[MD] Quantum computing

[skutvik at online.no]

Hello Magnus

You are the only one left (discussionwise) of the "parents" of this 
MOQ discussion (hail to Horse for keeping it going) and your 
mere name starts me reminiscing about them old days. (sob)   

13 Feb. you said:

> Just read this (from
> http://www.dwavesys.com/index.php?page=quantum-computing) (my
> *emphasis*)

Regrettably this geriatric has become very lazy and wince at long 
reading exercises,  wanting things digested from a MOQ 
perspective. All right, you have done some such.  

> "We now know that Turing was only partially correct. Not all computers
> are equivalent. His work was based on an assumption — that computation
> and information were abstract entities, divorced from the rules of
> physics governing the behavior of the computer itself.

At least I know the Türing Test and there are "Cases" around this 
site that may pass it delivering sufficiently intelligent responses - 
yet dull enough - to never being sure if it is a human being or a 
program. 

> One of the most important developments in modern science is the
> realization that information (and computation) can never exist in the
> abstract. *Information is always tied to the physical stuff upon which
> it is written.* What is possible to compute is completely determined
> by the rules of physics.

Right, that of a computation as an abstraction, principally 
different from the physical world ... etc. is intellect's eternal S/O 
but it's a static level and as such its pattern dissolves when one 
starts to examine it (beyond the usual surface scratching). How 
many examples aren't there about the S/O distinction dissolving 
(Language for instance) and each time it is taken as some proof 
of the MOQ. It WAS at the time when the Quality Idea was a 
rebel intellectual pattern striving to obtain freedom from its 
parent, but NOW it's just a proof of the intellectual level's static 
limitation.   
 
> Turing's work, and conventional computer science, are only valid if a
> computer obeys the rules of Newtonian physics — the set of rules that
> apply to large and hot things, like baseballs and humans. If elements
> of a computer behave according to different rules, such as the rules
> of QM, this assumption fails and many very interesting possibilities
> emerge."
 
> When quantum computers become more common, I think they will start
> provoking philosophical questions in much the same lines we're doing
> here.

Is it "computer awareness" you hint to? That the machines 
themselves will start asking philosophical questions? I am as little 
endeared by this as always and - again - I "accuse" you (all) of 
not understanding the MOQ. Consciousness along with mind has 
no place in it. Human beings are what they self-congratulatorily 
calls "self-conscious" because they have arrived at the level that 
has the conscious subject as different from the unconscious 
object as its value. There is as much consciousness at the social 
level, only it hasn't conscious/unconscious as its value. 

So the "aware computer" we may just forget. 

> Any takers?

This will certainly find a lot takers. Hope you are here to stay 
Magnus. 

Bo