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I don't really know a lot about D-wave to be honest. I defer to Scott Aaronson's posts [1] and to the opinion that the main criteria for success is "solve hard problems" as opposed to "solve hard problems with a quantum computer" [2].

[1]: https://scottaaronson.com/blog/?s=dwave

[2]: https://youtu.be/XbFoXT73xVQ?t=355




Hmmmmm. I tried to follow this youtube, but it doesn't make sense for me. The guy is saying that D-wave would be a success even if it was not a quantum but only solved a hard problem.

I could buy this, but they do not solve any problem yet that was not solvable with probabilistic classical algorithms before.

I would also give them a credit if they didn't solve any problem yet but showed real quantum computer at work. Eg. could do factoring of 50 digit number. Or are on the way to do this somehow and made understandable progress in the area. Even though they didn't fully succeed yet.

What they do to my understanding is:

* approach a problem that is hard in general. * solve only a simple and already solvable case * when asked that it may not be a quantum thay say that even if it was not quantum then ok because the problem is hard (while it is not) * if asked about the problem being easy they say that maybe the problem is easy but this is quantum.

Do I understand this correctly? I would really appreciate more explanation


I agree with all of that.


Without hardware, you're not solving any problems. Glass bead game != solving problems.

At no point in human history as this sort of "detailed theoretical wanking" turned into progress in science; the hardware comes first.


Convnets were detailed 1980s and didn't become viable until hardware caught up in the 2010s.


How do you get the idea to build something without any thought about what it will do?


I was under the impression that theoretical physics detailing underpinning mechanisms proceeded the transistor, nuclear weapons and fibre optics.


That's true of most inventions. We had programming and boolean logic before we had computers. And of course we would, you can't build a boat without water to sail on.




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