"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard P. Feynman, quantum physicist and Nobel Prize winner
Reading your writing, I tried to interpret what I read with despair, which was compounded by the fact that my general English skills are not good enough for this, so I have to use Google to help me. But I can glean that our world is a terribly complex thing, in which it is becoming increasingly difficult for those who want to uncover something of the secrets of the universe. Not so long ago (minutes ago compared to the life of the planet), it was enough to gather a few ships and their crews and excite the curiosity of a money-hungry queen, gaining her support, to discover world-shaking things, such as America. Now you can no longer be Archimedes to draw circles in the dust and establish world-shaking geometric laws. Soon, even the combined power of great nations will not be enough for a single epoch-making discovery. Not to mention that even an ordinary mortal could understand Newton's law, but reading your writing, a world opens up to us that we can't even describe in words ! But thank you for your effort !
Love how this breaks down the quantum stack without all the mysticism. The dinner party power moves section is genius actualy because most quantum explanations either dumb it down too much or go full academese. The bit about quantum annealing for optimization problems is sometihng I find especially interesting since it's one of the few near-term applications that might actually deliver. I've sat through too many quantum hype cycles where people act like we're 6 months from breaking RSA, but stuff like optimization for logistics and portfolios seems legit. Quantum computers staying terrible at normal computing tasks is kinda the punchline people dunno get yet.
Brilliant breakdown here. The quantum annealing discussion is spot on, especially pointing out it's just good for specific optimization problems and not general computing. I've been messing with some simulation work lately and the distinction between superposition as computational tool versus just parallelism keeps getting muddled in most convos. The decoherence challenge is probaly the most underrated part of this whole field right now, like people think we're closer than we actully are.
I'd rather be happy than brilliant, not that the two ideas are mutually exclusive. (sadly, just in my case) Brilliant people put together the atomic bomb. Applied physics. Yippee! The product of this brilliance was the destruction of two Japanese cities. Plus, the universal fear thereafter that the next bomb might land on them. FDR was surrounded by nominally brilliant people, who, in an effort to bring the reluctant American Public into WW2, allowed Pearl Harbor to be attacked. The Americans had broken the Japanese naval codes and had advance warning of the attack. The Americans had sanctioned the Japanese, strangled their energy markets and froze Japanese assets held in the US. Sound familiar? They were at the end of their rope. Energy, brilliance and power employed for deception, control and nefarious ends.
My personal goals are directed in the heroic effort to be happy, enjoy life to the fullest before I exit this mortal coil. I left my industrial sales position at 60 y/o despite a decent income and frankly, about as close to a sinecure as one can imagine. Now at 74 y/o with a wife with health problems, I
look back over the years and marvel at the good luck and solid fortunes I've realized. Brilliance is also relative. I've seen some really brilliant people do some really, really stupid shit. YMMV.
It’s fascinating stuff, for sure, but could it be that our fundamental error is an unshakeable belief in ‘our reality’ and that all this quantum stuff is a clue that what we generally experience & believe to be reality is nothing of the sort?
You know - like miles off? Almost like we’re living in another Universe? (Oh wait!)
Maybe past, present & future don’t actually exist; it’s all now, in the present moment but we don’t see it. Is quantum telling us that - that time is a fake, a hoax?
That time is not linear but more like a spiral with a core running through it.. .that we can jump in & out, on & off like a bus on a circular non-stop route (how is beyond my pay grade) … live the same life/moment again with different/same results? Isn’t that what some aspects of quantum infer?
Perhaps Mr. Quantum is giving us hints that every action has a consequence; that the observer can be part of the experiment, can be the observed & the observer simultaneously. And the result.
Rumi, back in the 1300’s, I think sums up one aspect of life/death that, if you look deep, possibly covers much of this:
“This place is a dream and only a sleeper considers it real
I don't know... The science on quantum computing is actually quite solid in my opinion - just early-stage. IBM, Google, and others have built working quantum computers with real qubits (ion traps, superconducting circuits). They're limited and error-prone, but they demonstrably use quantum effects like superposition and entanglement. Google's Willow chip (Dec 2024) showed real error correction progress.
The tech is far from mature, but it's not fraudulent.
Mathis is essentially arguing the entire physics establishment has been wrong for a century. Possible? Technically. Likely? No.
Then again, I don't know enough about it to say anything conclusive about . (Like Richard mentioned in the other comment that even a Nobel Price winner says he doesn't understand it...)
I believe it is understandable, just not explainable. What's north of the north pole? If confined to the earth than it's the south pole. If you can leave the earth than it's infinity and beyond. How's that for entanglement? I do know just enough to know I don't know anything. Keep searching, keep reaching, keep asking questions, one may eventually know something. Great work No1 and lots of mental fun here.
