Quantum Computing and… Democritus

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Yesterday I noticed that there is a new book entitled Quantum Computing since Democritus. I haven't read the book but from what I have seen, it seems that it is a presentation of the field of quantum computing in a colloquial language (Democritus is called a dude!). What is really interesting is one of the reviews posted at amazon's web page. The review is by some one called Guy Wilson but it seems that Guy Wilson is actually Joy Christian. Christian does not really believe that it will possible to build scalable quantum computers.

First of all, it is true that one cannot go to a computer shop and buy a quantum computer today, but this does not mean that there are no quantum computers. For example, Google bought a quantum computer recently. But Christian argues that he has disproved Bell's theorem, which, roughly speaking, implies that it is not possible to build scalable quantum computers.

Unfortunately, in a way the situation looks familiar–just because someone has built a career on something, it doesn't mean quantum computing, or hypercomputation for that matter, is nonsense! And this is something the author of the book should not forget!

PS Frankly, I don't understand what's the connection between quantum computing and Democritus, but then again I haven't read the book…

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Recently, "someone" posted a review of my book on hypercomputation on the Brains site. The reviewer argues that This area is full of problems, some of which are physico/mathematical and some of which are conceptual. Unfortunately, from a quick sample, Syropolous's book does not avoid common mistakes and confusions—some of which I've been trying to correct in my own work. First of all, I have to admit that back in 2004 I read a paper by this reviewer, but at that time I did not considered it interesting. However, after I read this review of my book, I read The Physical Church-Turing Thesis: Modest or Bold? , the reviewer's latest manuscript, in order to see what he meant by common mistakes and confusions and how he was trying to solve them. In this manuscript, the reviewer puts forth a number of criteria that every machine has to satisfy in order to be ``useful for physical computing.'' These criteria are: Readable Inputs and Outputs Process-Independ...
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Is the Universe a Quantum Computer?

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