5 ms·

> a measure of quantumness known as “magic.” This naming-proposal couldn't possibly cause any problems down the line... > They had worked out a way of running

by Terr_ 5mo ago

> a measure of quantumness known as “magic.” This naming-proposal couldn't possibly cause any problems down the line... > They had worked out a way of running software on a classical computer that would mimic a quantum task. When it comes to using a regular computer to mimic (read: fake) the execution of an exotic program/API for nonexistnet future hardware, I highly recommend the humorously titled talk: "Temporally Quaquaversal Virtual Nanomachine Programming In Multiple Topologically Connected Quantum-Relativistic Parallel Timespaces... Made Easy!" [0][1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzTjPx4NIiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzTjPx4NIiM [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpInOI4o2LY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpInOI4o2LY

soco 5mo ago
> This naming-proposal couldn't possibly cause any problems down the line... Your worries are a bit late, there's already a huge amount of new age conspiracy bull about quantum healing with wave function collapse, microtubule alignment and biophotons - quality all-you-can-eat word salad buffet.
- CuriouslyC 5mo ago
  Blame Roger Penrose for the microtubule bullshit. Ironically, he's the opposite of new age, dude won a Nobel prize.
  - an0malous 5mo ago
    Maybe, just maybe, an eminent physicist who won the Nobel Prize knows more than us. At the very least his ideas deserve consideration instead of ridicule and dismissal. Also as far as I know, Penrose’s main argument is that consciousness can not be computational. If you can’t argue against an idea with reason and resort to name calling, you’re not being rational you’re just being dogmatic and censoring ideas.
    - bawolff 5mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease
      - an0malous 5mo ago
        Again, if you disagree with Penrose’s idea, just explain your disagreement. It’s so ironic how you’ll call it bullshit and link to some pop culture skeptic idea with no scientific backing to try and undermine an idea in defense of “real science” > Another approach is to follow that word, heresy. In every period of history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not. "Blasphemy", "sacrilege", and "heresy" were such labels for a good part of western history, as in more recent times "indecent", "improper", and "unamerican" have been. https://paulgraham.com/say.html https://paulgraham.com/say.html
        bawolff 5mo ago
        I'm disagreeing with the notion that someone "who won the Nobel Prize knows more than us". History suggests otherwise. Surely you must appreciate the irony when your primary argument is an appeal to authority, while on the other hand you dismiss everyone who is unconvinced as "dogmatic". As for Penrose's specific ideas, i'm not familiar enough with them or the field to make an informed judgement. Hence i would defer to other experts in that field, who as far as i understand are unconvinced. However, the fact he previously won a nobel does not lead me to give him any more credence than i would anyone else. If anything its a negative signal. That said, if i was going to bite: > Penrose’s main argument is that consciousness can not be computational. If you can’t argue against an idea with reason The onus is on Penrose to show consciousness is non-computational. Preferably with some sort of experiment (or are we in the realm of pure philosophy here? Arguing how many angels are dancing on the pin). Science is about creating hypotheses and testing them. Admiteddly im not super well-read on this topic, but i don't think this theory has yielded testable predictions not explainable by other theories that have been verified.
        5mo ago
- rockskon 5mo ago
  Don't underestimate the capacity for the problem to get significantly worse.
echelon 5mo ago
Is any of this experimentally testable in the real world? Would gravity or spacetime under these definitions behave differently and yield something we can observe? Or is this fancy math modeling that looks nice on paper, but that we won't be able to test until we become a Kardashev type III civilization?
- stogot 5mo ago
  These wild ideas eventually arrive in textbooks as if they were tested, proven with none of the nuance or contradictory evidence
  - boutell 5mo ago
    Do they though? Are physics textbooks putting forward some version of string theory from the 1990s as proven fact?
- api 5mo ago
  As far as I know it’s the latter and that’s a big problem for physics. A lot of stuff like string theory, loop quantum gravity, etc. require energies that would take a particle accelerator the diameter of the solar system or something nuts like that. Without tests it’s just pretty math that can be coaxed into agreeing with reality but that proves nothing. Physicists try to indirectly test all the time via cosmological observations but that is extremely hard and limited to what you can infer and how well you can eliminate other explanations or sources of error.
  - boutell 5mo ago
    I believe there was a science fiction story all the way back in the early '80s describing a scenario where physics gets reclassified as a soft science or an art form because it is no longer feasible to prove anything.
- MeteorMarc 5mo ago
  See the end of the article, after further research quantum gravity could be simulated on a quantum computer. The links between research on quantum computing and quantum gravity are fascinating anyway!
SoftTalker 5mo ago
I had assumed it was a play on the saying "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" but I didn't see that in the article.
wasabi991011 5mo ago
> This naming-proposal couldn't possibly cause any problems down the line... You're a little late here, "magic" is already a fairly well known term in quantum computing literature. There's "magic states" and protocols for "magic state distillation" and "magic state injection", there's "shallow magic depth circuits", etc.
- m-s-y 5mo ago
  > "magic" is already a fairly well known term in quantum computing literature which is fine, but the point is still valid. who looked at the state of science education in today's world and though that "magic" was a word that belonged anywhere near legitimate discourse? and more importantly WHY?
  - plastic-enjoyer 5mo ago
    it's a cool word
    - from_memory 5mo ago
      It is a cool word. So are 'charm' and 'strange' for quarks. I don't see what the big deal is. People can differentiate between two meanings for the same word. Are pseudo-science inclined folks going to spin it some crazy way? Yeah, probably, but that happens pretty much anyway.
taeric 5mo ago
To be fair, it isn't that different from why we have imaginary numbers. Or why the reals are calls reals. Which. Yeah, has been a pretty bad thing for people in understanding those. :(
tim-projects 5mo ago
I guess we can no longer use this phrase: "The best kind of science is magic, and the best kind of magic is science."
- msla 5mo ago
  > "The best kind of science is magic, and the best kind of magic is science." Who has ever used that phrase?

by Terr_ 5mo ago

soco 5mo ago

> This naming-proposal couldn't possibly cause any problems down the line... Your worries are a bit late, there's already a huge amount of new age conspiracy bull about quantum healing with wave function collapse, microtubule alignment and biophotons - quality all-you-can-eat word salad buffet.

