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"
>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.
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.
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