Doubts about teapot supremacy: my reply to Richard Borcherds | Hacker News Reader

Doubts about teapot supremacy: my reply to Richard Borcherds

scottaaronson.com

68 pointsEvgeniyZh8 comments

I don't have anything intelligent to say about this article but damn, i find it surprising that Richard Borchards is a prolific youtuber.

I've been learning representation theory (among other topics) from his Youtube lectures! They're a real treasure trove. And he's got a dry sense of humor that I quite like.

I can also recommend this interview with him by Curt Jaimungal, which is filled with his insights and opinions about his practice of mathematics, and his life as a mathematician: https://youtu.be/xu15ZbxxnUQ

His math lectures have renewed my love of the subject that I had lost in poorly taught undergraduate classes.

Protip: value village has hoards of teapots for cheap

Unrelated, but the image of Scott Aaronson playing with teapots with his children brings me great joy. I suspect that Covid has increased my appreciation for domesticity, I wonder if this is a common trend?

Cursory googling suggests that Covid has been bad for family formation but I’ve heard anecdotally that “everyone is getting married.”

I don't find this compelling at all. I'm not in the least convinced that there is a way for a classical computer to determine how many pieces a dropped teapot will break into given an arbitrarily detailed description of it's structure. Handwaving about wind tunnels does nothing to assuage my doubts.

On the other hand, I'm not in the least convinced that there is a way for a teapot to determine how many pieces a (specified, in-general-different) dropped teapot will break into given an arbitrarily detailed description of it's structure.

Yep, IIUC you have to include the whole custom teapot manufacturing infrastructure in your "teapot" simulator to get a fully equivalent system, or rather to claim to be attempting to solve the same problem.

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