Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ

scottaaronson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 215 posts

Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ

#151

Post by OJFord »

whatshisface wrote: post #123
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #116

>Q12. Even so, there are countless examples of materials and chemical reactions that are hard to classically simulate, as well as special-purpose quantum simulators (like those of Lukin’s group at Harvard). Why don’t these already count as quantum computational supremacy? >Under some people’s definitions of “quantum computational supremacy,” they do! The key difference with Google’s effort is that they have a fully p…

At the time of the Wright brothers, which was incidentally before Frisbees were invented, there were some naysayers that thought heavier than air flight was simply impossible. A Frisbee, which can be chucked much further than a balloon, would for them serve as actual proof of "wooden supremacy."

It's a simple question of weight ratios!

http://www.armory.com/swallowscenes.html

Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ

#152

Post by lebed2045 »

smsm42 wrote: post #122
whatshisface wrote: post #4

If it goes well, the history of quantum computing will be divided up in to three eras: the era of twisty philosophical arguments that it's working ("the molecule is simulating itself"), the era of academic arguments that it's working ("we can solve this one carefully constructed problem") and the era of practical arguments ("Amazon is selling QC time for $20/kilogate-bit, what do you mean it's not possible?"). Quantu…

The third stage is the hardest. Thermonuclear energy production has been sitting in "theoretically possible, but economically unviable" for decades, tons of technologies like supersonic commercial flight has been achieved and then scrapped because of practical concerns, many other technologies struggle with passing economic viability barrier. Taking that into account, getting from 2nd to 3rd stage would be the hardes…

I don't think it's true for quantum computers. Folding proteins and stuff is good use-case of the cause but the real drive is the military. Same as for gen-AI. If you don't r&d this but Chine does - you're fucked. So the only way to do not become in the disadvantageous position - is to reason it yourself.

Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ

#153

Post by ragerino »

I recently told a friend, that the perfect quantum computer application would be a machine that can apply all possible operations simultaneously and consistently filter out one or more of the methods which results in a valid computer program producing a predefined result.

Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ

#154

Post by OscarCunningham »

someotherone wrote: post #124

So it looks like QC is good for speeding up simulations, and with far less overhead for ECC and such than it needs for things like factoring. So is simulation the QC "killer app"? Does it only do certain kinds of simulations well, i.e. simulations of quantum systems, or can that be generalized? Can it be applied to economic, environmental, traffic, etc as well?

>Can it be applied to economic, environmental, traffic, etc as well?

Our current understanding is that quantum computers won't offer a speedup for the simulation of nonquantum systems. The only simulations they'll be faster for are systems for which quantum effects are important.

Of course it's possible that someone will discover an algorithm that gives quantum computers an exponential speedup in the simulation of any system. But I think that's pretty unlikely because it would imply that quantum computers were exponentially faster than classical computers computers for every problem, because you could just use your quantum computer to simulate a classical one.

Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ

#155

Post by simias »

erichocean wrote: post #120
alanbernstein wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no comment on the QC claims, but regarding the flight analogy, it seems you're being disingenuous: https://www.xaprb.com/blog/flight-is-impossible/

Curious: Did you Google that just now, in order to comment here?

You wouldn't be any less wrong if he did, I don't really see how that's relevant.

You can find other contemporary counter-examples too, for instance nuclear fusion. We know it's possible, it exists in nature, we managed to do it under very special conditions but it's still unclear whether it's actually possible to build a competitive, safe commercial nuclear fusion reactor.

Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ

#156

Post by Judgmentality »

lebed2045 wrote: post #152
smsm42 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The third stage is the hardest. Thermonuclear energy production has been sitting in "theoretically possible, but economically unviable" for decades, tons of technologies like supersonic commercial flight has been achieved and then scrapped because of practical concerns, many other technologies struggle with passing economic viability barrier. Taking that into account, getting from 2nd to 3rd stage would be the hardes…

I don't think it's true for quantum computers. Folding proteins and stuff is good use-case of the cause but the real drive is the military. Same as for gen-AI. If you don't r&d this but Chine does - you're fucked. So the only way to do not become in the disadvantageous position - is to reason it yourself.

If the military is paying for it then it's already in stage 3. Just because something isn't readily available to the public doesn't mean it's a failure - I can't buy a rocket but the various space programs still do lots of cool things and they have money to pay for it.

Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ

#157

Post by russdill »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #51
3PS wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short answer, a qubit is a unit vector in a 2D complex Hilbert space. Now, that doesn't actually say much about why we care or how they're useful. In practical terms, you can think of qubits as complex unit vectors along two axes, with one axis corresponding to |0⟩ (the zero qubit) and one axis corresponding to |1⟩, or the one qubit. So for example, you could have a qubit called |+⟩, which is just shorthand for (|0⟩…

> Schrödinger's cat must be alive or dead once we open the box I recently had a conversation about this in another thread. It seems to me, and nobody tried to convince me otherwise, that the Cat would be the Observer. Therefore it would be dead, NOT dead AND alive, as soon as it observes the poisonous gas in its box.

The point of the thought experiment was to highlight the measurement problem in QM interpretations and the difficulty in defining the observer.

Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ

#158

Post by smsm42 »

lebed2045 wrote: post #152
smsm42 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The third stage is the hardest. Thermonuclear energy production has been sitting in "theoretically possible, but economically unviable" for decades, tons of technologies like supersonic commercial flight has been achieved and then scrapped because of practical concerns, many other technologies struggle with passing economic viability barrier. Taking that into account, getting from 2nd to 3rd stage would be the hardes…

I don't think it's true for quantum computers. Folding proteins and stuff is good use-case of the cause but the real drive is the military. Same as for gen-AI. If you don't r&d this but Chine does - you're fucked. So the only way to do not become in the disadvantageous position - is to reason it yourself.

The military what? Comparing again to computing engines, even when computers were not at all like they are now, there were always lots of people queueing around them with workloads they want them to do now - and which computers could help them with as they are, not 200 years in the future. For QC, I do not see many users with workloads that can be served right now. I don't say it shouldn't be developed because of that - lots of things took time to bring to maturity - but we should be ready for it taking a long time to get to real usefullness.

Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ

#159

Post by smsm42 »

Judgmentality wrote: post #156
lebed2045 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's true for quantum computers. Folding proteins and stuff is good use-case of the cause but the real drive is the military. Same as for gen-AI. If you don't r&d this but Chine does - you're fucked. So the only way to do not become in the disadvantageous position - is to reason it yourself.

If the military is paying for it then it's already in stage 3. Just because something isn't readily available to the public doesn't mean it's a failure - I can't buy a rocket but the various space programs still do lots of cool things and they have money to pay for it.

Military pays for a lot of stuff that then is not going anywhere. Just as other venture funds do. You can't win without taking some risks. But that doesn't mean everything the army pays for automatically is a great thing.

Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ

#160

Post by doctorpangloss »

braindead_in wrote: post #142
whatshisface wrote: post #4

If it goes well, the history of quantum computing will be divided up in to three eras: the era of twisty philosophical arguments that it's working ("the molecule is simulating itself"), the era of academic arguments that it's working ("we can solve this one carefully constructed problem") and the era of practical arguments ("Amazon is selling QC time for $20/kilogate-bit, what do you mean it's not possible?"). Quantu…

If all goes well, Google may be the last company. They'll just gobble up everybody else and become Skynet.

Maybe. I’m pretty sure this FAQ is as much about quantum computing skepticism as it is disbelief that a giant corporation is really as totally responsible for some invention as its brand management would lead headlines to believe.
Post reply on HN