See also Scott Aaronson on experimental computational complexity theory (haha its a joke wait no maybe he’s not joking wait what?)
The meeting ended with a “Wild & Crazy Ideas Session,” at which I (naturally) spoke. I briefly considered talking about quantum gravity computing, closed timelike curves, or quantum anthropic postselection, but ultimately decided on something a little less mainstream. My topic was “Experimental Computational Complexity Theory,” or “why do theoretical physicists get $8-billion machines for the sole purpose of confirming or refuting their speculative ideas, whereas theoretical computer scientists get diddlysquat?” More concretely, my proposal is to devote some of the world’s computing power to an all-out attempt to answer questions like the following: does computing the permanent of a 4-by-4 matrix require more arithmetic operations than computing its determinant?
See also Scott Aaronson on experimental computational complexity theory (haha its a joke wait no maybe he’s not joking wait what?)
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=252