Here is audio, video and transcription. Here is the summary of the episode:
Michael Nielsen is a scientist who helped pioneer quantum computing and the modern open science movement. He has worked at Y Combinator, co-authored on scientific progress with Patrick Collison, and is a prolific writer, reader, commentator, and mentor.
He joined Tyler to discuss why the universe is so beautiful to human eyes (but not ears), how to find good collaborators, the influence of Simone Weil, why Olaf’s understanding of the word social Stapledon Gone Wrong, Potential Applications of Quantum Computing, The Status (Rising) of Linear Algebra, What Makes Physicists Age Well, Finding Young Mentors, Why Some Fields of Science Have Plateaus -preprint forms and some not, how so many lousy journals survive, the threat of cheap nuclear weapons, the many unknowns of colonizing Mars, techniques for being more attentive, what you learn from visiting the USS Midway, why he changed his mind about Emergent Ventures, why he didn’t join OpenAI in 2015, what he’ll learn next, and more.
And here is an excerpt:
COWEN: Now you wrote that in the first half of your life you were usually the youngest person in your circle and that in the second half of your life, which is probably now, you are usually the oldest person in your circle. circle. How would you model this as a statement about yourself?
NIELSEN: I hope I’m in the top 5 percent of my life, but unfortunately that’s unlikely.
COWEN: Let’s say you’re 50 now and you live to be 100, which is plausible…
NIELSEN: Which is plausible.
COWEN: – and you would now be in the second half of your life.
NIELSEN: Yes. I can give superficial reasons. I can’t give good reasons. The good reason in the first semester was that a lot of the work I was doing was in new areas of science, and those tend to be essentially dominated, for reasons of sunk costs – people who don’t have costs unrecoverable tend to be younger. They go into these areas. Those early days of quantum computing, the early days of open science, were dominated by people in their 20s. Then they would leave and become faculty members. She would be the youngest person on the faculty.
Now, maybe it’s just because I discovered San Francisco and it’s a very interesting cultural institution or achievement of civilization. We have this amplifier for 25 year olds that allows them to dream dreams in the world. It is, for me, at least, for a person with my personality, very attractive for many of the same reasons.
COWEN: Let’s say you had a theory about your collaborators, and aside, yes, they are intelligent; they work hard; but trying to identify in as few dimensions as possible, who is likely to become one of your collaborators after taking into account the evidence? What is your theory about your own employees?
NIELSEN:They are all extremely open to experience. They are all extremely curious. They are all extremely parasocial. They are all extremely ambitious. They are all extremely imaginative.
Self-recommended everywhere.
