Related papers: Why I am not a QBist
We show that some N-particle quantum systems are holistic, such that the system is deterministic, whereas its parts are random. The total correlation is not sufficient to determine the probability distribution, showing a need for extra…
Quantum cosmology is the quantum theory of the entire universe. Although strange at first sight, it is appropriate because (1) our world appears to be fundamentally quantum, (2) the classical description of gravity breaks down at…
It is often stated that quantum mechanics only makes statistical predictions and that a quantum state is described by the various probability distributions associated with it. Can we describe a quantum state completely in terms of…
Consciousness and quantum mechanics are among the most puzzling phenomena studied in the sciences. Some scholars suggest they are related, though others think this claim commits a "minimization of mystery" fallacy. The aim of this…
QBism may be the most significant contribution to the search for meaning in quantum mechanics since Bohr, even as Bohr's philosophy remains the most significant revision of Kant's theory of science. There are two ironies here. Bohr failed…
A new formulation of quantum mechanics is developed which does not require the concept of the wave-particle duality. Rather than assigning probabilities to outcomes, probabilities are instead assigned to entire fine-grained histories. The…
Contrary to classical physics, which was strongly objective i.e. could be interpreted as a description of mind-independent reality, standard quantum mechanics (SQM) is only weakly objective, that is to say, its statements, though…
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…
This pseudo-paper consists of excerpts drawn from two of my quantum-email samizdats. Section 1 draws a picture of a physical world whose essence is ``Darwinism all the way down.'' Section 2 outlines how quantum theory should be viewed in…
Criticisms of so called `subjective probability' come on the one hand from those who maintain that probability in physics has only a frequentistic interpretation, and, on the other, from those who tend to `objectivise' Bayesian theory,…
We compare and contrast the basic principles of two philosophies: Bayesianism and relationalism. These two philosophies are both based upon criteria of rationality. The analogy invoked in such a comparison seems rather apt when discussing…
I gamely try to disentangle ideas that have been confused with one another.
An interpretation of non-relativistic quantum mechanics is presented in the spirit of Erwin Madelung's hydrodynamic formulation of QM and Louis de Broglie's and David Bohm's pilot wave models. The aims of the approach are as follows: 1) to…
Quantum theory, originally proposed as a physical theory to describe the motions of microscopic particles, has been applied to various non-physics domains involving human cognition and decision-making that are inherently uncertain and…
Since its inception, many physicists have seen in quantum mechanics the possibility, if not the necessity, of bringing cognitive aspects into the play, which were instead absent, or unnoticed, in the previous classical theories. In this…
Experimental evidene of the last decades has made the status of "collapses of the wave function" even more shaky than it already was on conceptual grounds: interference effects turn out to be detectable even when collapses are typically…
One of the most central and controversial element of quantum mechanics is the use of non zero vectors of a Hilbert space (or, more generally, of one dimension subspaces) for representing the state of a quantum system. In particular, the…
According to quantum theory, a scientist in a sealed laboratory cannot tell whether they are inside a superposition or not. Consequently, so long as they remain isolated, they can assume without inconsistency that their measurements result…
Quantum Mechanics (QM) has faced deep controversies and debates since its origin when Werner Heisenberg proposed the first mathematical formalism capable to operationally account for what had been recently discovered as the new field of…
Quantum Darwinism describes the proliferation, in the environment, of multiple records of selected states of a quantum system. It explains how the fragility of a state of a single quantum system can lead to the classical robustness of…