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  "slug": "paper-manifesto-honest-computation",
  "title": "Manifesto for Honest Computation",
  "authors": [
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  "abstract": "Five papers have traced an arc from diagnosis to prescription. The qubit is a scaffold, not an invariant. Alternative paradigms exist. Physical limits are real. A diversified portfolio is rational. Institutions must be reformed. This final paper --- the Manifesto --- synthesizes these findings into principles for honest computation and a call to action for investors, researchers, policymakers, and the public. We propose five principles: (1) the substrate IS the algorithm; (2) correlation over particle; (3) joules per solution as the universal metric; (4) falsifiability as a condition of funding; and (5) institutional independence of verification. We propose a specific resource reallocation --- from the ~60% currently consumed by gate-model quantum computing toward thermodynamic, optical, neuromorphic, and analog quantum simulation --- and a Falsification Pledge by which institutions commit to pre-registering computational claims with time-bound success criteria. Computation is too important to be left to narrative production. The future of computing is honest, or it is nothing. Computation is the most important technology of the twenty-first century. It determines what we can know, what we can build, what we can cure, and what we can defend against. The future of computation is, in a very real sense, the future of human capability. For the past two decades, a significant fraction of the world's computational R&D expenditure --- roughly $35 billion --- has been directed toward one specific computational paradigm: the fault-tolerant universal gate-model quantum computer. This investment was made on the basis of extraordinary claims: exponential speedups for problems of commercial importance, revolutionary new industries, a transformation of the computational landscape comparable to the invention of the transistor. Those claims have not been realized. Not one commercially viable quantum computer exists. Not one problem of genuine economic value has been solved faster, cheaper, or more accurately by a quantum computer than by a classical alternative. The roadmaps have been revised outward, repeatedly, from \"five years\" to \"ten years\" to \"the 2030s\" --- and those timelines assume flawless execution of error-correction protocols that currently consume thousands of physical qubits per logical qubit. This is not a temporary setback. It is not a matter of insufficient funding, insufficient talent, or insufficient time. The failure is structural. It is embedded in the institutional incentive systems that fund computational research, in the ontological confusion that treats qubits as particles rather than relational properties, in the neglect of fundamental thermodynamic limits, and in the absence of independent verification with enforcement mechanisms. Five papers have mapped this terrain. This final paper --- the Manifesto --- synthesizes their findings into actionable principles and a call to action. We do not merely diagnose. We prescribe. We do not merely critique. We construct. The future of honest computation depends on it.",
  "abstract_markdown": "Five papers have traced an arc from diagnosis to prescription. The qubit is a scaffold, not an invariant. Alternative paradigms exist. Physical limits are real. A diversified portfolio is rational. Institutions must be reformed. This final paper --- the Manifesto --- synthesizes these findings into principles for honest computation and a call to action for investors, researchers, policymakers, and the public. We propose five principles: (1) the substrate IS the algorithm; (2) correlation over particle; (3) joules per solution as the universal metric; (4) falsifiability as a condition of funding; and (5) institutional independence of verification. We propose a specific resource reallocation --- from the ~60% currently consumed by gate-model quantum computing toward thermodynamic, optical, neuromorphic, and analog quantum simulation --- and a Falsification Pledge by which institutions commit to pre-registering computational claims with time-bound success criteria. Computation is too important to be left to narrative production. The future of computing is honest, or it is nothing. Computation is the most important technology of the twenty-first century. It determines what we can know, what we can build, what we can cure, and what we can defend against. The future of computation is, in a very real sense, the future of human capability. For the past two decades, a significant fraction of the world's computational R&D expenditure --- roughly $35 billion --- has been directed toward one specific computational paradigm: the fault-tolerant universal gate-model quantum computer. This investment was made on the basis of extraordinary claims: exponential speedups for problems of commercial importance, revolutionary new industries, a transformation of the computational landscape comparable to the invention of the transistor. Those claims have not been realized. Not one commercially viable quantum computer exists. Not one problem of genuine economic value has been solved faster, cheaper, or more accurately by a quantum computer than by a classical alternative. The roadmaps have been revised outward, repeatedly, from \"five years\" to \"ten years\" to \"the 2030s\" --- and those timelines assume flawless execution of error-correction protocols that currently consume thousands of physical qubits per logical qubit. This is not a temporary setback. It is not a matter of insufficient funding, insufficient talent, or insufficient time. The failure is structural. It is embedded in the institutional incentive systems that fund computational research, in the ontological confusion that treats qubits as particles rather than relational properties, in the neglect of fundamental thermodynamic limits, and in the absence of independent verification with enforcement mechanisms. Five papers have mapped this terrain. This final paper --- the Manifesto --- synthesizes their findings into actionable principles and a call to action. We do not merely diagnose. We prescribe. We do not merely critique. We construct. The future of honest computation depends on it.",
  "date": "2026-07-10",
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