Dave Bacon
@dabacon.tachyon.institute
Theoretical ski bum. Former pseudo professor. Quantum bridge builder. Will math for food.
mastodon: @[email protected]
https://dabacon.org
mastodon: @[email protected]
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
Nice result! See end for interesting description of process using LLMs. Matches some of my experience as well.
Now on the arXiv: Shalev Ben-David and I (with the help of LLMs) show how a randomized algorithm can compute a total Boolean function faster than it is possible to certify the function! The full proof is < 3 pages.
arxiv.org/abs/2609.15063
scirate.com/arxiv/2609.1...
arxiv.org/abs/2609.15063
scirate.com/arxiv/2609.1...
September 15, 2026 at 1:18 PM
Nice result! See end for interesting description of process using LLMs. Matches some of my experience as well.
“The first rule of the Intuition Club is: you don’t talk about the Intuition Club” davidbessis.substack.com/p/the-fall-o...
The fall of the theorem economy
How AI could destroy mathematics and barely touch it
davidbessis.substack.com
September 14, 2026 at 2:34 AM
“The first rule of the Intuition Club is: you don’t talk about the Intuition Club” davidbessis.substack.com/p/the-fall-o...
Reposted by Dave Bacon
Deeply saddened to learn that Rafael Sorkin is no more. One of the deepest and most original thinkers of quantum gravity and the pioneer of causal set theory, he was also among the nicest, gentlest physicists I have met.
September 13, 2026 at 10:32 PM
Deeply saddened to learn that Rafael Sorkin is no more. One of the deepest and most original thinkers of quantum gravity and the pioneer of causal set theory, he was also among the nicest, gentlest physicists I have met.
Make a band edible Tangerine de Poutine
Make a band edible:
Durian Durian
Durian Durian
The Beets
September 12, 2026 at 12:42 PM
Make a band edible Tangerine de Poutine
Reposted by Dave Bacon
Applications are open for SFI's 2027 Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships.
SFI is looking for recent Ph.D. graduates with strong quantitative and computational skills who want to pursue independent, transdisciplinary research.
Deadline: September 30, 2026
Apply: santafe.edu/sfifellowship
SFI is looking for recent Ph.D. graduates with strong quantitative and computational skills who want to pursue independent, transdisciplinary research.
Deadline: September 30, 2026
Apply: santafe.edu/sfifellowship
September 10, 2026 at 8:20 PM
Applications are open for SFI's 2027 Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships.
SFI is looking for recent Ph.D. graduates with strong quantitative and computational skills who want to pursue independent, transdisciplinary research.
Deadline: September 30, 2026
Apply: santafe.edu/sfifellowship
SFI is looking for recent Ph.D. graduates with strong quantitative and computational skills who want to pursue independent, transdisciplinary research.
Deadline: September 30, 2026
Apply: santafe.edu/sfifellowship
Reposted by Dave Bacon
Frontier LLMs can now solve interesting open problems. So how should academic conferences adapt? I get asked this often and I've given this a lot of thought for QIP 2027 specifically, as chair of the Steering Committee. My personal thoughts (not speaking for the SC): (1/4)
September 10, 2026 at 4:36 AM
Frontier LLMs can now solve interesting open problems. So how should academic conferences adapt? I get asked this often and I've given this a lot of thought for QIP 2027 specifically, as chair of the Steering Committee. My personal thoughts (not speaking for the SC): (1/4)
Lot of fun to be had if you can find bugs in Lean today. Possibly even Fame for un-winning a Millennium prize :)
September 9, 2026 at 6:43 PM
Lot of fun to be had if you can find bugs in Lean today. Possibly even Fame for un-winning a Millennium prize :)
Reposted by Dave Bacon
Do Androids Dream of Electronic Funds Transfer?
September 9, 2026 at 3:23 PM
Do Androids Dream of Electronic Funds Transfer?
Wrong question not relevant to this universe. BQP v QMA is the real problem (ducks).
Another reminder that a solution to P v NP is not around the corner. Neither man or machine has even a viable approach.
September 9, 2026 at 2:51 AM
Wrong question not relevant to this universe. BQP v QMA is the real problem (ducks).
Reposted by Dave Bacon
Well, this Navier-Stokes affair did blow up in finite time
September 8, 2026 at 10:52 AM
Well, this Navier-Stokes affair did blow up in finite time
“It’s an art, and it gets passed down. It’s altruistic in a sense, but it’s also selfish in a sense, because we have these ideas and this tradition that we really want to pass down.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/s...
The 92-Year-Old Mathematician and the Teenage Apprentice
Joan Birman thought her major discoveries were behind her. Then came an email from a young neighbor — a girl who knew little but wanted to learn.
www.nytimes.com
September 7, 2026 at 4:17 AM
“It’s an art, and it gets passed down. It’s altruistic in a sense, but it’s also selfish in a sense, because we have these ideas and this tradition that we really want to pass down.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/s...
Now I’m sure it’s true, have been worried for many decades.
Claude has produced a formalized proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem. Of course FLT had already been proven by Andrew Wiles, but this proof is simpler, and “formalized” means machine-verifiable. The news isn’t the proof, but the form.
Still too long to fit in a page margin, though.
Still too long to fit in a page margin, though.
Jesus Christ.
www.anthropic.com/research/for...
www.anthropic.com/research/for...
September 5, 2026 at 1:40 AM
Now I’m sure it’s true, have been worried for many decades.
