my handle on the quantum computing hype post i'm trying to assemble:

this is nothing to do with physics and everything to do with VC bubble parties, the physical realities are a MacGuffin, the excuse

this saves me explaining science i don't understand lol

ideal would be an example of the physics getting in the way of the hype, but there are so few of those right now they can't yet

full hype barrage "changes the world!" news stories on ... minor intermediate scientific results? ridiculous

@davidgerard always thought it was funny how insistent people are that "obviously quantum computing doesn't just try every possibility in parallel, you fool, you utter nincompoop, it does something much less useful that also doesn't work"

@davidgerard

As a non-physicist IT engineer, I have consistently failed to get a deep description of the mechanisms from my physicist colleagues.

My prediction after those experiences is that higher order quantum computing will continue to fail to meet the hype for the same reasons that Babbage couldn't get his mechanical computers to scale, because forces (and errors) propagate non-linearly through a complex configuration and that isn't something that you can reliably control against.

@davidgerard The recent "quantum factorisation on a VIC-20" paper is well worth a read to see how bafflegab is used to cover up academic fraud when it comes to QC.

@davidgerard honestly, as someone working in post quantum cryptography, it's worse than that. Quantum computers are very much a real thing that checks out, they are just utterly useless except for two things: breaking all asymmetric cryptography and simulating quantum systems. While the former is not commercially relevant, guarding against it is insanely expensive, and the latter is, as far as we can tell right now, a relatively niche application.

So not only is the quantum part a Mac Guffin as far as VCs are concerned, it also will mainly make society lose money (part of which it will give to me, which is nice, but I could find another thing to do)

@davidgerard peter shor incorrectly mansplained the law once on twitter and i said he was wrong and rude

@hipsterelectron @davidgerard An actually correct explanation of what it does from a physical perspective is that it folds the exponental factor away. This is physically achieved by creating a superinformation medium (see Marletto et al for a more general explanation of this). Unfortunately, the infrastructure cost of gaining this capability at present is preposterous compared to other possible approaches. It would be fine as an R&D avenue in the absence of venture capital hype.

There was also a lot of potential in the domain of neural network models (most of which nobody has ever heard of, going back almost a century of research). VC ruins everything by replacing it with the stupidest (most marketable) version of itself, simultaneously destroying all of the boring (viable) research paths and pulling in a shit load of money and creating a bubble, ruining a bunch of serious researchers, and replacing them with insufferable shills. I hate the anti-christ.

@somebody @davidgerard i don't believe quantum computing is physically realizable

@somebody @davidgerard I think that the main difference between us is that I'm anti-crank and you're anti-grift. Normally this isn't a big distinction because we're all skeptics who oppose bullshit. This doesn't have to mean that I'm pro-grift or that you're pro-crank, but today I'm apparently Hella Jeff telling you about stairs, because I warned you about how your anti-intellectual attitude borders on anti-scientific, and now...

@hipsterelectron You have no evidence for your claim. In less than ten words you managed to rack up a 6 on the Baez scale (https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html); David's also got a positive score in the thread-opener.

@corbin @somebody @hipsterelectron yeah that's great thanks