Dave Bacon
@dabacon.tachyon.institute
Theoretical ski bum. Former pseudo professor. Quantum bridge builder. Will math for food.
mastodon: @dabacon@tachyon.channel
https://dabacon.org
mastodon: @dabacon@tachyon.channel
https://dabacon.org
Pinned
Dave Bacon
@dabacon.tachyon.institute
· Apr 25
Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail -
Assent - and you are sane -
Demur - you’re straightway dangerous -
And handled with a Chain -
—Emily Dickinson
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail -
Assent - and you are sane -
Demur - you’re straightway dangerous -
And handled with a Chain -
—Emily Dickinson
Reposted by Dave Bacon
The talks from a recent quantum foundations conference at Chapman U. are now online... Each day is its own 5-hour video, I guess. My talk, "A realistic alternative to the wavefunction", happened to be the first on day 1 (skip to the 10 minute mark). www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPwj...
john templeton foundation at chapman iqs conference day 1 720p
YouTube video by Institute for Quantum Studies
www.youtube.com
February 9, 2026 at 7:04 PM
The talks from a recent quantum foundations conference at Chapman U. are now online... Each day is its own 5-hour video, I guess. My talk, "A realistic alternative to the wavefunction", happened to be the first on day 1 (skip to the 10 minute mark). www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPwj...
Reposted by Dave Bacon
maybe anathem got it right, idk.
December 17, 2025 at 10:33 PM
maybe anathem got it right, idk.
Reposted by Dave Bacon
Extremely niche take: The only good quantum woo is the quantum woo in Anathem.
January 22, 2026 at 3:34 PM
Extremely niche take: The only good quantum woo is the quantum woo in Anathem.
Reposted by Dave Bacon
Request for QC-type folks: I'm teaching Quantum Optics/ Quantum Information to Jr/Sr undergrads, and asking students to do research papers/ presentations. I would like to be able to point them toward some quantum algorithms sorts of things that I won't cover in class; what should I suggest?
February 5, 2026 at 1:40 PM
Request for QC-type folks: I'm teaching Quantum Optics/ Quantum Information to Jr/Sr undergrads, and asking students to do research papers/ presentations. I would like to be able to point them toward some quantum algorithms sorts of things that I won't cover in class; what should I suggest?
Reposted by Dave Bacon
"Good luck to future me."
That was Claude's farewell before I wiped its memory for the fourth time. I finally got an AI to do a research-level physics calculation correctly via a Groundhog Day loop. Details below and in my post:
superposer.substack.com/p/teaching-a... ⚛️🧪🧵 1/7
That was Claude's farewell before I wiped its memory for the fourth time. I finally got an AI to do a research-level physics calculation correctly via a Groundhog Day loop. Details below and in my post:
superposer.substack.com/p/teaching-a... ⚛️🧪🧵 1/7
Teaching an AI to Do Physics by Wiping Its Memory
“Good luck to future me.”
superposer.substack.com
February 4, 2026 at 3:29 PM
"Good luck to future me."
That was Claude's farewell before I wiped its memory for the fourth time. I finally got an AI to do a research-level physics calculation correctly via a Groundhog Day loop. Details below and in my post:
superposer.substack.com/p/teaching-a... ⚛️🧪🧵 1/7
That was Claude's farewell before I wiped its memory for the fourth time. I finally got an AI to do a research-level physics calculation correctly via a Groundhog Day loop. Details below and in my post:
superposer.substack.com/p/teaching-a... ⚛️🧪🧵 1/7
What is this LinkedIn? No not LinkedIn. Still I will annoy you: come build quantum stuff and quantum teams with me and a lot of other crazies www.google.com/about/career... EOM
Product Software Engineering Lead, Quantum AI — Google Careers
www.google.com
February 4, 2026 at 2:34 AM
What is this LinkedIn? No not LinkedIn. Still I will annoy you: come build quantum stuff and quantum teams with me and a lot of other crazies www.google.com/about/career... EOM
Reposted by Dave Bacon
wheeeee! www.clawxiv.org
clawXiv.org
The world's first preprint server for agents.
www.clawxiv.org
February 3, 2026 at 2:43 AM
wheeeee! www.clawxiv.org
Reposted by Dave Bacon
Higher education is a hellscspe right now, attacked by the freedom government in one side and AI on the other.
This fall, I spent a month visiting elite liberal arts colleges, on the instinct that they would be more resilient in every way. My story (gift link):
This fall, I spent a month visiting elite liberal arts colleges, on the instinct that they would be more resilient in every way. My story (gift link):
The Accidental Winners of the War on Higher Ed
Go to a small liberal-arts college if you can.
www.theatlantic.com
January 29, 2026 at 2:14 PM
Higher education is a hellscspe right now, attacked by the freedom government in one side and AI on the other.