Is it wrong that my favorite social network is Goodreads. I’m more interested in what you read than in you, sorry not sorry. (And yes I judge you based on your bookshelf)
August 28, 2026 at 7:43 PM
Is it wrong that my favorite social network is Goodreads. I’m more interested in what you read than in you, sorry not sorry. (And yes I judge you based on your bookshelf)
My favorite identity morphisms is from Borges “Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger”. No objects, just morphisms. You are the morphism that takes you to you.
August 28, 2026 at 6:40 PM
My favorite identity morphisms is from Borges “Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger”. No objects, just morphisms. You are the morphism that takes you to you.
Aliens. Beautiful beautiful aliens.
August 25, 2026 at 2:37 AM
Aliens. Beautiful beautiful aliens.
Reposted by Dave Bacon
Applications for the 2027 Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships are open!
Katrin Schmelz just completed SFI’s Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowship, and she reflects on what the experience meant to her.
Deadline: September 30, 2026
Requirements & application: santafe.edu/sfifellowship
Katrin Schmelz just completed SFI’s Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowship, and she reflects on what the experience meant to her.
Deadline: September 30, 2026
Requirements & application: santafe.edu/sfifellowship
August 12, 2026 at 7:23 PM
Applications for the 2027 Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships are open!
Katrin Schmelz just completed SFI’s Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowship, and she reflects on what the experience meant to her.
Deadline: September 30, 2026
Requirements & application: santafe.edu/sfifellowship
Katrin Schmelz just completed SFI’s Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowship, and she reflects on what the experience meant to her.
Deadline: September 30, 2026
Requirements & application: santafe.edu/sfifellowship
Reposted by Dave Bacon
That noise you're hearing is all the cryptographers working on PQC (and particularly lattices, but a breakthrough like that would have likely had far reaching consequences beyond just lattices) collectively breathing out after holding their breath for a week.
https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1693
https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1693
August 15, 2026 at 6:24 PM
That noise you're hearing is all the cryptographers working on PQC (and particularly lattices, but a breakthrough like that would have likely had far reaching consequences beyond just lattices) collectively breathing out after holding their breath for a week.
https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1693
https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1693
Quantum Roadmap Energy: the conserved quantity arising from the time invariance of quantum computing roadmaps.
August 12, 2026 at 10:24 AM
Quantum Roadmap Energy: the conserved quantity arising from the time invariance of quantum computing roadmaps.
In Cambridge at the Cambridge University Press bookstore. Had forgotten this slypo, my email address turned into my initials in Mike and Ike. (My real initial are DMB yes it is funny)
August 9, 2026 at 11:01 AM
In Cambridge at the Cambridge University Press bookstore. Had forgotten this slypo, my email address turned into my initials in Mike and Ike. (My real initial are DMB yes it is funny)
Unverified but BIG if true eprint.iacr.org/2026/1591
A Polynomial-Time Quantum Algorithm for the Dihedral Coset Problem
We present a polynomial-time quantum algorithm for the Dihedral Coset Problem (DCP). The algorithm is based on Regev's polynomial-time reduction of the Dihedral Subgroup Problem (DSP) to the modular ...
eprint.iacr.org
August 6, 2026 at 6:00 PM
Unverified but BIG if true eprint.iacr.org/2026/1591
Reposted by Dave Bacon
NeurIPS 2026 Workshop: Symmetry and Geometry in Neural Representations
Submission deadline: August 22
#Workshop #NeurIPS #Symmetry #Geometry #Neural #Representation #NetworkScience ./9
www.complexitycat.org/posts/worksh...
Submission deadline: August 22
#Workshop #NeurIPS #Symmetry #Geometry #Neural #Representation #NetworkScience ./9
www.complexitycat.org/posts/worksh...
NeurIPS 2026 Workshop: Symmetry and Geometry in Neural Representations
The 5th annual NeurReps Workshop, Symmetry and Geometry in Neural Representations, returns to NeurIPS 2026, in person on December 11 or 12 in Sydney. Submit your research on symmetry, geometry, and to...
www.complexitycat.org
August 3, 2026 at 1:41 PM
NeurIPS 2026 Workshop: Symmetry and Geometry in Neural Representations
Submission deadline: August 22
#Workshop #NeurIPS #Symmetry #Geometry #Neural #Representation #NetworkScience ./9
www.complexitycat.org/posts/worksh...
Submission deadline: August 22
#Workshop #NeurIPS #Symmetry #Geometry #Neural #Representation #NetworkScience ./9
www.complexitycat.org/posts/worksh...
Reposted by Dave Bacon
I'm just now reading @randomwalker.bsky.social's writeup of his ICML keynote. It is very insightful. Everyone thinking about the future of work in the age of AI should read this.
www.normaltech.ai/p/what-will-...
www.normaltech.ai/p/what-will-...
What will be left for us to work on?
My keynote at ICML 2026
www.normaltech.ai
August 2, 2026 at 3:08 PM
I'm just now reading @randomwalker.bsky.social's writeup of his ICML keynote. It is very insightful. Everyone thinking about the future of work in the age of AI should read this.
www.normaltech.ai/p/what-will-...
www.normaltech.ai/p/what-will-...
Reposted by Dave Bacon
Famously, quantum error-correction on the toric code under bit-flip errors maps to the random-bond Ising model. But what about general noise (e.g. amplitude damping) and non-abelian codes (e.g. string-net)? scirate.com/arxiv/2607.2... (1/2)
scirate.com
July 27, 2026 at 5:11 AM
Famously, quantum error-correction on the toric code under bit-flip errors maps to the random-bond Ising model. But what about general noise (e.g. amplitude damping) and non-abelian codes (e.g. string-net)? scirate.com/arxiv/2607.2... (1/2)