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.