{"id":6297,"date":"2012-06-22T14:23:21","date_gmt":"2012-06-22T21:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=6297"},"modified":"2012-06-22T14:23:21","modified_gmt":"2012-06-22T21:23:21","slug":"threading-the-needle-of-mathematical-consistency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2012\/06\/22\/threading-the-needle-of-mathematical-consistency\/","title":{"rendered":"Threading the needle of mathematical consistency"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest round of the debate between Aram and Gil Kalai is now up over at Goedel’s Lost Letter<\/a>.
\nI realize that I’m preaching to the choir at this venue, but I thought I would highlight Aram’s response. He nicely sums up the conundrum for quantum skeptics with a biblical allusion<\/a>:<\/p>\n

…Gil and other modern skeptics need a theory of physics which is compatible with existing quantum mechanics, existing observations of noise processes, existing classical computers, and potential future reductions of noise to sub-threshold (but still constant) rates, all while ruling out large-scale quantum computers. Such a ropy camel-shaped theory would have difficulty in passing through the needle of mathematical consistency.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the things that puzzles me about quantum skeptics is that they always seem to claim that there is an in principle<\/em> reason why large-scale quantum computation is impossible. I just completely fail to see how they infer this from existing lines of evidence. If the skeptics would alter their argument slightly, I might have some more sympathy. For example, why don’t we power everything with fusion by now? Is it because there is a fundamental principle that prevents us from harnessing fusion power? No! It just turned out to be much harder than anyone thought to generate a self-sustaining controlled fusion reaction. If skeptics were arguing that quantum computers are the new fusion reactors, then I can at least understand how they might think that in spite of continuing experimental progress. But in principle impossible? It seems like an awfully narrow needle to thread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest round of the debate between Aram and Gil Kalai is now up over at Goedel’s Lost Letter. I realize that I’m preaching to the choir at this venue, but I thought I would highlight Aram’s response. He nicely sums up the conundrum for quantum skeptics with a biblical allusion: …Gil and other modern … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Threading the needle of mathematical consistency”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quantum-computing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}