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Serious quantum computers ARE FINALLY HERE That would involve both the hardware and software is ready for production and use. So it's my thing or is it MIT Te
by Torai 9y ago
Serious quantum computers ARE FINALLY HERE
That would involve both the hardware and software is ready for production and use.
So it's my thing or is it MIT Technology Review writers who are misleading common people into thinking quantum computing will be usable in a couple of years?
- andybak 9y agoYes. From my layman's view the fact that there are serious scientists in the field who still doubt that practical quantum computation is even realistically possible surely indicates we're not on the verge of being able to order one for delivery.
- OscarCunningham 9y agoOn the other hand I'm sure you could find lots of other achievements where some scientists were denying it was possible right up to the point it was achieved.
- akvadrako 9y agoThat's missing the point. Until it's actually achieved it isn't "finally here".
- andybak 9y ago"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong." https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/arthur_c_clarke_100793 https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/arthur_c_clarke_100793 > On the other hand I'm sure you could find lots of other achievements where some scientists were denying it was possible right up to the point it was achieved. True and I'm very aware that I'm creeping towards the age where I'm likely to be on the wrong side of these debates. (Not that I'm distinguished or even a scientist) However - the distinguished, elderly scientists are sometimes right.
- Retric 9y agoThat only seems true with hindsight bias, as distinguished elderly scientists are most memorable when they are wrong. Being right 99.9% of the time would not be enough if there are millions of you and people only care about a few quotes. Granted, you can't be proved correct if you say some action is impossible as someone can always wait to see if you're wrong.
- coldtea 9y agoOr you know, that is a BS quote, extrapolating from too few historical examples (and even them, not understood well), and not some scientific law.
- rwallace 9y agoCould you? Sure, we can all think of cases where someone said something was impossible and then eventually it was achieved. But are there any cases where the expert consensus on the physical possibility of something wasn't established until it was achieved in practice? I can't think of one off the top of my head. Nuclear energy? No, the physical possibility of this was understood in the thirties; the objection was that, as one scientist put it, you would have to turn a whole country into a uranium refinery. Which wasn't exactly wrong; the Manhattan project took engineering resources in the ballpark of a small country. Supersonic flight? No, artificial objects had been going supersonic for centuries. Spaceflight? No, the physics of this was well understood long before it was achieved. Any that I'm missing?
- OscarCunningham 9y agoRight, people had consensus on the physical possibility, but not on whether the engineering problems were surmountable. But I think there is a consensus on the physical possibility of quantum computing in principle. The [threshold theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_threshold_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_threshold_theorem) is very convincing.
- rwallace 9y agoBe careful: there's an important distinction. There is a consensus that quantum computers can, for certain problems, perform computation exponential in the number of qubits. But the often unspoken assumption is that the difficulty of getting the computation to stay coherent, is polynomial in the number of qubits. That's currently the big unknown. If it's not, then that's what would be meant by practical quantum computers being physically impossible.
- OscarCunningham 9y agoIs that not the problem that the threshold theorem solves?
- 9y ago
- posterboy 9y agoIt's reverse psychology. Surely, if they are in the field, they want it to be true. I frequently find myself invariably assuming a contrarian position in debate just to provoke more arguments, effectively contradicting myself over the course of different debates. In that sense, I just wanna know if that has a name in psychology as a normal or pathological condition. I mean, it might be purely rhetorical. Also, if it's not "crypto season", what is it actually, nano, cryo, opto, ..?
- neltnerb 9y agoAny good scientist should be the biggest skeptic of their own work. Though I usually poke holes in my own ideas in private ;-)
- AlexCoventry 9y agoTechnology Review decided to go full New Scientist 20 years ago. It's entertaining sometimes, but not a reliable source for the state of a research field.
- philipkglass 9y agoWhen did New Scientist itself go full New Scientist? I've stumbled across New Scientist articles from the 1970s when performing searches on Google Books and it reads like a completely different publication.
- AlexCoventry 9y agoI don't know. I didn't start to pay attention until the late 80s or so.
- War_tijn 9y agoOnly if those common people only read the headline. One of the first sentences of the article is: "Yet only now, after decades of gradual progress, are researchers finally close to building quantum computers powerful enough to do things that conventional computers cannot." And there are more parts of the article that make clear that it's definitely not possible to buy a quantum computer any time soon. Granted, it's not the best headline ever, but it's a decent article.
- gus_massa 9y ago"close to building" means in 20 years that means https://xkcd.com/678/ https://xkcd.com/678/ For most people "close to building" means 1 or 2 years.
- rollcat 9y agoIt will be "ready", when you can rent qubits by the minute on AWS.
- dang 9y agoSince people are disputing it, we took that bit out of the title above.