forecast
Quantum Computing Speedup May Be Illusory
It seems you can never win with quantum computing because when computation branches out across many threads in branchial space, the effort required for the observer to corral those threads back together to read the result is at least as great as the gain from the branching; if measurement is honestly accounted for, the apparent speedup may disappear.
forecastpending
Speaker
Stephen WolframEvidence Quote
“I think what's going to happen is, if you take short algorithm for factoring, which is primarily a quantum Fourier transform, that Fourier transform is done beautifully quickly... The problem is, every thread is somewhere in a different place in branchial space, that thread, that us observers, we have to corral all those things back together again in order to tell what actually happened”
Source
155 | Stephen Wolfram on Computation, Hypergraphs, and Fundamental Physics— Sean Carroll's MindscapeCreated: 6/13/2026, 3:30:55 AM
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