Interesting. I'm inclined to agree but I pause when I read that Scott Aaronson still seems to hold the line on quantum computing not doing anything too useful for NP-complete or a useful subset. The weight of opinion seems against him on quantum though he remains empirically correct for the foreseeable future.
"The weight of opinion seems against him on quantum though he remains empirically correct for the foreseeable future."
Then you're misjudging the weights "for" and "against" him by putting way too much weight on people who don't know what they're talking about and way too little on those who do. It is likely that your "for" group are still operating under the idea that "quantum" works by "trying all possible answers then returning the correct one". This is empirically, mathematically-provably wrong. Anyone operating under this idea deserves for you to weight them at zero.
Despite the fact we still can't build a very big quantum computer, we actually do know quite a bit about what they can do and not do. And as Scott Aaronson points out very frequently, if in fact they prove either able to do something our current theories say they can not or unable to do something that our current theories say they can, either way that will be very interesting, precisely because it will imply that there is something wrong with quantum mechanics, which for all its "woo woo" reputation is one of the most solid math-to-reality theories we have ever had in the history of mankind.
Scott Aaronson isn't "holding" the line... he and his fellow-travelers are drawing the line.
Edit: I'm also unsure on why you think Aaronson believes quantum "won't work"... he's on the optimist side that quantum computers can be made practical. If you mean that he doesn't think "quantum" can solve NP-completeness, well, of course he doesn't... he understands the mathematical proof that it doesn't, so that's hardly surprising.
Edit edit: A positive followup to this negative message: Consider reading Quantum Computing Since Democritus [1], or if you don't want to spend the dough, read through the class notes that turned into that book [2].
>If you mean that he doesn't think "quantum" can solve NP-completeness, well, of course he doesn't... he understands the mathematical proof that it doesn't, so that's hardly surprising.
There's no proof BQP ≠ NP (as well as no proof it does).
Scott thinks it doesn't, but doesn't have a proof (if he did, he'd also have a proof of P≠NP (and showing something implies a resolution of P versus NP is a great proxy for "it's not easy and hasn't been solved yet")).
Quantum computers can't solve NP complete problems any better than classical computers as far as we know. You can at best hope for polynomial speedups. That is the scientific consensus, I don't know what weight of opinion you're talking about.
He seems to be misunderstanding Scott as claiming that no quantum computers will beat classical ones (even for factoring and the like), whereas Scott only makes the claim for NP-complete problems.
> Scott Aaronson still seems to hold the line on quantum computing not doing anything too useful for NP-complete or a useful subset. The weight of opinion seems against him on quantum
Where are you getting this opinion from? My experience has been exactly the opposite. Could you back it up by referencing examples of this "weight of opinion"?
There's no such thing as a "useful subset" of NP-complete problems. If you solve one of them, you've automatically solved all of them, because they are all reducible to each other.