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by Taek 383 days ago
This comment appears insightful but I have no idea what it means. Can someone elaborate?
3 comments

Electrons are fermions which means that two electrons can't occupy the same quantum state (Pauli exclusion principle). Bosons don't have the limit so I believe that implies that you can have stronger signals at the low end since you can have multiple photons conveying or storing the same information.
Also less chance for external interference.
What the previous poster is implying is that electrons interact much more strongly than photons. Hence electrons are very good for processing (e.g. building a transistor), while photons are very good for information transfer. This is also a reason why much of the traditional "optical computer" research was fundamentally flawed, just from first principles one could estimate that power requirements are prohibitive.
> This is also a reason why much of the traditional "optical computer" research was fundamentally flawed

presumably also because photons at wavelengths we can work with are BIG

Fermions can “hit each other” whereas bosons “pass through each other”.

(Strong emphasis on the looseness of the scare quotes.)