ScottAaronson comments on Quotes and Notes on Scott Aaronson’s "The Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine" - Less Wrong

16 Post author: shminux 17 June 2013 05:11AM

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Comment author: Manfred 17 June 2013 01:46:21PM *  6 points [-]

I think that the "absolute prediction" question is answered. I mean, I'm acquiring bits of information you can't physically know all the time just by entangling with air molecules that haven't reached you yet. But there's a separate question of "how important is that?" which is a combination of at least two different questions: first "how big an impact does flipping a qubit have on human cognitive actions?" and second "how much do I care that someone can't predict me exactly, if they can predict my macroscopic actions out to a time horizon of minutes / days / years?"

I think you're more concerned about absolute prediction relative to "pretty good" prediction than I am, which is a shame because that's the totally subjective part of the question :)

Comment author: ScottAaronson 18 June 2013 08:19:17AM 0 points [-]

As a point of information, I too am only interested in predicting macroscopic actions (indeed, only probabilistically), not in what you call "absolute prediction." The worry, of course, is that chaotic amplification of small effects would preclude even "pretty good" prediction.