Quantum Computing Skepticism

I gave an online presentation on my quantum computing skepticism, and it is now posted. Thanks to the sponsors for making this happen, and persisting in the face of criticism from enthusiasts.

Why Einstein's Dishonesty was Tolerated

I wrote a book on Einstein, but I was never able to explain why everyone overcredits him for relativity and other wisdom.

One explanation is that most people do not know the history of relativity. Yes, that's true, but the history is well-documented for all the scholars who bother to look.

Another possible explanation is that his reputation was being propped up by friends or Jews or Leftists or others who were partial to him for some reason. But he gets plenty of exaggerated support from non-Jews and others with no obvious ties.

Galina Weinstein is an Israeli philosopher, and Einstein scholar and worshipper, and she suggests another possibility. Because the Nazis denigrated Einstein in the 1930s, an Einstein critic might get labeled a Nazi.

What is not acceptable is ... to frame the [relativity priority] debate in terms that echo long-standing prejudicial tropes.

As I commented:

Apparently this is a veiled reference to a stereotype of Jews being dishonest plagiarists, and as being parasitic, unoriginal, morally corrupt, and eager to appropriate the achievements and culture of others.

That seems rude, but Weinstein is essentially saying that Einstein must be credited to avoid those stereotypes. Just to be sure, I conferred with an AI, and it confirmed the interpretation.

A 1931 German book was titled, A Hundred Authors Against Einstein. According to Wikipedia, Einstein said the authors were Nazi professors, but that was not true. Maybe a couple of them were Nazis. He emigrated from Germany a couple of years later.

Sabine Hossenfelder says the book's main objection was that "Einstein’s theory is merely a philosophical construction." But that is how Einstein's biggest admirers credit him. He cannot be credited with any of the mathematical or physical elements of the theory, and they all predate him.

All this gave the impression that criticizing Einstein was something that ignorant and anti-Jewish Nazis would do.

To me, the history of relativity seems far removed from Jewish issues. But then Weinstein argues that certain Einstein criticisms are unacceptable, if they echo Jewish stereotypes.

If she is right, then maybe that is why almost everyone credits Einstein for relativity, and idolizes him as a great genius. They will be called Nazi and prejudiced, if they do not.

Then there is the issue of Deutsche Physik versus Jewish science. I cannot find a clear explanation of the difference. Wikipedia says that some Germans questioned Einstein's notion of the aether, and some experimental results.

Any analysis of how Einstein's relativity work might be Jewish science must be based on what Einstein actually contributed to special relativity. The consensus among historians is that Einstein ignored experiments like Michelson-Morley, and that he had no new formulas or testable ideas. Einstein is usually praised for obscure terminological differences that have no physical significance. Is there something Talmudic about that? I don't know.

This all seems foolish to me. Einstein was a brilliant physicist. There are lots of other brilliant Jewish physicists. Just credit them for what they did. Those who artificially inflate his reputation are the ones echoing those long-standing tropes.

The Fitzgerald-Lorentz Contraction is not Real

Sabine Hossenfelder's latest physics video:

Over a century ago, Einstein wrote his theories of special relativity and general relativity. Within those theories, he predicted that, as an object moves faster, it slightly contracts in length. However, 50 years later Penrose and Terrell predicted that what one would see is instead that the object is rotated. In a recent experiment, physicists proved that this Penrose-Terrell effect is actually real. Let’s take a look.

She is a big Einstein idolizer. Her favorite prop is an Einstein bobblehead.

Let me review the basic facts.

The relativity length contraction was discovered by Fitzgerald in 1889 and Lorentz in 1892. Lorentz also discovered time dilation in 1895. Both of them used these to explain the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment.

Poincare in 1905 and Minkowski in 1907 explained these as a new geometry of spacetime. In their interpretation, the spacetime distortions are not real, but an artifact of choosing a frame in the 4D non-euclidean geometry. This interpretation was quickly accepted, and is the dominant one today.

Dr. Bee starts:

0:00 Albert Einstein totally changed our understanding of space and time. ...

Einstein’s theory of 0:46 special relativity makes two most remarkable predictions. The first is time dilation, 0:52 the other one is length contraction. Time dilation means that if an object moves faster 0:58 than its internal time passes slower. Length contraction means that the same fast-moving 1:05 object will also be shorter. It’s not that it appears shorter, it actually is shorter.

