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Yet another skeptical commentary about quantum computing: http://physicsdetective.com/quantum-com ... um-quacks/

It alludes to my first anti-Bell paper of 2007, and also to my refutation of Scott Aaronson's critique of my work: https://www.academia.edu/38423874/Refut ... ls_Theorem

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Joy you really should have done some basic checking before posting that link. John Duffield aka 'Physics Detective' is a crank especially well known for his 'visual' interpretation of GR.

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Q-reeus, I don't agree with everything John Duffield is saying, but he is entitled to his views. And I agree with his view that quantum computing is "pie in the sky and jam tomorrow."

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Joy Christian wrote:***
Q-reeus, I don't agree with everything John Duffield is saying, but he is entitled to his views. And I agree with his view that quantum computing is "pie in the sky and jam tomorrow."

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Make that a threesome Joy. However whether it's down to mere infeasibility e.g. environmental decoherence, ineffectualness of 'error correction' etc., or fundamental physics i.e. existence or non-existence of entanglement and/or quantum superposition, is where it's really at. Most if not all of the QC critics you quoted and linked to earlier here (and in other threads), fall under the former category best I can tell.

Q-reeus wrote:Joy you really should have done some basic checking before posting that link. John Duffield aka 'Physics Detective' is a crank especially well known for his 'visual' interpretation of GR.

When I talk about GR, I refer to what Einstein said. Things like this from 1920:

“Second, this consequence shows that the law of the constancy of the speed of light no longer holds, according to the general theory of relativity, in spaces that have gravitational fields. As a simple geometric consideration shows, the curvature of light rays occurs only in spaces where the speed of light is spatially variable”.

That's because I've read the history. I've read the history of quantum mechanics too. And papers such as Hans Ohanian’s what is spin?. When you understand these things, you understand why quantum computing hasn't achieved anything in nearly forty years.

JohnDuffield wrote:

Q-reeus wrote:Joy you really should have done some basic checking before posting that link. John Duffield aka 'Physics Detective' is a crank especially well known for his 'visual' interpretation of GR.

When I talk about GR, I refer to what Einstein said. Things like this from 1920:

“Second, this consequence shows that the law of the constancy of the speed of light no longer holds, according to the general theory of relativity, in spaces that have gravitational fields. As a simple geometric consideration shows, the curvature of light rays occurs only in spaces where the speed of light is spatially variable”.

That's because I've read the history. I've read the history of quantum mechanics too. And papers such as Hans Ohanian’s what is spin?. When you understand these things, you understand why quantum computing hasn't achieved anything in nearly forty years.

Oh dear. Guess I should take at least partial responsibility for JD signing up here. Partial because I suspect someone else here alerted John to my earlier entry above.
Rather than disputing again some of your erroneous ideas that were repeatedly dealt with over at another forum, I will refer any interested reader to check out these:
http://physicsdetective.com/how-gravity-works/
http://physicsdetective.com/the-screw-n ... magnetism/
Don't have the time or interest to comb through each and every article there - just selected two whose main themes were persistently promoted over at another forum.
Hopefully the conceptual errors in both articles are clearly evident. If not, too bad - JD may end up with one or more new disciples.
[PS - I myself was rather partial to Ohanian's spin model for an electron - one which was improved on btw by a later article by Andre Gsponer, - What Is Spin http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0308027
Unfortunately, I cannot see how it could successfully be adapted to explain the experimentally observed spin half for neutrinos!]

You're sounding like Scott Aaaronson. You have nothing to do with me being here. I emailed Joy about his 2007 article Quantum Entanglement: is Spookiness under threat, and we got talking. The moot point is that when you know about electron spin, you know that Joy was right. And yet he received dreadful abuse for his pains. This was an injustice. How on Earth are academics like Scott Aaronson allowed to spray such obnoxious bile and remain in post?

As for how gravity works, you can't point out where it's wrong. If you think you can, please start a thread and do so. But please do so on another thread, and respect the OP. Ditto if you want to talk about neutrino spin.

