Quantum computing as a field is obvious bullshit

https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/quantum-computing-as-a-field-is-obvious-bullshit/

by smsm42 • 8 years ago

33 38 8 years ago

scottlocklin.wordpress.com

drdeca• 8 years ago

The amount of insults per line compared to the number of actual points per line convinced me that this probably didn't make any noteworthy points.

"Quantum computing hasn't been practically useful yet!" Yes, we know that; thank you for your valuable insight.

You'd think that it would actually comment on the claims made of late, about BosonSampling and whatnot, but as far as I could tell, nope!

Libbum2• 8 years ago

Agreed. Seems like the author had enough education on the subject to be able to form an opinion that sounds credible enough, but lacked the capability to hammer the point home.

Sure, many of the points made are valid - work is still ongoing. Progress however, has been staggering. Ignore the whole quantum computer aspect, and you still have condenser matter, nanomanufacturing, optics, material science, modelling, dilution refrigeration, metrology and many other fields that directly benefit from the funding that's going into quantum computing at the moment.

scottlocklin12• 8 years ago

So like, if I claim I can build a perpetual motion machine in a dilution refrigerator, everything is great because "dilution refrigerator."

FWIIW I sat next to a dilution refrigerator in a lab in 1991 -can you name any significant improvements in them which came from QC funding?

mimixco3• 8 years ago

One glaring fact in support of the original post is that even the companies who make quantum computers don't claim that they are useful for solving any real problems. The problems that they can "solve" have to be constructed to fit within the limits of the machine.

In other words, quantum computers are less powerful than Turing machines which can solve any problem that any computer can ever solve -- including one's we haven't seen yet.

scottlocklin12• 8 years ago

That certainly doesn't seem to be true to the average layman:

http://www.dbta.com/Editorial/News-Flashes/IBM-Unveils-Quant...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiriasresearch/2019/01/17/ibm-l...

https://www.openpr.com/news/1516739/Quantum-Computing-Market...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gemmamilne/2019/01/14/the-inves...

http://techgenix.com/quantum-computing-cloud/

https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/08/daily-crunch-the-age-of-qu...

http://discovermagazine.com/2019/jan/quantum-supremacy

https://jaxenter.com/quantum-computing-cryptography-security...

https://gizmodo.com/us-passes-bill-to-inject-1-2-billion-int...

mimixco3• 8 years ago

Yes, they're very good at getting PR... but read what they put on their actual sites. These computers are expensive toys for research purposes.

The goal is to find out if quantum computers can ever be useful for real world problems. I'm with the OP; they can't.

currymj• 8 years ago

In the spirit of charity I wish there were a version of this post that didn’t seem like it was written after injecting some strange cocktail of anabolic steroids and cocaine.

Maybe there are some good or at least interestingly wrong arguments but I find myself incapable of looking past the rhetoric.

benmcnelly• 8 years ago

Right, much like discussing political maters, when discussing important things; compassion and easily digestible chunks of information go farther. It's OK to be passionate and certainly OK to call things out, but for the most part I think the only people who are able to look past the rhetoric are people who already agree with its position.

gaze6• 8 years ago

Disclaimer: I'm near the end of a PhD in experimental quantum computing.

I'm not sure what he means very little progress... we're entangling over long distances, we're doing practical error correction, we're reaching really long coherence times. More importantly, we've seen exponential progress in coherence times over time. Moore's law-like progress. Quantum computing has also had the side benefit of generating obviously practical results like ultra wide bandwidth, high dynamic range quantum limited amplifiers, and debatably practical but stunning fundamental results like reversing a quantum jump in real time by feedback. This is all recent. Quantum computing research has exploded in the last 10 years. The blog post just sounds like some dude that doesn't really understand physics, didn't do a thorough literature search, didn't really even look at recent news articles, who pats himself on the back for being a real practical business guy instead of a Quantum Physics PhD, because some Quantum Physics PhD served him food or something and thus they must all be floundering. He then goes on to poorly explain why quantum computing is really really hard and therefore we shouldn't be spending money on it. Poorly I say because he can't even seem to explain properly one of MANY proposed implementations of a quantum computer. One that isn't even particularly popular anymore. I really think he just woke up angry and wrote this.

