Related papers: Physical limits of inference
Can a Turing Machine simulate the human mind? If the Church-Turing thesis is assumed to be true, then a Turing Machine should be able to simulate the human mind. In this paper, I challenge that assumption by providing strong mathematical…
One of the most complex systems is the human brain whose formalized functioning is characterized by decision theory. We present a "Quantum Decision Theory" of decision making, based on the mathematical theory of separable Hilbert spaces.…
In recent publications in physics and mathematics, concerns have been raised about the use of real numbers to describe quantities in physics, and in particular about the usual assumption that physical quantities are infinitely precise. In…
Quantum instruments describe outcome probability as well as state change induced by measurement of a quantum system. Incompatibility of two instruments, i. e. the impossibility to realize them simultaneously on a given quantum system,…
The role of impossibilities in theories of Physics is mentioned and a recent result is recalled in which Quantum Mechanics is characterized by three information-theoretic impossibilities. The inconvenience of the asymmetries established by…
We consider the ambiguity associated with the choice of clock in time reparameterization invariant theories. This arbitrariness undermines the goal of prescribing a fixed set of physical laws, since a change of time variable can completely…
We study the paradoxical aspects of closed time-like curves and their impact on the theory of computation. After introducing the $\text{TM}_\text{CTC}$, a classical Turing machine benefiting CTCs for backward time travel, Aaronson et al.…
Quantum mechanics---the theory describing the fundamental workings of nature---is famously counterintuitive: it predicts that a particle can be in two places at the same time, and that two remote particles can be inextricably and…
Quantum theory's irreducible empirical core is a probability calculus. While it presupposes the events to which (and on the basis of which) it serves to assign probabilities, and therefore cannot account for their occurrence, it has to be…
Quantum theory implies, and empirical evidence confirms, that while particles $\textit{can}$ exhibit wave-like behavior in interferometric experiments, this behavior is so limited as $\textit{not}$ to allow for third- and higher-order…
A physical system is determined by a finite set of initial conditions and "laws" represented by equations. The system is computable if we can solve the equations in all instances using a "finite body of mathematical knowledge". In this…
As physics searches for invariants in observations, this paper looks for invariants of probabilistic observation without assuming physical structure. Structure emerges from the basic assumption of science that new information shall lead to…
We revisit the maximum-entropy inference of the state of a finite-level quantum system under linear constraints. The constraints are specified by the expected values of a set of fixed observables. We point out the existence of…
According to quantum theory, the outcomes of future measurements cannot (in general) be predicted with certainty. In some cases, even with a complete physical description of the system to be measured and the measurement apparatus, the…
We construct universal prediction systems in the spirit of Popper's falsifiability and Kolmogorov complexity and randomness. These prediction systems do not depend on any statistical assumptions (but under the IID assumption they dominate,…
Can scientific discovery be made arbitrarily easy by choosing the right representation, collecting enough data, and deploying sufficiently powerful algorithms? This paper argues that the answer is fundamentally negative. We introduce the…
Despite the extraordinary successes the two great bastions of $20^{th}$ century science (Quantum Theory and General Relativity) are troubled with serious conceptual and mathematical difficulties. As a result, further growth of fundamental…
Our representation of the Universe is built with sequences of symbols, numbers, operators, rules and undecidable propositions defining our mathematical truths, represented either by classical, quantum and probabilistic Turing Machines…
Due to common misconceptions about the Church-Turing thesis, it has been widely assumed that the Turing machine provides an upper bound on what is computable. This is not so. The new field of hypercomputation studies models of computation…
Deduction is the one of the major forms of inferences and commonly used in formal logic. This kind of inference has the feature of monotonicity, which can be problematic. There are different types of inferences that are not monotonic, e.g.…