fwiw, after I posted this link on bsky I was alerted to this video (here’s a transcript) on Hossenfelder’s unfortunate foray into physicist disease, where she started pontificating on trans teens and treated the ROGD paper as non-trash:
TBH, I ignore her physics takes too. Her background is in the cosmology/quantum gravity corner of the subject. That’s a different specialization from the experimental implementation of quantum computers. And when she wandered into quantum foundations, a subject I’ve put a lot of work into understanding, her thinking came across as in part shallow, in part deliberately contrarian. So, yeah, Google is hyping their work — that’s a safe bet — and further progress is going to be harder than the sales talk makes it sound. But on the other hand, it’s possible to have “physicist disease” about other subfields of physics than one’s own.
(I have not had the time and energy to read the underlying paper in detail myself yet.)
I remember being quite ticked off by her takes about free will, and specifically severly misrepresenting compatibilism and calling philosphers stupid for coming up with the idea.
this video is from a month before the post
fwiw, after I posted this link on bsky I was alerted to this video (here’s a transcript) on Hossenfelder’s unfortunate foray into physicist disease, where she started pontificating on trans teens and treated the ROGD paper as non-trash:
https://skepchick.org/2023/05/physicist-sabine-hossenfelder-screws-up-on-trans-kids-care/
so Hossenfelder’s physics takes are one thing, buuut.
TBH, I ignore her physics takes too. Her background is in the cosmology/quantum gravity corner of the subject. That’s a different specialization from the experimental implementation of quantum computers. And when she wandered into quantum foundations, a subject I’ve put a lot of work into understanding, her thinking came across as in part shallow, in part deliberately contrarian. So, yeah, Google is hyping their work — that’s a safe bet — and further progress is going to be harder than the sales talk makes it sound. But on the other hand, it’s possible to have “physicist disease” about other subfields of physics than one’s own.
(I have not had the time and energy to read the underlying paper in detail myself yet.)
I remember being quite ticked off by her takes about free will, and specifically severly misrepresenting compatibilism and calling philosphers stupid for coming up with the idea.