149
User asks for an explanation of why quantum computing companies are listed on the stock exchange
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
149 points (94.6% liked)
Bluesky
239 readers
278 users here now
People skeeting stuff.
Bluesky Social is a microblogging social platform being developed in conjunction with the decentralized AT Protocol. Previously invite-only, the flagship Beta app went public in February 2024. All are welcome!
founded 1 month ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I mean, quantum computing does exist right now, it’s just not terribly stable or useful yet. With time and bucketloads of engineering it could be a huge change in how we solve problems.
My understanding is that it is incredibly useful for very obscure and specific things, and not very good at all for general purpose computing (and it may never be).
Not yet, I think. They're still too small from what I've heard to be useful for really anything at all, but they are improving and will likely start to be useful in the next 10 years or so
Yes, for cracking older cryptography.
Sounds like something someone once said about airplanes.
And it's not like Nvidia is really selling AI either...
Ironically enough, real AI can't happen until quantum computing. Actual intelligence has a quantum compenont.
I'm a neuroscientist. I have no idea how you definitively know that.
Vibes.
Somebody read "The Emperor's New Mind" and called it a day.
"read".
https://www.pbs.org/video/was-penrose-right-new-evidence-for-quantum-effects-in-the-brain-pe0bka/
Since you have a problem with reading, you can just watch that.
It's about the discovery from 6 months ago where the quantum process was found
It's great you read books about this from 50/60 years ago, but you need to stay up on recent science too if you want to shit talk people for not knowing stuff.
Do you mean you didn't hear Penrose's hypothesis from (checks watch) over fifty years ago?
Or the discovery of extended potassium superposition in microtubules from like six months ago which showed there's quantum superposition in the brain?
Or you haven't heard of either?
I'm aware of both. Hameroff has been banging on about that stuff since the 90s. The views of neither are mainstream in neuroscience.
The fact that superposition may exist in the brain does not mean it's causal in "consciousness" (cf. temperature in the regulation of cognition). And the construct of "consciousness" is far from isomorphic with "intelligence" which is where the conversation started.
I appreciate that you're enthusiastic about the approach, but I would urge you to temper your enthusiasm with due consideration of alternatives.
For that you can look at how anesthesia works...
Which, we don't know how it does. But we do know it results in a disruption of those microtubules, thus losing the superposition.
And it would also explain why a hit to the head can also cause unconscious, the microtubules being physically disrupted by the impact. Along with many other examples.
What you're doing is like arguing that we don't know if gravity is real because it's still a theory.
Hell, string theory was accepted for like 40 years, but ask any of the greatest living physicists today about it and they'll tell you it's been a waste of time and needs thrown out.
You're too hung up on scientific consensus without understanding how hard that is to achieve and that sometimes, it's still wrong.
Everything we know about conscious/intelligence points to a quantum component and has for decades. Just because we don't know everything about it doesn't mean we ignore it. Hell, we just got the tech to verify it's there.
It's there and it's real, regardless of if we know how it's happening. Pretending we can ignore it because we don't understand it is the opposite of science.
We have a saying in science; science advances one funeral at a time. It's a pithy summation of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. So yes, I know how hard it can be to change people's minds. Most scientists do.
I partially trained in a psychology department, so I haven't even started down the path of operationalizing "consciousness". I note that neither Penrose or Hameroff are trained in the discipline either. So if you think the concept is self evident, it ain't.
I'm not throwing out the concept, but the evidence is far from overwhelming, and there are strong critiques from people like Christof Koch that can't simply be dismissed out of hand. I compared it temperature, which can also produce anesthesia and loss of consciousness. But no one would step up and say that consciousness is temperature. Or maybe they would?
Because it's a physics problem... At its base level consciousness is a thing that is happening between physical components unless you say it's Jesus taking the wheel at it's root it's a physics problem.
He's spent literally 40 years of his "retirement" looking into it. He knows far more than us or anyone else on the planet.
Someone will come after him and finish it up, just like him and Hawking finished Einstein's. That doesn't mean pretend it doesn't exist till it's scientifically proven.
What does that even mean?
That would be the cause not mechanism of action. Like, I get you were trying to make a silly point, but all that did is show you're not understanding this
I'm sorry, I just don't think I'm able to explain this in a way you can understand
That's not how science works. It's not enough to sound right and tell you what you want and expect to hear. You have to present the most compelling hypothesis and consistently try and fail to disprove it, especially looking at counterarguments by peers as places to seek to disprove it.
If his peers remain unconvinced so do I
Sorry for delay. Work got in the way.
At essence the argument for Penrose and Hameroff comes down to the requirement for a non-computational requirement for consciousness. At the time of publication the response was "has Penrose never heard of a heuristic?" Because organisms generally do not solve problems computationally, they ballpark things and fumble around in the problem space for something that looks like an adequate solution.
Without the requirement for the brain to function as a universal Turing machine there is no need to point alternative mechanisms like quantum processes.
I made the point about temperature because there are all kinds of things, at specific doses, affect "consciousness" without disrupting other physiological processes. Anaesthetics are useful, but they aren't a unique tool to probe conscious experience.
We could go on in this vein with Koch and Crick's interest in the split sensory processing of the superior and inferior geniculate. One pathway is consciously perceived and the other is not. So a quantum explanation needs to account for dorsal vs ventral pathways. And so on.
Backing the discussion out, it may be correct. But it is far from settled, or even a leading theory in the area.