Your World View Doesn't Compute

Since computers are, if nothing else, starkly logical, for as long as they have been around, there have been people who have hoped that the machines might serve as an example to their human overlords, helping to make certain human affairs--politics, say--a little more logical too.

One of them is Scott Aaronson, a computer scientist at M.I.T. with an idea for a program designed to help people appreciate that the logical path they have just traveled in a political or other discussion might not have been entirely straight and narrow.

Despite being just 27 years old and in only the second year of his professorship, Aaronson is widely known in his field, quantum computing.

Quantum computers work in ways utterly different from conventional ones, and can do some tasks--breaking encryption, say--unimaginably quickly. So far, only small-scale, prototype quantum computers have been built, and it's not yet clear whether one big enough to be useful will ever be technically possible.

Aaronson's work involves quantum software, meaning, as members of his field like to say, that he spends his time thinking about programs for machines that might never get built.

One of his side projects, though, is a work-in-progress political program called the Worldview Manager. It has nothing to do with quantum machines or, indeed, of advanced computing of any sort. In fact, it's so simple and straightforward an idea that you could write it with macros in Excel.

The goal of Worldview Manager, explains Aaronson, is to help people appreciate the inconsistencies and contradictions that might crop up in their social and political beliefs.