Also what percentage of the engineers at Rigetti actually think that you are in any sense "leveraging the multiverse" with this sort of technology, and how many of you prefer an alternative explanation?
I understand if you don't want to make a public statement about such divisive (and perhaps, more importantly, ill-defined) matters in this context. I'm just curious about the way that the people who are actually building these things tend to view them...
After an informal poll of ~30 of our scientists/engineers, ~8 said they subscribe to the many-worlds interpretation [1] [2] of quantum mechanics. To be honest, this is a discussion that comes up surprisingly infrequently at the office!
This result reminds me of Sean Carroll's "Most Embarrassing Graph in Modern Physics" [3]. When top theoretical physicists are polled, it seems like no interpretation of quantum mechanics even takes the majority! In my view, the lack of consensus around this (after ~100 years) underscores the strangeness of the theory.
I should mention that David Deutsch (one of the pioneers of quantum computing), Steven Hawking, Max Tegmark, Sean Carroll, John Preskill, and many other prominent physicists prefer the many-worlds interpretation (citation needed).
If you like the "leveraging the multiverse" view of quantum computing, be sure to watch David Deutsch's video lectures [4]! In his view, multiple universes is the way to explain the power of a quantum computer.
@dangirsh is polling people at the company now to answer this question!
As for me, the only way I could even attempt to understand this quantum mechanics business was through the multiverse perspective. Fun fact: The QVM actually implemented the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics. Every qubit measurement, in particular, would branch the wavefunction into two separate universes. This was a perfect way to bring my computer to a grinding halt in no time.
I understand if you don't want to make a public statement about such divisive (and perhaps, more importantly, ill-defined) matters in this context. I'm just curious about the way that the people who are actually building these things tend to view them...