Related papers: The Movie Graph Argument Revisited
Ever since its foundations were laid nearly a century ago, quantum theory has provoked questions about the very nature of reality. We address these questions by considering the universe, and the multiverse, fundamentally as complex…
General relativity required the abandonment of Euclidean geometry. Here we show that quantum theory requires the abandonment of classical logic. We show that the Hilbert space representation of quantum theory is logically inevitable. There…
I explore physics implications of the External Reality Hypothesis (ERH) that there exists an external physical reality completely independent of us humans. I argue that with a sufficiently broad definition of mathematics, it implies the…
The quantum description of the microscopic world is incompatible with the classical description of the macroscopic world, both mathematically and conceptually. Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that classical mechanics emerges from…
While graphs and abstract data structures can be large and complex, practical instances are often regular or highly structured. If the instance has sufficient structure, we might hope to compress the object into a more succinct…
This paper explores the intersection of identity, individuality, and reality through competing frameworks, including classical metaphysics, quantum mechanics, and computational theories. Traditional metaphysical notions of fixed identity…
In this paper we discuss Internal Relativity, a recent program to address the problem of quantum gravity. In our approach we change the relationship between spacetime and matter. Currently we view matter as propagating on spacetime.…
We investigate the structure common to causal theories that attempt to explain a (part of) the world. Causality implies conservation of identity, itself a far from simple notion. It imposes strong demands on the universalizing power of the…
A long-standing tradition, largely present in both the physical and the philosophical literature, regards the advent of (special) relativity -- with its block-universe picture -- as the failure of any indeterministic program in physics. On…
In this article I aim to provide an intuitive and non-technical introduction to decoherence and quantum Darwinism. Together these theories explain how our classical reality emerges from an underlying quantum mechanical description. Here I…
Contextuality lays at the heart of quantum mechanics. In the prevailing opinion it is considered as a signature of 'quantumness' that classical theories lack. However, this assertion is only partially justified. Although contextuality is…
Scientific realism in classical (i.e. pre-quantum) physics has remained compatible with the naive realism of everyday thinking on the whole; whereas it has proven impossible to find any consistent way to visualize the world underlying…
Frames play an important role in various practical problems related to signal and image processing. In this paper, we define computable frames in computable Hilbert spaces and obtain computable versions of some of their characterizations.…
When modelling spacetime and classical physical fields, one typically assumes smoothness (infinite differentiability). But this assumption and its philosophical implications have not been sufficiently scrutinized. For example, we can appeal…
It has been known for some time that the usual inference drawn from the observed near-flatness of the large-scale Universe - namely the existence of a cosmological "flatness problem", which is then taken as a partial, but key motivation for…
The suggestion that particles of the same kind may be indistinguishable in a fundamental sense, even so that challenges to traditional notions of individuality and identity may arise, has first come up in the context of classical…
We considers how a particular kind of graph corresponds to multiplicative intuitionistic linear logic formula. The main feature of the graphical notation is that it absorbs certain symmetries between conjunction and implication. We look at…
The causal structure of cognition can be simulated but not implemented computationally, just as the causal structure of a comet can be simulated but not implemented computationally. The only thing that allows us even to imagine otherwise is…
One classical theory, as determined by an equation of motion or set of classical trajectories, can correspond to many unitarily {\em in}equivalent quantum theories upon canonical quantization. This arises from a remarkable ambiguity, not…
According to the so-called ``Quantum Darwinist'' approach, the emergence of ``classical islands'' from a quantum background is assumed to obey a (selection) principle of maximal information. We illustrate this idea by considering the…