Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrdrozdov | Hacker News Reader

How does this compare to Justin Trudeau's explanation? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rRmv4uD2RQ4

I wish that video continued so we could see whether or not he remembered and addressed the real question. That would have been impressive.

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2694

Thanks for the useful link!

http://syruptrap.ca/2016/04/delirious-exhausted-justin-trude...

hmm, they both talk about quantum computing? the guy in the video says one phrase about it. the article says a bit more. strange question.

The 'guy in the video' is the prime minister of Canada- the question had value as it asked about someone's understanding of quantum who is in a position of political power.

What's more interesting in the video is quantum computing being explained to a general audience. For young people looking for direction, both the video and the paper serve as persuasive pieces.

This video comes up frequently in social circles as for many people it was their first time having quantum computing explained to them (albeit simplistically). This paper seems to similarly explain briefly what quantum computing is and why it can be useful.

The sentence of Justin Trudeau is not an explanation. It looks like a something that someone with a very sallow knowledge about the subject would say.

It has a few conceptual errors, and if you use it in a midterm the TA will mark it as a fail, and probably try to ban you from the university

The important detail is the back story of that answer, that is unluckily unknown:

* If it's genuine and he studied alone a few Wikipedia pages and similar stuff, then it's a good enough answer, he got the general idea, but he still don't understand the details. He must try to understand something about the qbits that still have only two states, and that they can combine exponentially. Keep trying, good luck.

* If it was a PR setup, and a collaborator wrote it, then it's a bit sloppy. It's like going to a milk factory and saying that their business is related to squeezing cows. Next time try contact a physics. (But remember to redact the 2 pages about complex Hilbert spaces, it's difficult to give an short, ineligible and correct explanation.)

It is honestly at par with explanations given in popular media by 'science' communicators like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Bill Nye.

If you ever gave an answer that would pass in a midterm examination in public as a politician, it would be complete disaster and nobody would understand what you are talking about and you would embarrass yourself.

One of the most difficult challenges in science is to find the exact level of complexity in an explanation to fit your audience. You can see this if you go to a talk at a university -- often researchers are so obsessed with looking smart that they begin with extremely difficult material that 10% of their audience understands and go on from there, losing another percent every 10 minutes.

Sometimes people will give a 'general audience' talk that is so simplified that everyone understands it but nobody gets anything out of it; it's just vague platitudes and intuitions.

Most of Trudeau's language is so vague it could neither be called correct or incorrect (with a few exceptions).

I think the purpose of it was: 1) to acknowledge to the researchers there that he took the time to learn /something/ about their highly technical field and that he finds it interesting and exciting. Contrast this with, for example, any politician that has ever existed in the history of the world.

2) to give a vague general explanation of what the phenomenon is that would make sense to his general audience, who don't even understand what computers are.

Most importantly NOT: 3) To prove to scientists he understands science as well as they do.

I think his speech was excellent in light of those two goals.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com