8 ms·

So, I have a question. I found the 'article'... well comic, surprisingly easy to read and I think I learned something. However, my knowledge of quantum computin

So, I have a question. I found the 'article'... well comic, surprisingly easy to read and I think I learned something. However, my knowledge of quantum computing has mostly been based on articles that the comic was poking fun at. I've not had any formal education. So my question is, was this indeed a good educational comic, or does it just have a different set of problems from other articles on quantum computing?

madhadron 7y ago
It was accurate and hilarious. I don't know how useful it is if you don't already know quantum mechanics. (Note: that's not the idiom of "I don't know" = "I doubt it". It's actually "I don't know." One thing I have learned over the years is that once you've rewired your brain for this stuff, you have no intuition for what exposition will actually work for someone who hasn't.)
- slowmovintarget 7y ago
  It's like coming up with a metaphor for monads once you understand monads. OK, now I must ask forgiveness for using monads in an analogy.
  - madhadron 7y ago
    I did not know until today that I needed an emoji that was both lol and angry.
kingbirdy 7y ago
Scott Aaronson, co-author of the comic, is the director of the Quantum Information Center at UT Austin, and has a number of publications about quantum computing. His website has more qualifications: https://www.scottaaronson.com/ https://www.scottaaronson.com/.
- _asummers 7y ago
  His book Quantum Computing Since Democritus is very good too.
- Darkphibre 7y ago
  Wow. I had no idea, thanks for this!
- knzhou 7y ago
  And it's not just the qualifications -- Scott Aaronson is one of the most approachable, honest, and witty science communicators of all time. You almost never see all those traits all together in popsci, even ignoring qualifications. If there was a Scott Aaronson tier communicator for every subfield of science, the world would be a much better place. I also wouldn't have to type nearly as many comments.
  - romwell 7y ago
    >You almost never see all those traits all together in popsci Hold on a second. Scott Aaronson is popsci, as in popular science. As for what you refer to, see the name of the journal the boy is reading in the first panel :)
Filligree 7y ago
It was indeed a good educational comic, but if you're reading between the lines you're still probably getting things wrong. And there aren't a lot of lines, so if you aren't reading between the lines you aren't getting a lot, period. Probably the best thing to take away is what you don't know. Scott Aaronson is one of the best in the field, though.
- mikestew 7y ago
  The parallels between Zen Buddhism and quantum anything has been striking to me lately. Not in every way, duh. But mainly "your classical concepts aren't going to work here" and "you nod your head, but you don't really get it yet." But perhaps the biggest parallel is that a lot of people, maybe most, get it way, way wrong starting out.
  - dkarl 7y ago
    The comic kind of pokes fun at such parallels, especially in the final panel ("Quantum computing and consciousness are both weird and therefore equivalent,") but I think it's a common experience, and quantum physics in general becomes the canonical example because everybody has the same experience with it. Whereas with many other examples, two people might find different things intuitive or counter-intuitive, depending on their path to the subject. I've even seen a professor confuse an entire classroom by describing something as "counterintuitive" when it was completely straightforward from the perspective they had been taught the previous semester. Quantum mechanics can serve as the byword for needing to absorb an entirely new and counterintuitive set of concepts because everyone experiences it that way.
    - NoodleIncident 7y ago
      > "Quantum computing and consciousness are both weird and therefore equivalent," You call this "poking fun", but it's horrifyingly real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind
    - Viliam1234 7y ago
defen 7y ago
It's actually educational and was cowritten by Scott Aaronson, who has a great lecture that explains the idea of "quantum mechanics as complex probabilities": https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html
- aaron-santos 7y ago
  I've been recently exposed to dual and split-complex number systems. Is there any place for probability theories based on those "sibling" number systems?
shantly 7y ago
I don't know what a bunch of words like "event" and "amplitude" (of... what?) mean in context, to the point that I was able to nod along but didn't actually understand any of it.
- jandrese 7y ago
  My takeaway is that amplitude is used because we're thinking about wave patterns and in particular the interference from those waves.
- monktastic1 7y ago
  It's hard to answer your question without giving a course in QM, but this is a good place to share a pet peeve about this. For some deeply unfortunate reason, "amplitude" can refer to: (1) The (complex) coefficient of a component of a state vector. (2) If we treat that number c as re^(iθ), then r is sometimes called c's "amplitude" (though it's more often called the "norm" or the "modulus"). (3) Some authors even use it to refer to θ ("The argument is sometimes also known as the phase or, more rarely and more confusingly, the amplitude" [1]) Luckily, in quantum mechanics, they almost always mean (1). That's the usage here. [1] http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ComplexArgument.html http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ComplexArgument.html
  - boblivion 7y ago
    Wait, why do they call it amplitude when it's the rotational component? What is the reasoning to call this amplitude?
    - monktastic1 7y ago
      I don't know, because they hate us?
  - mrkstu 7y ago
    My knowing-nothing coming in takeaway is that the 'wave' state of QM is more like an ocean wave than the two dimensional wave of a sine wave on a oscilloscope and 'interferes' similar to how wave encountering each other on the ocean might. Is that at all part of what is trying to be communicated?
colanderman 7y ago
As someone who used to think all the "wrong" things, and then actually sat down and read what quantum computing actually is (thanks Wikipedia!) and realized that the popular depiction is, in fact, wrong, yes, this comic repeatedly hits all the right points.
frenchyatwork 7y ago
I'm not an expert, but I think this comic does a decent job of breaking down a few of the easy, popular misconceptions, provided you don't get completely lost. You're not going to gain any real understanding from this comic, it's not intended for that. Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to have any deep understanding of quantum computing without sticking your head in the numbers.
drcode 7y ago
It's much better than most other brief explanations I've read. One thing I wish it would hit more strongly is that the "actual world" is bigger than what we can interact with, we only experience a "slice" of this larger world under almost all circumstances- The complex amplitudes of qbits hint at this fact, and quantum computers essentially take advantage of this "extra stuff in the world" to do calculations, though in a completely different manner than mere "parallel computation". What we don't yet know is if this "extra stuff" is really big (i.e. represents parallel universes) or is just some kind of more restricted phenomenon. The other important thing to know is that our brains are subject to the same complex probability amplitudes as qbits- That's why things seem weird when we magnify quantum phenomena via experiments and try to explain what's happening: Our brains get entangled with the experiment and the "slice" of the world that we're experiencing varies depending on the results of the experiment. Quantum phenomena seem a lot less "weird" once you get comfortable with this fact: i.e. that our brains are just physical objects prone to the exact same physical laws as elementary particles, and that the organ we're using to reason about the experiment with is entangled with the experiment itself. (Disclaimer: I'm only an armchair enthusiast)
Bajeezus 7y ago
My coworker gave this talk on quantum computing for computer scientists that I found extremely helpful. It just requires basic knowledge of linear algebra and classical computer architecture. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/quantum-computing-computer-scientists/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/quantum-compu...

