General discussion

“… suppose an evil dictator captured you and gave you a choice: write a paper acceptable for physical review letters or be tortured to death. Suppose he was willing to pay to support you for 10 years while you studied the necessary physics and mathematics and also was willing to pay for the best tutors to prepare you for writing the paper. Suppose he also added a carrot on a stick: once the paper is accepted for publication, you will be given 1 billion dollars and never be bothered again. Could you pass the Deutsch test after 10 years? I claim that it is likely you could. In spite of what a non-physicist may think, writing the required paper is not really that difficult. No deep creative thought is necessary; the central ideas in many physics’ papers, given in physical review letters, have been suggested by others, and the authors have merely developed these ideas. You have a physics tutor, remember? Let us supposes the tutor is Albert Einstein. Given the necessary time, resources, and motivation to train, every reader of this book could pass the Deutsch Test. “