"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard P. Feynman, quantum physicist and Nobel Prize winner
Reading your writing, I tried to interpret what I read with despair, which was compounded by the fact that my general English skills are not good enough for this, so I have to use Google to help me. But I can glean that our world is a terribly complex thing, in which it is becoming increasingly difficult for those who want to uncover something of the secrets of the universe. Not so long ago (minutes ago compared to the life of the planet), it was enough to gather a few ships and their crews and excite the curiosity of a money-hungry queen, gaining her support, to discover world-shaking things, such as America. Now you can no longer be Archimedes to draw circles in the dust and establish world-shaking geometric laws. Soon, even the combined power of great nations will not be enough for a single epoch-making discovery. Not to mention that even an ordinary mortal could understand Newton's law, but reading your writing, a world opens up to us that we can't even describe in words ! But thank you for your effort !
Love how this breaks down the quantum stack without all the mysticism. The dinner party power moves section is genius actualy because most quantum explanations either dumb it down too much or go full academese. The bit about quantum annealing for optimization problems is sometihng I find especially interesting since it's one of the few near-term applications that might actually deliver. I've sat through too many quantum hype cycles where people act like we're 6 months from breaking RSA, but stuff like optimization for logistics and portfolios seems legit. Quantum computers staying terrible at normal computing tasks is kinda the punchline people dunno get yet.
Brilliant breakdown here. The quantum annealing discussion is spot on, especially pointing out it's just good for specific optimization problems and not general computing. I've been messing with some simulation work lately and the distinction between superposition as computational tool versus just parallelism keeps getting muddled in most convos. The decoherence challenge is probaly the most underrated part of this whole field right now, like people think we're closer than we actully are.
I'd rather be happy than brilliant, not that the two ideas are mutually exclusive. (sadly, just in my case) Brilliant people put together the atomic bomb. Applied physics. Yippee! The product of this brilliance was the destruction of two Japanese cities. Plus, the universal fear thereafter that the next bomb might land on them. FDR was surrounded by nominally brilliant people, who, in an effort to bring the reluctant American Public into WW2, allowed Pearl Harbor to be attacked. The Americans had broken the Japanese naval codes and had advance warning of the attack. The Americans had sanctioned the Japanese, strangled their energy markets and froze Japanese assets held in the US. Sound familiar? They were at the end of their rope. Energy, brilliance and power employed for deception, control and nefarious ends.
My personal goals are directed in the heroic effort to be happy, enjoy life to the fullest before I exit this mortal coil. I left my industrial sales position at 60 y/o despite a decent income and frankly, about as close to a sinecure as one can imagine. Now at 74 y/o with a wife with health problems, I
look back over the years and marvel at the good luck and solid fortunes I've realized. Brilliance is also relative. I've seen some really brilliant people do some really, really stupid shit. YMMV.
Enjoy the holidays amigos. Tick-Tock...
It’s fascinating stuff, for sure, but could it be that our fundamental error is an unshakeable belief in ‘our reality’ and that all this quantum stuff is a clue that what we generally experience & believe to be reality is nothing of the sort?
You know - like miles off? Almost like we’re living in another Universe? (Oh wait!)
Maybe past, present & future don’t actually exist; it’s all now, in the present moment but we don’t see it. Is quantum telling us that - that time is a fake, a hoax?
That time is not linear but more like a spiral with a core running through it.. .that we can jump in & out, on & off like a bus on a circular non-stop route (how is beyond my pay grade) … live the same life/moment again with different/same results? Isn’t that what some aspects of quantum infer?
Perhaps Mr. Quantum is giving us hints that every action has a consequence; that the observer can be part of the experiment, can be the observed & the observer simultaneously. And the result.
Rumi, back in the 1300’s, I think sums up one aspect of life/death that, if you look deep, possibly covers much of this:
“This place is a dream and only a sleeper considers it real
Then death comes like dawn and you awake
Laughing at what you thought was your grief”
I’ve requested this to be read at my funeral :)
And I was thinking my excursion into quantum made my head spin! But you sir collapsed the wavefunction on that one!
Precisely. "our fundamental error is an unshakeable belief in ‘our reality’"
You got it... (?)
But, then again.... https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMi1jb3B5_1c69153f-fb7c-4dda-b607-bc1c55d27b2b
I don't know... The science on quantum computing is actually quite solid in my opinion - just early-stage. IBM, Google, and others have built working quantum computers with real qubits (ion traps, superconducting circuits). They're limited and error-prone, but they demonstrably use quantum effects like superposition and entanglement. Google's Willow chip (Dec 2024) showed real error correction progress.
The tech is far from mature, but it's not fraudulent.
Mathis is essentially arguing the entire physics establishment has been wrong for a century. Possible? Technically. Likely? No.
Then again, I don't know enough about it to say anything conclusive about . (Like Richard mentioned in the other comment that even a Nobel Price winner says he doesn't understand it...)
I believe it is understandable, just not explainable. What's north of the north pole? If confined to the earth than it's the south pole. If you can leave the earth than it's infinity and beyond. How's that for entanglement? I do know just enough to know I don't know anything. Keep searching, keep reaching, keep asking questions, one may eventually know something. Great work No1 and lots of mental fun here.