“Post-empirical science”

The informed reader will know that the title represents an oxymoron. Without its empirical character science would not be science. It is very much what defines the cultural activity that we call “science” to be what it is.

Why then this glaring contradictory notion? It has popped up in the literature related to a recent “publicity stunt” where a simulation of a wormhole in a toy model was blown out of all proportions by being deemed to have created an actual wormhole. The simulation was done on a puny quantum computer incorporating merely 9 qubits.

Although this story has been hyped by various sources (and I am not going to give any links because I don’t want to mislead more people), many people have strongly criticized the story, including John Horgan, Scott Aaronson, Ethan Siegel, and Peter Woit. I can go on to try and clarify, but these posts are doing a much better job than I can.

Of course it is nonsense. A simulation is a numerical calculation of the physical process under study. It is not the real thing. And it does not matter whether the simulation is done with a classical digital computer or with a quantum computer. It is still just a simulation. Moreover, the amount of information that one can extract from 9 qubits is 9 bits, which is barely enough to specify one single ASCII character in a text document. So, no wormholes were created.

Perhaps the result they obtained from their simulation agreed well with what they expected to see, but that does not mean that it qualifies as being an experiment. Simulations and experiments are different things. Usually simulations are used when the direct calculations are too difficult. However, there is almost no limit on what one can simulate. It does not have to be something that can actually exist. If I have a set of equations that describe some weird imagined process that cannot exist in our universe, I can still program those equations into a computer and simulate it. For this reason, the results of a simulation can never take the place of an actual experiment.

What does this have to do with the notion of post-empirical stuff? Well, the problem lies in fundamental physics where it becomes progressively more difficult to perform experiments to learn about how things work. As a result, people are trying to motive that we start to learn about these things without having to do the experiments. That would have been great if it could work. Unfortunately, it has been tried before and found not to work. That was what the philosophers did before the advent of the scientific method. The nonsense they came up with still bounces around in the cultures of the world.

No! the day we cannot perform experiments to learn how this universe works is the day we stop learning more about our universe. A lot of people may go on coming up with stuff, but for sure, that stuff is worth nothing if it cannot be shown to work that way in our universe.

Unfortunately, there is already a lot of this going on, as this hyped wormhole nonsense demonstrates. It is related to several such non-scientific ideas that people work on and call physics, even though they don’t have much or any hope ever to show that it actually works that way through a scientific process.

The annoying thing is that there are prominent people in the physics community that are driving the hype. They’ve been doing this with other similar stories. Apparently, the reason for this hype is to induce funding agencies to give them more funding. Well, I think that if funding agencies can be led by their noses so easily, then the situation is more hopeless than I thought. These prominent people are not prominent for having done any solid scientific work. There are also other ways to become prominent. Well, I’ve ranted enough about people being prominent for the wrong reasons and don’t want to do it again.

A brave new quantum world

They say one votes through one’s actions. Where you spend your money is where cast your vote. For example, if you want to support the recycling effort then you would buy only products that somehow support the recycling effort.

Would it be possible that someone may in this way cast a vote in favour of some human endeavour while not supporting that endeavour? Yes, that is often the case (I think) when it comes to earning your money. People find themselves in work situations where they are effectively supporting the activities of the organization that they work for even though in their hearts they are not really in favour of the activities associated with the organization.

For a long while I was under the impression that this situation is valid for the current so-called quantum revolution. There are many people doing research in this field, but I was doubtful whether they all really believe that this “revolution” is a real thing. There is a large amount of hype surrounding the expectations of these technologies. Most people working in this field must be aware of the fact that not all the promises are realistic.

Perhaps, part of this notion was based on my one skepticism about this field. I was thinking that most if not all of these new quantum technologies are just activities being pursued for the sake of getting research funding and ego trips.

Well now I’m starting to form a different picture of the situation. The difference come from seeing the efforts made by commercial companies. The way that such companies approach the challenges is very different from the way that academic researchers do it. While the academic approach is often purely for the wow-factor of what is being achieved, the industry must do this in a sustainable way. When they market a product, it must work according to specification and keep on working for a reasonable time after being sold. As a result, the industry is far more serious when is comes to the design and implementation of these systems than any academic researcher would ever be.

So it is when I saw the seriousness with which a commercial enterprise is addressing the challenges of quantum computing that I realize that this is not going to be something that will just blow over after some time. We are very likely to see a world where quantum computers enter our lives in the not too distant future. Yes, there are still challenges, but they are not insurmountable. What the specific details of the technology are going to be I cannot tell you, but I can see that the way quantum computing is being addressed gives it a very high chance of success.

Are you ready for that? How is that going to change our lives? That remains to be see.