CuriouslyC 5mo ago
Blame Roger Penrose for the microtubule bullshit. Ironically, he's the opposite of new age, dude won a Nobel prize.
- an0malous 5mo ago
  Maybe, just maybe, an eminent physicist who won the Nobel Prize knows more than us. At the very least his ideas deserve consideration instead of ridicule and dismissal. Also as far as I know, Penrose’s main argument is that consciousness can not be computational. If you can’t argue against an idea with reason and resort to name calling, you’re not being rational you’re just being dogmatic and censoring ideas.
  - bawolff 5mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease
    - an0malous 5mo ago
      Again, if you disagree with Penrose’s idea, just explain your disagreement. It’s so ironic how you’ll call it bullshit and link to some pop culture skeptic idea with no scientific backing to try and undermine an idea in defense of “real science” > Another approach is to follow that word, heresy. In every period of history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not. "Blasphemy", "sacrilege", and "heresy" were such labels for a good part of western history, as in more recent times "indecent", "improper", and "unamerican" have been. https://paulgraham.com/say.html https://paulgraham.com/say.html
      - bawolff 5mo ago
        I'm disagreeing with the notion that someone "who won the Nobel Prize knows more than us". History suggests otherwise. Surely you must appreciate the irony when your primary argument is an appeal to authority, while on the other hand you dismiss everyone who is unconvinced as "dogmatic". As for Penrose's specific ideas, i'm not familiar enough with them or the field to make an informed judgement. Hence i would defer to other experts in that field, who as far as i understand are unconvinced. However, the fact he previously won a nobel does not lead me to give him any more credence than i would anyone else. If anything its a negative signal. That said, if i was going to bite: > Penrose’s main argument is that consciousness can not be computational. If you can’t argue against an idea with reason The onus is on Penrose to show consciousness is non-computational. Preferably with some sort of experiment (or are we in the realm of pure philosophy here? Arguing how many angels are dancing on the pin). Science is about creating hypotheses and testing them. Admiteddly im not super well-read on this topic, but i don't think this theory has yielded testable predictions not explainable by other theories that have been verified.
        5mo ago
rockskon 5mo ago
Don't underestimate the capacity for the problem to get significantly worse.

echelon 5mo ago

Is any of this experimentally testable in the real world? Would gravity or spacetime under these definitions behave differently and yield something we can observe? Or is this fancy math modeling that looks nice on paper, but that we won't be able to test until we become a Kardashev type III civilization?

stogot 5mo ago
These wild ideas eventually arrive in textbooks as if they were tested, proven with none of the nuance or contradictory evidence
- boutell 5mo ago
  Do they though? Are physics textbooks putting forward some version of string theory from the 1990s as proven fact?
api 5mo ago
As far as I know it’s the latter and that’s a big problem for physics. A lot of stuff like string theory, loop quantum gravity, etc. require energies that would take a particle accelerator the diameter of the solar system or something nuts like that. Without tests it’s just pretty math that can be coaxed into agreeing with reality but that proves nothing. Physicists try to indirectly test all the time via cosmological observations but that is extremely hard and limited to what you can infer and how well you can eliminate other explanations or sources of error.
- boutell 5mo ago
  I believe there was a science fiction story all the way back in the early '80s describing a scenario where physics gets reclassified as a soft science or an art form because it is no longer feasible to prove anything.
MeteorMarc 5mo ago
See the end of the article, after further research quantum gravity could be simulated on a quantum computer. The links between research on quantum computing and quantum gravity are fascinating anyway!

SoftTalker 5mo ago

I had assumed it was a play on the saying "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" but I didn't see that in the article.

wasabi991011 5mo ago

> This naming-proposal couldn't possibly cause any problems down the line... You're a little late here, "magic" is already a fairly well known term in quantum computing literature. There's "magic states" and protocols for "magic state distillation" and "magic state injection", there's "shallow magic depth circuits", etc.

m-s-y 5mo ago
> "magic" is already a fairly well known term in quantum computing literature which is fine, but the point is still valid. who looked at the state of science education in today's world and though that "magic" was a word that belonged anywhere near legitimate discourse? and more importantly WHY?
- plastic-enjoyer 5mo ago
  it's a cool word
  - from_memory 5mo ago
    It is a cool word. So are 'charm' and 'strange' for quarks. I don't see what the big deal is. People can differentiate between two meanings for the same word. Are pseudo-science inclined folks going to spin it some crazy way? Yeah, probably, but that happens pretty much anyway.

taeric 5mo ago

To be fair, it isn't that different from why we have imaginary numbers. Or why the reals are calls reals. Which. Yeah, has been a pretty bad thing for people in understanding those. :(

tim-projects 5mo ago

I guess we can no longer use this phrase: "The best kind of science is magic, and the best kind of magic is science."

msla 5mo ago
> "The best kind of science is magic, and the best kind of magic is science." Who has ever used that phrase?