QM Interpretation, Quantum Computation, and the Church-Turing Thesis

Here’s an interesting email exchange from this morning between me and Sean O’Nuallain. It’s about the QM Interpretation Problem and so-called “quantum computation”.

[Distribution (partial): John G. Cramer (Washington), Jack Sarfatti, Robert Addinall, Rudy Tanzi (Harvard), Stu Hameroff, Ruth Kastner, Rod Sutherland, Lenny Susskind (Stanford), Stanley A. Klein (UC Berkeley), David Kaiser (MIT), Tony Valentini (Clemson), Nick Herbert, Menas Kafatos (Chapman), Huw Price (Cambridge/UK), Saul-Paul Sirag, Russell Targ, Garry Nolan (Stanford), George Knapp, Jacques Vallee, Hal Puthoff, Eric Davis, Kit Green (ex-CIA Science Desk), Col. John B. Alexander, ...]

SEAN: “In the middle of this debate - shortly after I received John's email - a colleague of Alain aspect showed up in the small provincial French town that I live in. She is in fact head of the lab there and will be a most useful resource as we seek to distinguish validity of these different interpretations [of quantum mechanics].

“It gets even closer to the bone. Her very talented and troubled son has decided to do do a PhD in quantum computing. But she and I agreed that there may be in principle arguments against quantum computing under the current rubrics. So this cuts very close to the bone for her because she does not want her son to end up a burn out before he's 30 years old.

“Unquestionably we need an institution to support us.”

MY RESPONSE: Just a little something for the record.