No, Lorentz and others made those remarkable predictions 10+ years ahead of Einstein. They said that the motion actually actually made the Michelson apparatus shorter. I think most physicists today would say that it only appears shorter.

In 1931, a group of scientists went so far 1:24 as to publish a book called “100 authors against Einstein.” It’s an interesting historical summary 1:31 of why people rejected Einstein’s insights, more than 2 decades after he had put them forward.

1:38 Some of them claimed Einstein’s maths is wrong. Some said the maths is right, 1:44 but they did it earlier.

The most frequent objection though was that they thought 1:49 Einstein’s theory is merely a philosophical construction. They thought that special 1:55 relativity tells us something about the way we see things. Not about how they really are. 2:01 Well, they were wrong. We know that length contraction is real. A moving object really is 2:08 shorter.

Her opinion is very strange. Lorentz and Poincare had all the equations and predictions before Einstein. The only way to credit Einstein for relativity is to say that he had a superior philosophical construction. If the Lorentz contraction is real and the 1931 book was wrong to say that Einstein had a philosophical construction, then Lorentz had it all before Einstein.

Here is what Poincare wrote in 1905, before Einstein:

But the question can still be seen form another point of view, which could be better understood by analogy. Let us suppose an astronomer before Copernicus who reflects on the system of Ptolemy; ...

Or this part which would be, so to speak, common to all the physical phenomena, would be only apparent, something which would be due to our methods of measurement. ...

so that the theory of Lorentz is as completely rejected as it was the system of Ptolemy by the intervention of Copernicus.

He says his view is like Copernicus rejecting Ptolemy, putting a new view on the same data. The relativity contraction is only apparent, due to our methods of measurement.

This is the modern view of relativity. It was popularized by Minkowski in 1907-8, and accepted ever since. Einstein is only credited because of a mistaken belief that he contributed to this modern view. In fact, the view was published before Einstein, and Einstein rejected it when he learned about it.

Most of Dr. Bee's video is about a new paper confirming a visual illusion that Penrose discovered.

Whatever Happened to String Theory?

Gizmodo reports:

Whatever Happened to String Theory?

At the turn of the century, it sounded as if string theory could give us big answers about the universe. Well… has it?

Believe it or not, physicists want to keep it simple. That’s why many scientists, including Albert Einstein, believe physics could eventually converge into a single, overarching paradigm that describes the universe — a theory of everything.

It was always a foolish belief. Especially Einstein's version of it. Anyone looking for a "paradigm" is not doing science.

Enter string theory. Very broadly speaking, string theory is a mathematical framework that replaces point-like particles with one-dimensional “strings” as the fundamental building blocks of matter. It was initially proposed as an explanation for a different phenomenon but quickly caught the attention of physicists working to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity—two extremely successful, equally valid theories that notoriously don’t get along.

Everybody says those theories conflict, but there is no problem as they apply to anything observable.

Then followed two “superstring revolutions,” which saw impressive strides in mapping out the details of how string theory could capture the complexity of our universe. The fervor of string theory naturally leaked over to popular conversations—science enthusiasts of the 1990s and 2000s, I’m looking at you—producing famous documentaries such as PBS’s The Elegant Universe and a trove of popular and academic books.

The word "revolution" is another tipoff that science is not being done.

The article requested comments from experts, and got a variety of opinions.

I say that string theory was trying to solve a problem that did not exist. It was a mathematical exercise with no relation to science.

In twenty years, I look forward to articles on what happened to quantum computing, quantum cryptography, teleportation, and other trendy topics of today.

Quantum Supremacy by 2028

Dr. Quantum Supremacy lists some recent quantum computing announcements, and says:

Evidence continues to pile up that we are not living in the universe of Gil Kalai and the other quantum computing skeptics. Indeed, given the current staggering rate of hardware progress, I now think it’s a live possibility that we’ll have a fault-tolerant quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm before the next US presidential election. And I say that not only because of the possibility of the next US presidential election getting cancelled, or preempted by runaway superintelligence!

Note that he is not quite saying that I have been proved wrong. Maybe I will be proved wrong by 2028.

