4 ms·

The vast majority of experts are being employed to say this. There is no demonstrable evidence of physical computation to the contrary.

jessriedel 3y ago
Tenured professors who have been working in the field for decades before you ever heard about it in the news, and who have been consistently deeply critical of quantum computing hype despite negative professional and financial penalties from doing so, nonetheless still agree overwhelmingly that it will happen. You can't just believe the opposite of what swindlers are arguing and expect that to be right.
- pyinstallwoes 3y ago
  On one hand I can make a joke that you are defending the only job on Earth that not only gets paid but can't get fired past a certain point due to their 'tenure.' On the other hand I can make a nod in the direction of the decades of expertise any one can build in a chamber of vapor ware with the hope that it will distill into something useful. As critical as I am, I of course congratulate anyone on taking on such difficult innovation. Nonetheless, there is no physical evidence it will amount to anything thus far. It is purely hypothetical, and the only thing theoretical in justification is the fictitious proof of its use through mathematical modeling which is not physical reality and thus closer to building a virtualized computer in a MMO that mimics Earth saying you get to play as a martian using some weird technology while it runs on classical computing.
  - jessriedel 3y ago
    So people who have financial interests can't be trusted, but also people who don't have financial interest can't be trusted. All new tech starts as purely hypothetical. (Not to mention concrete milestones like quantum supremacy, gate infidelity trends, etc.)
    - pyinstallwoes 3y ago
      Yeah that's why most startups fail. Rarely do startups exist for over 40 years with no physical proof of the idea working and just a simulation of it that fundamentally undermines its reality and even more rarely are there people who don't work at those startups who defend them as if compelled by some strange force.
      - jessriedel 3y ago
        Quantum computing is not a startup, it's a technology. There are many technologies that took much longer than 40 years from initial conception to first useful application.
        pyinstallwoes 3y ago
        I bet they had a physical example along their way in that 40 years.
        jessriedel 3y ago
        Nope. The analogy with the development of quantum sensing is actually very close: the idea of using squeezed or superposed measuring probes to increase measurement sensitivity goes all the way back to Braginsky in 1967. It took two or three decades for "demonstrations" of this effect to be realized in the lab. However, people correctly pointed out that in every case where these early demonstrations were done, it would have been much easier to carry out the same measurement using non-quantum techniques by simply scaling up the resources (usually, by increasing laser power). So these demonstrations were never actually useful for anything practical. (Likewise, the earliest "demonstrations" of quantum computing where they factored two-digit numbers were ridiculous for several reasons, not least of which was that you could do it in a microsecond using a classical computer. Then later, when quantum supremacy calculations were done by Google, the mathematical problem chosen was completely useless for any practical application.) It was not until 2013, 46 years after Braginsky theorized the basic principles, that a squeezed probe was used for something other than a proof-of-concept: measuring gravitational waves at LIGO. This enabled LIGO to detect ultra weak gravitational waves that would otherwise be invisible to it: https://www.nature.com/articles/nphoton.2013.177 https://www.nature.com/articles/nphoton.2013.177 Needless to say, it will take even longer before these techniques are used for economically relevant applications.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > On one hand I can make a joke that you are defending the only job on Earth that not only gets paid but can't get fired past a certain point due to their 'tenure.' You could, but the premise is wildly false; tenured professors can get fired for cause (and tend to have some process protections alongside that), and tenured professors aren’t the only workers with contracts or legal protection that restrict firing to “for cause” (pretty much all high level employees with individual contracts like—but not limited to—executives have that, maybe with a high-priced buyout option, though without or with limited process protections), and most unionized workers and most (even if not unionized) public workers have both limitations to firing (or other adverse actions) for-cause and strong due process protections.

jessriedel 3y ago

Tenured professors who have been working in the field for decades before you ever heard about it in the news, and who have been consistently deeply critical of quantum computing hype despite negative professional and financial penalties from doing so, nonetheless still agree overwhelmingly that it will happen. You can't just believe the opposite of what swindlers are arguing and expect that to be right.

pyinstallwoes 3y ago
On one hand I can make a joke that you are defending the only job on Earth that not only gets paid but can't get fired past a certain point due to their 'tenure.' On the other hand I can make a nod in the direction of the decades of expertise any one can build in a chamber of vapor ware with the hope that it will distill into something useful. As critical as I am, I of course congratulate anyone on taking on such difficult innovation. Nonetheless, there is no physical evidence it will amount to anything thus far. It is purely hypothetical, and the only thing theoretical in justification is the fictitious proof of its use through mathematical modeling which is not physical reality and thus closer to building a virtualized computer in a MMO that mimics Earth saying you get to play as a martian using some weird technology while it runs on classical computing.
- jessriedel 3y ago
  So people who have financial interests can't be trusted, but also people who don't have financial interest can't be trusted. All new tech starts as purely hypothetical. (Not to mention concrete milestones like quantum supremacy, gate infidelity trends, etc.)
  - pyinstallwoes 3y ago
    Yeah that's why most startups fail. Rarely do startups exist for over 40 years with no physical proof of the idea working and just a simulation of it that fundamentally undermines its reality and even more rarely are there people who don't work at those startups who defend them as if compelled by some strange force.
    - jessriedel 3y ago
      Quantum computing is not a startup, it's a technology. There are many technologies that took much longer than 40 years from initial conception to first useful application.
      - pyinstallwoes 3y ago
        I bet they had a physical example along their way in that 40 years.
        jessriedel 3y ago
        Nope. The analogy with the development of quantum sensing is actually very close: the idea of using squeezed or superposed measuring probes to increase measurement sensitivity goes all the way back to Braginsky in 1967. It took two or three decades for "demonstrations" of this effect to be realized in the lab. However, people correctly pointed out that in every case where these early demonstrations were done, it would have been much easier to carry out the same measurement using non-quantum techniques by simply scaling up the resources (usually, by increasing laser power). So these demonstrations were never actually useful for anything practical. (Likewise, the earliest "demonstrations" of quantum computing where they factored two-digit numbers were ridiculous for several reasons, not least of which was that you could do it in a microsecond using a classical computer. Then later, when quantum supremacy calculations were done by Google, the mathematical problem chosen was completely useless for any practical application.) It was not until 2013, 46 years after Braginsky theorized the basic principles, that a squeezed probe was used for something other than a proof-of-concept: measuring gravitational waves at LIGO. This enabled LIGO to detect ultra weak gravitational waves that would otherwise be invisible to it: https://www.nature.com/articles/nphoton.2013.177 https://www.nature.com/articles/nphoton.2013.177 Needless to say, it will take even longer before these techniques are used for economically relevant applications.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > On one hand I can make a joke that you are defending the only job on Earth that not only gets paid but can't get fired past a certain point due to their 'tenure.' You could, but the premise is wildly false; tenured professors can get fired for cause (and tend to have some process protections alongside that), and tenured professors aren’t the only workers with contracts or legal protection that restrict firing to “for cause” (pretty much all high level employees with individual contracts like—but not limited to—executives have that, maybe with a high-priced buyout option, though without or with limited process protections), and most unionized workers and most (even if not unionized) public workers have both limitations to firing (or other adverse actions) for-cause and strong due process protections.