Here is a 3-paragraph summary of the blog post for mathopen.com:
A recent preprint by philosopher Amit Hagar titled "The NISQ Trap: Eight Years of Demonstrations the Hardware was Built to Lose" makes the bold claim that nearly every major quantum advantage demonstration from the NISQ era has ultimately failed. Hagar argues that within eighteen months of each announcement, these demonstrations were either classically reproduced, shown to rest on flawed assumptions, or otherwise undermined. The post takes direct aim at this argument, pushing back on what it sees as a misleading characterization of the field.
The blog author contends that Hagar's framing misunderstands the actual purpose and value of NISQ demonstrations. Rather than viewing classical reproducibility as a defeat, the author argues that these experiments still provided genuine scientific insight into quantum hardware and helped researchers better understand where quantum systems stand relative to classical ones. The fact that classical algorithms eventually caught up does not retroactively erase the progress made or the knowledge gained from pushing quantum devices to their limits.
Ultimately, the post defends the broader NISQ era as a meaningful and necessary phase in the development of quantum computing. Quantum supremacy demonstrations were never meant to be permanent, unchallenged milestones but rather proof-of-concept achievements that moved the field forward. The author suggests that dismissing this era as a trap or a failure reflects a misunderstanding of how scientific and technological progress actually works in emerging fields.