Colin Wright of Reality's Last Stand on the lack of evidence for gender transitioning medicine. Pray that whatever diseases and conditions you get have no political implications. Doctors do well with those. But part of succeeding at school is knowing what answers get you good grades. Medical school selects for many things, but one of them is discerning the fashionableness of an idea, because you need to adjust to that to get through to the next level.
James, can you explain this to us? Or any other scientists I've got aboard here. Is this some superadvanced analogy to casting out nines, where you can get enormous amounts of information out of the way?
Cats Greet Men More Than Women Not at my sons' houses, they don't.
Further Arguments Against Jared Diamond by Jane Psmith. Three books, two of which we have discussed here. I like any arguments against Jared Diamond
Epiphaneia at Cosmos and Taxis In Defense of Free Markets I had not heard of the site before this evening. I clicked on it because of the recommendation "Best defence of free markets I have ever read. I have read Friedman, Hayek, Rothbard and Mises—but this is the best by far." It was worth it.
I also want to mention computational market simulations as a source of evidence that market can self organize to achieve favorable outcomes without needing perfect competition. Gode et al. 2013 find that even when artificial traders use random, "zero-intelligence" bids, they can achieve near perfect market efficiency as long as a budget constraint (i.e., not permitting traders to sell below their costs or buy above their values) is enforced. This indicates that the market structure itself can produce efficient outcomes, supporting the idea that the "invisible hand" can work not only when individual traders are irrational, but also when the traders have zero intelligence. All it takes is a budget constraint.
Re checking quantum computers: Checking a solution is often much easier than finding it. In the case of cryptography, it's quite straightforward: Does the decoding now yield sense rather than gibberish? If you're using the quantum computer to solve an equation, you plug the proposed solution into the equation and see if it solves. I'm sure there are other kinds of problems that are less obvious, and I assume that's what the article is about.
ReplyDeleteI'm getting there slowly, since there's a fair bit of technology I'm not up to speed on.
ReplyDeleteI have had the strong impression that solving problems with quantum computing is a bit like building an analog computer, except with specially contrived quantum states rather than gears.
If it doesn't entertain you, don't bother. We'll only understand part of it anyway.
ReplyDeleteWhen you read something like "squeezed vacuum", you have to find out what the heck they're talking about...
ReplyDeleteI can see how you wouldn't be able to sleep until you had settled that in your mind
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