Scott Aaronson is a professor at UT Austin, director of its Quantum Information Center, and previously a professor at MIT. His research interests center around the capabilities and limits of quantum computers and computational complexity theory more generally.
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Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
00:00 – Introduction
05:07 – Role of philosophy in science
29:27 – What is a quantum computer?
41:12 – Quantum decoherence (noise in quantum information)
49:22 – Quantum computer engineering challenges
51:00 – Moore’s Law
56:33 – Quantum supremacy
1:12:18 – Using quantum computers to break cryptography
1:17:11 – Practical application of quantum computers
1:22:18 – Quantum machine learning, questionable claims, and cautious optimism
1:30:53 – Meaning of life