Re: [gentoo-user] Question of quantum computer

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 7:06 AM, Peter Humphrey <peter@prh.myzen.co.uk> wrote:
> On Friday 03 April 2015 06:58:38 Rich Freeman wrote:
>
>> I'm not convinced that anybody has proven that quantum behavior is truly
>> non-deterministic
>
> But it must be, surely, since it's probabilistic. I don't see how the domain
> of probabilistic behaviour can overlap the domain of deterministic
> behaviour.

/me looks over at his handy Plinko board.

Just because it looks probabilistic, doesn't mean that it is.  Take a
cryptographic PRNG.  If you know the seed, the output is completely
deterministic.  If you don't know the seed, you could describe the
output as probabilistic, and it might look non-deterministic, but it
still is.

The biggest problem I have with quantum mechanics is that there is no
understanding of underlying mechanisms.  We have models that describe
experiments, which is great, but not really a satisfying solution.  I
think a lot of scientists have gone on to argue that it is wrong to
look for underlying mechanisms or argue that they don't exist, but I
think this is just a result of the fact that nobody has found one.  It
seems a bit like intellectual pride: "why, my and my friends have
spent 30 years working hard on this, and none of us have solved it, so
the problem must be unsolvable."  It is possible they are right, but
it is also possible that they are not, and there certainly is no
concrete evidence one way or the other, just a lot of hand-waving.

The beauty of a good explanation of mechanisms is that it takes
behavior that previously relied on complicated models and such, and
suddenly causes it to make sense and look simple.  We just don't have
that for quantum mechanics yet.  Absent such an explanation, I am
skeptical that we really can claim to know what is truly going on.

That doesn't mean the models themselves aren't useful, or that there
aren't MANY practical benefits arising from our current understanding
of quantum mechanics.  I just think that statements like "the universe
is non-deterministic" are reaching a bit further than our current
grasp.

-- 
Rich