Re: Computability in principle

From: Aaron Denney (wnoise_at_ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: 11/06/03 

Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 23:18:22 +0000 (UTC)

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.lang.functional.]
On 2003-11-05, Anton van Straaten <anton@appsolutions.com> wrote:
> Markus Mottl wrote:
>> In comp.lang.functional Erann Gat <gat@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
>> > It is not yet clear whether quantum computation can really be made to
>> > work. It may be that the practical difficulty of keeping N qbits
> mutually
>> > entangled grows exponentially with N, in which case the same argument
> may
>> > well apply.
>>
>> Indeed, I also fear that your argument might turn out to be true in
>> practice. But well, as long as there is no evidence against large-scale
>> quantum computers, I'll retain some healthy optimism :-)
>
> My suspicion is that quantum computers will indeed turn out to be
> miraculous, with one minor drawback: when they produce a correct answer, it
> will not necessarily appear in the same universe in which the question was
> asked...

Thinking of quantum computers as "harnessing the powers of multiple
universes" is not a fruitful way to think of their speed-ups over
classical computers. 

-- 
Aaron Denney
-><-