Related papers: God may not play dice, but human observers surely …
We consider the binary hypothesis testing problem with two observers. There are two possible states of nature (or hypotheses). Observations collected by the two observers are statistically related to the true state of nature. The knowledge…
We propose a definition of determinism for a physical system that includes, besides the measurement device, the surrounding environment. This enlarged system is assumed to follow a predefined trajectory starting from some (unknown) initial…
We investigate the theory of finite observables, i.e., resolutions of the finite-dimensional identity by means of positive operators, that have a physical interpretation in terms of measurement schemes. We focus on extremal and rank-one…
Some possible (re)sources of indeterminism and randomness encountered in physics are enumerated. These gaps in the physical laws, if they exist, could possibly be exploited for dualistic interfaces. We also speculate that physical laws and…
A general scheme to seek for the relations between entanglement and bservables is proposed in principle. In two-qubit systems with enough general Hamiltonian, we find the entanglement to be the functions of observables for six kinds of…
Many systems involve numerous interacting parts and the whole system can have properties that the individual parts do not. I take this novelty as the defining characteristic of an emergent property. Other characteristics associated with…
We show a hitherto unexplored consequence of the property of identicity in quantum mechanics. If two identical objects, distinguished by a dynamical variable A, are in certain entangled states of another dynamical variable B, then, for such…
Although time is one of our most intuitive physical concepts, its understanding at the fundamental level is still an open question in physics. For instance, time in quantum mechanics and general relativity are two distinct and incompatible…
This is an attempt to create a consistent and non-trivial extension of quantum theory, describing in detail the quantum measurement process. A tentative but concrete model is presented, based on the concept of multiple…
What can we discover? As the discussion in this paper is limited to ontological considerations, it does not deal with the discovery of new concepts. It raises the following question: What are the entities or existents that we can discover?…
For obtaining causal inferences that are objective, and therefore have the best chance of revealing scientific truths, carefully designed and executed randomized experiments are generally considered to be the gold standard. Observational…
Equilibrium notions for games with unawareness in the literature cannot be interpreted as steady-states of a learning process because players may discover novel actions during play. In this sense, many games with unawareness are…
The notions of error and disturbance appearing in quantum uncertainty relations are often quantified by the discrepancy of a physical quantity from its ideal value. However, these real and ideal values are not the outcomes of simultaneous…
Anthropic reasoning is a critical tool to understand probabilities, especially in a large universe or multiverse. According to anthropic reasoning, we should consider ourselves typical among members of a reference class that must include…
Observational astronomy is plagued with selection effects that must be taken into account when interpreting data from astronomical surveys. Because of the physical limitations of observing time and instrument sensitivity, datasets are…
The 20th century has revealed two important limitations of scientific knowledge. On the one hand, the combination of Poincar\'e's nonlinear dynamics and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle leads to a world picture where physical reality is,…
In both classical and quantum thermodynamics, physical quantities are typically assigned objective values defined independently of our observations. We then refer to the 'work performed by a gas', or the 'entropy of the gas', regardless of…
Two different approaches to dealing with probabilistic knowledge are examined -models and inductive inference. Examples of the first are: influence diagrams [1], Bayesian networks [2], log-linear models [3, 4]. Examples of the second are:…
Time can be defined as the duration between events. It is irreversible. When used as a variable in quantifying the changing properties of matter, this irreversibility of time is incompatible with Newton's deterministic mechanics and with…
Some physical objects are hardly accessible to direct experimentation. It is then desirable to infer their properties based solely on the interactions they have with systems over which we have control. In this spirit, here we introduce…