Gary writes: "I'd like to see how this fact can be put to practical use *at an algorithmic level* to solve some problem"
Shor's algorithm[Ͽ] has long been one of my favorite concrete examples. Here is an algorithm that has a classical counterpart wrt the techniques common to elliptic curve factorization and pollard's rho, namely period finding. The majority of Shor's algorithm can actually be seen to be classical, well up and till the use of superposition is exploited to get a *calculable* speed up on period finding. From my perspective, quantum theory _is_ founded, and Feynmann's quip (like Einstein's dice) seems to persist for the sake of contributing to the woo[†]. To a profound extent, every time we ask whether or not a photon is a wave or a particle we are contributing to the woo. The phenomenon is, at best, understood in terms of the theory we construct. It is no different here than it is for our other investigations. Though it might take some digging to find, there was an entertaining lecture given by Hans Bethe (in what looks like a nursing home) on quantum mechanics. He departs from the main thread of the lecture at one point to go on a diatribe about how bad-faith actors continue to mystify what he sees to be directly calculable[ϡ]. It seems important to me to not confuse an inability to understand some phenomena for a lack of imagination. Ͽ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm †) Many of us grew up working with transistors, treating them analogous to triodes and not necessarily understanding what was happening to electrons on the surface of the doped silicon sandwich. The story need not be so mystically removed for the case of quantum gates. We understand how to calculate with them, even if in an abstracted form. There are clearly open engineering problems, that will undoubtedly contribute to our physical understanding of ideas like locality, to be solved by IBM and others along the way. ϡ) The video once lived here: http://bethe.cornell.edu/video1_small.html but alas I cannot find another source. Here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oggC_xhkdJA Bethe talks briefly about the wave-particle controversy and he talks about the controversy in terms of power and authority. -- Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
