斯科特·亚伦森(Scott Aaronson)是麻省理工学院电气工程和计算机科学的副教授。在此之前,他在加州大学伯克利分校(UC Berkeley)获得了计算机科学博士学位,以及普林斯顿大学高级研究所和滑铁卢大学的高级研究所。他的研究金宝博娱乐重点是量子计算机的功能和限制,更普遍地介绍了计算复杂性与物理学之间的联系。亚伦森以他的博客以及建立复杂性动物园(an online encyclopedia of complexity classes); he’s also written about quantum computing for Scientific American and the New York Times. His first book,量子计算以来,今年由剑桥大学出版社出版。他获得了Alan T. Waterman奖,PECASE奖和麻省理工学院的少年Bose卓越教学奖。
卢克·穆尔豪瑟(Luke Muehlhauser):尽管您以理论计算机科学的工作而闻名,但您还创作了一些非常有趣的哲学作品,例如在量子计算以来,“”Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity,“ 和 ”量子图灵机中的幽灵。”您还教了2011年秋季麻省理工学院课程哲学和理论计算机科学。
您为什么对哲学如此感兴趣?从您的角度来看,哲学的社会价值是什么?
斯科特·亚伦森(Scott Aaronson):我总是本能地次大陆所吸引t, most general questions that it seemed possible to ask. You know, like are we living in a computer simulation? if not, could we upload our consciousnesses into one? are there discrete “pixels” of spacetime? why does it seem impossible to change the past? could there be different laws of physics where 2+2 equaled 5? are there objective facts about morality? what does it mean to be rational? is there an explanation for why I’m alive right now, rather than some other time? What是解释,反正吗?实际上,真正使我感到困惑的是,当我遇到一个聪明,好奇的人(说是数学家或科学家)时,他声称不痴迷于这些巨大的问题!我怀疑许多美里读者可能会像我一样被吸引到这样的问题,在这种情况下,无需重点。
从我的角度来看,构建问题的最佳方法不是:“为什么对哲学感兴趣?”而是:“为什么对其他任何东西感兴趣?”
But I think the latter question has an excellent answer. A crucial thing humans learned, starting around Galileo’s time, is that even if you’re interested in the biggest questions, usually the only way to make progress on them is to pick off smaller subquestions: ideally, subquestions that you can attack using math, empirical observation, or both. For again and again, you find that the subquestions aren’t nearly as small as they originally looked! Much like with zooming in to the Mandelbrot set, each subquestion has its own twists and tendrils that could occupy you for a lifetime, and each one gives you a new perspective on the big questions. And best of all, you can actuallyanswer一些子问题,并成为第一个这样做的人:即使只有小额数量,您也可以永久移动人类知识的针头。正如我曾经提到的那样,数学和科学方面的进步 - 想想自然选择,戈德尔和图灵的定理,相对论和量子力学 - 随着哲学讨论,反复改变了哲学讨论的术语本身很少改变他们!(当然,这完全抛弃了数学和科学的“附带利益”,即使我们的技术文明也不是鸡肉饲料。)
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