Related papers: Quantum Will: Determinism meets Quantum Mechanics
Randomness is an indispensable resource in modern science and information technology. Fortunately, an experimentally simple procedure exists to generate randomness with well-characterized devices: measuring a quantum system in a basis…
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…
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…
The discussion of the foundations of quantum mechanics is complicated by the fact that a number of different issues are closely entangled. Three of these issues are i) the interpretation of probability, ii) the choice between realist and…
We show that the local and deterministic mode of description is not only in conflict with the quantum theory, but also with relativity. We argue that elementary relativistic properties of spacetime lead to the emergence of a…
The problem of measurement in quantum mechanics is reanalyzed within a general, strictly probabilistic framework (without reduction postulate). Based on a novel comprehensive definition of measurement the natural emergence of objective…
An approach is presented treating decision theory as a probabilistic theory based on quantum techniques. Accurate definitions are given and thorough analysis is accomplished for the quantum probabilities describing the choice between…
The uncertainty associated with probing the quantum state is expressed as the effective abundance (measure) of possibilities for its collapse. New kinds of uncertainty limits entailed by quantum description of the physical system arise in…
We give a counter example to show that determinism as such is in contradiction to quantum mechanics. More precisely, we consider a simple quantum system and its environment, including the measurement device, and make the assumption that the…
Applications of quantum mechanics have led to many successful predictions and explanations of puzzling phenomena, and we now apply quantum mechanics to gain, process, and communicate information in novel ways. We can understand quantum…
A central feature of quantum mechanics is the non-commutativity of operators used to describe physical observables. In this article, we present a critical analysis on the role of non-commutativity in quantum theory, focusing on its…
Many attempts have been made to characterise and solve the infamous measurement problem of quantum mechanics by advocating, implicitly or explicitly, different realist perspectives. As a result, we are still uncertain where this problem and…
In the present article we consider the conjunction fallacy, a well known cognitive heuristic experimentally tested in cognitive science, which occurs for intuitive judgments in situations of bounded rationality. We show that the quantum…
Here are a few random thoughts on the interpretations of the quantum double slit experiment, the Mach Zehnder experiment, the delayed-choice experiment and the measurement problem.
Present quantum theory, which is statistical in nature, does not predict joint probability distribution of position and momentum because they are noncommuting. We propose a deterministic quantum theory which predicts a joint probability…
A pedagogical introduction is given to the quantum mechanics of closed systems, most generally the universe as a whole. Quantum mechanics aims at predicting the probabilities of alternative coarse-grained time histories of a closed system.…
In spite of its popularity, it has not been possible to vindicate the conventional wisdom that classical mechanics is a limiting case of quantum mechanics. The purpose of the present paper is to offer an alternative formulation of classical…
The relational interpretation (or RQM, for Relational Quantum Mechanics) solves the measurement problem by considering an ontology of sparse relative events, or "facts". Facts are realized in interactions between any two physical systems…
Incompatibility between conjugate variables and complementary pictures comes in two kinds, exclusive of one another. The first kind is unconditional, and the second conditional on quantum's indivisibility. We employ this distinction to…
Two problems will be considered: the question of hidden parameters and the problem of Kolmogorovity of quantum probabilities. Both of them will be analyzed from the point of view of two distinct understandings of quantum mechanical…