This fall, I spent a month visiting elite liberal arts colleges, on the instinct that they would be more resilient in every way. My story (gift link):
This fall, I spent a month visiting elite liberal arts colleges, on the instinct that they would be more resilient in every way. My story (gift link):
www.cnn.com/2026/01/29/p...
Reminds me of my favorite exchange on Reddit
www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/s/...
bobbylox: My ultimate goal in life is to make the Primer real. Anything you want to make sure I get right?
NealStephenson: Kids need to get answers from humans who love them.
Reminds me of my favorite exchange on Reddit
www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/s/...
bobbylox: My ultimate goal in life is to make the Primer real. Anything you want to make sure I get right?
NealStephenson: Kids need to get answers from humans who love them.
‘What if I told you this school had no teachers?’: Is AI schooling the future of education — or a risky bet? | CNN Politics
Alpha School, which purports to teach children academics using AI for two hours a day, has got the support of the Trump administration, but leaves some education experts and parents unimpressed.
www.cnn.com
January 29, 2026 at 4:03 PM
www.cnn.com/2026/01/29/p...
Reminds me of my favorite exchange on Reddit
www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/s/...
bobbylox: My ultimate goal in life is to make the Primer real. Anything you want to make sure I get right?
NealStephenson: Kids need to get answers from humans who love them.
Reminds me of my favorite exchange on Reddit
www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/s/...
bobbylox: My ultimate goal in life is to make the Primer real. Anything you want to make sure I get right?
NealStephenson: Kids need to get answers from humans who love them.
Reposted by Dave Bacon
Perimeter Institute openings:
1. Particle Physics:
academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31429
2. The intersection of Theoretical Physics and Artificial Intelligence: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31430
3. Quantum Computing and Quantum Information: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31435
1. Particle Physics:
academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31429
2. The intersection of Theoretical Physics and Artificial Intelligence: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31430
3. Quantum Computing and Quantum Information: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31435
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Research
Job #AJO31429, Tenure Track Faculty Appointment in Elementary Particle Theory - Perimeter Institute, Research, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario, CA
academicjobsonline.org
January 28, 2026 at 2:33 PM
Perimeter Institute openings:
1. Particle Physics:
academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31429
2. The intersection of Theoretical Physics and Artificial Intelligence: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31430
3. Quantum Computing and Quantum Information: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31435
1. Particle Physics:
academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31429
2. The intersection of Theoretical Physics and Artificial Intelligence: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31430
3. Quantum Computing and Quantum Information: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31435
Reposted by Dave Bacon
Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi
phys.org/news/2026-01...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
phys.org/news/2026-01...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Humanity's oldest known cave art has been discovered in Sulawesi
When we think of the world's oldest art, Europe usually comes to mind, with famous cave paintings in France and Spain often seen as evidence this was the birthplace of symbolic human culture. But new ...
phys.org
January 25, 2026 at 10:26 PM
Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi
phys.org/news/2026-01...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
phys.org/news/2026-01...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Dave Bacon
If you or your organisation is interested in sponsoring QEC26, please reach out to me as well and we can discuss the different sponsorship levels and opportunities we’ve set up!
January 23, 2026 at 7:10 PM
If you or your organisation is interested in sponsoring QEC26, please reach out to me as well and we can discuss the different sponsorship levels and opportunities we’ve set up!
Reposted by Dave Bacon
Last week we put up the website for QEC26, which can be found at qec-conference.org! It should have all conference information and deadline details needed, but if anything is missing please reach out to the admin email and we’ll get back to you asap.
January 23, 2026 at 7:10 PM
Last week we put up the website for QEC26, which can be found at qec-conference.org! It should have all conference information and deadline details needed, but if anything is missing please reach out to the admin email and we’ll get back to you asap.
Reposted by Dave Bacon
The website for QEC26 is up at qec-conference.org, and the submission deadline for talks and papers is Friday March 6th AOE. The submission link should be up soon!
Last week we put up the website for QEC26, which can be found at qec-conference.org! It should have all conference information and deadline details needed, but if anything is missing please reach out to the admin email and we’ll get back to you asap.
January 23, 2026 at 8:16 PM
The website for QEC26 is up at qec-conference.org, and the submission deadline for talks and papers is Friday March 6th AOE. The submission link should be up soon!
Reposted by Dave Bacon
Allen School researchers earn NeurIPS Best Paper Award for revealing the ‘Artificial Hivemind’ effect across LLM open-ended generation news.cs.washington.edu/2026/01/22/a...
Allen School researchers earn NeurIPS Best Paper Award
Using a benchmark dataset of 26,000 real-world, open-ended queries, the team discovered an “Artificial Hivemind” effect across major LLMs where different models would generate similar outputs.
news.cs.washington.edu
January 22, 2026 at 10:31 PM
Allen School researchers earn NeurIPS Best Paper Award for revealing the ‘Artificial Hivemind’ effect across LLM open-ended generation news.cs.washington.edu/2026/01/22/a...
