The Case Against Quantum Computing
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The Case Against Quantum Computing
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Re: The Case Against Quantum Computing
#2Had to read to the bottom to get to the (really weak) "case against Quantum Computing":
> I believe that, appearances to the contrary, the quantum computing fervor is nearing its end. That’s because a few decades is the maximum lifetime of any big bubble in technology or science. After a certain period, too many unfulfilled promises have been made, and anyone who has been following the topic starts to get annoyed by further announcements of impending breakthroughs. What’s more, by that time all the tenured faculty positions in the field are already occupied. The proponents have grown older and less zealous, while the younger generation seeks something completely new and more likely to succeed.
I was really hoping for a real technical argument, not speculation about bubbles or politics in academia. (Especially given that most of the real research is done in industry.)
Re: The Case Against Quantum Computing
#3Had to read to the bottom to get to the (really weak) "case against Quantum Computing": > I believe that, appearances to the contrary, the quantum computing fervor is nearing its end. That’s because a few decades is the maximum lifetime of any big bubble in technology or science. After a certain period, too many unfulfilled promises have been made, and anyone who has been following the topic starts to get annoyed by…
> I was really hoping for a real technical argument
Please read the body of the article, not only the bottom. There's plenty of technical arguments in there.
Re: The Case Against Quantum Computing
#4Had to read to the bottom to get to the (really weak) "case against Quantum Computing": > I believe that, appearances to the contrary, the quantum computing fervor is nearing its end. That’s because a few decades is the maximum lifetime of any big bubble in technology or science. After a certain period, too many unfulfilled promises have been made, and anyone who has been following the topic starts to get annoyed by…
Sounds like Fusion. That’s still going on after 60 odd years.
Re: The Case Against Quantum Computing
#5Had to read to the bottom to get to the (really weak) "case against Quantum Computing": > I believe that, appearances to the contrary, the quantum computing fervor is nearing its end. That’s because a few decades is the maximum lifetime of any big bubble in technology or science. After a certain period, too many unfulfilled promises have been made, and anyone who has been following the topic starts to get annoyed by…
The technical argument is absolutely clear: quantum computing cannot work because it relies on manipulating and measuring an absolutely astronomical number of continuous variables with near-infinite precision.
The argument may or may not be correct, but it deserves something more thoughtful than a dismissive response that doesn't even recognise the basic point the author is making.
Re: The Case Against Quantum Computing
#6I still need to gain the intuition for why a quantum computer can operate on some kinds of things "faster". I've read some of the math, but that did little to satisfy me (I need to study it more clearly).
But all of this seems in a tragic state at the moment. Allowing rampant misinformation and hype as to what these machines are actually capable of.
Re: The Case Against Quantum Computing
#7Had to read to the bottom to get to the (really weak) "case against Quantum Computing": > I believe that, appearances to the contrary, the quantum computing fervor is nearing its end. That’s because a few decades is the maximum lifetime of any big bubble in technology or science. After a certain period, too many unfulfilled promises have been made, and anyone who has been following the topic starts to get annoyed by…
Sounds like Fusion. That’s still going on after 60 odd years.
With one major difference. We know that fusion in some form is possible (for example, in the sun, or in a hydrogen-bomb). The difficulty is doing it at a reasonable scale. It's less clear that quantum computing is possible.
Re: The Case Against Quantum Computing
#8Had to read to the bottom to get to the (really weak) "case against Quantum Computing": > I believe that, appearances to the contrary, the quantum computing fervor is nearing its end. That’s because a few decades is the maximum lifetime of any big bubble in technology or science. After a certain period, too many unfulfilled promises have been made, and anyone who has been following the topic starts to get annoyed by…
Sounds like Fusion. That’s still going on after 60 odd years.
If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Re: The Case Against Quantum Computing
#9I still need to gain the intuition for why a quantum computer can operate on some kinds of things "faster". I've read some of the math, but that did little to satisfy me (I need to study it more clearly). But all of this seems in a tragic state at the moment. Allowing rampant misinformation and hype as to what these machines are actually capable of.
It's not that they can execute a computation faster in the traditional sense. It is that you can exploit the quantum behaviour in some types of computation (e.g. factoring primes) to make the answer more probable, and thus more likely to be "observed", when you read the state of the quantum computer and thus make it easy to locate the correct answer compared to traditional algorithms.
PBS Infinite Series has several videos on quantum computing and Shor's algorithm: 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrbJYsep45E "The Mathematics of Quantum Computers" 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12Q3Mrh03Gk "How to Break Cryptography" 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUwZZaI5u0c "Hacking at Quantum Speed with Shor's Algorthm"
Re: The Case Against Quantum Computing
#10Having worked on quantum computing in some of the leading labs for nearly a decade I do share some of the author's pessimism. My feeling is that theory once again is way ahead of experiment here. Also many theoretician who work in the field of quantum information are all too happily ignoring all the details that actually make it so darn hard to maintain quantum coherence and scale. Having said that I still think/hope that some day we will manage to harness nature at the level of individual quanta with the level of precision required to perform some non-trivial quantum computation. We're not there yet and I think some major technological breakthroughs need to happen before that. I am afraid there's too much hype around QC and when it fades it will bring down the field with it.