> Once you invest decades of your life into a research subject, if it turns out the entire thing is never going to work, there are major social and financial pressures to deceive the public about the true nature of the subject.

You're implying that Scott Aaronson is being deceptive.

I think that needs better evidence. The story you linked to is two years old and it's about QC skeptic Gil Kalai.

Scott addresses him directly in his post:

> If quantum supremacy was achieved, what would it mean for the QC skeptics?

> I wouldn’t want to be them right now! They could of course retreat to the position that of course quantum supremacy is possible (who ever claimed that it wasn’t??), that the real issue has always been quantum error-correction. And indeed, some of them have consistently maintained that position all along. But others, including my good friend Gil Kalai, are on record, right here on this blog predicting that even quantum supremacy can never be achieved for fundamental reasons. I won’t let them wiggle out of it now.