Seth Lloyd
13 quotes
Biography
Seth Lloyd is an American quantum information scientist and professor in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Mechanical Engineering.
"Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics. All three are processes in which useful or accessible forms of some quantity, such as energy or money, are transformed into useless, inaccessible forms of the same quantity. That is not to say that these three processes don't have fringe benefits: taxes pay for roads and schools; the second law of thermodynamics drives cars, computers and metabolism; and death, at the very least, opens up tenured faculty positions."
"Of course, one way of thinking about all of life and civilization is as being about how the world registers and processes information. Certainly that's what sex is about; that's what history is about."
"Quantum mechanics is weird. I don't understand it. Just live with it. You don't have to understand the nature of things in order to build cool devices…If you can figure out how to take advantage of this quantum multitasking, we can build computers that can do computations that no classical computer could do even if it were the size of the entire universe."
"Computers are famous for being able to do complicated things starting from simple programs."
"Something else has happened with computers."
"What's happened with society is that we have created these devices, computers, which already can register and process huge amounts of information, which is a significant fraction of the amount of information that human beings themselves, as a species, can process."
"Computers are famous for being able to do complicated things starting from simple programs."
"Similarly, another famous little quantum fluctuation that programs you is the exact configuration of your DNA."
"Science consists exactly of those forms of knowledge that can be verified and duplicated by anybody."
"Science consists exactly of those forms of knowledge that can be verified and duplicated by anybody."
"Of course, not everybody's willing to go out and do the experiments, but for the people who are willing to go out and do that, - if the experiments don't work, then it means it's not science."
"Instead of having to be a member of the Royal Society to do science, the way you had to be in England in the 17th, 18th, centuries today pretty much anybody who wants to do it can, and the information that they need to do it is there."
"Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics."