Keating Sells Out for Quantum Hype

Great progress in quantum computers was announced a couple of weeks ago, and I posted comments by Scott Aaronson and Sabine Hossenfelder. Now another popular physicist channel has weighed in, attacking her:

Quantum Computers Are Useful. You're Using Them Wrong.

Dr Brian Keating
338K subscribers

Sabine Hossenfelder says quantum computers are only useful for breaking codes. She's wrong — and my undergraduates are building the proof. What's happening in my lab right now has nothing to do with cryptography, and everything to do with the future of AI.

I'm a cosmologist at UC San Diego teaching undergraduates to build, program, and eventually launch quantum computers — possibly to the Moon via Artemis!

We cover: why Sabine's code-breaking verdict misses the real story, how free tools like Quantum Rings are closing the education gap Sabine thinks is a hardware problem, why Q-Day just got moved up to 2029, what my students are actually doing with quantum computers in my lab, and why the next generation of quantum physicists won't need a billion-dollar facility to train.

The bottleneck isn't the hardware. It's what we're teaching — and who we're teaching it to.

The whole video seems like a paid infomercial for a startup called Quantum Rings. He even shows a clip of a class teaching:

[7:25] Another thing I think is fun is that we can more intuitively see how I squared equals minus 1.

He argues:

[4:45] What are they actually good for these quantum computers? Sabine said, and I'm paraphrasing, that apart from the codebreaking, nobody has figured out how to turn quantum computing theoretical advantage into a real world. Quantum chemistry, material science, optimization, financial modeling. She says not much there has happened. And again, if you're looking at published breakthroughs, she's not wrong.

And see above, as I said, quantum computers are awesome, unrivaled at simulating how quantum computers work. But Sabine is looking perhaps at the wrong metric. The revolution isn't in the papers. It's in the tooling.

5 years ago, if you wanted to run a quantum circuit, you needed to access IBM's cloud. You'd wait in a huge long queue. You'd get a noisy result on maybe 20 cubits, even if you could figure out how to use it, and you'd spend more time debugging the interface than doing actual physics. Today, I'm going to show you something, a free tool where you can use and learn about quantum computing. It's called Quantum 101. It's by Quantum Rings, a quantum computer circuit simulator that runs on your laptop. Not 20 cubits, hundreds of them. Millions of gate operations, high fidelity on your desktop, on your laptop for free. They replicated Google's quantum supremacy experiment.

So there is no published research that show quantum computers are good for anything, but you can just prove it for yourself on a laptop and a free demo account from a startup?

Oh wow, I thought Keating was more honest than this.

There is a Nobel Prize waiting for the first person to prove quantum supremacy. The idea is comical that you can do it on your laptop but no one has bothered to publish it.

Physicist Angela Collier posts a video on physicists don't know how planes work, largely about some predictions Lord Kelvin made in a 1900 interview. In particular, he said that heavier-than-air-flight would never work. She says we should not have expected him to be wise outside his specialty, and he had no expertise in flight.

Here is another example of an expert predicting outside his expertise:

Live Science spoke with physicist David Gross, who today received the $3 million "Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics". He was part of a trio that won the 2004 physics Nobel prize for research that helped complete the Standard Model of particle physics. But when asked if physics will reach a unified theory of the fundamental forces of nature within 50 years, Gross has a surprising answer. "Currently, I spend part of my time trying to tell people... that the chances of you living 50 [more] years are very small."

Live Science: So what do you suggest as remedies to lower that risk?

Gross: We had something called the Nobel Laureate Assembly for reducing the risk of nuclear war in Chicago last year.

His prize was for quark interactions. We have no reason to believe he is wiser about nuclear war than anyone else.

If he were correct, then I would expect him to favor nuking Iran, in order to stop them from developing a bomb. But I do not hear him saying that.

I am not criticizing these people for having opinions on quantum computing. They are physicists, and probably friends with some of the researchers in the field, even if they are not in the field themselves. I just want to hold them to their predictions. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warned of nuclear war for years, and then moved its clock close to midnight just when everyone else thought that the chance of war was reducted. The fact is that nukes have kept keep the peace, so far.

Special Relativity was Announced in 1904

Relavity historians give 1905 for the theory's origin, but it was really 1904.

Hector Giacomini writes in a new paper, also here:

Henri Poincaré’s Saint Louis lecture, delivered on 24 September 1904 at the International Congress of Arts and Science, occupies a distinctive place in the pre-history of twentieth-century theoretical physics. In this text, Poincaré formulated the principle of relativity in explicit and general terms, not as a narrow empirical rule limited to electrodynamics, but as one of the major guiding principles of mathematical physics. The lecture also offered a principle-based conception of theory centered on invariance, least action, and general theoretical coherence.

Poincare and other great scholars made the trip all the way to St. Louis, Missouri, USA, where the World's Fair was being held. For a month, St. Louis was the center of the world.

The text of the lecture was widely published and distributed in 1904, and an English translation was published in a popular philosophical journal in Jan. 1905. The above paper documents the wide distribution.

Poincare's lecture did not have any formulas, but he clearly had the essence of special relativity.

He wrote two kinds of papers. Technical papers with formulas intended for mathematicians, and papers without formulas intended for a wider audience. He was probably the most widely-read intellectual in Europe. Perhaps some did not appreciate him because he did not attempt to explain the formulas to non-mathematicians.

In explicit and programmatic terms, Poincaré formulated the principle of relativity as follows: the laws of physical phenomena must be the same for an observer at rest and for an observer carried along in uniform translational motion. Consequently, no experiment should allow one to determine whether one is in such uniform motion or not. In the lecture this formulation appears within the canonical list of fundamental principles and is treated on the same conceptual level as energy conservation and the principle of least action.

The relativity principle is not introduced merely as an empirical summary of ether-drift experiments. Rather, Poincaré presents it as a structural requirement increasingly supported by the persistent failure of attempts to detect motion relative to the ether. He discusses in particular the negative results of Michelson-type experiments and emphasizes the remarkable stability of electromagnetic theory under uniform motion. The continued empirical confirmation of null results is interpreted as evidence that the invariance of physical laws under uniform translation may reflect a deep structural property of nature. ...

In this respect, Poincaré’s principle of relativity appears as the explicit crystallization of themes already articulated in his writings [11, 12, 13], and made accessible to German-speaking readers through the 1904 translation of La science et l’hypothèse [14]. Poincaré further analyzes the theoretical devices introduced to preserve this invariance. He discusses Lorentz’s notion of “local time”, obtained by synchronizing clocks through light signals ...

Importantly, Poincaré suggests that the situation may ultimately require a new mechanics in which no velocity could exceed that of light and in which inertia would increase with speed. Such remarks indicate that the principle of relativity is not treated as a peripheral correction within classical mechanics, but as a constraint capable of reshaping its conceptual structure.

Lorentz’s 1904 Theory

An important component of the lecture is Poincaré’s discussion of Hendrik Antoon Lorentz’s recent work. In May 1904 Lorentz had published a major paper [6]. In that work Lorentz presented a refined mathematical formulation of the transformations required to preserve the form of Maxwell’s equations in a moving frame.

Poincaré’s lecture demonstrates that by September 1904 he was fully aware of the structure and implications of Lorentz’s construction. He describes the introduction of local time, the contraction hypothesis — according to which bodies moving through the ether undergo a physical contraction in the direction of motion — and the modification of forces and masses required to reconcile theory with experiment.

The paper makes no mention of Einstein, as he did not write anything on relativity until Summer 1905.

Poincare wrote his great relativity paper in 1905, but his 1904 lecture has the essence: the relativity principle, Lorentz transformations, length contraction, Michelson-Morley, clock synchronization, local time, and a new mechanics where nothing goes faster than light.

Previously I argued that the essence of relativity was the 4D spacetime, Lorentz group, non-euclidean geometry, covariant equations, and extending beyond electromagnetism. Poincare had all these in 1905, and Einstein did not understand them until years later.

Einstein sometimes denied that he knew about Lorentz's 1904 paper and Poincare's 1905 paper, although it is documented that he had access to both before submitting his own 1905 paper. I do not know if he was ever asked about Poincare's St. Louis lecture. It is hard to believe he could have missed it, as it was read by anyone with an interest in Mathematical Physics.

Einstein did not reference Lorentz or Poincare in his famous 1905 relativity paper. Even if he really did not know about these papers, he surely knew about them when he wrote survey papers on relativity a couple of years later.

You could also argue that relativity started in 1895, with Lorentz's paper. He had the approximate Lorentz transformations, Michelson-Morley to second order, local time, length contraction, and relation to Maxwell's equations. Lorentz got the 1902 Nobel Prize for his electromagnetic theory. He did not have the higher order theory he found in 1904, the symmetries as a group, and connecting local time to clock synchronization.

Ready to Warn Us about Broken Cryptography

Prof. Scott Aaronson really wants us to believe in quantum computing, and the press regularly asks him to comment on the latest developments, many of which are bogus. So now he posts:

Then one evening, you hear a howl in the distance, and sure enough, on a hill overlooking the town is the clear silhouette of a large wolf. So you point to it — and all the same people laugh and accuse you of “crying wolf.”

Now you know how it’s been for me with cryptographically relevant quantum computing.

No, the wolf not there yet. Some are predicting 2030. I say there is no chance of that.

A comment says:

I see you’re following in the footsteps of Eliezer Yudkowsky, getting so frustrated at people not understanding what you’re saying that you resort to explaining the basic principles of rationality in hope that this will help.

Meanwhile the NY Post reports:

The CIA used a futuristic new tool called “Ghost Murmur” to find and rescue the second American airman who was shot down in southern Iran, The Post has learned.

The secret technology uses long-range quantum magnetometry to find the electromagnetic fingerprint of a human heartbeat and pairs the data with artificial intelligence software to isolate the signature from background noise, two sources close to the breakthrough said.

It was the tool’s first use in the field by the spy agency — and was alluded to Monday afternoon by President Trump and CIA Director John Ratcliffe at a White House briefing.

