
Quantum computing as a field is obvious bullshit - J253
https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/quantum-computing-as-a-field-is-obvious-bullshit/
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kamilner
Further discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18958321](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18958321)

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toufiqbarhamov
The good points being made about the tenuous link between current quantum
computing theory and anything like reality is consistently undermined by his
“old man shouts at clouds” attitude.

 _Physicists used to be serious and bloody minded people who understood
reality by doing experiments. Somehow this sort of bloody minded seriousness
has faded out into a tower of wanking theorists who only occasionally have
anything to do with actual matter. I trace the disease to the rise of the
“meritocracy” out of cow colleges in the 1960s. The post WW-2 neoliberal idea
was that geniuses like Einstein could be mass produced out of peasants using
agricultural schools. The reality is, the peasants are still peasants, and the
total number of Einsteins in the world, or even merely serious thinkers about
physics is probably something like a fixed number. It’s really easy, though,
to create a bunch of crackpot narcissists who have the egos of Einstein
without the exceptional work output. All you need to do there is teach them
how to do some impressive looking mathematical Cargo Cult science, and keep
their “results” away from any practical men doing experiments._

Yeeeaaaah... I’m wildly skeptical of the state of so-called quantum computing,
but what does this ranting have to do with anything? Pissing on theorists can
be fun, especially in physics where whole fields divorced from anything like a
feasible experiment exist (I’m looking at you M-Theory), but dismissing the
exercise is downright silly. It wasn’t that long ago that the Higgs Mechanism
moved from completely untested theory to observed reality.

I’d love to hear a brutally honest assessment of the field in question without
it rapidly degenerating into pissing and moaning from an irredeemable ass.

~~~
scottlocklin
Higgs-Anderson "discovery" was done in 1973 with discovery of weak current,
and again in 1982. It was a great piece of experimental particle physics, but
it was also not necessary for our understanding of how the world works.

The point of all this is pretty simple: people are play acting instead of
doing useful work. Higgs-Anderson mechanism is a great example of this. 73 we
were done, but had this huge staff of experimental particle physics guys with
nothing to do, so we do it again. And again. Until you end up with a "science"
paper with hundreds of "coauthors" and a huge racket of people wasting their
lives verifying something that was already done in the 70s. Maybe it serves
some higher purpose, like international relations, but even if it didn't, I'm
pretty sure some bozos will be requesting an even bigger particle accelerator
in 20 years to do 1970s physics again.

