Re:Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone wo...
by 7thaccount on Sunday April 26, 2020 @07:54PM
(#22991446)
There is a comic (maybe SMBC) that covers the whole commonly false belief surrounding qubits.
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Re:Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone wo...
by klmadfejno on Sunday April 26, 2020 @08:15PM
(#22991607)
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3
The basic gist I get is that quantum computing, for a very specific set of problems, like optimization, let's you search the space more efficiently. With quantum mechanics you can associate computations with positive or negative probability amplitudes. With the right design, you cause multiple paths to incorrect answers to have opposite amplitudes, so that interference causes them to cancel out and not actually happen to begin with. That's just my reading of the comic over and over though.
Re:Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone wo...
by Izkata on Monday April 27, 2020 @12:14AM
(#22992836)
Along those same lines, I once heard a description that went something like: "Imagine a Jenga tower so precisely balanced that, when it falls over, it spells out the answer."
Re:Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone wo...
by mda on Sunday April 26, 2020 @09:47PM
(#22992146)
I found the comic not very good either. Kid suddenly blurts "Wait a minute, that means a qubit corresponds to a unit vector in 2 dimensional Hilbert space"
Yeah.
Re:Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone wo...
by 7thaccount on Sunday April 26, 2020 @09:54PM
(#22992194)
I think you have to take that sarcastically like when she mentions that it's not like the classical probability taught in preschool.
Re:Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone wo...
by klmadfejno on Monday April 27, 2020 @02:47PM
(#22998688)
Not quite what I meant. I think the comic is excellent. In case its not painfully obvious, the joke is equating lay people's poor understanding of quantum mechanics to a child's misunderstanding of sex. It's not trying to dumb down the concept of quantum computers at all, it's just trying to point out how incorrect how dumb pop science simplifications of it are. The 'qubits are bits with a range of value between 0 and 1 that use quantum magic to test all possibilities at once' is utter fiction.