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Comment by ahelwer | Hacker News Reader

I made a lecture aimed at such people (I was such a person!), which has proven popular: https://youtu.be/F_Riqjdh2oM

With a follow-up blog post focusing on entanglement: https://ahelwer.ca/post/2018-12-07-chsh/

Andrew, that lecture you gave was fantastic. The Deutsch oracle example in the lecture was especially helpful -- I'm surprised it doesn't get used more frequently in other explanations of QC. I think one of the most interesting moments in the video was when the audience (me included) jumped to the conclusion that the QC was more powerful than it actually was and you helpfully brought everyone back to reality.

Glad you enjoyed! I do think the Deutsch Oracle problem is the closest thing to a "hello world" problem in quantum computing, or maybe more analogous to the "sum every value in a list of integers" problem in GPU programming. Of course you can shoot holes in it, and a lot of people have trouble with the "rewire the black box to use two wires" thing and think it's cheating. But such an objection would disappear if you just look at the N-bit Deutsch Oracle problem, which is unfortunately too complicated to be the first problem one encounters.

Thanks! Commenting so I don’t lose this.

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I didn't know you could do it on a comment. It's not on the normal UI. Thanks.

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