Do you want to explain what you understand about the technology that you think is relevant or direct to sources that you think explain the relevant parts that explain why you are confident this is the case or do you want to just take a trust-me-bro approach?

Why do you think that quantum annealers will never scale up to do this?

This is not accurate. This is somewhat a caricature of how trapped ion systems work, and is not accurate at all for how systems using Josephson junctions function which have obviously distinct qubits.

It is true that some examples with quantum annealing systems have been stunts in the sense that they used knowledge of the factorization to choose an annealing system which would make the factorization easier to perform. But that's not true about such annealing in general. Is there a reason you consider all use of quantum annealing to factor to be just stunts?

The current factorization record for Shor's algorithm is 35. Quantum annealing systems have factored numbers much larger numbers. See e.g. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Farxiv.org%2Fpdf%2F2212.12372 But 35 is also not that bad at all. Shor's algorithm factors odd, non-perfect powers. It was first used to factor 15 in 2001, and the next number after that is 21 in 2012 https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fnphoton.2012.259 . I'm actually not sure where you are getting 35 from, and would be curious for a citation about that. But this also ignores that we're making rapid progress here. Progress has occurred not just in the physical implementations, but also on the algorithmic end. There's been massive improvement in quantum error correcting codes which mean major improvements in how many physical qubits one needs per logical qubit. There's also been substantial improvements in Shor's algorithm itself, such as that by Oded Regev which https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quantamagazine.org%2Fthirty-years-later-a-speed-boost-for-quantum-factoring-20231017%2F.

It may help to compare where things are to the rate of progress of vacuum tubes and transistors. Lilienfeld suggested the idea of the transistor in the mid 1920s. The first transistor was invented in the late 1940s. But it is not until the mid 1950s that transistors are used for computers. Vacuum tubes tell a similar but slower story, with the first tubes made around 1905 and the first tube computers in the late 1930s. The comparisons here suggest quantum computers are developing more slowly than either of these other computer hardwares develop, but not so much slower that you should be predicting anything involving centuries.

Unlcear, but this shouldn't be dismissed as hype or dismiss quantum computing. Obviously some pretty standard research is being hailed major breakthroughs when it shouldn't. But a big issue is that a lot of discoveries here are for fundamentally different hardware architectures. So you sometimes read about something somoene figured out how to do with say auperconducting (using Josephson junctions), and another time something someone did with a trapped ion system, or another with optical tweezers, and you cannot just use all of these on a single system; although sometimes lessoned learned from one can help with another. For example, there's some overlap in the techniques for trapped ion systems as there are for ones with optical tweezers. There are around 20-30 different proposed basic hardwares for quantum registers, with about 5 of them still getting serious research. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FList_of_proposed_quantum_registers has a list. If one of them pulls ahead far more than the others, then research will likely concentrate much more on that one. Trapped ion and superconducting systems seem to be right now battling it out with most others receiving much less attention.

Solar and wind power can be placed in agricultural areas without reducing crop yield. Moreover, some crops actually respond better when there is shade given by solar panels. The term is agrivoltaics https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2022%2F06%2F28%2Fbusiness%2Fdual-use-solar-panels-agrivoltaics-blue-wave-power.html is a good article on it. There's a decent discussion on the DoE website but given the current government climate, I have no idea how long that is going to be up there https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.energy.gov%2Feere%2Fsolar%2Fagrivoltaics-solar-and-agriculture-co-location.

The US did make an online system under Biden. Trump got rid of it https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapnews.com%2Farticle%2Firs-direct-file-tax-returns-free-trump-4bb0bca02fab9b3d06ae6f45ac67b7ab.

Its terrible at many levels. First, new ideas and concepts come from more people. Fewer people means fewer new ideas. Second, large scale economic success with high standards of living relies heavily on comparative advantages https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FComparative_advantage and economies of scale, both which go away if you have a smaller population. It also is incorrect to think that the Earth has trouble supporting the current population since much of our current environmental impact is due to extreme inefficiencies which we're getting better at addressing or which can be handled by very small changes in how countries function. For example that's part of why CO2 per capita varies so much from country to country even among countries with similar GDP per capita. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fourworldindata.org%2Fgrapher%2Fco-emissions-per-capita.

To quote Infinity Train: " "I bet it's a fart car." More serious comment: this is gross but obviously good from an environmental and energy use standpoint. Methane would otherwise go unused into the atmosphere where it is a really bad greenhouse gas, or just get burned off. This way it gets used.

Some of these are reasonable and may make sense given specifically how LLMs behave. Others are just the worst sort of job protection. And the attempt to essentially outlaw driverless cars is pretty similar to the red flag laws in the 1890s https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRed_flag_traffic_laws where people were required to have someone else waving a red flag walk in front of any car. Given how many traffic fatalities there are yearly, maybe a generally stricter attitude about car safety would have benefited everyone, but simply banning the tech is clearly counterproductive. What should matter is making sure that the self-driving cars are at least as safe as a regular human driver. If the self-driving cars are even slightly safer than normal human drivers then banning them this will actively cost lives.

Lots of people are working on anti-aging research. It happens to be very hard. Biology is complicated. And most researchers research areas they personally find intellectually engaging, not necessarily areas that will do the most benefit anyhow.

Fusion power has been steadily getting better. The tech has greatly improved over time. For example, the triple product, a measure of how effective a fusion system was growing steadily since the 1950s, slowed down in the early 2000s when almost all fusion research money started going into ITER and is now projected to start increasing again https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fusionenergybase.com%2Farticles%2Fmeasuring-progress-in-fusion-energy-the-triple-product . Moreover, fusion research has been drastically underfunded compared to what predictions of fusion being soon would have assumed https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fx.com%2Fben_j_todd%2Fstatus%2F1541389506015858689%2Fphoto%2F1 so this progress is happening despite that. And even then, the length of predicted time has gone down over time https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Farticle%2F10.1007%2Fs10894-023-00361-z with shorter prediction times. The major question now for fusion is not will we develop it, but when we do will it ever be cost competitive in practice against very cheap wind and solar whose prices continue to drop.

I'm not sure why they would believe that. The number of coherent qubits over time has gone steadily up. See here https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.statista.com%2Fstatistics%2F993634%2Fquantum-computers-by-number-of-qubits%2F Right now, we're in what is sometimes called the noisy intermediate-scale quantum erahttps://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FNoisy_intermediate-scale_quantum_era which looks radically different from where we were 20 years ago. We now have in labs all over the world quantum computers with enough qubits that they would have been front page news a decade ago. We're not very close to practical quantum computers and both IBM and Google are probably overly optimistic here, but the general trends are showing steady improvement.

Is there a reason you feel a need to be so hostile to everyone you disagree with? Might it be the case that people can have thought about things and disagree with you in good faith?