Many-worlds Theory Rejects Models and Probabilities

The Sean M. Carroll podcast just had a guest talking about models and probabilities for an hour. And then he said:

1:01:43 the many worlds idea that you know this wave function which is the beast of 1:01:48 quantum mechanics, the thing that it that it provides for the whole universe in principle um has a very natural way 1:01:56 of describing everything that there is as being split 1:02:01 into quote unquote worlds.

Um, and that there's a there's also a 1:02:09 very natural beast that comes with quantum mechanics which tells you how probable you are to be in a world and 1:02:16 that that's all you need. And that sort of and that all that there is is this wave function and these probabilities which are part of the wave function. 1:02:21 They're not externally tacked on. Um, and that from that you get out all of 1:02:26 the predictions of quantum mechanics that you could possibly want.

No, that is completely wrong. The many-worlds theory does not tell you how probable you are to be in a world, and it does not give you the predictions of quantum mechanics.

Carroll is a big proponent of many-worlds, and he knows the guest was wrong, but quietly wrapped up the interview.

Many-theory theory stands in opposition to everything the guest was says. He said all of physics, and indeed all of science and life itself, can be understand in terms of models and probabilities. But many-worlds theory is a rejection of that whole concept, as it hypothesizes that everything that can happen, does happen, and probabilities are meaningless.

People who learn many-worlds always assume that it says that some worlds are more likely than others. But no one has ever gotten that to work. Nor would the proponents want it to work, as the whole point is to reject models and probabilities.

Equivalence of Lorentz Aether Theory

Here is a pretty good Quora answer, from a prolific physicist 9 years ago:

Update: What is the difference between Lorentz Ether Theory, which spawned the Lorentz Transformation, and Special Relativity that uses the transformation as its basis as well?

Mark Barton
PhD in Physics, researcher at University of GlasgowAuthor has 17.9K answers and 23.7M answer views 9y

It's a bit hard to say precisely, because LET was never an entirely finished project, but it was clearly converging on being identical to SR, and if you include Poincare's corrections then it was essentially the same for practical purposes. The main difference is that LET took an ad-hoc and bottom-up approach which ended up grudgingly backing into the relativity principle and the Lorentz transformation, whereas SR took a top-down approach that cheerfully assumed the relativity principle from the beginning, immediately derived the Lorentz transformation from it, and then read off a bunch of new physics that had to be true for all this to make sense.

Anyone insisting on LET today is probably holding out for some combination of the following ideas: (i) there is absolute space consisting of points with well-defined identities and well-defined and constant distances between them, (ii) there is a fact of the matter as to whether any object is travelling past the points that make up space, (iii) there is an absolute time in the sense that history is cleaves naturally into well-defined instants spanning all of space, and (iv) there are well-defined time intervals between the instants.

The trouble is that to the extent the relativity principle is true, all of the above four points are unfalsifiable by any experiment. It's analogous to claiming that ordinary 2D space has a One True X Coordinate, that all the points with the same One True X Coordinate are invisibly linked so as to form a sort of grain structure, and that likewise there's only One True Y Coordinate, and all the points with the same One True Y Coordinate are linked as well.

So the people insisting on LET then fall into two broad groups (with some overlap): (i) the ones who say, yes, it may be unfalsifable, but it's just complete nonsense philosophically for it to be any other way so SR has to be an illusion, and (ii) the ones who maintain that some marginal ancient result proves that absolute space and time do exist after all.

Saying that LET was ad hoc and bottom-up means that it was based on Michelson-Morley and other experiments. Saying that Einstein's SR was top-down means that he used principles deduced from those experiments, and not the experiments themselves. Lorentz described this difference as Einstein postulating what was previously proved.

There are philosophers who argue that top-down is greatly superior to bottom-up. An empiricist might prefer bottom-up. I am not sure there is much practical difference.

In the top-down view, the Lorentz contraction is exactly what is needed for the relativity principle. An anti-positivist might prefer that. In the bottom-up view, it is what is needed for Michelson-Morley. A positivist would prefer that.

I quibble with Barton's last point. The discovery of the Cosmic microwave background was not "some marginal ancient result" and it does indeed define a frame for determining absolute time and whether an object is moving.

