Maturana & Varela: The Theory of Autopoiesis and the Revolution of Life

Maturana & Varela transformed biology and the understanding of living systems with the notion of « autopoiesis »: living beings are systems that produce and self-organize …

Shtetl-Optimized

The Blog of Scott Aaronson

The QMA Singularity

A couple days ago, Freek Witteveen of CWI and I posted a paper to the arXiv called “Limits to black-box amplification in QMA.” Let me share the abstract: We study the limitations of bla…

Passionate State of Mind, Aphorism 88 (1955) - Hoffer, Eric | WIST Quotations

Absolute power is partial to simplicity. It wants simple problems, simple solutions, simple definitions. It sees in complication a product of weakness -- the torturous path compromise must follow.

The bloat of edge-case first libraries

How building edge-case first led to bloated, overly-granular libraries and what we can do about it

Driving Complex Decisions

Why do software developers love complexity?

The Great Pyramids took decades to build. It was a monumental feat of human ingenuity and collaboration. Today, we software developers erect our own pyramids each day - not from stone, but from code. Yet despite far more advanced tools, these systems don’t always make the experience better. So why, when KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is a well-known mantra, do we keep gravitating toward complexity?