Quantum Yogurt

Please Don't Shout At Me, Mr. Kaku

In my old life as a bookseller, I would get sent lots of proofs of books by publishers. Even though I left my job in the summer, I brought away such a mountain of books with me, that I am still working through all these proofs. I’ve not even touched all the books I bought with my hard earned wages yet.

I am not very disciplined in many areas of my life, but I do finish every book I start and I always read the books people send me, even if they’re not my thing at all. I would like to be able to toss books I don’t enjoy aside, because life is too short and I will surely die before I’ve read all the great books there are to be read, but I just can’t do it yet. It may be something that happens further down the line in therapy. If we get to that point, I will know my journey is done.

A few weeks ago I read a proof of a book called Quantum Supremacy by Michio Kaku. The subtitle of the book is: How Quantum Computers Will Unlock The Mysteries of Science - And Address Humanity’s Biggest Challenges. That’s quite a tall order for a book that clocks in at three hundred pages of widely spaced type.

What I know about quantum anything can be summed up by my adoration of Doctor Who and a lecture I once attended where a man talked about quantum stuff by comparing it to a vanilla slice and shouting; ‘YOGURT TALKS TO YOGURT!’ I also read Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood where the heroine is a physicist and references Michio Kaku, but I was only reading it for the science based sex, so I don’t think it helped at all.

Kaku is good at popularising science, which was a big help, because in the bits where he got technical, I zoned out and got the voice of Charlie Brown’s teacher, Miss Othmar: ‘Wah wah wah wah WAH.’ This is entirely my own fault. You may read it and not get the trombone chorus and come away with an outstanding new outlook on quantum physics. I certainly did learn more than I expected, which is 100% down to how clever Kaku is. I can take no credit whatsoever.

What follows is my deeply flawed and idiosyncratic view of the world of quantum computing. If you read the book and come back to me shouting: ‘What was that bunkum you were spouting?’ on your own head be it. You had enough disclaimers.

It seems to me that a lot of quantum computing is a strong case of The Emperor’s New Clothes. e.g. He isn’t wearing any, but nobody likes to say. Everyone wants a quantum computer. Nobody really knows if they’ve actually got one, but they paid such a lot of money for it, they don’t like to ask difficult questions like: ‘How will I know I’ve got a quantum computer and not just something a steampunk obsessed teenager made with a hot glue gun and the contents of Ikea marketplace?’ So they keep quiet, stroke their beards and nod sagely every time a man in Hush Puppies and a lab coat walks by talking about ‘Qubits’.

Some people have actually bought quantum computers, maybe. Some people haven’t even done that. Some people have bought the idea of a quantum computer from a man who may be an incel but who might also be the next Bill Gates, and how would you know, frankly? I think it will boil down to what sort of jumper they wear at the end of the day. It turns out that quantum computing has a lot to do with fashion trends, or the lack thereof both at an actual and a metaphorical level, which ironically, is quite a quantum idea.

The more I read about the people engineering quantum computers, the more strongly I was put in mind of Ponder Stibbons and his exploration of L Space using the computer Hex in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. Should you find Quantum Supremacy too taxing I think you could probably pull off a cogent conversation with a quantum physicist simply by reading Soul Music and taking notes.

A lot of the book, about 80% by my reckoning, is a breakdown of all the awful problems we face in the world today and will face going forward. At the end of each chapter, there is a cheering couple of paragraphs in which it is posited by the author that quantum computing will sort that out for you. Maybe. Might be.

I am always struck by the fact that men (it’s almost always men) are dead keen on solving world hunger, global pandemics and the environmental apocalypse to come. They make many bold and exciting claims for the future in which they will don capes and fly round the world twice before breakfast. It’s all very exciting and massive.

Everything has to be big and heroic and yet I find it hard to believe. It’s not that I don’t want to believe that all these wonderful things can be done. It would take a load off my mind. It’s just that I am increasingly cynical about man’s ability to do anything that large and complicated when they seem to struggle so much with the small, easy things, e.g, picking up their socks or ending the gender pay gap. If someone told me that they could use quantum computers to invent a self cleaning toilet or scented candles that really smell like forests and not like something a taxi driver uses to mask the smell of sick in his overly warm cab, I’d be much more enthusiastic.

Also, when all is said and done, a quantum computer is just another gadget isn’t it? One of those things, like a soup maker, that you buy thinking you’re going to become the first winner of Masterchef solely to win for your innovative and bold soups, only to find that you can do it all quicker in a saucepan. You get annoyed with the soup maker two days after you bought it because it won’t go back in the box it came in, even though it’s the same size as it was when you took it out the box. A week later you have gifted it to your Aunty Carol. Three weeks after that, you see it on the shelf in your local Oxfam with a £5.99 PAT TESTED sticker on it and wish you’d never bothered.

The main thing I took from the book is that quantum physics is very much a modern day version of religion. You have to have an enormous amount of faith in something that you can’t see, don’t know how to explain and aren’t entirely sure works. Much like other religions, it seems to involve a lot of men in fancy costumes shouting loudly over each other about which one of them is right about the thing they can’t see and don’t understand. As I was reading, I kept thinking about the age old theological argument about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Truthfully, I think they will all be sad when they have finally built a computer quantum enough to answer.