The radiation is remarkably uniform across the sky, very unlike the almost point-like structure of stars or clumps of stars in galaxies.[6] The radiation is isotropic to roughly one part in 25,000: the root mean square variations are just over 100 μK,[7] after subtracting a dipole anisotropy from the Doppler shift of the background radiation. The latter is caused by the peculiar velocity of the Sun relative to the comoving cosmic rest frame as it moves at 369.82 ± 0.11 km/s towards the constellation Crater near its boundary with the constellation Leo[8]

So we can say that our Sun is moving with velocity 370 km/sec towards Crater.

Sometimes it is said that special relativity is based on there being no privileged frame. But that is clearly false, as the CMB forms a privileged frame, and it has no effect on the predictions of special relativity.

Back in the early 1900s, LET was known as Lorentz-Einstein Theory. It was superseded by the Poincare-Minkowski theory of a 4D spacetime with the non-euclidean geometry of the metric +dx²+dy²+dz²-dt².

Quantum Computing Links

Google quantum echoes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEBCQidaNTQ

Nature cover story
https://www.nature.com/nature/volumes/646/issues/8086

Nature article
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09526-6

Reuters story
https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-says-it-has-developed-landmark-quantum-computing-algorithm-2025-10-22/

Google announcement
https://research.google/blog/a-verifiable-quantum-advantage/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/google-measures-quantum-echoes-on-willow-quantum-computer-chip/

Yesterday's news
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/11/05/1127659/a-new-ion-based-quantum-computer-makes-error-correction-simpler/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-next-big-quantum-computer-has-arrived-c1053c2a

Related Nobel prizes
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2012/popular-information/
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2022/popular-information/
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2025/popular-information/

Nature 2019, Google quantum supremacy
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1666-5

Gil Kalai skepticism
https://gilkalai.wordpress.com/2022/08/06/ordinary-computers-can-beat-googles-quantum-computer-after-all/
https://gilkalai.wordpress.com/2025/11/03/computational-complexity-and-explanations-in-physics/

"Quantum supremacy can be achieved and then unachieved later."
https://www.aventine.org/quantum-computing-nuclear-reactor-recyling-solar-panels

Scott Aaronson's current view
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9243

current public key methods must be abandoned by 2035
https://csrc.nist.gov/csrc/media/Presentations/2025/nist-pqc-the-road-ahead/images-media/rwcpqc-march2025-moody.pdf

Peter Gutman, factoring is fake
https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/bollocks.pdf

Why haven't quantum computers factored 21 yet?
https://algassert.com/post/2500

Investor hype
https://www.fool.com/ext-content/this-breakthrough-could-be-as-big-as-the-internet/
https://www.fool.com/investing/stock-market/market-sectors/information-technology/ai-stocks/quantum-computing-stocks/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DKkcn1mpAI
https://youtu.be/RJ4Ld6F0Puc?si=vZxIgxZzJeMl6TQb&t=485

D-Wave short seller
https://www.kerrisdalecap.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Dwave-Kerrisdale.pdf
https://wallstreetpit.com/126447-kerrisdale-capital-d-wave-is-riding-quantum-hype-with-dead-end-tech/

We believe QUBT is a rampant fraud
https://www.capybararesearch.com/reports/quantum-computing-inc-a-stock-promotion-with-fake-products-sales-and-partnerships/

Quantum computing stocks
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/QUBT/
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/IONQ/
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RGTI/
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/QBTS/

Neven's Law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing_scaling_laws
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-law-suggests-quantum-supremacy-could-happen-this-year/

RP Feynman argument, 1981 lecture, 1982 paper
https://s2.smu.edu/~mitch/class/5395/papers/feynman-quantum-1981.pdf

Galton board
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galton_board
https://mathworld.wolfram.com/GaltonBoard.html
https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/quincunx.html

Plinko
https://brainplay.com/p/plinko
https://sigma.world/play/games/spribe/plinko/
https://sigma.world/play/games/betsoft/plinko-rush/

Preskill on probability
https://youtu.be/0TFQgXaXGmk?si=7XRHO9x9q50uUAU5&t=114

Presentation slides

Talk on Quantum Computing Skepticism

I will be giving a presentation to the Quantum Computing Chicago Meetup on Quantum Computing Skepticism, Thurs. Nov. 6, at 6pm Central Time. I consider them very broad-minded to be willing to listen to my rants. The event is free to the public.

There has been some recent news, with Google claiming quantum supremacy again.

I will probably be posting some links on this blog, to support the talk.