mtpolitics.net

I’ve Said This About PC’s

As the headline says, “Quantum computer works best switched off.”

Now, I’m obviously no quantum physicist, but I do kind of understand stuff like Schroedinger’s Cat on an intuitive level. (For God’s sake, don’t ask me to explain it.)

But this, quite honestly, makes my hair hurt^*.

To sum up the article in what I like to call “layman’s terms”:

• Write a program
• Turn the computer off
• Shoot a photon into the computer, which would make the program run, if the computer were turned on
• Deflect and observe the photon with the explicit purpose of causing the photon to not enter the computer which is not turned on
• Observe expected results

To recap: Write a program, then do a whole bunch of stuff that will avoid running the program on a computer that is not even “turned on” and the results will be what you would expect.

Wrap your head around that.