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To: dpwiener
"...technology of quantum computing..."

Oh...you mean intellegent design!
...and the only reason that this computing can happen is because intellegent humans have created a machine that can calculate faster than the human brain is able to calculate. All of which points to intellegent design, with purpose. But the experiment is intentionally set up to factor out intellegence, so your observation is not applicable to this scenario.

BTW, please show us one instance of natural quantum computations happening in the natural world, without intellegent intervention. Computers don't count, as they are programmed by intellegent men.

135 posted on 03/05/2002 3:16:47 PM PST by woollyone
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To: woollyone
please show us one instance of natural quantum computations happening in the natural world, without intellegent intervention.

I see you missed my point. The existence of quantum computing is evidence that processes are not necessarily limited by the kind of exponential statistics described in the "Tiny Mathematical Proof Against Evolution" article which started this thread.

That "proof" was based on a probability calculation in which typing Shakespeare through pure random chance is so unlikely as to be a number which far exceeds the size and age of our universe. Which of course is true. Just as it is true that cracking a code with a sufficiently long key may be so unlikely as to be a number which far exceeds the size and age of our universe.

That is not necessarily true for the superposition of all possible universes (which is one way of interpreting quantum mechanics). If there is an infinity or near-infinity of universes (as some interpretations of quantum mechanics suggest) then the size and age of our single universe is no longer the probabilistic limitation.

This is not an issue that is limited to computer designs, and so the question of whether there are "natural" quantum computations that occur is not relevant. (I am not a physicist, and I do not know whether there are examples of "natural" quantum computations. Nor does the lack of knowledge in such a young field indicate the non-existence of "natural" quantum computations.)

The issue here is that the author of the article is positing a "proof" of his thesis. So by definition the burden of proof is on him. Among other things, his "proof" depends on the attempted calculation of probabilities that exceed anything that could be obtained within the size and age of our universe. But his "proof" fails to take into account quantum mechanics, in exactly the same fashion as similar "proofs" for the security of encryption systems fail to take into account quantum mechanics.

Therefore, as a "proof", it fails. That was my point.

156 posted on 03/05/2002 4:13:30 PM PST by dpwiener
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