[HN Gopher] Microsoft's big win in quantum computing was an 'err...
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft's big win in quantum computing was an 'error' after all
Author : kumarharsh
Score : 142 points
Date : 2021-02-15 10:58 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| [deleted]
| sn_master wrote:
| Anyone else wondering how much bonus and promotions were obtained
| in Microsoft as a result of that "research"?
| klyrs wrote:
| Personally, I think I'd enjoy the fame of being the first to
| prove the existence of Majorana fermions much more than
| whatever promotions / bonuses etc may have been on the table.
| One might expect a Nobel prize for such a result. This may be
| cynical, but my guess is that they wanted to get their stake in
| the ground first, and optimistically saw the misbehaving data
| as a hardware glitch that would get ironed out before they
| received any real scrutiny.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It may be a loss for Microsoft but it is a win for the scientific
| method. And it is also one more score for the push to include
| _all_ data with scientific papers and not just the pretty
| version.
| klyrs wrote:
| The authors say that they cut the data out for "aesthetic"
| reasons. Personally, I don't buy it. They claimed a
| groundbreaking result, that obviously doesn't hold for the
| "ugly" data. It's possible that they deluded themselves, but
| from where I sit, that just counts as two more victims of
| fraud.
| jacquesm wrote:
| More often than not people that do a thing like this are
| deluding themselves. I've seen this in founders too.
|
| Outright fraud is _at least_ 10 times rarer than self
| delusion by my quick tally over 14 years of looking at
| companies, I don 't see any reason why the academic world
| would be substantially different.
|
| The range goes all the way from 'wouldn't it be nice if 'x'
| existed, so what does it matter if I have to fake it for a
| bit' to people who refuse to believe they are wrong right up
| until the debt collectors arrive and the whole thing falls
| apart. Fraud and self delusion are two completely different
| things and you shouldn't conflate them like that.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| I would really like to understand how omitting outright fraud
| by committing contra data for "aesthetic" reasons and then
| getting caught is a win for the scientific method.
|
| By this logic what would be a loss for the scientific method?
| Committing fraud and never getting caught?
| mathgenius wrote:
| Relevant tweet thread:
| https://twitter.com/condensed_the/status/1361018841724256267
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| That's a surprisingly good tweet thread that does an excellent
| job of pragmatically walking the line between "quantum
| computing is impossible" and "real quantum computers are only
| 2-3 years away".
|
| Advances are being made, but we're still very much in the
| primitive science experiment stage.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| I feel like you can replace "quantum computing" in this rant
| with almost any other major gov science initiative and it would
| still have relevance. Lunar colonization. Nuclear fusion.
| Genome therapy. All 5 years away since 2000. All require major
| materials breakthroughs. All hyped in the glossy popular media
| ;)
| mchusma wrote:
| Nuclear Fusion has made significant progress, and generally
| speaking the joke has been "its 20 years away and always will
| be". Only starting 2020 did people start to estimate shorter
| timelines, with ITER expecting to have net positive energy
| between 2025 and 2035. There are several fusion
| startups/projects looking to beat ITER, including SPARC and
| Commonwealth. In 2020 a detailed peer review of the system
| could find no major obvious flaws. SPARC is hoping to be done
| by 2025 with net postiive energy probably a few years after
| that.
|
| Neither ITER nor SPARC require any materials breakthroughs,
| but do rely on breakthroughs made over the last 30 years.
|
| People's expectations about a faster fusion timeline were
| always based on funding that never manifested. See
| https://i.imgur.com/3vYLQmm.png
|
| We are in the ballpark of 1976 timeline expectations given
| the amount of spending we committed to fusion.
| nl wrote:
| ITER was supposed to achieve fusion in 2016, but that has
| now been delayed until 2026:
|
| _When ITER first received formal approval in 2006, it was
| slated to first achieve fusion in 2016, a date which has
| since been pushed back at least 10 years. Issues with
| component construction and design disagreements have been
| blamed for the delays._ [1]
|
| > People's expectations about a faster fusion timeline were
| always based on funding that never manifested.
|
| ITER was initially budgeted EUR5 billion which was
| provided, then jumped to EUR15 billion, which was also
| provided:
|
| _The project was officially begun in 2006 with an
| estimated cost of EUR5 billion and date for the beginning
| of operations--or first plasma--in 2016. Those figures
| quickly changed to EUR15 billion and 2019, but confidence
| in those numbers has eroded over the years._ [2]
|
| And yet the timeline just for ITER to do an _experimental
| run_ is still 10 years, and then:
|
| _If everything goes to plan, ITER will pave the way for
| another reactor, called DEMO, which will expand the
| technologies perfected by ITER to an industrial scale, and
| hopefully prove that nuclear fusion is a viable source of
| energy._ [2]
|
| > See https://i.imgur.com/3vYLQmm.png
|
| Very unclear where these predictions and budget numbers
| come from. Apart from the 1976 budget, the rest just seem
| to be made up, and the end dates seem arbitrary.
|
| [1] https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/why-
| nuclear-fusi...
|
| [2] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/iter-fusion-
| project-...
