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Peter Shor
@PeterShor1
♫♫ There's a rich man who's sure that all speech should be free And he's buying the network of Twitter. (And because of this sale, you'll find me on bluesky.)
Joined June 2019
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  • user avatar
    Peter Shor
    @PeterShor1
    Aug 14, 2023
    I've put my lecture notes from my Fall 2022 Quantum Computation course online. math.mit.edu/~shor/435-LN/ I don't guarantee that there aren't any mistakes left in them, although I've tried to eradicate them all. If you find any, feel free to email me.
    436K
  • user avatar
    Peter Shor
    @PeterShor1
    Aug 25, 2020
    True story: When I was checking into a hotel in Atlanta, GA, I was asked "Can I have your name, please." I replied "Shor." Then there was a long pause.
    user avatar
    Lior Gazit
    @gazit_lior
    Aug 25, 2020
    @PeterShor1 so which one do you like better?
  • user avatar
    Peter Shor
    @PeterShor1
    Feb 1, 2020
    35 years ago today, Richard Feynman's paper "Quantum Mechanical Computers" was published in 𝘖𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘴 𝘕𝘦𝘸𝘴. I think he'd be surprised and gratified to see everything that his original idea has led to.
  • user avatar
    Peter Shor
    @PeterShor1
    May 1, 2021
    40 years ago IBM and MIT held a 𝘗𝘩𝘺𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 conference, where Feynman gave his seminal keynote address, later published in the 𝘐𝘯𝘵. 𝘑. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘰𝘳. 𝘗𝘩𝘺𝘴. Next Thursday, they are holding a 40th anniversary conference: qiskit.org/events/physics…
  • user avatar
    Peter Shor
    @PeterShor1
    Dec 4, 2019
    When I was working on my quantum algorithm for factorization, I didn't tell anybody, because it seemed like such a long shot. Similarly, Wiles didn't tell anybody that he was working on Fermat's Last Theorem before he solved it, presumably for the same reason.
  • user avatar
    Peter Shor
    @PeterShor1
    Aug 18, 2023
    Wonderful article about recent progress in theoretical cryptography and complexity theory (although we're still really a long way from proving P ≠ NP).
    user avatar
    Quanta Magazine
    @QuantaMagazine
    Aug 17, 2023
    For more than 50 years, complexity theorists have tried and failed to solve the foundational question of their field. Why is it so hard to prove hardness? @benbenbrubaker reports: quantamagazine.org/complexity-the…
    00:00
    62K
  • user avatar
    Peter Shor
    @PeterShor1
    Jun 25, 2020
    Quanta Magazine's story on the discovery of the Ising model, and how it revolutionized the field of statistical mechanics. quantamagazine.org/the-cartoon-pi… via @QuantaMagazine
    quantamagazine.org
    The Cartoon Picture of Magnets That Has Transformed Science
    One hundred years after it was proposed, the Ising model is used to understand everything from magnets to brains.
  • user avatar
    Peter Shor
    @PeterShor1
    May 1, 2021
    Replying to @PeterShor1
    To celebrate this anniversary, I have summarized Feynman's paper in 4 lines of #quantumpoetry: With our computers, we can’t model Nature; To simulate her faithfully, we must Go where she lives, and grasp her hand, and make her, With clever tricks, perform the task for us.
  • user avatar
    Peter Shor
    @PeterShor1
    Dec 4, 2019
    Replying to @PeterShor1
    I am sure lots of mathematicians are currently working on famous problems without telling anybody. Is this a good aspect of the culture of mathematics? Maybe if all the mathematicians working secretly on the Riemann hypothesis got together and compared notes, they could solve it.
  • user avatar
    Peter Shor
    @PeterShor1
    Nov 26, 2019
    With the Google quantum supremacy paper, the claims that quantum computers can’t possibly work keep on coming. It is becoming clear that reasoned arguments will not stop them. I don’t think illogical poetry is going to work, either. But it’s fun to write.
  • user avatar
    Peter Shor
    @PeterShor1
    Oct 6, 2022
    I find superdetermism just as "spooky" as Einstein's action at a distance ... it implies that decisions you think are being made at a given moment (say you set detector angles by rolling dice) actually were predetermined. If this isn't "spooky", I don't know what is.
    user avatar
    Sabine Hossenfelder
    @skdh
    Oct 6, 2022
    Replying to @skdh
    Okay, to finish, another word on superdeterminism. If you want a local explanation of the observations of Aspect, Clauser, and Zeilinger -- ie, one without "spooky action" -- then the only currently known way to do this is superdeterminism. 13/
  • user avatar
    Peter Shor
    @PeterShor1
    Jul 8, 2023
    With respect to the recent Supreme Court decision, if it's legal to give preferential admissions to people whose grandfather went to Harvard, shouldn't it also be legal to give preference to people whose great-great-great-great-great-grandparents were enslaved?
    53K
  • user avatar
    Peter Shor
    @PeterShor1
    Dec 25, 2021
    Great advice! If you think about a mathematical problem on your own first, you may come up with new ideas. Next, look at the literature to find the old ideas people have already tried. If you're lucky, you will see how to combine your new ideas with their old ideas to solve it.
    user avatar
    Joel David Hamkins
    @JDHamkins
    Dec 25, 2021
    How to use the research literature. When approaching a difficult mathematical problem, first think deeply upon it on your own, using all the ideas you can muster, before consulting the work of others. Push your own ideas as hard as you can first, and read only afterward.
  • user avatar
    Peter Shor
    @PeterShor1
    Jul 10, 2021
    A 256-qubit "analog" quantum computer. nature.com/articles/s4158…