Checkout her other books too. They all seem fascinating.

The three things i find most fascinating in Biology are 1) Neuroscience, 2) Immune Systems and 3) Microbiome on our bodies. Together; they literally define who we are (mentally and physically), how we survive and how we coexist with our environment and yet there is no one book which brings everything together.

As a kid, i had read two classic books from the Soviet-era Mir Publishers Science for Everyone series which fired my imagination and sparked a lifelong interest in the Life Sciences. You might also find these (and others from the series) interesting (though old);

Science for Everyone – Ethology What Animals Do and Why? - https://mirtitles.org/2013/10/08/science-for-everyone-etholo...

Science for Everyone – Me Or Not Me - https://mirtitles.org/2011/12/22/science-for-everyone-me-or-...

Some References:

1) Role of the Microbiome in Human Development - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6580755/

2) Human Microbiome Project - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Microbiome_Project

3) The Human Microbiome Project: Exploring the microbial part of ourselves in a changing world - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3709439/

4) The Human Microbiome: From Symbiosis to Pathogenesis - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3731629/

5) The Second Brain: A Groundbreaking New Understanding of Nervous Disorders of the Stomach and Intestine by Michael Gershon. This is a must-read neuro-psychology book.

6) Gut: The inside story of our body’s most under-rated organ by Giulia Enders. Another must-read book.

7) Finally; i came to know (have not browsed/read) of this definitive textbook Fundamentals of Microbiome Science: How Microbes Shape Animal Biology by Angela Douglas (via her Microbiomes: A Very Short Introduction Oxford series book) - https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691160344/fu...

Roseburia also seems to correlate with longevity;

The Gut Microbiome, Aging, and Longevity: A Systematic Review - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7762384/

Deep insights into the gut microbial community of extreme longevity in south Chinese centenarians by ultra-deep metagenomics and large-scale culturomics - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41522-022-00282-3

We are what we eat.

There are a spectrum of "Consciousness States" which can be partitioned into two categories viz. 1) the three well-known ones i.e. Wakeful, Dreaming and Deep Sleep 2) All the others whether self-induced or externally-induced viz. chemically (eg. drugs/anesthesia), electromagnetically etc.

The model to use as a framework is that of "Raising the Kundalini" (from Muladhara chakra to Sahasrara chakra) which you can assume for now to be an allegory for moving through a trajectory of consciousness states from "normal" to "supra-normal" (can only be experienced and cannot be precisely defined). The major "stages" in this path are at the Chakras which are precisely defined with geometrical patterns, visual imagery, internal sensations similar to vibrations produced by different sounds; viz. specific coloured luminous figures (aka deities), polygons with different 3/4/5/6/etc sides (aka lotuses with different no. of petals), sound vibrations mapped to syllables in the Sanskrit language etc.

The experience(s) of the woman described in the article (assuming it is legit) checks many of the above viz. "She described experiencing vivid internal imagery, alteration of her body schema, changes in agency, and a deep sense of unity", "it begins with intricate geometric and luminous imagery and culminates in a lucid, expansive state of unity and serenity", "she reported the emergence of a violet coloration replacing her dark visual field, followed by the gradual appearance of a yellow-violet hexagonal lattice that she perceived as a structured pattern floating “in the air” around her", "The hexagonal network coupled with rhythmic violet pulses remained the most stable phenomenological motif across all 20 sessions."

My only scepticism is that the article reads "a little too pat" (i have yet to read the original paper) and makes everything seem a "done deal" (i.e. known) in a domain where inherently there can be no objectivity. For example; while the brain imaging shows a specific set of activities (i.e. objective) their correlation to a specific description is based solely on the woman's self-reporting (i.e. subjective).

2) Experiential approach through any activity (eg. Bhakti/Tantra/Hatha etc.) also called Laya Yoga (i.e. yoga of dissolution) where one "dissolves" one's identity (i.e. no experiencer nor object of experience) so only the pure experience remains. See the sections on Laya at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundalini_yoga and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatha_yoga

3) Book of Techniques; Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vij%C3%B1%C4%81na_Bhairava_Tan...

4) For a simple method to get started and more details, see my comment chain here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41537499

Everything.

That comment was one of the first (hence the points) with the above opinionated (and wrong) conclusion. The authors explicitly refuted it with their response which i have highlighted. The paper/subject is highly technical and so without showing both sides of the argument posting only the (opinionated) conclusion as-if it was a done deal is wrong.

PS: There are now more technical comments with the authors themselves addressing the criticisms.

Here is what the authors actually say w.r.t. the criticisms (all the comments are worth reading);

Our primary emphasis is ECC-256. Elliptic curve cryptography is widely deployed in modern systems, e.g., internet security and cryptocurrency.

For ECC-256, the space-efficient architecture uses 9,739 qubits with < 3-year runtime, the balanced architecture uses 11,961 qubits with < 1-year runtime, and the time-efficient architecture uses ~19,000 qubits with ~52-day runtime (or ~26,000 qubits with ~10-day runtime using higher parallelism). Space and time overheads are reported together within each architecture, not mixed across regimes.

The claim that our scheme requires 117 years selectively cites RSA-2048 under the most space-constrained architecture, which is one corner of a trade-off space we present clearly in Figure 3 of the work. We include RSA-2048 for completeness, and state explicitly that its runtimes are one to two orders of magnitude longer.

We believe our clearly labeled trade-offs constitute exactly the transparent resource accounting the commenter calls for.

Best regards,

Maddie, Qian, Robert, Dolev

Caltech Team Sets Record with 6,100-Qubit Array - https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/caltech-team-sets-record-...

Also had a look at your quop.ai; seems pretty interesting though i need to explore it a bit more.

