[SpicyLemonZest]

"Programmable" in this context would mean that you can encode complex computational problems into your cat's behavior. The idea is to distinguish a cat that can only calculate cat behavior (which is of course a very easy problem) from a cat that could eventually be engineered to calculate whatever you want.

If you can solve complex computational problems faster than a cat-sized computer by carefully arranging tins of cat food, it would definitely be fair to say your cat computational supremacy is a significant achievement.

[codeulike]

Google's device is not encoding complex computational problems. Its just being told to arrange its qbits into a random series of gates. Could it do the Fizz Buzz algorithm? Or output the Fibonacci sequence? If not, then in what way is it programmable?

[quantifyme]

It's programmable in the same way an FPGA where you can specify how gates are connected is.

Note that the "random series of gates" is generated on a classical computer, and then the quantum processor is set to that configuration. It's not that you turn on the quantum processor and whatever random uninitialized state is it in.

[the8472]

> Its just being told to arrange its qbits into a random series of gates.

It's not told to arrange its qubits into a random series of gates. It is told to arrange them in a specific order that was chosen at random.

It is programmable. But it is as if you had to program malbolge[0], except worse so due to the hardware constraints and lack of error correction.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbolge

[SpicyLemonZest]

What's a classical computer, if not silicon arranged into a random series of gates?

I'm not sure how to evaluate the question of whether it could do the Fizz Buzz algorithm. Could it run fizzbuzz.c? No, it doesn't have an OS. Could it perform a sequence of operations isomorphic to "count to 100 by 3s and 5s"? It sounds like Aaronson's answer would be yes, but I think you'll be skeptical (and I am too) about whether that really means anything.

[quickthrower2]

A stone tablet could "perform" a sequence of operations isomorphic to "count to 100 by 3s and 5s". But "count to N by 3s and 5s" for any N : 0 < N < 2^32. Well that'd require a lot of stone.