Ben Deeb - Quantum Country interview - 2019-06-18

“Stalwart” user

Synthesis + highlights

Very thoughtful learner who’s totally outside of our target reader. He’s a philosophy major, just curious about various things. Weirdly, though, he’s super serious about his study experience. Is totally compliant, on the first notification, again and again.

He did have a clear experience where his study practice helped him understand when he reread the essay:

“While reading it again today, I thought I don’t get this, and then I thought about it for a moment … I would go back, and integrate things from before, and it would snap into place a little bit.”
“I didn’t have to spend so much time holding in my mind what the things meant. I was able to use the terms to draw concepts together a little more easily.”

On the value of reviews:

“Made me give it more of a chance. If it hadn’t had that aspect, I probably wouldn’t have quit when getting into the proofs that I didn’t understand.”
“I guess it’s showing me that I have the ability to learn information that I thought was beyond me. If you just showed me some of this stuff in the article like 3/4 of the way down, I would have thought that’s not for me.”

Raw notes

• Found it through a friend:
  • Sent it as an email of interesting things
  • “I’m interested in this stuff”
  • Works for a non-profit, ran their science dept, worked in schools around LA
  • “Getting complex ideas across has always been very important to me.”
  • “I consider myself a very curious person.”
  • “My attempts to understand QC, QM perviously… I went on Wikipedia wormholes… and found that I didn’t really understand anything that I’d read”
  • “I’m always curious about where technology is headed”
  • “I’m a writer, I mostly do fiction. Now I’m doing more immersive storytelling”
  • Dabbles in programming
  • Philosophy major (!)
• First impressions:
  • “The first paragraphs had me hooked on a new way of learning it.”
  • Bogged down in math. Hadn’t done any linear algebra since HS.
  • Watched videos to get basics of matrix multiplication
  • “Found myself over my head but makes a little more sense now”
  • Wasn’t able to follow the proofs
  • “It seemed like a more accessible way of learning this stuff”
• Where did things get challenging?
  • Amplitudes of vectors and normalization
  • Stuff that didn’t sink in until later: unitary matrices
  • “A lot of the concepts clicked into place…”
  • “When I first read it, I was like: I’m just going to plow through this”
  • H-dagger card “I didn’t get at all.”
  • “While reading it again today, I thought I don’t get this, and then I thought about it for a moment … I would go back, and integrate things from before, and it would snap into place a little bit.”
  • First time: Read, read, still lost
  • Seeing the card in sessions:
    • “It was like I still didn’t quite understand what it meant fully, but I knew the answer. ‘This is the proper response.’”
    • “It was a little bit just like memorization.” Y-gate again!
    • “I gotta be honest, I still don’t fully understand the math behind all that stuff, but I do think I have a better grasp on XXX”
  • Was confused by the ket with the +/- kets.
  • Put together that the + is the Hadamard applied to |0>.
• What did the review sessions do for you?
  • “There were terms that just weren’t making sense. I was trying so hard to process them all the first time I read that I couldn’t put them together.”
  • When you read again “I didn’t have to spend so much time holding in my mind what the things meant. I was able to use the terms to draw concepts together a little more easily.”
• First exposure to interactive review
  • “This is cool, this is a new way of doing things that I haven’t seen before.”
  • “Am I gonna be tested? I probably wouldn’t do very well, and my vanity wouldn’t like that.” But: “Feel free to lie!”
  • remembered “transgressive”
  • “Made me give it more of a chance. If it hadn’t had that aspect, I probably wouldn’t have quit when getting into the proofs that I didn’t understand.”
  • “I learn a lot better if I understand why.”
• Expectation?
  • “I expected to have a better understanding after I’d read it. And if not… maybe I can get the concepts better … at the end of a few months.”
  • “That seemed achievable … unlike the Wikipedia pages I mentioned.”
• What do you feel you gained?
  • “I have a better grasp on exactly what QC is; what its promises and limitations are.”
  • “The stuff I found most fascinating was the applications for the future”
  • “It allows me to have conversations I wouldn’t have been able to have otherwise.”
  • Has a friend who’s doing data analysis, talked with her about stuff
• Sense of progress?
  • “There’s definitely a sense of progress. … conceptually understanding things a little bit more”
  • On the second reading, it sunk in why it mattered
  • “I guess it’s showing me that I have the ability to learn information that I thought was beyond me. If you just showed me some of this stuff in the article like 3/4 of the way down, I would have thought that’s not for me.”
• Why so consistent?
  • “I like to keep my email at inbox zero”
• Why stick with it?
  • A chance to learn something new.
  • “I like a challenge”
  • “I like the idea that this was something I didn’t get the first time.”
• The levels…
  • Why on the cards?
  • “to remind you how long it’s been”
  • noticed when rereading today
  • “I feel good that I have two months of recall”
  • What’s “done”?
  • Do you have a goal? “Not sure I do.” “Rereading this today, it felt great to understand too much more of it.”
  • to be able to read more
  • it’s nice to see that other things are coming
• Scheduling consistency
  • Likes that it’s spreading out
  • “I like it seems like it has an end in sight”
  • The end is comprehension
• Stumbling blocks
  • qubits -> amplitudes initially, but then computational basis states drops idea of amplitudes
  • eventually got it, but had to reread
• Read it once, skimmed another time

Prep notes

• Joined early April
• Read over two sessions
• Very consistent, no more than 2 notifications
• Read all of QCVC, none of search
• Card quartiles: 5 / 7 / 7 / 7 / 7

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