What Michael Nielsen thinks about ambition
Physicist, writer and researcher, co-author of the standard textbook on quantum computation and quantum information.
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2 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Michael Nielsen has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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Their wordsthere's sort of there's two types of work that tends to be involved in any kind of creative project. There's routine stuff and there you just want to avoid procrastination. You just want to like, you know, how do I get good at this or how do I outsource it and how do I do it as rapidly as possible? Um and just avoid you know, like getting into a situation where you're prolonging it. Um, and then there's high variance stuff where you actually you need to be willing to to you know take a lot of time.
↗Michael Nielsen – Why aliens will have a different tech stack than usyoutube.com 22nd of 26 in this recording
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Their wordsif a million dollars had been at stake, like would you have put the same effort in? And the answer is no. Um sort of invariably. Um like they've tried, but they haven't really tried.
↗Michael Nielsen – Why aliens will have a different tech stack than usyoutube.com 23rd of 26 in this recording