An important quantum algorithm may be a property of nature • Hacker News Board

Re: An important quantum algorithm may be a property of nature

#51

Post by quotemstr » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 2:06 PM UTC

Iv wrote: post #8

quotemstr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument doesn't stand up to cursory examination. There are all sorts of tricks of physics that evolution never found out how to use. Natural systems don't use the (macroscopic) wheel either, but that works great. Refrigeration works great, but nature doesn't use that either. Complex life has barely been around 540 million years ago. Why would you suppose evolution would have had time to explore the entire space…

Actually, rolling things, from seeds to eggs, including whole shrimps is a locomotion technique used by nature since a long time. The axle is something it does not use, and I would argue does not need. In all natural terrains, legs are a superior option. The physical principles behind refrigeration are witnessed in several places in nature.

Rolling is not the same thing as a wheel and axke. You're playing word games.

Arguing that while nature doesn't might not use some technology, it does do something else that relies on the same principle. Who's to draw the line between a technology and a principle? You can say nature has done anything so long as your definitions are uselessly vague.

Re: An important quantum algorithm may be a property of nature

#52

Post by jessriedel » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 2:10 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #46

jessriedel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT Tech Review is no longer associated with MIT. The name is historical vestige. It's just another magazine like Popular Science.

that's not correct, they are owned by MIT.

Thanks you're right. The important idea I was remembering is that they have no editorial connection to the university; they're just an investment.

Re: An important quantum algorithm may be a property of nature

#53

Post by arthurcolle » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 2:30 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #7

Iv wrote: post #4

A reason why I allow myself some skepticism on the feasibility of quantum computing is that if it were possible, I would have expected evolution to have used it somehow. If it turns out that protein folding really use a quantum computation, I'll move quantum computers from the "too good to be true" category to the "probably revolutionary stuff that I will see in my lifetime" alongside with nuclear fusion and strong A…

Your argument doesn't stand up to cursory examination. There are all sorts of tricks of physics that evolution never found out how to use. Natural systems don't use the (macroscopic) wheel either, but that works great. Refrigeration works great, but nature doesn't use that either. Complex life has barely been around 540 million years ago. Why would you suppose evolution would have had time to explore the entire space…

You didn't explicitly mention it, but planthoppers use gears (as one example of a "man-made" macroscopic invention) that we then discovered as a locomotion mechanism in this species within Insecta. Not a perfectly round wheel, but a wheel with teeth.

https://www.livescience.com/39577-insects-with-leg-gears-dis...

Re: An important quantum algorithm may be a property of nature

#54

Post by pfdietz » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

wnkrshm wrote: post #32

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there organisms that use geometry to shape sound to send a signal? Wouldn’t this include pretty much any animal than can vocalise?

Technically yes but what I mean is: Are there organisms that shape that sound into a tightly focused beam, to be able to only address the receivers they aim at?

Bats, dolphins. Dolphins even used focused beams of high intensity sound to stun fish, I believe.

Re: An important quantum algorithm may be a property of nature

#55

Post by smilliken » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 3:10 PM UTC

sriku wrote: post #48

Iv wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument I propose is not a strong one. It is still an argument: if something is possible, why did evolution not use it? There are several possible answers: 1. Life may not have a use for it 2. It may be impossible to achieve with proteins and cells 3. It may not actually be possible For quantum computer I (weakly) believe that 1 and 2 are wrong: evolution and cognition would hugely benefit from quantum accelerat…

All that is assuming that you do know for certain the evolution did NOT exploit it. There is some extrapolative argument that hints at the contrary. Adrian Thompson's evolved FPGA circuits exploited a single chip's underlying physics in a manner no digital circuit designer would. By that thread, it would seem possible that evolution has already exploited quantum computation ... just that maybe we haven't had the tech…

Rhodopsin, in our retina, exploits a quantun mechanical effect. You could argue that our brains are quantum computers if you consider our retina including rhodopsin to be part of the brain.

