Top all-time · #142
Scott Aaronson
Personal blog · scottaaronson.blogsciencemathai
Scott Aaronson writes Shtetl-Optimized, a personal blog at scottaaronson.blog about science, math and ai. Since 2021, 298 different Hacker News readers have linked it 530 times, most often “The 8000th Busy Beaver number eludes ZF set theory (2016)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 0 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Scott Aaronson's blog for specific posts on quantum computing, busy beavers and complexity theory, and as a source on AI and policy, usually as background to their own points.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The Blog of Scott Aaronson
Most-linked posts?
- The 8000th Busy Beaver number eludes ZF set theory (2016)15 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2021-12-03
- AI Safety14 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2022-11-29
- The Mathocalypse12 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2022-06-25
- /?p=179910 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2022-02-20
- The First Law of Complexodynamics (2011)8 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2024-05-18
- The Demise of Scientific American7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2022-01-03
- Ten Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough Is Wrong (2008)7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2022-08-16
- Steven Pinker and I debate AI scaling7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2022-06-28
- Quantum Computing: Between Hope and Hype6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2024-09-23
- Google’s Sycamore chip: no wormholes, no superfast classical simulation either5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-12-02
What Hacker News says?
Nice, thanks for linking that paper. I also did below. The authors argue (e.g. in the first comment here https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8310#comments ) that by their definition, Google still only has a fraction of one logical qubit. Their logical error rate is of order 1e-3, whereas this paper considers a logical qubit to have error of order 1e-18. Google's breakthrough here is to show that the logical error rate can…
Comment linking /?p=8310
on “Willow, Our Quantum Chip”Submitted The Google Willow Thing as a story · 763 points
HN discussionHe's already blogged about it a bit here https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8310#comments and here https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8329 though I bet he will have more to say now that the paper is officially out.
Comment linking /?p=8329
on “Willow, Our Quantum Chip”Submitted The Demise of Scientific American as a story · 563 points
HN discussionHe told when the preprint was published https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8310
Comment linking /?p=8310
on “Willow, Our Quantum Chip”Submitted An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California as a story · 450 points
HN discussionI wonder if anyone else will be forced to wait on https://scottaaronson.blog/ to tell us if this is significant.
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on “Willow, Our Quantum Chip”Submitted The Mathocalypse as a story · 409 points
HN discussionYou don't even have to get to the point where you're reading a post off Scott Aaronson's blog[1] at all; his headline says "If you take nothing else from this blog: quantum computers won't solve hard problems instantly by just trying all solutions in parallel." [1]: https://scottaaronson.blog/
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on “Willow, Our Quantum Chip”Submitted Book Review: “Viral” by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley as a story · 360 points
HN discussion- nl · 2026-10-08
Sorry for the delayed reply - it's taking some time for people to digest these! Yes there are some extremely novel approaches. Scott Aaronson highlights[1] some of ones he's interested in, and I'd highlight: > Matrix multiplication in O(n9/4) time—a rational exponent for once (!), and via a completely different approach than was used for O(n2.373) and so forth And in his wife's comments on USG (which she worked on):…
Comment linking /?p=10169
on “Sharing AI progress in mathematics” Submitted FAQ on Microsoft's topological qubit thing as a story · 328 points
HN discussionFor now I think more or less the same thing as with all recent math announcements: This is in a range where human work still exists (see Terry Tao, (1)). I wonder whether the trend will extend into the problems that (as far as I can tell) are considered complete brick walls right now -- P vs. NP, Collatz, Goldbach, odd perfect numbers, problems that aren't part of any research program. (2) In other words, is the pro…
Comment linking /?p=690
on “On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem”Submitted Guess I'm a rationalist now as a story · 323 points
HN discussionFound one: Blog of Scott Aaronson. E.g. this post https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=10046 Also: Substack posts don't seem to show the reader symbol immediately, often only after switching tabs or a page refresh, e.g. posts linked here: https://dynomight.substack.com/
Comment linking /?p=10046
on “Hang on to Your Firefox”Submitted Shor, I’ll do it (2007) as a story · 308 points
HN discussionYes, that's why we need something stronger than the Church-Turing thesis. See https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=735 'Why Philosophers should care about Computational Complexity' Basically, what the brain can do in reasonable amounts of time (eg polynomial time), computers can also do in polynomial time. To make it a thesis something like this might work: "no physically realisable computing machine (including the brain)…
Comment linking /?p=735
on “S1: A $6 R1 competitor?”Submitted AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English as a story · 297 points
HN discussionScott Aaronson comments on his blog "Given this news, I’ll up my personal probability of P=NP from 3% to 5%." ( https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=10239#comment-2042428 )
Comment linking /?p=10239
on “The Exponential Time Hypothesis Is False [pdf]”Submitted An alarming trend in K-12 math education: a guest post and an open letter as a story · 292 points
HN discussionFor those interested in what what Scott Aaronson said: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=4979 > In a world-historic irony, the main effect of this “solution” will be to drastically limit the number of Asian students, while drastically increasing (!!!) the number of White students. The proportion of Black and Hispanic students is projected to increase a bit but remain small.
Comment linking /?p=4979
on “The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)”Submitted BusyBeaver(6) Is Quite Large as a story · 272 points
HN discussionHere's a post by the computer scientist Scott Aaronson on his blog, in support: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8269 -- it links to some earlier explainers, has some pro-con arguments, and further discussion in the comments.
Comment linking /?p=8269
on “Gavin Newsom vetoes SB 1047”Submitted The zombie misconception of theoretical computer science as a story · 251 points
HN discussion> costs nothing to remove something someone might find offensive But there is a cost. You're losing a battle in the war of free speech vs Orwellian thought control. The woke (an offshoot of last-wave feminism, currently promoted mainly by the control-left strain of the Democratic party) are lying; they're not actually offended, they're just using that as an excuse (propaganda) and as an emotional appeal, to get you…
Comment linking /?p=4450
on “Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken”Submitted OpenAI as a story · 209 points
HN discussionI have recently noticed people suddenly using the word "geniunely" in places where it serves no purpose [1][2], yet these posts don't seem to be otherwise AI-written. I guess that LLMisms are also creeping into the voice of their users. [1] "[Robert Caro is] a guy who genuinely rarely gives interviews" https://manifold.markets/DylanBowman/who-is-dwarkeshs-upcomi... [2] Scott Aaronson uses it four times in a short po…
Comment linking /?p=10222
on “LLM Voice”Submitted Why Quantum Mechanics? as a story · 183 points
HN discussionhttps://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8088 > You need to find a mathematical reason why it can’t halt, and there’s no systematic method for finding such reasons—that was the great discovery of Gödel and Turing nearly a century ago. That's only true for sufficiently large N, large enough to encode the halting paradox. (How large is that N? It's larger than 5!) Smaller N can and do fall to systematic methods. > (x) = (5x+18)/…
Comment linking /?p=8088
on “With fifth busy beaver, researchers approach computation's limits”Submitted I had a dream as a story · 166 points
HN discussion
