Schrödinger's cat

Congrats on a masterfully deft pivot, sorry for the chaos you’ve gone through and wishing you the best in your new gig.

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Big Blue… You should see if you can incorporate OS-2 into your quantum computing efforts :slight_smile:

Congratulations on the new job. I hope you’re able to make it a lot of fun. I’m envious.

Chaos is what quantum computing is all about? So may @henryhbk grab chaos by the throat to do his bidding! Which brings up something you henryhbk are uniquely able to address. As real hard AI in order to be self-aware as the human brain is would need to have all the parts active all the time in an infinite number of states with many different types of connections, and the state of each affecting all the others, and no doubt far more than the parts I know of, is there any chance of that happening in a digital system, or even quantum computing?

A computer is the best metaphor we have for human thought just as the automaton of many gears and levers was before we had computers, but it would seem to me not a lot better at describing what goes on in the brain and yet the expectation that we can eventually build such a machine is very high. Extreme expert systems seem possible or even extant and far better/faster than humans at what they do, but I would really be interested in how you are perceiving the issues.

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easy peasy.
Just use Windows 2000.

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As a half-researcher half-surgeon, I have often lamented my Schrodinger Funding (don’t open the financial statements - I might be funded or I could be broke!) It’s hard to see smart people lose funding but incredibly inspiring to know that quick pivots are out there! Enjoy the transition and if you ever need a derm surgery consult ping me!

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I may try to jump ship from where I’m at in the Seaport and aim for a Kendall commute like Joe…

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I’m very interested in a Boston-area GF community meet up! Please keep posted if you’re open to others joining… Or, is there already one I could join? Thanks!

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Congrats, and way to land on your feet, Doc!

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I hear the initiation procedure is pretty intense.

There isn’t one officially (although Joe did come to my house during PRU days), but happy to meet up for coffee in Kendall Square (lots of nice cafes around)

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Mazel tov Henry! Sorry to hear about the loss of funding but delighted and unsurprised that your genius was quickly recognized. I hope the new job is terrific!

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You have to help shovel out @joe’s car after a snowstorm.

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That was a nasty snowstorm!

Much later in the season I lost part of a finger in a snowblower. :frowning:

Told you initiation was rough!

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Henry is a man of many hats/many talents.

I lost count after “Cool thing-a-majiggy something something - I cannot pronounce but looks awesome”

Happy New Job Doctor!

haha. Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment (actually a nasty satire at the time as Schrödinger didn’t believe in quantum theory) about quantum mechanics. It tries to describe quantum “superposition”, since quantum mechanics sort of breaks all the rules of how “the world works”. For instance superposition allows particles to occupy the same position as another particle (only Bose-Einstein particles), which of course isn’t possible in our macro world (Although Boston drivers often attempt to disprove this). So the experiment goes something like this: you have a cat in a box (which is opaque) and there is a vial of poison in the box and when a random event (say a gamma ray passing through the box) occurs the poison is released. Since until you open the box, you know nothing about the cat, you can say the cat is both alive and dead, and it only goes to a definitive state when you open the box and observe the answer. This is how our quantum computer here at IBM Watson works (the “qbits” are both 0 AND 1 at the same time and the answer only coalesces to the “correct” answer when observed.

Which presupposes that nothing exists in this world until we interact with it, and in fact it is only our interaction which defines it. (Something I’ve always had trouble with as it assumes an alarming level of hubris.)

Never much liked the Schrödinger cat theory for that reason.

“If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it does it make a sound?”

And DH calls me away …enough physics and philosophy for the moment. Time to meet with the financial planner, so the good ole govt doesn’t “poof” away our retirement. :smile:

That’s where I have a problem. This is not entirely true. Although you can’t definitively determine the cat’s status, it has in actuality changed (or not depending on the efficacy of the poison) and is definitely dead (or not), just you can’t know it to be true until you open the box to observe. The action of opening the box does not in & of itself cause the transition to the end state, just your ability to know what that state is.

Yes, the notion that observation changes the universe is quite disturbing, but with quantum entanglement we see it in action. The quantum world is so strange. Recent articles have demonstrated the ability to violate Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle (observe an entangled particle to derive the second variable) and the second law of thermodynamics (essentially a Maxwell Demon has been created). Things we were told were “facts” in physics simply are falling by the wayside in the quantum world.

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