[FRIAM] invoking quantum woo (was Book publishing advice needed)

[Jon Zingale]

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.



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