
“The Talk” by Scott Aaronson and Zach Weinersmith - nabla9
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3
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weinzierl
This is a good read.

One popular misconception it misses to hit on is that we do not know if
quantum computing "gives your computer a huge speed boost!". The answer in the
comic is only: "Well, we only know how to do that for a few special problems."

I expected it to go on and say that even for them we are not sure because this
seems to be a recurring topic in Scott Aaronson's writing.[1]

Besides that my favorite part is:

Son: "Then why did the popular articles lie to me about that?!"

Mom: "For generations physicists had a custom when discussing these matters
with outsiders they wanted to avoid being too... _graphic_ "

Mom:"Too explicit."

Mom: " _Gulp_ "

Mom: "Mathematically precise."

[1]
[http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=124](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=124)

~~~
nabla9
>The answer in the comic is only: "Well, we only know how to do that for a few
special problems."

We know that for generic search problems (most everyday computation can be
formulated as search problems) quantum computers can provide quadratic
speedup. For some special problems it can provide exponential speedup.

~~~
weinzierl
Depends upon against what you measure the speedup. If you mean against the
best known classical algorithm then I agree.

The point of the quantum computing skeptics seems to be that there exits no
quantum algorithm where we can prove that any classical algorithm must be
slower. At least that is my limited understanding.

