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Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring

scottaaronson.blog

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Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring

#31

Post by lofatdairy »

ramraj07 wrote: post #28
yalue wrote: post #14

One of the most fun (?) parts of academia is the unique blend of frustration and satisfaction that results when a shoddy paper somehow clears peer review only to get eviscerated when it lands on the desk of an actual expert. "the detailed exploration of irrelevancies" LOL, if that isn't a "time-tested" method for making a paper sound academic, I don't know what is.

This is not always the case. SA and Sabine, are the hyper rare outliers in this regard. Fields like biology have no such folks for variety of reasons (I’m counting out some celebrities involved in pointing out actual misconduct instead of sloppy work).

Who even are the big science communicators in for current research in bio? Nobody comes to mind, not even a non-professor.

Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring

#32

Post by sebzim4500 »

dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote: post #21

Eventually Scott Aaronson will be wrong. Call it a reverse black swan, but we will all remember it as the day the quantum computing era began.

Scott Aaronson is more than willing to praise research whenever there has been actual progress made. There is just a lot of bullshit in his field (or maybe there is a normal amount of bullshit but it is amplified more by the media).

Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring

#34

Post by dekhn »

lofatdairy wrote: post #31
ramraj07 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not always the case. SA and Sabine, are the hyper rare outliers in this regard. Fields like biology have no such folks for variety of reasons (I’m counting out some celebrities involved in pointing out actual misconduct instead of sloppy work).

Who even are the big science communicators in for current research in bio? Nobody comes to mind, not even a non-professor.

Eric Topol

Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring

#35

Post by dekhn »

qwezxcrty wrote: post #29
adamsmith143 wrote: post #23

I did graduate work in Materials Science and the understanding in our lab was to be very skeptical of papers from China, particularly from the State Key Labs as they were very often impossible to replicate and ended up being useless. Seems relevant to this paper as well.

[flagged]

Can you explain, in detail, why you believe that making a statement about the scientific output of a country, as measured by paper quality, is necessarily racist? In particular, I'm going to challenge you on this because the "racism" argument has been used as an easy cop-out to denigrate an opinion all-too-commonly.

Please just explain your thinking of why it's "racist". Assume your reader is aware of the effects of socioeconomic status, national ambitions to become a science powerhouse, and the incentives to publish groundbreaking work.

Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring

#36

Post by fsh »

0xf00ff00f wrote: post #33

In the original paper they claim to have factored a 48-bit number with an implementation of their algorithm. Did they use some kind of trick?

The actual work is done by a classical computer. Factoring a 48-bit number is not exactly difficult.

Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring

#37

Post by dekhn »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #32
dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote: post #21

Eventually Scott Aaronson will be wrong. Call it a reverse black swan, but we will all remember it as the day the quantum computing era began.

Scott Aaronson is more than willing to praise research whenever there has been actual progress made. There is just a lot of bullshit in his field (or maybe there is a normal amount of bullshit but it is amplified more by the media).

The bullshit ratio in quantum computing is the highest I've seen in any field, followed only by ML (the difference being that there is ML non-bullshit, while quantum computing hasn't been shown to be useful for any real problem, but there have been huge advances in the underlying technologies).

Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring

#38

Post by chowells »

0xf00ff00f wrote: post #33

In the original paper they claim to have factored a 48-bit number with an implementation of their algorithm. Did they use some kind of trick?

Why would they need to have done so? The blog post argues there's no evidence this is any faster than classical Schnorr's algorithm, and classical Schnorr's algorithm can easily factor a 48-bit number.

And as the post also makes very sure to point out, Schnorr != Shor.

Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring

#39

Post by faitswulff »

dekhn wrote: post #34
lofatdairy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who even are the big science communicators in for current research in bio? Nobody comes to mind, not even a non-professor.

Eric Topol

Akiko Iwasaki aka @virusesimmunity on Twitter is also a good follow for, well, viruses and immunity.

Ed Yong for excellent long form journalism.

Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring

#40

Post by krastanov »

dekhn wrote: post #37
sebzim4500 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scott Aaronson is more than willing to praise research whenever there has been actual progress made. There is just a lot of bullshit in his field (or maybe there is a normal amount of bullshit but it is amplified more by the media).

The bullshit ratio in quantum computing is the highest I've seen in any field, followed only by ML (the difference being that there is ML non-bullshit, while quantum computing hasn't been shown to be useful for any real problem, but there have been huge advances in the underlying technologies).

Quantum sensing is a pretty huge *practical* advance that is due to the overall work of Quantum Information Science (computing included).
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