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You're right. I didn't sufficiently separate experimental physics QC from engineering QC. On the engineering end, the question on if a large-scale quantum computer can be built is …

Quantum theory predicts this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_theorem . An experiment can show that this prediction is false. This is a scientific problem not an engineerin…

Good point. I didn't sufficiently delineate what counts as a scientific problem and what counts as an engineering problem in QC. Quantum theory, like all physical theories, makes p…

Sure, I'm not disagreeing that this processor is noisy, just providing enough context to say that it's fine. Historically, these devices improve enough to be under threshold at whi…

This processor is state-of-the-art for silicon quantum computing. It's where modalities like superconducting were 15 years ago, and superconducting does not create noise these days…

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09848-5 performs CZ gates on up to 256 qubits with fidelities of 99.5%, which is good enough to run surface codes below threshold.

Quantum theory is so unlikely to be wrong that if large-scale fault tolerant quantum computers could not be built, the effort to try to build them will not be a dead end, but inste…

Quantum theory says that quantum computers are physically plausible. Quantum theory lies in the realm of physics, not mathematics. As a physical theory, it makes predictions about …

Depends on what we mean by "early days on hardware". If we mean "we've have been working on this for almost 3 decades. That's a very long time to be working on something!". I agree…

"early days" means that the 1998 computer didn't have qubits that were below the error correction threshold. Now we have hundreds of qubits below threshold. We'll need millions of …

> Is there a guarantee that these things can and will work given enough time? Quantum theory predicts that they will work given enough time. If they don't work, there is something …

The graphs aren't telling you that QC hardware is not improving at a super-exponential pace? There are no real world use cases today. The hardware is not advanced enough yet, but i…

Oops, updated. Thanks!

QC progress happens super-exponentially: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46383233

Silicon is not one of the leading modalities for quantum computers, but it has progressed a lot in the past ~2-3 years. Here are a few key advancements that have happened as of lat…

No, and Shor's is not a good benchmark for these early quantum computers: https://algassert.com/post/2500

Which version did you read? I read this one: https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Penguin-Classics-Hardcove... , which provides a lot of context. Here are my thoughts on it: https://…

Turns out, a lot of Plato this year. See https://vtomole.com/ for the list.

Yes, QC is far enough that it's "anyone's guess", but the field is actively working on sliding the answer to this problem from "anyone's guess" to "a bit more certain". It will nev…