It's pretty sad that people are surprised or impressed when a politician has a layman's understanding of something in science.
No, and what I said came across wrong. I was surprised, and I think that is sad, because things would be a lot better if most of our politicians understood science and technology.
The surprise should only be when they really, deeply understand something like this.
he didn't mention anything that you can't find on the first page of a cliffs notes on quantum physics
"A quantum state can be much more complex than that, because as we know, things can be both particle and wave at the same time and the uncertainty around quantum states allows us to encode more information into a much smaller computer."
Really? I got the impression that he didn't really get the significance of Q-bits and just thought of it as 'stores more stuff than a digital-bit; MORE GB!!!'.
At the same time, I'd be surprised if a man-on-the-street interview would give anywhere near as good of an answer.
> It's pretty sad that people are surprised or impressed when a politician has a layman's understanding of something in science.
Sad yes, but probably a mentality brought on by the number of U.S. politicians who activity don't believe and don't understand many things in science (great answer from Carl Sagen on Charlie Rose on this: https://youtu.be/U8HEwO-2L4w?t=56).
I am reminded of the choice of selecting Rev. Palmer Joss instead of Dr. Arroway for the mission in 'Contact' because he represents the 99% of the world who have some sort of religious faith vs one holding a scientific or skeptical view of it.
http://www.falstad.com/gravity.html
> Physics 324 - Modern Physics for Engineers
> "A body is at rest tends to stay at rest, plus there's no gravity"
> "The gravity of the moon can be said to be negligible, and also the moon's a vacuum, there is no external force on the pen. Therefore it will float where it is."
> "The pen will float away because the gravitational pull of the moon, being approximately 1/6 that of the earth, will not be enough to cause the pen to fall nor remain stationary where it is. The gravatational pull of other objects would influence the pen"
Whether or not Trudeau's knowledge of the topic goes any deeper than what he's said here, he's demonstrated that he either cares enough about the subject to have consulted with people who understand it and learned how to repeat their explanations without falling off the rails, unlike good ol' Senator Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens for example, or that he cares about the subject enough to have learned enough about it that he can articulate an opinion in a clear and accessible way. Either way, what's impressive is not that he is repeating information which is true, but that he cares enough about quantum computing to get it right.
That said, Trudeau has shown a significant capacity to leverage those around him to display competencies he wouldn't have on his own.
[0] http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/andrew-coyne-resigns-editor-...
Also, you're way overestimating how much a layman knows about computing, quantum or otherwise.
I believe power does not go through the wire, it is current or charges, and usually voltage is used to signal states. We can have wires depending how you define a computer, but in most cases it just feels wrong.
A qubit can hold multiple values, it seems. Okay, that's a data density improvement (presuming a quibit is as dense as a traditional bit). How does that improve computing power (especially by the many magnitudes)? Do you multiply a qubit of infinite values against a quibit of infinite values and have all possible results? I just don't see the bridge from data density to a revolution in computing power.
Note that I'm not saying this as a cynic. I know that this is happening, and a lot of very smart people are excited by it. I just have never seen an explanation that bridges data density to calculation speed.
The key point is that qubits aren't limited to finite "multiple values", they can express an uncountable number of values. The best "short" answer is that a qubit can exist in a superposition (QM Term) of states. LOOSELY put it can have a probability of being a 0 and a probability of being 1 (with both probabilities adding to 1). This ability to encode information as the probability is the key to quantum computing.
When you measure (QM Term) the qubit, it takes on either the value 0 or 1 according to the probabilities you set it up with. This is computationally useful because with clever constructions you can make these probabilities meaningful.
For example Grover's Algorithm allows you to search an unsorted database for a particular item in O(sqrt(N)) time rather than the classical best O(N). The algorithm is successful with very high probability, note that because it uses the probabilistic nature of qubits, it itself can only be probabilistically correct, it just so happens you can make the probability of error very low (in theory lower than the chance your classical computer has a bit flip or similar)
The unfortunate restriction on QC is that you need enough qubits to encode your problem, if you can't hold the database in your "qubit memory" then you can't perform algorithm. In practice, building systems of qubits is extremely difficult and the current record is about 1000 as of 2015 I believe.
1) Quantum Simulation. So in a quantum system, your state can be in a superposition of states ("because waves"). There is a lot of information that resides in the way this system is in superposition and it determines how the system will interfere and evolve (amplification or destruction of certain states). Mathematically, it means you need to keep track of the complex amplitude of each of the 2^n states of a n-qubits system. On a classical computer, this means 2^n complex numbers are necessary to represent the quantum state.
