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Comment by gus_massa | Hacker News Reader

Old previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8081384 (59 points, 731 days ago, 74 comments)

First comment by Dunnorandom

> For anyone interested, here's Scott Aaronson's response to the paper: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1767#comment-103591 .

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I feel that this is so important that I'll just quote the central part of Aaronson's response:

  OK everyone: At several people’s request, I’ve now taken
  a look at arXiv:1403.7686, and I can confirm that it’s
  complete garbage.

Aaronson explains why, too.

> As additional problems, the author appears to conflate the P vs. NP problem with the question of whether NP-complete problems can be efficiently solved in the physical world, a common novice mistake.

This occurred to me as well just reading the article. Take an algorithm taking roughly G * x time and another taking e ^ (x/G) where G is the Graham number. Just because the first is growing in a linear fashion and the latter in exponential it doesn't mean the first will be quicker for any number physicians need to deal with.

Curiously he singled out D-wave as an example of other people who made the same mistake the author supposedly makes. But since then, quite recently in fact, I read that the D-wave quantum computer has finally been recognized to really speed up calculations as it should if it were indeed a quantum computer. I wonder to what extent that could invalidate Aaronson's criticism.

Before reading the page I thought the combination of headline and domain looked fishy, so I decided to check the HN comments first. It isn't that I have anything against Medium but I do not trust it enough for a claim like that and the following potentially demanding but underwhelming read.

I am always astonished by how good humans are at pattern matching. And also: I live in a severe filter bubble.

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