Quotes

If I have any tool with which to unblank my face, then it’s only my extreme self-consciousness when confronted with evidence of my own stupidities—the way I’ve trained myself over decades in science to see error-correction as a or even the fundamental virtue.

– Scott Aaronson, in his blog.

“On this comeback, I’ve worked so hard—harder than if I had had no success”

– Aly Raisman, six time Olympic medal-winning gymnast

“A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.”

– Haruki Murakami

It is the great glory as well as the great threat of science that everything which is in principle possible can be done if the intention to do it is sufficiently resolute.

– Sir Peter Medawar

Starting with a problem, and then searching for a solution covers only one part of research. Research aims in the end to match problems to solutions to maximize happiness, but ideas don’t have any ordering imposed on them. You may have to start with solutions, and find problems which they solve. This is why current quantum computing research makes sense: you have been promised access to enormous power; does it not make sense to ask what one can do with this power?