Quantum supremacy: the gloves are off
I still don&#x27;t understand what the hell is &quot;quantum computing&quot;. I think my problem is my own conception of classical computing.<p>My best approximation for what a quantum computer actually is. Is that it&#x27;s some sort of device to set quantum states, then run a &quot;quantum algorithm&quot; (i.e. a graph of &quot;quantum logic gates&quot;), and finally read out the &quot;quantum bits&quot; resulting from the algorithm. That sounds a lot more like a sensor to me. Also all the problems with noise and calibration reinforce my notion that it&#x27;s more like a sensor than a computer.<p>But to be fair I barely understand &quot;classical computing&quot;.  I think my personal notion relies too much on badly defined ideas about &quot;the run-time&quot; of a computer program (some software) that I have constructed from &quot;industry&quot; experience.<p>To me big huge fundamental part of computing has to do with arbitrarily representing anything with a symbolic alphabet. And then automatically manipulating this symbolic alphabet to get a result with can be &quot;mapped back&quot; through the initial arbitrary representation so we learn something about whatever we initially chose to represent.<p>Maybe that&#x27;s not computing? but then what is that? and then what is computing??<p>Try as I might I cannot reconcile my understanding of classical computing with quantum computing.