"Unrealistic" or "contrived" don't really get to the heart of the matter, at least not as I understand them. The stick example can be extremely useful and reali

"Unrealistic" or "contrived" don't really get to the heart of the matter, at least not as I understand them. The stick example can be extremely useful and realistic - it doesn't really make any difference to the question. Perhaps another way to phrase it (though I'm not 100% sure this is equivalent) is: how do they know whether whatever they're accomplishing is quantum computation, as opposed to something else (like analog computation) that happens to be concerned with quantum physics.