He's referring to this: https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.12372 Scott's take: > NO. JUST NO.
There are over 20 names on that paper. That is unusual?
In academia? No. Everyone and their mom will add their name to any paper they can to get references.
Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring
51–60 of 67 posts
Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring
#52I 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.
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My racist view is that Chinese people are smarter than western people.
Do you have a problem with that type of racism?
What if it is true?
If it is just my personal observation but don't make decisions based on race, am I still a bad person for recognizing a pattern in the people I know?
Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring
#53I 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.
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The criticism was on the country, representing its system of academic publications, not on Chinese people and characteristics unique to their genetics or similar.
Your argument is similar to calling anybody an antisemite who criticizes Israels politics. You're rightfully being downvoted.
Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
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My racist view is that Chinese people are smarter than western people. Do you have a problem with that type of racism? What if it is true? If it is just my personal observation but don't make decisions based on race, am I still a bad person for recognizing a pattern in the people I know?
By this argument you are validating the invalid type of argument GP is making.
Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Shnorr != Schnorr
Also Schnorr != Shor != Schneier, which was a confusion in the HN thread about Bruce Schneier’s response to this paper
Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Shnorr != Schnorr
Eh. Spelling is hard, especially when you don't know the country of origin for proper names. What're you gonna do?
Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring
#57I have no comment of actual value to contribute but I note that by the standards of the field we can infer the existence of the Schxorr algorithm.
Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
My racist view is that Chinese people are smarter than western people. Do you have a problem with that type of racism? What if it is true? If it is just my personal observation but don't make decisions based on race, am I still a bad person for recognizing a pattern in the people I know?
By this argument you are validating the invalid type of argument GP is making.
The only people who are pure of heart live in a tribe that has never interacted with outsiders. Everyone else is tainted.
Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quantum sensing is a pretty huge *practical* advance that is due to the overall work of Quantum Information Science (computing included).
To my knowledge the only "practical" application of quantum sensing so far has been the use of squeezed light in some gravitational wave detectors. However, this has absolutely nothing to do with quantum information science. Getting an actual advantage out of quantum effects has so far been remarkably difficult.
Answering here, but this really covers the sibling comment from dekhn.
To me it seem quite wild to have quantum sensing separated from the rest of quantum information science. It would be like saying that classical SNR considerations are unrelated to Shannon's introduction of error correcting codes (the birth of information science). But if that is your preference, it does not make much sense to argue. Either way, most scientist who work on quantum information science also see their work apply specifically to sensing.
Similarly, it seems strange to me to insist on specifically focusing on quantum computing, when the majority of technology developments in quantum information science apply both to sensing and to computing (one of which is simply easier thanks to its analog nature).
Re: Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring
#60Eventually 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.
Just wanted to point out that Scott Aaronson is not one of those anti quantum curmudgeons. Besides bashing on companies with questionable claims, I think he's been pretty open minded about looking for problems and algorithms with actual quantum advantages.
As someone who lived though one AI winter and seriously fears another, I view fighting hype is important to allowing useful research to happen.
'Super position' and 'entanglement' have been overly mystified in QM in general and the implications of probabilistic Turing machines vs the typical non-deterministic Turning machine examples is important.
While probabilistic Turing machines are non-deterministic, they don't work the way that most examples offer.
Same problem with elementary descriptions of entropy so it isn't just the quantum fields problem.