Related papers: The future's not ours to see
A variety of physical unknowables are discussed. Provable lack of physical omniscience, omnipredictability and omnipotence is derived by reduction to problems which are known to be recursively unsolvable. "Chaotic" symbolic dynamical…
If the quantum mechanical description of reality is not complete and a hidden variable theory is possible, what arises is the problem to explain where the rates of the outcomes of statistical experiments come from, as already noticed by…
In QBism (or Quantum Bayesianism) a quantum state does not represent an element of physical reality but an agent's personal probability assignments, reflecting his subjective degrees of belief about the future content of his experience. In…
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…
This essay considers a simple model of observers that are influenced by the world around them. Consistent quantification of information about such influences results in a great deal of familiar physics. The end result is a new perspective…
I present my views on the future of America's program in particle physics. I discuss a variety of experimental initiatives that do have the potential to make transformative impacts on our discipline and should be included in our program, as…
The question of what ontological message (if any) is encoded in the formalism of contemporary physics is, to say the least, controversial. The reasons for this state of affairs are psychological and neurobiological. The processes by which…
These notes are an elaboration on: (i) a short course that I gave at the IPhT-Saclay in May-June 2012; (ii) a previous letter on reversibility in quantum mechanics. They present an introductory, but hopefully coherent, view of the main…
The process of doing Science in condition of uncertainty is illustrated with a toy experiment in which the inferential and the forecasting aspects are both present. The fundamental aspects of probabilistic reasoning, also relevant in real…
An overview of the Pondicherry interpretation of quantum mechanics is presented. This interpretation proceeds from the recognition that the fundamental theoretical framework of physics is a probability algorithm, which serves to describe an…
Probabilistic description of results of measurements and its consequences for understanding quantum mechanics are discussed. It is shown that the basic mathematical structure of quantum mechanics like the probability amplitude, Born rule,…
The interpretation of quantum mechanics is an area of increasing interest to many working physicists. In particular, interest has come from those involved in quantum computing and information theory, as there has always been a strong…
A source of unpredictability is equivalent to a source of information: unpredictability means not knowing which of a set of alternatives is the actual one; determining the actual alternative yields information. The degree of…
Some notes and questions about the concept of time are exposed. Particular reference is given to the problem in quantum mechanics, in connection with the indeterminacy principle.
Quantum mechanics is a theory that is as effective as it is counterintuitive. While quantum practices operate impeccably, they compel us to embrace enigmatic phenomena like the collapse of the state vector and non-locality, thereby pushing…
In this article we present a possible way to make usual quantum mechanics fully compatible with physical realism, defined as the statement that the goal of physics is to study entities of the natural world, existing independently from any…
The epistemological interpretation of quantum mechanics is still in an unacceptable status. This becomes obvious if looking on the variety of interpretations currently under discussion. However, the physical community together with…
In the first part of the talk, I give a low-resolution overview of the current state of particle physics - the triumph of the Standard Model and its discontents. I review and re-endorse the remarkably direct and (to me) compelling argument…
Does the notion of a quantum randomized or nondeterministic algorithm make sense, and if so, does quantum randomness or nondeterminism add power? Although reasonable quantum random sources do not add computational power, the discussion of…
According to quantum theory, measurements generate random outcomes, in stark contrast with classical mechanics. This raises the question of whether there could exist an extension of the theory which removes this indeterminism, as suspected…