[awhitty]

I understand that people get a little passionate about their fields of study, but the tone of Aaronson's response is wildly inappropriate. Phrases like "a common novice mistake" and "as if he just emerged from a cave" are unnecessary and entirely condescending. This style of discourse fosters a really awful and exclusive atmosphere, and I wish it wasn't the norm.

I don't know this guy at all, and I'm guessing he's pretty respected in his field, but at the end of the day, he doesn't have to be a jerk to get his point across.

[soganess]

I find the dismissive tone and holier and thou attitude that Aaronson has garnered more that bit of notoriety for really detrimental to the growth of both our collective understanding of QM and our understanding of computability. if knowledge is truly power, lording your knowledge over a peer is paramount to oppression. A bit dramatic, of course, but not completely without warrant.

This maybe a bit of a kumbaya, everyone hold hands argument, but I'm going to make it. Its not as if the number of people that have the ambition to collect the wealth of knowledge required to characterize(even incorrectly) any perspective overlap between computation and quantum is exactly a huge working set. I don't consider it reasonable to shit on someone's work so indiscriminately in this space where its rather hard to be right and quite easy to be wrong.

Prima facie, the paper was accepted for publish in a peer reviewed journal (Physical Science International Journal), and. from all the terse looks of it I've encountered, is likely erroneous on a fundamental level. Highlighting this is not meant to imply that peer-review is a good/bad measure of academic muster, but rather an indicator of how complex comprehending and qualifying such theories might be.

My point is, even in its incorrectness, a bravo for thinking so wildly is likely in order.

Disclaimer: I'm a quantum chemist and computer scientist. I'm also not the biggest fan of Scott Aaronson, so I might be harder on him that is likely deserved.

[mdxn]

I can see how it can be read that way, though you should also to look at this from his perspective (or at least my guess as to a possible perspective).

The internet (and the field) is flooded with nonsense papers that don't respect the hard work of others. A lot of them really do come from these "common novice mistakes". The authors are taking very superficial views of complexity theory and physics against the advice of researchers in those fields. This particular one hasn't, but a lot of them have incredibly bad and egotistical attitudes. I think researchers see this as incredibly insulting, ignorant, and a severe lack of humility. People aren't showing enough respect and care to this field.

This wouldn't be such a problem if it didn't happen more often than not. On top of that, these poor findings end up swarming around the media and dilute the field. Look, Aaronson is a well known guy who has spent a lot of time trying to point out and explain these mistakes. Though people, including pseudo-scientists, completely ignore him. They even start fights with him. He and others get spammed with this stuff weekly if not daily. For him, I bet it's simply too much to ignore.