Related papers: Experimenters' Free Will and Quantum Certainty
If quantum mechanics is taken for granted the randomness derived from it may be vacuous or even delusional, yet sufficient for many practical purposes. "Random" quantum events are intimately related to the emergence of both space-time as…
Measurement is a fundamental notion in the usual approximate quantum mechanics of measured subsystems. Probabilities are predicted for the outcomes of measurements. State vectors evolve unitarily in between measurements and by reduction of…
Even if never elucidated, the question of determinism is a standing question along the history of human thinking. A physical system evolves in a deterministic way if its future is completely determined once we have fixed some present…
The best mathematical arguments against a realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics - that gives definite but partially unknown values to all observables - are analysed and shown to be based on reasoning that is not compelling. This…
Is the universe digital or analog? In this essay I argue that both classical and quantum physics include limits that prevent us from definitively answering that question. That quantum physics does so is no surprise. That classical physics…
If the block universe view is correct, the future and the past have similar status and one would expect physical theories to involve final as well as initial boundary conditions. A plausible consistency condition between the initial and…
The scientific method relies on facts, established through repeated measurements and agreed upon universally, independently of who observed them. In quantum mechanics, the objectivity of observations is not so clear, most dramatically…
Recently, a delicately designed Gedankenexperiment was proposed to check the self-consistence of quantum theory in the description of the agents who are using this theory. It was demonstrated that the quantum theory is inconsistent. Here a…
A solution to the second measurement problem, determining what prior microscopic properties can be inferred from measurement outcomes ("pointer positions"), is worked out for projective and generalized (POVM) measurements, using consistent…
Ultimately, any explanation of quantum measurement must be extendable to relativistic quantum mechanics (RQM), since many precisely confirmed experimental results follow from quantum field theory (QFT), which is based on RQM. Certainly, the…
The descriptions of the quantum realm and the macroscopic classical world differ significantly not only in their mathematical formulations but also in their foundational concepts and philosophical consequences. When and how physical systems…
The measurement conundrum seems to have plagued quantum mechanics for so long that impressions of an inconsistency amongst its axioms have spawned. A demonstration that such purported inconsistency is fictitious may then be in order and is…
Gao (2017) presents a new mentalistic reformulation of the well-known measurement problem affecting the standard formulation of quantum mechanics. According to this author, it is essentially a determinate-experience problem, namely a…
One of quantum theory's salient features is its apparent indeterminism, i.e. measurement outcomes are typically probabilistic. We formally define and address whether this uncertainty is unavoidable or whether post-quantum theories can offer…
The histories-based framework of Quantum Measure Theory assigns a generalized probability or measure $\mu(E)$ to every (suitably regular) set $E$ of histories. Even though $\mu(E)$ cannot in general be interpreted as the expectation value…
Is quantum mechanics about 'states'? Or is it basically another kind of probability theory? It is argued that the elementary formalism of quantum mechanics operates as a well-justified alternative to 'classical' instantiations of a…
While complex numbers are essential in mathematics, they are not needed to describe physical experiments, expressed in terms of probabilities, hence real numbers. Physics however aims to explain, rather than describe, experiments through…
The problem of measurement is often considered as an inconsistency inside the quantum formalism. Many attempts to solve (or to dissolve) it have been made since the inception of quantum mechanics. The form of these attempts depends on the…
The indeterministic outcome of a measurement of an individual quantum is certified by the impossibility of the simultaneous, definite, deterministic pre-existence of all conceivable observables from physical conditions of that quantum…
In this study, I argue that the future is not open if quantum mechanics is complete. An open future means that the value observed when measuring a physical quantity in the future is not determined. At first glance, quantum mechanics seems…