Related papers: Bayes Keeps Boltzmann Brains at Bay
We analyze a model of learning and belief formation in networks in which agents follow Bayes rule yet they do not recall their history of past observations and cannot reason about how other agents' beliefs are formed. They do so by making…
Bayesian inference --- although becoming popular in physics and chemistry --- is hampered up to now by the vagueness of its notion of prior probability. Some of its supporters argue that this vagueness is the unavoidable consequence of the…
This is a brief reply to Goldstein's article on ``Quantum Theory Without Observers'' in Physics Today. It is pointed out that Bohm's pilot wave theory is successful only because it keeps Schr\"odinger's (exact) wave mechanics unchanged,…
In this work we challenge the main conclusions of Gu et al work (Controllability of structural brain networks. Nature communications 6, 8414, doi:10.1038/ncomms9414, 2015) on brain controllability. Using the same methods and analyses on…
Discussions of political disagreement emphasize two patterns: polarization, where beliefs diverge toward opposite extremes on each issue dimension; and issue alignment, where individuals' views across issues become more internally…
Although the conscious state is considered an emergent property of the underlying brain activity and thus somehow resides on brain hardware, there is a non-univocal mapping between both. Given a neural hardware, multiple conscious patterns…
Bayesian models of cognition hypothesize that human brains make sense of data by representing probability distributions and applying Bayes' rule to find the best explanation for available data. Understanding the neural mechanisms underlying…
Recently, it has been argued that no extension of quantum theory can have improved predictive power under a strong assumption of free choice of the experimental settings and validity of quantum mechanics. Here, under a different free choice…
We consider two straightforward rules that govern the stochastic choice in a single quantum mechanical event. They are shown to lead to absurd results if an objective state reduction is allowed to compete with an observer state reduction.…
We present a logical proof that computing machines, and by extension physical systems, can never be certain if they possess conscious awareness. This implies that human consciousness is associated with a violation of energy conservation. We…
We consider the well-known Boltzmann brains problem in frames of simple phantom energy models with little rip and big rip singularity. It is showed that these models (i) satisfy to observational data and (ii) may be free from Boltzmann…
Non-Bayesian social learning theory provides a framework that models distributed inference for a group of agents interacting over a social network. In this framework, each agent iteratively forms and communicates beliefs about an unknown…
Bayesian networks provide an elegant formalism for representing and reasoning about uncertainty using probability theory. Theyare a probabilistic extension of propositional logic and, hence, inherit some of the limitations of propositional…
A popular theory of perceptual processing holds that the brain learns both a generative model of the world and a paired recognition model using variational Bayesian inference. Most hypotheses of how the brain might learn these models assume…
I wish to discuss a large, interwoven set of topics pointed at in the title above. Much of what I say is highly speculative, some is testable, some is, at present, surely not. It is, I hope, useful, to set these ideas forth for our…
Nonmonotonic reasoning is a pattern of reasoning that allows an agent to make and retract (tentative) conclusions from inconclusive evidence. This paper gives a possible-worlds interpretation of the nonmonotonic reasoning problem based on…
Objections to pilot-wave theory frequently come in three mutually-contradictory categories: that the theory is too bizarrely different from ordinary physics, that the theory is not radically different enough, and that the physics of…
Cosmological scenarios wherein the cumulative number of spontaneously formed, cognitively impaired, disembodied transient observers is vastly larger than the corresponding number of atypical `ordinary observers' (OOs) formed in the…
Bohmian mechanics (BM) draws a picture of nature, which is completely different from that drawn by standard quantum mechanics (SQM): Particles are at any time at a definite position, and the universe evolves deterministically.…
A perceived problem with the standard flat-lambda model is that in the far future spacetime becomes an exponentially expanding de Sitter space, filled with Gibbons-Hawking thermal radiation, and given infinite time there will appear an…