I do not know anything about it.

Update: Sabine Hossenfelder Quantum Computers Just Got Much More Dangerous. She cites Google predicting Q-day for 2029, when quantum computers break popular cryptosystems.

Google has never realized its quantum predictions. I am glad to see it predicting 2029. That is only 3 years. We shall soon see. I say no chance.

Particles do not Pass Both Slits

The double-slit experiment is often explained as particles going through both slits. Supposedly this quantum mechanics interpretation was made rigorous by R.P. Feynman's path integral formulation, where particles take all possible paths.

This is not really correct, as explained in a new video: Debunking Veritasium: The “All Possible Paths” Myth & What Feynman Really Showed

Curt Jaimungal rigorously debunks the viral myth popularized by Veritasium (that quantum particles literally take “all possible paths” has been proved) and clarifies the true mathematical purpose of Feynman's formalism. Learn why this concept is a computational tool in configuration space rather than a physical map of reality.

People doing quantum computing are always talking about an electron being in two places at once, like the Schroedinger Cat that is alive and dead at the same time. The many-worlds fans especially like to talk this way. It these things do not happen in standard textbook quantum mechanics.

In textbook/Copenhagen QM, does not have a defined position until it is measured. It does not get observed in two places.

Update: A reader points out that the video is almost a year old.

Google to Crack Bitcoin

Yahoo reports:

Google recently issued two warnings in a span of a few days.

First, quantum computers will be able to crack cryptography encrypting cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) by 2029. In fact, hackers might try stealing encrypted financial details right now and wait until 2029 for quantum computers to become powerful enough to decrypt those details.

Google recommended transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) to address the threat.

Second, a quantum system could crack a real-time Bitcoin transaction in about nine minutes. Here is how it could happen.

When a Bitcoin transaction is executed, the public key is revealed for a brief period. A quantum computer powerful enough can use the public key to find out the private key and steal the crypto assets.

It takes approximately 10 minutes for a Bitcoin transaction to confirm; the probability of success is only slightly less than 41%, the paper estimated.

The paper also revealed that it could take fewer than 500,000 qubits — far less than millions of qubits cited earlier — to crack Bitcoin's cryptography. It's a 20-fold reduction in the number of qubits needed to crack the encryption.

If there is a quantum computer, it would have to crack someone's key in that 10-minute window to steal money. The computers would have to be millions of times more efficient than they are now.

If the quantum computers get close, the Bitcoin community could change their protocols to resist the attack. It might be difficult to get everyone to agree to a new protocol. But as long as they did agree, the attack would be easily defended.

Dr. Quantum Supremacy has his take on the new announcements. I am skeptical, as usual.

In particular, the Caltech group estimates that a mere 25,000 physical qubits might suffice for this, where a year ago the best estimates were in the millions.

Here is a new PBS tv video on The Truth About Quantum Computers.

4:47 Microsoft claimed not only had they observed Majoranas, they also figured out how to control them. And they said they'd be able to use them to build reliable qubits that would be able to hold up in ways that other qubits can't. This breakthrough would provide a much faster pathway to quantum computing at a much larger scale than anyone else has been able to achieve. Microsoft was faced with an avalanche of skepticism. And as of filming, the data hasn't firmly established everything they claimed.

But some are optimistic that Microsoft can improve its chip and provide the breakthrough the industry has been waiting for. If they do, the whole world will change fast as we gain the ability to solve all kinds of problems we can't currently fully explore. For example, we might be able to create computer simulations of our world, down to the molecular level. That would open the door for incredible breakthroughs in chemistry and medicine. Or we could develop new battery technology, which could be key for mitigating climate change.

So this "truth" is all speculation.

A River is now a Science Journal Co-author

Centuries ago, scientists might thank God, or cite Christianity for their belief in an orderly world. No science journal would tolerate that today, right?

Actually the leading science journal, Nature, has publish an article praising a river god.

Biology professor Jerry Coyne reports:

Conservationist Anne Poelina has a deep connection to the fresh water that runs through the dry red-rock landscape of the Kimberley region in Western Australia. Poelina identifies as a Nyikina Warrwa woman, and her people are the Traditional Custodians of the Martuwarra Fitzroy River. ...

Poelina explains that “in terms of property rights, the river owns me. So, I have a duty of care and the fiduciary duty to protect this river’s right to life.” ...

In 2020, she started including the Martuwarra River of Life as the first author on her publications. ...

When asked why the river should be listed as first author, she responded: “Because it’s the authority. It’s where I get my authority.”

This is not religious tolerance. This is a Wokeness statement.

China has taken over Science

T. Greer argues China is the future of science:

The scientific publisher Nature makes a similar catalog on a slightly more granular level, looking at specific fields of science. According to Nature’s most recent rankings, 18 of the top 25 most productive research institutes in the physical sciences, 19 of the top 20 in geosciences, and a full 25 out of 25 in chemistry are Chinese. Only in the biosciences do American scientists still have a lead—but even on that list three of the top ten are Chinese.6

The kicker is, none of that was true even just a decade ago.