[ExI] Quantum computer advance

[The Avantguardian]

----- Original Message -----
> From: Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Cc: 
> Sent: Monday, February 20, 2012 10:48 AM
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Quantum computer advance
> 
> On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 09:48:43AM -0800, john clark wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/nanotransistor-breakthrough-to-offer-billion-times-faster-computer-20120220-1thqk.html
> 
> Doesn't feature entangled qubits or quantum parallelism, hence
> is not quantum computing.
> 
> P.S. 
> http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/why-im-wagering-100000-on-quantum-computing
> I think he's going to lose money on this, but the proof will be difficult.

I read his wager but I am somewhat confused by what he means by "scaling". I mean something can scale mathematically just fine but in reality can't scale worth crap. Examples are the mythical man-hour or non-existent individual insects weighing over a kilogram despite a fairly large range of workable masses.
 
Conversely other phenomena can be more-or-less scalable in an trivial practical sense although one cannot make any quantitatively meaningful physical predictions about them. For example my sample of ten rocks is in the most trivial fashion precisely a 10-fold scale up of your one rock. Yet I cannot make any predictions of how my ten rocks would compare to yours. I mean we might be hard-pressed to find any physical meaning to the 10 X scale up of rocks in terms of any physical property, if my rocks are sandstone, limestone, and chalk while yours is a star-sapphire.

So if he words his wager vaguely enough, then he can't lose.
 
Stuart LaForge
 
"The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides.
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