Related papers: Constructor Theory
Constructor theory asserts that the laws of physics are expressible as specifications of which transformations of physical systems can or cannot be brought about with unbounded accuracy by devices capable of operating in a cycle…
We present a theory of information expressed solely in terms of which transformations of physical systems are possible and which are impossible - i.e. in constructor-theoretic terms. Although it includes conjectured laws of physics that are…
Constructor theory is a meta-theoretic approach that seeks to characterise concrete theories of physics in terms of the (im)possibility to implement certain abstract "tasks" by means of physical processes. Process theory, on the other hand,…
The rather unintuitive nature of quantum theory has led numerous people to develop sets of (physically motivated) principles that can be used to derive quantum mechanics from the ground up, in order to better understand where the structure…
Unitary quantum theory, having no Born Rule, is non-probabilistic. Hence the notorious problem of reconciling it with the unpredictability and appearance of stochasticity in quantum measurements. Generalising and improving upon the…
Quantum mechanics, one of the most successful theories in the history of science, was created to account for physical systems not describable by classical physics. Though it is consistent with all experiments conducted thus far, many of its…
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 (QT) has been confirmed by numerous experiments, yet we still cannot fully grasp the meaning of the theory. As a consequence, the quantum world appears to us paradoxical. Here we shed new light on QT by being based on two…
This essay aims to propose construction theory, a new domain of theoretical research on machine construction, and use it to shed light on a fundamental relationship between living and computational systems. Specifically, we argue that…
Quantum theory (QT) has been confirmed by numerous experiments, yet we still cannot fully grasp the meaning of the theory. As a consequence, the quantum world appears to us paradoxical. Here we shed new light on QT by having it follow from…
The distinction between a theory's kinematics and its dynamics, that is, between the space of physical states it posits and its law of evolution, is central to the conceptual framework of many physicists. A change to the kinematics of a…
A tradition handed down among physicists maintains that classical physics is a perfectly deterministic theory capable of predicting the future with absolute certainty, independently of any interpretations. It also tells that it was quantum…
In this course, I talk about the source of mathematical constructivism and its role in the future development of theoretical physics. I describe what physical constructivism is and why it is necessary for the penetration of exact methods of…
We formulate physically-motivated axioms for a physical theory which for systems with a finite number of degrees of freedom uniquely lead to Quantum Mechanics as the only nontrivial consistent theory. Complex numbers and the existence of…
A characteristical property of a classical physical theory is that the observables are real functions taking an exact outcome on every (pure) state; in a quantum theory, at the contrary, a given observable on a given state can take several…
In physics, there is the prevailing intuition that we are part of a unique external world, and that the goal of physics is to understand and describe this world. This assumption of the fundamentality of objective reality is often seen as a…
Quantum theory expresses the observable relations between physical properties in terms of probabilities that depend on the specific context described by the "state" of a system. However, the laws of physics that emerge at the macroscopic…
All current formulations of thermodynamics invoke some form of coarse-graining or ensembles as the supposed link between their own laws and the microscopic laws of motion. They deal only with ensemble-averages, expectation values,…
Cantor's ordinal numbers, a powerful extension of the natural numbers, are a cornerstone of set theory. They can be used to reason about the termination of processes, prove the consistency of logical systems, and justify some of the core…
The main distinction between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics is the lack in the latter of a full mechanical determinism: different final states can arise from the same physical state, after the measurement. No hidden variable is…