madhadron 7y ago

It was accurate and hilarious. I don't know how useful it is if you don't already know quantum mechanics. (Note: that's not the idiom of "I don't know" = "I doubt it". It's actually "I don't know." One thing I have learned over the years is that once you've rewired your brain for this stuff, you have no intuition for what exposition will actually work for someone who hasn't.)

slowmovintarget 7y ago
It's like coming up with a metaphor for monads once you understand monads. OK, now I must ask forgiveness for using monads in an analogy.
- madhadron 7y ago
  I did not know until today that I needed an emoji that was both lol and angry.

kingbirdy 7y ago

Scott Aaronson, co-author of the comic, is the director of the Quantum Information Center at UT Austin, and has a number of publications about quantum computing. His website has more qualifications: https://www.scottaaronson.com/ https://www.scottaaronson.com/.

_asummers 7y ago
His book Quantum Computing Since Democritus is very good too.
Darkphibre 7y ago
Wow. I had no idea, thanks for this!
knzhou 7y ago
And it's not just the qualifications -- Scott Aaronson is one of the most approachable, honest, and witty science communicators of all time. You almost never see all those traits all together in popsci, even ignoring qualifications. If there was a Scott Aaronson tier communicator for every subfield of science, the world would be a much better place. I also wouldn't have to type nearly as many comments.
- romwell 7y ago
  >You almost never see all those traits all together in popsci Hold on a second. Scott Aaronson is popsci, as in popular science. As for what you refer to, see the name of the journal the boy is reading in the first panel :)

Filligree 7y ago

It was indeed a good educational comic, but if you're reading between the lines you're still probably getting things wrong. And there aren't a lot of lines, so if you aren't reading between the lines you aren't getting a lot, period. Probably the best thing to take away is what you don't know. Scott Aaronson is one of the best in the field, though.