You might want to think about posting quop.ai to HN and get some feedback ;-)

You are certainly right that commercialization (and speculation does play an important role here) serves as a forcing function to accelerate development of products. But this needs to be done somewhat in-sync-with/a-little-ahead-of the actual science and engineering. When the subject is inherently difficult to understand (as is the case with QC) it can very easily get out of hand and become just snake-oil/bullshit and exploited by hustlers/grifters/charlatans.

Do you have any links to more information on the points that you make above that you can share? Specifically on hybrid quantum-classical systems and silicon-based shuttling-qubits which can use current foundry technology? To me, this seems to be the future since both the scaling and availability are taken care of.

As regards scaling of qubits, Caltech recently achieved 6100(!) qubit-array - https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/caltech-team-sets-record-...

Wikipedia also has a list of quantum processors and their specs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_quantum_processors

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47455015

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

You have not understood the first thing about what i had pointed out.

> right now QC is 5 orders of magnitude away from practical systems - there's NO profit to invest for. It's all research that is being hyped and overpromised because there's not enough money in that sector and because established players (like google) don't want to lose their face

While there has been hype, in the last couple of years things seem to have changed and now culminated in the awarding of the ACM Turing Award prize. Do you know anything about the Physics/Mathematics behind qubits (eg. probablities/superposition/phase/noise etc.) and/or how that has been realized via technologies (eg. superconducting/photonics/trapped-ions etc.)? People are looking at "hybrid" quantum computers i.e. conventional+quantum (eg. IBM, Fujitsu), shuttling qubits on silicon (eg. Hitachi) which allows existing foundry technology to be used for QC. This is huge.

> viability of core physics does not imply immediate creation of product. I'd point to fusion, but that's also currently getting over-hyped 15-20 years too early

Non-sequiteur.

> governments are only investing the same way as into particle accelerators - in form of research grants

No, Govts. are actively funding startups in this area and including technology research/transfers in their Free Trade Agreements with other govts.

> simulation of QC is both extremely trivial (in "exponentially-slower" way) and existentially impossible (the whole sector would not exist if it was actually possible to use good old normal CPUs fast enough).

Simulation of QC is not "extremely trivial" but requires HPC technology. Datacenter/Cloud technologies are also utilized here. Generally only around 30-50 qubits have been simulated with 50+ qubits being exponentially prohibitive in terms of compute power/memory.

>Bringing in "AI technologies" only shows you as a gullible idiot that still parrots ai bubble without understanding exact details

To use your own language; this right here shows that you are just a clueless idiot about this domain. AI is a tool applied to various domains eg. AlphaFold for protein structures in Biology which solved an almost intractable problem. People are doing the same with QC+AI. There are a bunch of papers on this; for your edification start with Quantum Computing and Artificial Intelligence: Status and Perspectives - https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.23860

> If there is a breakthrough - it is secret government information, and it would not be available to non-government companies, especially those you can invest into. The moment such breakthroughs reach the market, knowledge of the very existence spreads - and yet all current known progress is dull.

This demonstrates your gullibility. Since one of the best studied usecases for QC is cryptography, if there has been a breakthrough in some lab (govt/academia/company all of whom have secrets), the powers-that-be would not want it to be widespread for security (mainly) reasons. But hints might have been given and investments encouraged. Almost all QC companies have a govt. tie-up and cryptographic technologies have already been subject to export controls from the very beginning. Another scenario is defense applications. There are plenty more but these two are the main ones.

> The only evidence worth anything out of what you brought up is the export controls - and those have been extremely pre-emptive in preparation for geopolitics and far future tech. Error-correction barely started to be useful at 100 cubits, so 34 makes no sense other than to minimize brain drain with base tech

That is the obvious superficial take. Given what i have written above, what if semiconductor technology i.e. the "hybrid" QC+Conventional allows one to simulate 100+ qubits easily now? What if there has been some breakthrough's by using AI on QC algorithms both existing and new ones? Have any formerly intractable problems in Physics/Chemistry/Biology/Mathematics been made tractable now due to AI usage? How many of these can be implemented on a QC? Etc. Etc.

To summarize; you have to look at the whole complex picture before drawing conclusions. Merely parroting trivialities like "hype" is meaningless.

Quantum Computing (QC) is unlike previous technologies which were all mostly "logical structures" (i.e. the underlying Physics/Technologies were well-known). The viability of both the core Physics itself and its realization through Technology for QC are questioned by some Physicists/Technologists themselves. But in 2024/2025 many Govts. and Companies both have started investing heavily in QC. Moreover the advanced countries have implemented export controls on QC technology prohibiting export of QC computers above 34-qubits.

And now the ACM prize for something done long ago in quantum information.

Finally note that QC algorithms can be simulated (for small size qubits) on conventional computers and the current AI technologies may also play a part here i.e. implement QC algorithms on the "Cloud supercomputer" and using AI technologies.

The logical inference is that there has been some technological (one or more) breakthrough in the realization of the QC qubits technologies, QC algorithms running efficiently on the cloud, AI usage for QC etc. Nothing else explains all of the above facts.

See also: The Case Against Quantum Computing by Mikhail Dyakonov (Professor of Physics) - https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-case-against-quantum-computing

As Sabine Hossenfelder (Theoretical Physicist) points out, companies to do with QC are seeing a surge in investments and marketing. It is as if somebody knows something that the "common public" doesn't - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBTS7JZTyZY

I don't know enough about the science/technology to form an opinion but have recently started down the path of trying to understand it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46599807

Theories of Programming: The Life and Works of Tony Hoare published by ACM in 2021 - https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/3477355

See the "preface" for details of the book - https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3477355.3477356

Review of the above book - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365933441_Review_on...

PS: You can check with some lady named "Anna" on the interweb for book access :-)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47425706

Points: 1

# Comments: 1