Re: An important quantum algorithm may be a property of nature

#56

Post by kuschku » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 3:11 PM UTC

knzhou wrote: post #21

Iv wrote: post #4

A reason why I allow myself some skepticism on the feasibility of quantum computing is that if it were possible, I would have expected evolution to have used it somehow. If it turns out that protein folding really use a quantum computation, I'll move quantum computers from the "too good to be true" category to the "probably revolutionary stuff that I will see in my lifetime" alongside with nuclear fusion and strong A…

This argument proves too much. By that same argument, nuclear fission, ordinary CPUs, steam engines, rockets, helicopters, jets, X-rays, radio waves, superconductivity, superfluidity, air conditioning, liquid helium, liquid nitrogen, the Haber process, the fractional quantum Hall effect, Doppler cooling, graphene, long-distance satellite communication, gravitational waves, and GPS corrections for relativity all don't…

> nuclear fission

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...

For pretty much every thing you list, nature has something pretty close to it in it. Even nuclear fission.

Re: An important quantum algorithm may be a property of nature

#57

Post by omar_a1 » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

Ultimatt wrote: post #24

nicwilson wrote: post #6

Hmm, there are several things I find strange about this article. There are 22 proteinogenic amino acids (admittedly two are rare, selenocysteine and pyrrolysine, but with rarity comes importance when they do occur). The search for the correct amino acid is not class balanced, e.g. the aromatics are much less common. The tRNAs are also not equally distributed, neither in the codon-anticodon pairing, the aromatics are…

Yup the biology bit is hocus pocus. If you read the single author arxiv paper referenced, its thinking is quite confused on the biology. The main thing discussed is hydrogen bonding between nucleotide pairs which doesn't fit the magic numbers. Then in an odd Q and A section its eluded to that mrna-trna interactions do, therefore it must be. Already the different bond lengths of the hydrogen bonding is known to be par…

I was also confused about the assertion that biologists dismissed quantum mechanic's affects on biological systems. Biochemists have known about this phenomenon for decades, including photosynthesis.

Re: An important quantum algorithm may be a property of nature

#58

Post by api » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

Iv wrote: post #4

A reason why I allow myself some skepticism on the feasibility of quantum computing is that if it were possible, I would have expected evolution to have used it somehow. If it turns out that protein folding really use a quantum computation, I'll move quantum computers from the "too good to be true" category to the "probably revolutionary stuff that I will see in my lifetime" alongside with nuclear fusion and strong A…

A bit of a further tangent but:

I continue to believe that it's very likely that brains somehow leverage quantum computing.

The human brain is able to accomplish computational tasks on only around 40 watts of power that destroy what we can accomplish using pretty much any known machine learning algorithm using tens or even hundreds of thousands of watts of power. Maybe our algorithms are primitive or wrong, or maybe the brain just is not a classical computer.

The power of brains is so "unreasonable" that I've long suspected that there are only three possibilities:

(1) Brains are quantum computers.

(2) P=NP, or for a weaker form perhaps there exist large numbers of undiscovered algorithms that offer massive speed improvements over any currently known algorithm.

(3) Brains or intelligence are "supernatural" or at least tap into something about nature that we fundamentally do not understand.

I think option #1 is by far the most likely, especially given that brains excel most of all at search and quantum computing seems to really be able to speed up search.

There is just no way classical computation can do what the human brain does on 40 watts. To me that strains credulity much more than any of the three options above. It just cannot possibly be so.

Re: An important quantum algorithm may be a property of nature

#59

Post by whatshisface » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

smilliken wrote: post #55

sriku wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that is assuming that you do know for certain the evolution did NOT exploit it. There is some extrapolative argument that hints at the contrary. Adrian Thompson's evolved FPGA circuits exploited a single chip's underlying physics in a manner no digital circuit designer would. By that thread, it would seem possible that evolution has already exploited quantum computation ... just that maybe we haven't had the tech…

Rhodopsin, in our retina, exploits a quantun mechanical effect. You could argue that our brains are quantum computers if you consider our retina including rhodopsin to be part of the brain.

Apples are red because of quantum mechanical effects, but that doesn't make them computers.

Re: An important quantum algorithm may be a property of nature

#60

Post by smilliken » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #59

smilliken wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rhodopsin, in our retina, exploits a quantun mechanical effect. You could argue that our brains are quantum computers if you consider our retina including rhodopsin to be part of the brain.

Apples are red because of quantum mechanical effects, but that doesn't make them computers.

Anything and everything is because of quantum mechanics, sure. But you could've asked a classical physicist to design an apple "computer" (the fruit)— just arrange the right atoms— but you couldn't have asked a classical physicist to design a retina computer exploiting rhodopsin.