mikestew 7y ago
The parallels between Zen Buddhism and quantum anything has been striking to me lately. Not in every way, duh. But mainly "your classical concepts aren't going to work here" and "you nod your head, but you don't really get it yet." But perhaps the biggest parallel is that a lot of people, maybe most, get it way, way wrong starting out.
- dkarl 7y ago
  The comic kind of pokes fun at such parallels, especially in the final panel ("Quantum computing and consciousness are both weird and therefore equivalent,") but I think it's a common experience, and quantum physics in general becomes the canonical example because everybody has the same experience with it. Whereas with many other examples, two people might find different things intuitive or counter-intuitive, depending on their path to the subject. I've even seen a professor confuse an entire classroom by describing something as "counterintuitive" when it was completely straightforward from the perspective they had been taught the previous semester. Quantum mechanics can serve as the byword for needing to absorb an entirely new and counterintuitive set of concepts because everyone experiences it that way.
  - NoodleIncident 7y ago
    > "Quantum computing and consciousness are both weird and therefore equivalent," You call this "poking fun", but it's horrifyingly real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind
  - Viliam1234 7y ago

defen 7y ago

It's actually educational and was cowritten by Scott Aaronson, who has a great lecture that explains the idea of "quantum mechanics as complex probabilities": https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html

aaron-santos 7y ago
I've been recently exposed to dual and split-complex number systems. Is there any place for probability theories based on those "sibling" number systems?

shantly 7y ago

I don't know what a bunch of words like "event" and "amplitude" (of... what?) mean in context, to the point that I was able to nod along but didn't actually understand any of it.

jandrese 7y ago
My takeaway is that amplitude is used because we're thinking about wave patterns and in particular the interference from those waves.
monktastic1 7y ago
It's hard to answer your question without giving a course in QM, but this is a good place to share a pet peeve about this. For some deeply unfortunate reason, "amplitude" can refer to: (1) The (complex) coefficient of a component of a state vector. (2) If we treat that number c as re^(iθ), then r is sometimes called c's "amplitude" (though it's more often called the "norm" or the "modulus"). (3) Some authors even use it to refer to θ ("The argument is sometimes also known as the phase or, more rarely and more confusingly, the amplitude" [1]) Luckily, in quantum mechanics, they almost always mean (1). That's the usage here. [1] http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ComplexArgument.html http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ComplexArgument.html
- boblivion 7y ago
  Wait, why do they call it amplitude when it's the rotational component? What is the reasoning to call this amplitude?
  - monktastic1 7y ago
    I don't know, because they hate us?
- mrkstu 7y ago
  My knowing-nothing coming in takeaway is that the 'wave' state of QM is more like an ocean wave than the two dimensional wave of a sine wave on a oscilloscope and 'interferes' similar to how wave encountering each other on the ocean might. Is that at all part of what is trying to be communicated?

colanderman 7y ago

As someone who used to think all the "wrong" things, and then actually sat down and read what quantum computing actually is (thanks Wikipedia!) and realized that the popular depiction is, in fact, wrong, yes, this comic repeatedly hits all the right points.

frenchyatwork 7y ago

I'm not an expert, but I think this comic does a decent job of breaking down a few of the easy, popular misconceptions, provided you don't get completely lost. You're not going to gain any real understanding from this comic, it's not intended for that. Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to have any deep understanding of quantum computing without sticking your head in the numbers.

drcode 7y ago

It's much better than most other brief explanations I've read. One thing I wish it would hit more strongly is that the "actual world" is bigger than what we can interact with, we only experience a "slice" of this larger world under almost all circumstances- The complex amplitudes of qbits hint at this fact, and quantum computers essentially take advantage of this "extra stuff in the world" to do calculations, though in a completely different manner than mere "parallel computation". What we don't yet know is if this "extra stuff" is really big (i.e. represents parallel universes) or is just some kind of more restricted phenomenon. The other important thing to know is that our brains are subject to the same complex probability amplitudes as qbits- That's why things seem weird when we magnify quantum phenomena via experiments and try to explain what's happening: Our brains get entangled with the experiment and the "slice" of the world that we're experiencing varies depending on the results of the experiment. Quantum phenomena seem a lot less "weird" once you get comfortable with this fact: i.e. that our brains are just physical objects prone to the exact same physical laws as elementary particles, and that the organ we're using to reason about the experiment with is entangled with the experiment itself. (Disclaimer: I'm only an armchair enthusiast)

Bajeezus 7y ago

My coworker gave this talk on quantum computing for computer scientists that I found extremely helpful. It just requires basic knowledge of linear algebra and classical computer architecture. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/quantum-computing-computer-scientists/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/quantum-compu...