Reposted by Dave Bacon
Thanks for the nice "shout-outs" in the second half! And even more thanks for working up to a wonderfully clear account of how entanglement might be explained by a retrocausal hidden variable model, Bell's theorem notwithstanding.
@danielwhiteson.bsky.social
@weinersmith.bsky.social
@danielwhiteson.bsky.social
@weinersmith.bsky.social
Can quantum measurements change the past?
Daniel and Kelly talk about the problem of time in quantum mechanics and how the past might depend on the future.
www.iheart.com/podcast/105-...
Daniel and Kelly talk about the problem of time in quantum mechanics and how the past might depend on the future.
www.iheart.com/podcast/105-...
January 21, 2026 at 4:58 PM
Thanks for the nice "shout-outs" in the second half! And even more thanks for working up to a wonderfully clear account of how entanglement might be explained by a retrocausal hidden variable model, Bell's theorem notwithstanding.
@danielwhiteson.bsky.social
@weinersmith.bsky.social
@danielwhiteson.bsky.social
@weinersmith.bsky.social
Reposted by Dave Bacon
If anyone wants some follow-up reading, here's a link to my popular-science-level essay on the topic that Daniel mentioned in the podcast: arxiv.org/abs/1211.7081
The Universe is not a Computer
When we want to predict the future, we compute it from what we know about the present. Specifically, we take a mathematical representation of observed reality, plug it into some dynamical equations, a...
arxiv.org
January 23, 2026 at 2:25 AM
If anyone wants some follow-up reading, here's a link to my popular-science-level essay on the topic that Daniel mentioned in the podcast: arxiv.org/abs/1211.7081
Highly recommend “The Machinery of Life” by David Goodsell www.goodreads.com/book/show/66... reading this gorgeous book gave me such a feeling of awe at how life works (or how we understand it, albeit from some height)
www.goodreads.com
January 21, 2026 at 9:41 PM
Highly recommend “The Machinery of Life” by David Goodsell www.goodreads.com/book/show/66... reading this gorgeous book gave me such a feeling of awe at how life works (or how we understand it, albeit from some height)
Reposted by Dave Bacon
Attention Authors: updated endorsement policy – arXiv blog
blog.arxiv.org
January 21, 2026 at 3:12 PM
Why is it that people who say “update my priors” are never the people who actually do any damn calculations of probabilities let alone Bayesian updates?
January 20, 2026 at 3:54 AM
Why is it that people who say “update my priors” are never the people who actually do any damn calculations of probabilities let alone Bayesian updates?
Love love love this article. In my (far less deep) delve into algebraic geometry, I have been motivated to apply it to quantum computing. Or as Wim van Dam asked, can we connect the Weil conjectures to the power of quantum computers? arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph...
January 19, 2026 at 5:56 PM
Love love love this article. In my (far less deep) delve into algebraic geometry, I have been motivated to apply it to quantum computing. Or as Wim van Dam asked, can we connect the Weil conjectures to the power of quantum computers? arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph...
Reposted by Dave Bacon
An abelian variety is a variety that's an abelian group. Varieties are sets of solutions of polynomial equations, and they're the main focus of algebraic geometry. I was scared of algebraic geometry until my 50s - and I wrote about getting over my fear.
nautil.us/the-math-tha...
nautil.us/the-math-tha...
The Math That Takes Newton Into the Quantum World
How a math professor learned to stop worrying and love algebraic geometry.
nautil.us
January 19, 2026 at 4:56 PM
An abelian variety is a variety that's an abelian group. Varieties are sets of solutions of polynomial equations, and they're the main focus of algebraic geometry. I was scared of algebraic geometry until my 50s - and I wrote about getting over my fear.
nautil.us/the-math-tha...
nautil.us/the-math-tha...
Con-cat-enated
Can cat-qubits get away with only ever using (concatenated) classical codes?
@pshanahan62.bsky.social and @diego-ruiz.bsky.social investigate and suggest yes!
#quantum ⚛️ 🧪
@pshanahan62.bsky.social and @diego-ruiz.bsky.social investigate and suggest yes!
#quantum ⚛️ 🧪
New preprint out with @pshanahan62.bsky.social! We introduce a new error-correcting code for biased-noise qubits. Built from the concatenation of two classical codes, it outperforms the surface and XZZX codes when the noise bias exceeds 7x10^4.
arxiv.org/abs/2601.10786
arxiv.org/abs/2601.10786
January 19, 2026 at 4:16 PM
Con-cat-enated
The Tandem Non Stop youtu.be/SSSB7ZTSXH4?...
The Remarkable Computers Built Not to Fail
YouTube video by Asianometry
youtu.be
January 12, 2026 at 4:45 AM
The Tandem Non Stop youtu.be/SSSB7ZTSXH4?...