, your guess is as good as mine: "Scott Aaronson is simply a decent human being."

[kohanz]

I had no idea who Scott Aaronson is, so the context was useful to me.

[shaklee3]

He runs this blog:

https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/

[denzil_correa]

The preprint has no mention of Scott Aaronson as an author though.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.04271

[jessriedel]

Scott is famous enough that people reading this article are more likely to remember the author as "Scott's student" than the author's name. Additionally, having famous and successful students has great career benefits when they champion your ideas (even when uncited).