My talk on AQC

In 2rd December, I’ll give a talk on AQC in Sharif University of Technology. I am planning to first describe the original paper of Farhi et. al. and then a little about the power of quantum systems on a line by Aharonov, Kempe and Gottesman. Finally, I will describe how it is robust against noise. Do you guys think it is good enough for a 1-1/2 hour talk in a physics department?

Why Do I Prefer Theory to the Application?

I think I’m too lazy that I didn’t have any post for a long time! To prove this laziness, I am deciding to build this entry upon your own ideas. Here is the matter we are going to discuss:

People who know me for a long time remember that I have been in the engineering side before! I started my scientific activities with electrical and electronic engineering. Then I moved to the mechanical engineering, busy with micro-aerial flapping vehicles. I was in the middle of the way when analyzing the mechanical parts guided me to mathematics and computer science. As far as I was going into the theory side, I found it more exciting and gradually decided to become a theorist! But why? Why did I prefer philosophy and theoretical sciences to the application?

First of all let me describe that there is a huge difference between experimental sciences and application/ engineering! Engineering is “The creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property”; as the American Engineers’ Council for Professional Development defines. However, experimental sciences are the form of sciences that need measurement and manipulation devices and machinery, but it is still science. We have to think of this apart from engineering.

Let’s go back to our own topic. In this post I have mentioned five reasons to answer why I prefer science! They are namely, curiosity about the fabric of things, complexity, adventure of seeking new phenomena, simplicity (from the production point of view) and the friendlier atmosphere.

The simplest insight ever, tells that philosophy asks “What is something (say existence, knowledge, mind, etc)?” Science asks (fundamentally) “How and why things happen/come to reality?” and engineering asks “How to build and make it inexpensive?” Thus at the beginning of the way it divides engineers from the people who are curious about the fabric of things. Scientists and philosophers cannot leave such questions away and just utilize them to build things.

Another difference is that basically, theoretical sciences are more rigorous than the applications. This order of precision causes it to be more complicated and more sophisticated that makes it a suitable choice for a complicated mind! At this stage we have to recognize that this complexity is not in contradiction with simplicity and elegance of a scientific theory, this is just a comparison with a problem in engineering!

Sciences deal with quantizing mystical subjective and objective phenomena, while engineering at most is able to use those phenomena to build things! There is no magic in engineering! This can be a good reason for a scientist who is doing research for its excitement to choose a theoretical science!

Science in some sense is easier to handle and in this particular occasion this is a good thing! In engineering it is possible (mostly in the fields that deal with physical devices) that you have designed everything perfectly but a small out of order piece that is beyond your ability to observe or predict, makes everything not functioning at all! A bunch of boring trial and error job is needed to fix that part! However, in science if you have done your calculation and measurement well, you’ll get a convincing result.

Moreover, in the scientific community (apart from the developing countries and some few other cases) you are very friendly to your competitors and you can share your ideas and benefit their advices. Nevertheless, in the engineering side you always have to be conservative and careful that you do thing before the others to be able to get more fund!

Umm … There are many! But I have to go now! Would you help me count more differences that make theory more exciting than application?