Revisiting Bohr v Einstein
Once upon a time, scientific debate was perfectly acceptable. Case in point: the public disagreements between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein were important to the development of quantum mechanics. In fact, their discourse at the 1927 Solvay Conference is downright legendary. And it’s safe to say that today’s quantum community has greatly benefited from it.
So, what happened?
The quantum community is generally reluctant to openly criticize anyone, especially the hardware providers. On the one hand, many want to maintain a friendly and cooperative environment, and that’s certainly better than any alternative. On the other hand, there is a sense of worry that any kind of negativity will detrimentally impact the entire industry. However, speculating as to who will “win” the quantum race implicitly acknowledges that not everyone is going to win. To that end, disagreement does not have to accompany malicious intent.
You don’t say.
Recently, an informal debate emerged on LinkedIn. One party’s approach to solving a particular problem outperforms the other’s. No, wait; the other party disagrees. But hold on; the first party has a rebuttal. Due to the rarity of such a public exchange, I pitched the idea in a private group of getting both parties onto a podcast with a proper debate format. Yuval Boger is a member of this private group.
On a recent episode of The Superposition Guy Podcast, Yuval interviewed Dr. Natasha Sachdeva and Prof. Michael Biercuk from Q-CTRL, one of the involved parties. Unfortunately, the other side – invited – did not participate for unspecified reasons. And despite everyone taking care to not mention the other party by name, Prof. Biercuk was very diplomatic in his approach to presenting his facts. Despite the other party being absent, Prof. Biercuk spoke respectfully. In fact, Prof. Biercuk technically declined a formal debate format, as well, instead agreeing to a “discussion” of Q-CTRL’s work and asserting that the two parties are not fundamentally in opposition to each other.
In any event, the audience was left missing the arguments from the other side. Based on Prof. Biercuk’s performance, the audience could have been treated to a respectful, moderated, spirited back-and-forth over published experiment results. But, again, for unspecified reasons, the other side did not participate.
What’s the beef?
Like the Bohr-Einstein debates, this debate could’ve been substantive. That’s not meant to directly compare its significance to the Bohr-Einstein debates, but it could have been substantive nonetheless.
The original assertion was that Q-CTRL’s classical-quantum optimization algorithm on gate model superconducting quantum computers outperformed an alternative method of solving optimization problems called quantum annealing. The significance of this assertion, according to Q-CTRL, was that this has not previously happened and that the other party has previously claimed that it would be unlikely to ever happen. And that’s when the informal debate started.
The greater significance of this assertion is that optimization problems are one of the major classifications of potential quantum computing applications. If one approach outperforms another approach, that’s newsworthy. If this only applies to certain problems, not all of them, that’s noteworthy, too. And if research methods are flawed or research results are misinterpreted, that would be really good to know. There are a growing number of companies developing optimization-related use cases for quantum computers, and the outcome of a proper debate could influence their research directions.
Conclusion
Scientific debate should once again be encouraged, especially in quantum. Yuval Boger and other quantum podcasters are not shock jocks looking for cheap listenership boosts. The Superposition Guy’s Podcast and other podcasts are recorded and can deliver healthy, evidence-based disagreements. Unproductive and unprofessional comments, should they occur, can be edited out. The host can steer the discussion along a road of facts and block off any detours. We should be able to publicly disagree without worrying about the whole industry collapsing.
For what it’s worth, Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein reportedly enjoyed a lifelong friendship based on mutual admiration. Debates – or discussions, if you will – can be civil if we choose to be civil.
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