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Comment by bjornsing | Hacker News Reader

Yea... I’m not suggesting of course that Scott is wrong about this being an illustration of “quantum supremacy”... (Did you think I was...?)

But comparing it to manned flight or the first nuclear reactor... In those two cases there was a clear path to something very useful. I’m my mind this experiment changes very little as to how probable it is that we will soon have useful quantum computers, or even that we will ever have them. I guess that’s another question for Scott’s list:

Q: If what we care about is computing solutions to difficult real world problems, in what way is this a meaningful milestone?

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Well I don't want to answer for him but you could make the same point with the airplane:

The first flight was 2 people in a plane that lasted very short. I could have ridden my horse more quickly over that distance! How is this a meaningful milestone?!

Well.. it demonstrates something that cannot be done on a horse (classical computer) but that can be done with a plane (quantum computer).

Is the application useful today? Probably not. But that shouldn't discourage anyone.

> But comparing it to manned flight or the first nuclear reactor (...) this experiment changes very little as to how probable it is that we will soon have useful quantum computers, or even that we will ever have them.

Not a lot of people directly own & operate their own airplane, let alone a nuclear reactor, and yet both have had a significant impact on modern life. As for this experiment & QC, only time will tell of course.

I think you misinterpreted "we will ever have them" part. bjornsing is not talking about whether there will be personal quantum computers. It is about whether there will be useful quantum computers at all. That is still open, for example because of issues related to quantum error correction.

> This experiment changes very little as to how probable it is that we will soon have useful quantum computers, or even that we will ever have them.

I completely agree with this statement. This is mainly about Extended Church-Turing Thesis.

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