JohnDuffield wrote:You're sounding like Scott Aaaronson. You have nothing to do with me being here. I emailed Joy about his 2007 article Quantum Entanglement: is Spookiness under threat, and we got talking. The moot point is that when you know about electron spin, you know that Joy was right. And yet he received dreadful abuse for his pains. This was an injustice. How on Earth are academics like Scott Aaronson allowed to spray such obnoxious bile and remain in post?

As for how gravity works, you can't point out where it's wrong. If you think you can, please start a thread and do so. But please do so on another thread, and respect the OP. Ditto if you want to talk about neutrino spin.

Right, well relieved to know I wasn't responsible for you being here. As for your put-up-or-shut-up dare, no. Feel free to start a thread on either topic, and I will likely chip in to point out obvious flaws you were alerted to numwerouss times in the past, but to no good effect. Your choice John.

JohnDuffield wrote:
How on Earth are academics like Scott Aaronson allowed to spray such obnoxious bile and remain in post?

The fault lies entirely with the physics community as a whole, especially with those holding professorial positions and positions of power. There is no accountability for abusive actions like those of Scott Aaronson and others. I wrote to the Provost of MIT when Aaronson was at MIT, but his office did nothing. Their reply to me was that what Aaronson does on his private blog does not amount to either scientific or professional misconduct. The administrators of FQXi, Max Tegmark and Anthony Aguirre, also sided with Aaronson and seemed to be grateful to him for his actions, which led to my resignation from FQXi. Even people like Harvey Brown and Samson Abramsky of my own college at Oxford University, Wolfson College, sided with Aaronson and acted against me, thereby condoning his abusive actions. The reason behind this is nothing but academic politics. Sadly, I have witnessed its dark underbelly from inside for many years.

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Joy Christian wrote:The fault lies entirely with the physics community as a whole, especially with those holding professorial positions and positions of power. There is no accountability for abusive actions like those of Scott Aaronson and others. I wrote to the Provost of MIT when Aaronson was at MIT, but his office did nothing. Their reply to me was that what Aaronson does on his private blog does not amount to either scientific or professional misconduct. The administrators of FQXi, Max Tegmark and Anthony Aguirre, also sided with Aaronson and seemed to be grateful to him for his actions, which led to my resignation from FQXi. Even people like Harvey Brown and Samson Abramsky of my own college at Oxford University, Wolfson College, sided with Aaronson and acted against me, thereby condoning his abusive actions. The reason behind this is nothing but academic politics. Sadly, I have witnessed its dark underbelly from inside for many years.

This is not good. Unfortunately it appears to be endemic, albeit without quite so much bile. I've had people tell me they've been told "don't rock the boat or you'll never make full professor". I hear stories about people struggling to get a paper on the arXiv, or into a high-impact journal. So I'm afraid I also have my doubts about peer review, as per this cartoon by Nick Kim:



Not only that, but it spills out into life at large. For example Q-reeus has employed the "crank" ad-hominem, and is now using the old "you have been debunked" trick. Sigh. I will start a thread, but he won't point out any flaws.

Anyway, apologies for the digression. What are you working on at the moment? Perhaps I could start a thread about something relevant.

Joy Christian wrote:

JohnDuffield wrote:
How on Earth are academics like Scott Aaronson allowed to spray such obnoxious bile and remain in post?

The fault lies entirely with the physics community as a whole, especially with those holding professorial positions and positions of power. There is no accountability for abusive actions like those of Scott Aaronson and others. I wrote to the Provost of MIT when Aaronson was at MIT, but his office did nothing. Their reply to me was that what Aaronson does on his private blog does not amount to either scientific or professional misconduct. The administrators of FQXi, Max Tegmark and Anthony Aguirre, also sided with Aaronson and seemed to be grateful to him for his actions, which led to my resignation from FQXi. Even people like Harvey Brown and Samson Abramsky of my own college at Oxford University, Wolfson College, sided with Aaronson and acted against me, thereby condoning his abusive actions. The reason behind this is nothing but academic politics. Sadly, I have witnessed its dark underbelly from inside for many years.

