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The quantum computing bubble

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Re: The quantum computing bubble

#21

Post by bluecalm »

wzwy wrote: post #3

Sometimes I wonder if we should try building a news site optimised for seeing the effect of appeals to authority. To write an article for the site, we would need to: 1. Write a headline with no mentions of any experts. 2. Write another headline mentioning at least one expert in it. 3. Write the content without mentioning any experts. 4. Write the content and sprinkle names of experts as needed. 5. Publish. Now, the r…

There is value in knowing what experts say. I and 99% of people in IT will never be in position to evaluate if quantum computing is feasible or not. The only thing we can do is try to evaluate expert's credibility and pick a side so to speak.

The same goes for health advice but this time it's 99.9%+ - if you're not in the field you can just listen and hope you are good at estimating who is more credible or likely to do better research or more truthful claims. Trying to evaluate them yourself is a recipe for being wrong and creating your own bubble.

If the article says: random guy X says quantum computing is a scam because Y there is nothing I can take away from it because it's very easy to make Y both incorrect and plausible sounding to me. If I know it's Oxford physics professor who makes the claim I can learn that Y is at least serious enough reason to not be easily dismissed.

Appeal to authority is bad as an argument when people knowledgeable in the field try to debate a certain point. In other cases it's very useful to know who makes the claims and very often it's the only thing that gives the claims credibility.

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#22

Post by brutusborn »

robertlagrant wrote: post #12
brutusborn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the idea. I've always wondered if the format of long form expert opinions could be replaced by a knowledge graph that is independent of the expert. E.g. instead of article "Economist John rejects minimum wage" Root node "Minimum wage is not the best solution to problem x" -> because -> , -> because -> In this way other experts could add to the graph and the differences between different branches of argument co…

I've thought about this before, but notating as a structure that needs logical supports instead of a graph.

When you say logical supports, do you mean something like "A because B and C"? Why is this better than a graph?

If you can't tell I don't know much about formal logic. Apologies for the naive questions.

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#24

Post by amelius »

fallingfrog wrote: post #13
wzwy wrote: post #3

Sometimes I wonder if we should try building a news site optimised for seeing the effect of appeals to authority. To write an article for the site, we would need to: 1. Write a headline with no mentions of any experts. 2. Write another headline mentioning at least one expert in it. 3. Write the content without mentioning any experts. 4. Write the content and sprinkle names of experts as needed. 5. Publish. Now, the r…

Well, I don’t know, I do think that expert opinions can carry weight. Like: “according to Dr Malcolm Alan of the department of geology at Harvard university, this kind of rock usually indicates…”. I mean knowing that a professor of geology said that is evidence that a fact is true, isn’t it?

Not necessarily true if the "expert" goes against most other experts.

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#25

Post by dr_dshiv »

I have a fair amount of experience in this space. It’s like, at a vacuum tube era, at best. There is a definite opportunity for advancement, but it is still extremely early.

We are building user interfaces that make it easier to “play around” with quantum computing phenomena—especially with music and art—with the idea that our aesthetic sensibilities may help drive discovery.

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#27

Post by bluecalm »

mandmandam wrote: post #4

> at some point the claims will be found out and the funding will dry up. Someone hasn't been watching the cryptocurrency markets. That's partly tongue in cheek. But there are countless examples of the market remaining irrational longer than one can stay solvent. Witness the continued success of BTC and Ether, amid newer options that outperform them on every tech-related metric, often by many orders of magnitude. I c…

Crypto is a bad example because it's pretty pointless in general. You can have better, faster, more efficient, safer, easier to use tech but at the end of day you're only achieving the same thing: skipping over regulations that apply to traditional currencies but somehow don't to crypto. That's assuming good will as one can argue that creating a distributed Ponzi scheme is another goal. It turns out that to achieve those you can get away with a simple idea and implementation like BTC.

It's really not a surprise it's not about tech when the goals and challenges were never technical.

On the other hand in areas where it is about tech we see superior one winning over established players all the time. Google, WhatsApp, AMD just to name three out of many examples in various times of this millennium.

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#28

Post by sweezyjeezy »

meltyness wrote: post #16

I think his model of the situation is short-sighted, to say nothing of the callbacks to that management principle involving transistors. If you're thinking that the whole purpose of QC will be quickly subsumed by wide algorithms with superpolynomial speedup, you might be missing the point. It's about how computers are built, not about stuffing one specific abstraction into another. If suddenly we discover we can buil…

I think most people, including the author, would agree QC should be funded for fundamental research reasons. But that is clearly not the way it is being pitched to VC. Right now there is no clear use-case, that's what I felt he was warning against. If nothing materialises soon, he's probably correct to say this is a bubble.

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#29

Post by pyb »

drewbeck wrote: post #6

There’s also billions going into commercial fusion reactors, which haven’t turned net positive yet. The goal of the investment is to build that capability tho, same (I think?) as with quantum computing. Weird critique imo.

As the tech is still unproven, it's research, rather than building capability, that they're spending money on. I hope all these investors understand this...

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#30

Post by seydor »

How did this come about? I think it's a very simple case of misunderstanding and overpromising. There are many interdisciplinary fields that mesh with computation. We have DNA computers and neural turing machines. QC is a subfield of quantum mechanics, one of many with some interesting applications but nothing shows that it has open-ended potential to revolutionize computation. But, it has the word 'computation' in it , and in the past decades the VCs with most money come from computer science. So you have a combination of Quantum (spoooky, mysterious) with computation (that one i know). I never got why QC was seen as so promising, it's an interesting exercise on paper but is not the 2nd coming of anything. Wish that money had gone to fusion instead, that one we understand now more than ever, that it has very real positive consequences
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