Just Say “Yo”

I often marvel at the fact that so little private investment is going into quantum computing, which is a fail-safe, super-profitable, no-brainer investment, in my opinion (if done prudently and conservatively). As an example, check out my previous post, in which I suggested a Meetup on the topic of investing in quantum computing and got zero takers. This in a quantum computing meetup that is being held in Mountain View CA, the Silicon Valley city where Google headquarters is located. There certainly is a lot of investing currently going on in Silicon Valley, but not into Quantum Computing, other than into D-Wave, which is not expected by most non-Google experts to scale better than classical computers. Check out the following hilarious and very well written article that illustrates well the high intellectual capacity of the people running Silicon Valley:

People Invested $1 Million In An App That Just Says ‘Yo’
By Judd Legum (thinkprogress.org, June 18, 2014)

I’m Not Ready To be a Mormon

I was wandering more or less aimlessly through the Internet when I came across a Quantum Computing themed Meetup being held roughly monthly near San Francisco (in Mountain View CA) . So, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to suggest the two topics shown below. Zero takers so far. I’ve included below a gif of their webpage because I expect they’ll be erasing my suggestion any day now. Hmm, these Mormon-like proselytizing gigs are harder to do than it looks. I better stick to my day job.

On a happier note, my newest QC research project is going fabulously. I still have to tie a lot of loose ends, but I’m pretty sure it will fly. I can’t say much about it right now because my competitors are very dishonest and loose lips sink ships. Suffice it to say that it’s an awesome (to me) application of (mathematical) Group Theory to quantum computing algorithms. I’ll probably take my usual route of filing for a software patent, and then, soon thereafter, releasing software and an arXiv paper about it.

Quantum Supremacy (the movie)

A movie was made of the Facebook/Mark Zuckerberg story, so I suspected that in the future, a movie would also be made of the Google/D-Wave partnership. Sure enough, I used my Martian Wormhole WiFi connection to look at YouTube Videos uploaded during the years 2014-2025. This led me to the following movie titled “Quantum Supremacy”, slated to open on May 15, 2019:

Beginning scene . Hartmut Neven speaks to an imaginary person that is supposed to be standing where the cameraman is. We see Hartmut as if through that imaginary person’s eyes:

Hartmut Neven: “My story? You want to know my story? … I’ll tell you my story…You know…I wasn’t always a janitor. I was once a highly paid department head at Google. Then one day, I walked into Larry Page’s office and advised him on how Google could achieve Quantum Supremacy. I remember well that day and the amazing events that followed…”

Scene of Neven as a janitor fades away into a scene of Neven entering Larry Page’s office 2 years ago…

Quantum Supremacy (the movie)

The Sacred Honor Bond Among Plagiarists

Check out the following paper on d-separation in quantum Bayesian networks (qbnets). This one again does not cite my almost 20 years of work on qbnets or my 7 year old paper on d-separation in qbnets. To be fair, its authors do show solidarity with their fellow plagiarists Joe Henson, Raymond Lal and Matthew F. Pusey by citing their 2 week old paper.

Pienaar and Brukner proudly proclaim themselves to be members of the Physics Faculty of the University of Vienna, where, I guess, nobody is overly judgemental and it’s fine if you are a plagiarist Herr Professor Doktor.

A graph-separation theorem for quantum causal models
http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.0430
by Jacques Pienaar and Caslav Brukner

Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, A-1090 Vienna, Austria. and Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Boltzmanngasse 3, A-1090 Vienna, Austria.

QBism != Quantum Bayesian Networks

I would like to point out here that the interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (QM) known as QBism, espoused by Chris Fuchs, N. David Mermin, and others, is not related in any close way to Quantum Bayesian Networks (qbnets). I’ve never discussed either QBism or qbnets, either personally or by email, with Fuchs or Mermin or any of the other proponents of QBism. I’m not a friend or even an acquaintance of any of those guys. As far as I know, Chris Fuchs has never mentioned qbnets in any of his papers (not even in his two voluminous email collections published in arXiv). Hence, he has never shown the slightest interest in qbnets. I, for my part, have never been too interested in QBism either. In fact, I’m not too interested in any interpretation of QM. I’m mostly a shut up and calculate guy.

The theory of qbnets follows logically from the standard, widely accepted, axioms of QM. One might say qbnet theory is agnostic to QM interpretation. I consider that to be one of the assets of this theory: even many-world crackpots/mystics can profit from qbnets. 🙂 QBism, on the other hand, is strictly an interpretation of QM. Many-world advocates see little of value in QBism, because it’s a different religion than theirs.

In classical Statistics, one distinguishes the frequentists and Bayesian approaches. The Bayesian approach seems to be more general than the frequentist one because it gives probabilities for everything the frequentist approach does, plus it gives probabilities for events (like the outcome of a future horse race) that the frequentists REFUSE, as a matter of principle, to give any probabilities for. What is the point of QBism? Is it to say that the Copenhagen interpretation (a.k.a shut-up-and-calculate) is a frequentist approach and QBism is a Bayesian approach? If so, then does QBism give probabilities for some events that the Copenhagen interpretation advocates refuse, as a matter of principle, to give probabilities for? What are those events? I’ve never heard of the shut-up-and-calculate people refusing to calculate anything. It seems to me that from the earliest days of QM, the Copenhagen interpretation has included BOTH the frequentist and Bayesian camps. QBism seems to me to be just a rebranding of the Copenhagen interpretation by corporate America.

(I just learned from Wikipedia a funny example of rebranding. The notorious company formerly called “Blackwater” (black ops contractor boasting of being the largest private army of mercenaries in the world) is now called “Academi“. So Blackwater has joined the ranks of Academia. Welcome home!).

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