"... privilege often breeds a dangerous mixture of ineptitude and arrogance, as well as incubating the kind of unhinged ideas that could appeal only to people removed from ordinary life, who tend to see the world in terms of crass abstractions." This opinion appears in the piece written today by John Harris in the context of Brexit for The Guardian, but it applies equally to the proponents of the so-called "quantum computing."

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Quantum Hype and Quantum Skepticism: https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2019/5/2 ... mbV30JZ5k0

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Exponential speed up done classically: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/9/15/3029/htm.

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Oops!

minkwe wrote:Oops!

Take a look at
https://www.phasespacecomputing.com/


You will also love https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.05082 Quantum Simulation Logic, Oracles, and the Quantum Advantage, Niklas Johansson, Jan-Åke Larsson
Abstract: Query complexity is a common tool for comparing quantum and classical computation, and it has produced many examples of how quantum algorithms differ from classical ones. Here we investigate in detail the role that oracles play for the advantage of quantum algorithms. We do so by using a simulation framework, Quantum Simulation Logic (QSL), to construct oracles and algorithms that solve some problems with the same success probability and number of queries as the quantum algorithms. The framework can be simulated using only classical resources at a constant overhead as compared to the quantum resources used in quantum computation. Our results clarify the assumptions made and the conditions needed when using quantum oracles. Using the same assumptions on oracles within the simulation framework we show that for some specific algorithms, like the Deutsch-Jozsa and Simon's algorithms, there simply is no advantage in terms of query complexity. This does not detract from the fact that quantum query complexity provides examples of how a quantum computer can be expected to behave, which in turn has proved useful for finding new quantum algorithms outside of the oracle paradigm, where the most prominent example is Shor's algorithm for integer factorization.

See also:

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs11128-017-1679-7.pdf
Efficient classical simulation of the Deutsch–Jozsa
and Simon’s algorithms
Niklas Johansson, Jan-Åke Larsson

https://www.researchgate.net/project/Efficient-Classical-Simulation-of-Quantum-Algorithms

Unfortunately, my usually very wise friend Scott Aaronson has not understood what Larsson and Johansson are doing. Somehow it is very hard to explain, that is true...
https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3638#comment-1752690
https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3638#comment-1753676

gill1109 wrote:
...my usually very wise friend Scott Aaronson ...

Elsewhere I have explained just how "wise" Scott Aaronson is:

Joy Christian wrote:

Joy Christian wrote:
I have written up a long-overdue refutation of Scott Aaronson's online critique of my local-realistic model:

Refutation of Scott Aaronson's Critique of my Disproof of Bell's Theorem

Fortunately, the Truth cannot be starved off so easily, and Aaronson has not succeeded in his goal.

I hear that Aaronson is no longer at MIT. Could my online treatment by him have anything to do with his departure from MIT? Unfortunately, some other guilties have retired from their academic positions and thereby escaped any repercussions for their online and offline behavior.

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Scott Aaronson is heading the Quantum Complexity group at University of Texas at Austin. Not exactly a demotion. Plus they also tenured his wife. He has written about his transition on his blog.

Heinera wrote:Scott Aaronson is heading the Quantum Complexity group at University of Texas at Austin. Not exactly a demotion. Plus they also tenured his wife. He has written about his transition on his blog.

Yeah, right. Unlike you, I know the inside story. Ask the Provost of MIT, and ask the President of the University of Texas at Austin. So if I were you, I would keep your anonymous opinions out of this. In any case, nothing justifies Aaronson's obnoxious online behavior, as John Duffield noted earlier in this thread:

JohnDuffield wrote:
How on Earth are academics like Scott Aaronson allowed to spray such obnoxious bile and remain in post?

If Aaronson were wiser, then he would have remained anonymous like you. That way what you say and do has no adverse consequences for you.

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OK guys, let's get back on-topic for this thread.
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The Argument Against Quantum Computers: https://indico.cern.ch/event/839574/

PDF of the talk: https://indico.cern.ch/event/839574/att ... 7/CERN.pdf

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