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| On the point of the media. Of course some blame can be put on
| the researchers but science media also presents perverse
| incentives for them to popularize their findings by
| extrapolating and speculating on sensational consequences.
| [deleted]
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| For fusion that seems to be misleading. It is "always" that
| long away because of massive cuts in funding ensuring that it
| stays that way.
|
| http://i.imgur.com/3vYLQmm.png
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/5budos/fusion_is_al.
| ..
|
| If funding had not been cut to far below "fusion never" we
| would have been done decades ago.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| Genome therapy is here, and has been for a while if you count
| car-t.
|
| the other two are pipe dreams though.
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| Lunar colonization is a economic and political challenge,
| not (really) a scientific one.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| I would even say that underneath the political and
| economic challenges is a lack of will in the first place.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| I can scarcely imagine a worse concept to try to explain in
| tweet form.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| I can hardly imagine a concept that would benefit from an
| explanation in tweet form.
| airstrike wrote:
| _" The challenge in conveying complex topics in 140^W280
| characters"_
| mathgenius wrote:
| It's "quantum computing twitter", so mainly experts
| twittering to each other.
|
| If you're interested, I made a video about these "anyons"
| [1]. Or, more briefly there's this [2].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0mn7UBonSs
|
| [2] https://quantumcomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/2030
| /wh...
| alpaca128 wrote:
| I never visit Twitter normally, so when I actually click an
| interesting link I always land in a 5-10 tweet chain that
| should have been a short blog post.
|
| But somehow people put up with it and rather use external web
| services that automatically compile tweets into continuous
| text.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/04y1n
| caycep wrote:
| How can they tell?
|
| ...sorry...quantum joke
| DonHopkins wrote:
| "The authors later told us it was done for aesthetics."
|
| I sure hope the scientists developing the COVID-19 vaccines
| didn't cut out any data points "for aesthetics".
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| Even if they did, it's unlikely we will find out in the current
| political climate. We have to wait until 'end of pandemic'
| before people will rationally analyze the data.
| mathattack wrote:
| Did we really think the folks who take 3 versions to get
| something correct would get Quantum Computing right on the first
| try?
|
| Saying this is the death of QC is like saying Windows 1 means the
| GUI is a worthless concept.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Are you suggesting they'll take another two tries to get a
| working quantum computer?
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| If you assume a reasonable interpretation of the analogy, he
| means they'll eventually get it right. I.e. it'll take
| another N tries, where N is of course finite.
| ouid wrote:
| Windows 1?
| contextfree wrote:
| scientific research isn't the same as commercial product
| development.
| cortexio wrote:
| oh yeah yeah, another win for us "quantum is BS" boys. It will
| never exist guys, quantum computing is a fad. woop
| Twisell wrote:
| Is this the first sign that we have nearly reached the end of
| "quantum computing" hype cycle?
|
| Meanwhile teh M1 is doing "boring optimization of binary
| computing"...
| coldcode wrote:
| Classic editing your data to prove your point.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Ah yes. Fraud.
| poletopole wrote:
| Does anyone know if this is the same quantum computing project as
| their anyon quantum braiding research?
| boublepop wrote:
| Seems a lot like a deliberate lie in order to gain funding. While
| Microsoft backing this means they have solid financials, they are
| also pulling in serious amounts of funding from state actors. To
| the point where in for instance Denmark they where described as
| one year "draining the entire state innovation fund". Doing fund
| raising based on articles that where knowingly manipulated to
| support untruthful claims really's should be treated like
| financial fraud. Though likely this will come out with just a
| reprimanded and no real consequences.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| Locklin explains it best in "Quantum computing as a field is
| obvious bullshit" [1]:
|
| "quantum computing" enthusiasts expect you to overlook the fact
| that they haven't a clue as to how to build and manipulate
| quantum coherent forms of matter necessary to achieve quantum
| computation. A quantum computer capable of truly factoring the
| number 21 is missing in action. In fact, the factoring of the
| number 15 into 3 and 5 is a bit of a parlour trick, as they
| design the experiment while knowing the answer, thus leaving out
| the gates required if we didn't know how to factor 15. The actual
| number of gates needed to factor a n-bit number is 72 * n^3; so
| for 15, it's 4 bits, 4608 gates; not happening any time soon."
|
| [1] https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/quantum-
| comput...
| AnHonestComment wrote:
| Theorem: my bathroom has achieved quantum supremacy, greater than
| any current industry system.
|
| Proof:
|
| - No current super computer can accurately (much less real time)
| model an hour long high fidelity video of my bathtub full of
| water set into motion by jiggling my foot against it.
|
| - No current quantum computer can accelerate a problem of that
| size.
|
| Let me know when quantum computing is more than triviality in
| expensive components.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-02-15 23:01 UTC)