A new speculative short essay from me: "In what sense is quantum computing a science?" http://cognitivemedium.com/qc-a-science
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Only very minimally, in the sense I describe in the essay. Transistors are only slightly different a notion to pre-existing amplifiers/switches. Criticality and chain reactions were more or less new design idea, but pre-dated the Manhattan project.
There's a big difference between "work out the details of how to do this, using standard ideas" and "invent arabic numerals". The latter isn't even a goal that can be conceived, a priori. Topological QC is a lot closer to the latter than the former.
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Ah, to be clearer: having the idea of topological QC at all is a bit like having the idea for arabic numerals. It's an astounding leap of design imagination.
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How would you compare the idea of topological QC to the idea of information theory or the idea that of control theory or the Kalman filter? Information theory in the past has been the domain of IEEE engineers, even if it's now being used by physicists and computer scientists.
End of conversation
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