However, on a quantum computer, you only need n-qubits to represent the quantum state, because qubits can be in superposition the same way any quantum state in nature can be. You can now do careful operations on your n-qubits state and simulate any quantum mechanical phenomena. It is therefore way easier to simulate quantum mechanics on a quantum computer than on a classical computer. This could be useful in many areas, like chemistry to simulate protein-folding.
2) Factorization (Shor's algorithm). It is possible to engineer a quantum state that is the superposition of all possible inputs. Then, it is also possible to carefully create interference so that non-solution of the factorization problems get lower amplitude, while solutions get bigger amplitude. At some points you can measure the state and collapse it in one of the state. Since the amplitude of the solutions is big compared to the amplitude of non-solutions, you get the solution with significant probability. You can then verify it using any classical computer because multiplying two numbers is easy. This algorithm breaks most of today public key cryptography used on the internet.
Two (entangled) qubits could hold 00, 01, 10, 11 simultaneously and perform calculations on these four values simultaneouslty.
...
100 (entangled) qubits could hold 2^100 distinct values simultaneously and perform calculations on them simultaneously.
That's the basic idea. The problem is keeping entangled state that's becomes harder and harder as number of entangled qubits grows.
Also there are limitations in extracting of calculations results from system of qubits, so not all algorithms can be speed up on quantum computers (but e.g. integer factorization can).
So for example, let's say you wanted to figure out if some enormous number is prime. If you get your program right you could feed it to a quantum computer and all possible states of prime/non-prime would be measured at once resulting in the answer (state) being available the moment you "observe" it.
From this perspective quantum computing can be nearly infinitely faster than traditional computers while at the same time being mostly useless for every-day tasks such as surfing the web.
2 bit => 2 ^ 2 => 1 of 4 possible state
2 qbit => 4 of 4 possible states. That's 4 times the information (although extraction of the information is limited)
With bigger numbers:
10bit => 1 of 1024 possible states
10qbit => 1024 of 1024 possible states (1024 times as much)
The accurate answer would be "no", or at least "thinking that way will lead you to believe that they're more powerful than they are".
In particular, quantum computers won't allow you to solve NP-hard problems in less than exponential time, not unless there's something we're missing in the math.
That said? Since I don't have the chance to describe it better right now, you can start off by thinking "sorta, yes".
http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/quantum-computing-for-the-det...
In reality it isn't so weird for a leader to know about quantum physics, like if you asked Angela Merkel I bet she will actually explain the concept. So I don't get all this hype.
>“I was flabbergasted,” Laflamme says. “I don’t know how he does in other subjects, but in quantum physics, he knows the basic pieces and the important questions.”
Maybe he read a single article about quantum theory in an issue of Popular Science. Maybe, before an event at a facility where he knew he would be speaking, he spent fifteen minutes reading something he asked an aide to give him, so he could speak intelligently about it.
Here in the US, we elect politicians who actively deny science and are proud of their lack of knowledge.
I think that ideally politicians should be working at a high level of abstraction (like any manager/executive in any field, especially technical). This means having a high level, big picture understanding of a field and the major benefits and hurdles to overcome.
Having a deep understanding of one area like this would make people in that field happy maybe, but it would not necessarily make him better at making big policy decisions and balancing the needs of the quantum computing industry with the other industries and the needs of the country.
The problem is that politicians generally tend to only be good at one thing: politics. A good leader would strive to understand at a high level all of the topics that involve policy decisions, with the intelligence to dive deeper if need be or be able to understand and verify the advice of an expert in that field and make educated decisions. This is usually not the case, but when it is we shouldn't deride someone for only having a topical knowledge of our own fields.
"A regular computer bit is either a one or a zero, either on or off. A quantum state can be much more complex than that, because as we know, things can be both particle and wave at the same time and the uncertainty around quantum states allows us to encode more information into a much smaller computer."
To be sure, there are statements in there that are correct, but they don't connect up to a coherent description of the science behind QC. In short: I see words, I do not see understanding.
What is distressing or embarrassing though is the scientist who blatantly kowtows to Trudeau:
“I was very impressed he made an attempt,” said Dr. Lucien Hardy. “He got it spot on.”
No. He didn't get it "spot on". But I suppose if the prime minister is spearheading an initiative to fund you you'd better not embarrass him. But that sort of political play is not how you're supposed to do things in science.
