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Arjen Lenstra was my professor for a year. When he we was asked about quantum computers he replied something to the effect of: "Back in the 90s, I asked leadin
by kjaer 10y ago
Arjen Lenstra was my professor for a year. When he we was asked about quantum computers he replied something to the effect of:
"Back in the 90s, I asked leading quantum computing researchers when quantum computers would become available, and I was told 'in 10 years' time'. I asked them again 10 years later, in the 2000s, and was met with the same reply. And I've asked again just recently, and I was told, once again: 'in 10 years'. Now, I'm a computer scientist, so I my prediction of the future can only be that what has repeated itself will continue to do so. According to this logic, quantum computers will never be available."
(I'm quoting very loosely, because this was just an off-topic remark during a lecture I attended a year ago, so I don't remember the exact phrasing. But I do believe that this was the gist of it).
I'm genuinely afraid that quantum computing will just remain a purely theoretical field, and that we won't see any practical applications to it. To me, that does not make it worth pursuing. I'd love to be wrong, though, because it sounds super interesting.
- ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago> According to this logic, quantum computers will never be available. No, it just means that time until quantum computers are available is distributed exponentially.
- kjaer 10y agoI don't think I really understand what you mean. What he said was that it stays at 10 years indefinitely. Either way, x+10 and e^x both go to infinity, so I guess the conclusion is the same, right?
- tgb 10y agoI think the joke was to say that 'quantum computing being discovered' follows a Poisson distribution which models occurrences of events that arrive in a manner so that each one is independent of the previous one. Such as letters arriving in the mail or winning at roulette. Regardless of how long it's been since your last letter, you still guess that the next one will come on average, say, 5 days from now. Regardless of how long its been since you won at roulette, you should still expect your number to come up on average 38 tries from now. The exponential part is more like e^(-x) and refers to the exponential distribution [1] that gives the distribution of intervals in between Poisson events. So if its 'distributed exponentially' (whatever that means for a one-off event), the joke is that this would then give rise to the situation where researchers are always correct guessing 10 years off, even if they've been saying that for decades. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_distribution
- ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago> So if its 'distributed exponentially' (whatever that means for a one-off event) One-off event is not a problem. You can clone the world many times at the moment when scientists made their prediction and find the distribution over ensemble instead of over time.
- itcrowd 10y agoDoes it, though? If I understand correctly the exponential distribution means we will have an expected waiting time of X years between two occurences but does it also hold when there is just a single event? I mean to say that the introduction of a quantum computer is just a single, once occurring event.
- SEMW 10y agoResearcher time-estimate translation table: https://xkcd.com/678/ https://xkcd.com/678/
- sampo 10y agoThere should be a website that keeps track of how many bits is the largest quantum register that someone has managed to build.
- mathgenius 10y agoI spoke to a guy from google recently, and it sounds like they are totally going to do this. General purpose QC is still a while away, but these guys are about to step into the void so to speak, within the next year or so. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/544421/googles-quantum-dream-machine/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/544421/googles-quantum-dr...