Nearly having finished a PhD in quantum computing, I wouldn't say the skills I'm most proud of I picked up are my understanding of quantum mechanics... I'm now an expert in low noise microwave electronics, high speed feedback control, cryogenics. Some of which are practically useful skills, some of which are highly applicable towards better understanding of the natural world in ways that I think the author would even agree are worthwhile. So no, my life hasn't been wasted and my career hasn't been ruined.

scottlocklin12• 8 years ago

"my life hasn't been wasted and my career hasn't been ruined"

Talk to me in 10 years when you're not bringing me a steak for a living.

FWIIW I went to a Gordon conference on this in the 90s, and literally, the capabilities of quantum computers have not changed since then. Zero. None. There has been no "Moore's law like progress." There hasn't been any! That's the point! There's been more progress in interstellar space flight than quantum computing (I dunno, White-Juday is at least a good try), but at least warp drive creators aren't trying to convince people like you to ruin your lives.

gaze6• 8 years ago

https://imgur.com/a/HCJ7hLq

Again, exponential progress in coherence time.

happytoexplain• 8 years ago

Talk to me in 10 years when you're not bringing me a steak for a living.

This comes off as an incredibly hostile sentence, though I suspect you may have not meant it as just an attack.

bassman90002• 8 years ago

He then goes on to poorly explain why quantum computing is really really hard and therefore we shouldn't be spending money on it

I think it read more like

We're still ages away from the ancilliary technologies that will allow us to tackle quantum computing

The whole XVIII century vs SR-71 example was pretty clear

gaze6• 8 years ago

But what technologies are needed to make quantum computing work with say superconducting qubits? High speed room temperature processors? FPGAs and fast DACs/ADCs will do it. Low loss cables? Got that. Low noise amplifiers? Got it. Idk what people want. It’s a good time to start throwing money at it to iron out the problems that nobody wants to do a thesis on. It’s not riskfree but it’s a reasonable bet.

flashgordon• 8 years ago

I normally go through HN comments before I decide to read the article. And so I decided to read it indeed to see how it could possibly be this bad. Wow! Just imagine how much different the article would have been if the author had just posted his misunderstandings as "hey I tried googling but did not understand these points, can an expert in the field help me understand the following...?". A world to live in indeed!

nairboon• 8 years ago

"He also noticed that instead of making progress down fruitful lanes or improving detailed knowledge of important areas, most develop enthusiasms for the latest non-experimental wank fest; complexity theory, network theory, noodle theory."

What exactly is the issue with complexity and network theory?

ivan_ah• 8 years ago

For people who think this post is too much of a rant (not me; I like it), perhaps this article might provide a more interesting read: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/the-u... which summary of the finding of the national academy of sciences report which can be downloaded from here https://www.nap.edu/download/25196

Personally, I'm all for more progress on quantum information science topics, but I think it will be better for the field if we rein in some of the claims about the potential for the technology, and the timeframe when it will become practical.

yifanlu• 8 years ago

Assuming everything he says is 100% true. Why can’t some people just work on things that interest them because they interest them? Why does everything need to be “useful” (as in useful right here right now)? Okay resource is finite and has to be allocated. But so what? What’s the point of science and technology if not to enable others to have a more meaningful life? For some, that meaning is in exploring “useless” problems. Let the people who want to make better classical computers do so. Let people who want to study quantum computers do so. I can assure you that the number of people who study/work on quantum computers is so low that convincing all of them to drop their work and do something more “practical” will not make the world a better place.

scottlocklin12• 8 years ago

Everything I said is 100% true. Citation: nobody has found an error yet.

I think it would be great if people took this up as a hobby. I don't even mind wasting VC on stuff like this, and said so. I object to researchers selling this to young scientists as a potential career. It's not! It is a glass bead game, and acting like it isn't is the moral equivalent of fraud.

craftinator2• 8 years ago

In everything I've read about quantum computing, I've always had nagging doubts about the actual engineering details required to make a QC a viable means of solving computing limitations. The original article sums all of these doubts up, and expounds on them. Can anyone who has actually worked on QC's offer an experiential rebuttle to the author's claims?

craftinator2• 8 years ago

Addendum: I think most reasonable people reading these comments can agree that the author is hostile to the topic, bordering on being an asshole, and he probably knows this. However, this has NO impact on his assertions. They are good, especially the references to older arguments against the potential of QC's, which still seem quite valid.

jacknews• 8 years ago

A finance guy calling out physicists for wasting resources and doing useless work?

Whether quantum computing research will deliver anything useful soon or not (it won't), I think the picture at the end sums up the author's attitude nicely.

Quantum computing as a field is obvious bullshit

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