Related papers: Experimenters' Free Will and Quantum Certainty
In a recent series of papers and lectures, John Conway and Simon Kochen presented The Free Will Theorem. "It asserts, roughly, that if indeed we humans have free will, then elementary particles already have their own small share of this…
Most physics theories are deterministic, with the notable exception of quantum mechanics which, however, comes plagued by the so-called measurement problem. This state of affairs might well be due to the inability of standard mathematics to…
It is argued that Feynman's rules for evaluating probabilities, combined with von Neumann's principle of psycho-physical parallelism, help avoid inconsistencies, often associated with quantum theory. The former allows one to assign…
A goal of most interpretations of quantum mechanics is to avoid the apparent intrusion of the observer into the measurement process. Such intrusion is usually seen to arise because observation somehow selects a single actuality from among…
The basic question in the long-standing debate about free will (FW) is not whether FW can be demonstrated to exist nor even whether it exists, but instead how to define it scientifically. If FW is not dismissed as an illusion nor identified…
We revisit the vexed question of how unpredictability can arise in a deterministic universe, focusing on unitary quantum theory. We discuss why quantum unpredictability is irrelevant for the possibility of what some people call `free-will',…
Quantum mechanics is derived from the principle that the universe contain as much variety as possible, in the sense of maximizing the distinctiveness of each subsystem. The quantum state of a microscopic system is defined to correspond to…
Free will discourse is primarily centred around the thesis of determinism. Much of the literature takes determinism as its starting premise, assuming it true for the sake of discussion, and then proceeds to present arguments for why, if…
The abstract concept of indeterministic free will is distinguished from the phenomenon of free will. Evidence for the abstract concept is examined and critically compared with various designs of automata. It is concluded that there is no…
Predictions of quantum theory have been confirmed experimentally in the microscopic domain with no known exceptions. This success motivates physicists to assume universal validity of the theory. To put the predictions of the quantum theory…
Both deterministic and indeterministic physical laws are incompatible with control by genuine (non-illusory) free will. We propose that an indeterministic dynamics can be $weakly$ compatible with free will (FW), whereby the latter acts by…
The title refers to the Free Will Theorem by Conway and Kochen whose flashy formulation is: if experimenters possess free will, then so do particles. In more modest terms, the theorem says that individual pairs of spacelike separated…
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…
"The unambiguous account of proper quantum phenomena must, in principle, include a description of all relevant features of experimental arrangement" (Bohr). The measurement process is composed of pre-measurement (quantum correlation of the…
Recently it has been claimed that no extension of quantum theory can have improved predictive power, the statement following, according to the authors, from the assumptions of free will and of the correctness of quantum predictions…
From what is known today about the elementary particles of matter, and the forces that control their behavior, it may be observed that still a host of obstacles must be overcome that are standing in the way of further progress of our…
Quantum mechanics is one of our most successful physical theories; its predictions agree with experimental observations to an extremely high accuracy. However, the bare formalism of quantum theory does not provide straightforward answers to…
Quantum mechanics led to spectacular technological developments, discovery of new constituents of matter and new materials. However there is still no consensus on its interpretation and limitations. Some scientists and scientific writers…
Many of the conceptual problems students have in understanding quantum mechanics arise from the way probabilities are introduced in standard (textbook) quantum theory through the use of measurements. Introducing consistent microscopic…
The assumption of free will - the ability of an experimentalist to make random choices - is central to proving the indeterminism of quantum resources, the primary tool in quantum cryptography. Relaxing the assumption in a Bell test allows…