Related papers: The Virtual Reality Conjecture
The common-sense view of reality is expressed logically in Boolean subset logic (each element is either definitely in or not in a subset, i.e., either definitely has or does not have a property). But quantum mechanics does not agree with…
Quantum cosmology is the quantum theory of the entire universe. Although strange at first sight, it is appropriate because (1) our world appears to be fundamentally quantum, (2) the classical description of gravity breaks down at…
Quantum theory makes the most accurate empirical predictions and yet it lacks simple, comprehensible physical principles from which the theory can be uniquely derived. A broad class of probabilistic theories exist which all share some…
Construal of observable facts or events, that is, the manner in which we understand reality, is based not only on mathematical formulas of a theory suggested as a reasonable explanation for physical phenomena (like general relativity or…
Can the theory that reality is a simulation be tested? We investigate this question based on the assumption that if the system performing the simulation is finite (i.e. has limited resources), then to achieve low computational complexity,…
An investigation of Einstein's ``physical'' reality and the concept of quantum reality in terms of information theory suggests a solution to quantum paradoxes such as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) and the Schroedinger-cat paradoxes.…
General relativity treats spacetime as dynamical and exhibits its breakdown at singularities. This failure is interpreted as evidence that quantum gravity is not a theory formulated within spacetime; instead, it must explain the very…
Despite the success of modern physics in formulating mathematical theories that can predict the outcome of experiments, we have made remarkably little progress towards answering the most fundamental question of: why is there a universe at…
Realism -- the idea that the concepts in physical theories refer to 'things' existing in the real world -- is introduced as a tool to analyze the status of the wave-function. Although the physical entities are recognized by the existence of…
Some contemporary views of the universe assume information and computation to be key in understanding and explaining the basic structure underpinning physical reality. We introduce the Computable Universe exploring some of the basic…
We carry out a thought experiment in an imaginary world. Our world is both local and realistic, yet it violates a Bell inequality more than does quantum theory. This serves to debunk the myth that equates local realism with local hidden…
It has been experimentally demonstrated that quantum coherence can persist in macroscopic phenomena [J.R. Friedman et al.,Nature, 406 (2000) 43]. To face the challenge of this new fact, in this article QM in its standard form is assumed to…
Quantum Mechanics, almost 80 years after its arrival, is a well established and experimentally not falsified theory. It has predicted and explained a whole series of natural phenomena of a very delicate nature. But its interpretation has…
It is commonly believed that decoherence arises as a result of the entangling interaction between a quantum system and its environment, as a consequence of which the environment effectively measures the system, thus washing away its quantum…
Realism about quantum theory naturally leads to realism about the quantum state of the universe. It leaves open whether it is a pure state represented by a wave function, or an impure (mixed) one represented by a density matrix. I…
I make the case that the Universe according to unitary (no-collapse) quantum theory has a branching structure, and so can literally be regarded as a "many-worlds" theory. These worlds are not part of the fundamental ontology of quantum…
Quantum "states" are objective probability measures. Because their dependence on a time is not the time dependence of an evolving state, they are neither states of Nature nor "states of knowledge." There is no such thing as an evolving…
Physical interpretations of the time-symmetric formulation of quantum mechanics, due to Aharonov, Bergmann, and Lebowitz are discussed in terms of weak values. The most direct, yet somewhat naive, interpretation uses the time-symmetric…
A notably enhanced comprehension of the underlying meaning of quantum observations is achieved via a novel premise. Assessments, from first principles, are made of unexamined presumptions that lie at the heart of both conventional…
The many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics is studied from an unprecedented ontological perspective based on the reality of (semi-) deterministic parallel worlds in the interpretation. It is demonstrated that with thanks to…