On Monday, March 03, 2025, at 1:13 PM, Matt Mahoney wrote:
> A quantum computation has 3 steps.
1. Set n qubits to a superposition of 2^n states, each represented by
a vector of n complex components, such that the sum of the squares of
the magnitudes of the components add up to 1. This means you have a
vector of 2^n elements each of the form (a+bi). The square of the
magnitude is (a+bi)(a-bi) = a^2 + b^2 is the probability of observing
the corresponding bit vector.
2. Perform a sequence of unitary operations on the qubits, which are
rotations in complex 2^n dimensional space. This can be done as a
sequence of elementary operations such as NOT, XOR, controlled NOT,
swap, and controlled swap. For example, a controlled swap will swap
the values of A and B if C is 1. All of the operations are time
reversible and preserve the sum of squares of magnitudes as 1.
3. Read the states of the n qubits as an n bit vector. The value is
probabilistic, such that the square of the magnitude is the
probability of observing that vector. The computation can be repeated
to approximate a probability distribution.
You’ve compressed a description of quantum computation into three short
succinct paragraphs making it easy to understand. That's awesome.
On Monday, March 03, 2025, at 1:13 PM, Matt Mahoney wrote:
> Free will is an illusion. We can't predict our own actions because of
Wolpert's theorem. Because if we couild, then we could also decide to
do the opposite of what we predict we would do. It doesn't matter if
the brain is deterministic or not, because a deterministic
cryptographic pseudorandom function is indistinguishable from true
randomness.
What isn’t an illusion? Since freewill falls under that category it doesn’t
mean people don’t have it. We have the power to choose and making an excuse
that everything is predetermined doesn’t negate the responsibility. That
statement is really a scientific statement but it gets misapplied in the wrong
context.
Is it similar to gcprintf("Free will is an illusion.");
Our predictions, decisions, and actions are not all internally synchronized
they are loosely coupled dynamics that we try to regulate, backpropagate and
form reusable patterns from feedback with outcomes. Exercising conscious
freewill while knowing those patterns is how interactions with the environment
and other conscious entities form symbiotic systems that mutually benefit and
share knowledge. You could look at freewill as a multiagent systems
intelligence optimizing synchronization protocol. From the external systems
view the freewill choices made are more deterministic and error decisions can
reinforce meta-agent pattern model robustness like a continuously iterating
dynamic self-organizing map on people nodes.
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Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI
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