Related papers: Law without law: from observer states to physics v…
In physics, there is the prevailing intuition that we are part of a unique external world, and that the goal of physics is to understand and describe this world. This assumption of the fundamentality of objective reality is often seen as a…
It is generally believed that physical laws, reflecting an inherent order in the universe, are ordained by nature. However, in modern physics the observer plays a central role raising questions about how an observer-centric physics can…
A realist description of our universe requires a twofold concept of locality. On one hand, there are the strictly Einstein-local interactions which generate the time evolution. On the other hand, the quantum state space calls for a…
Interpretations of quantum theory have traditionally assumed a "Galilean" observer, a bare "point of view" implemented physically by a quantum system. This paper investigates the consequences of replacing such an…
In the modern quantum mechanics of cosmology observers are physical systems within the universe. They have no preferred role in the formulation of the theory nor in its predictions of third person probabilities of what occurs. However,…
Inferring universal laws of the environment is an important ability of human intelligence as well as a symbol of general AI. In this paper, we take a step toward this goal such that we introduce a new challenging problem of inferring…
I argue for an approach to the Foundations of Physics that puts the question in the title center stage, rather than asking "what is the case in the world?". This approach, algorithmic idealism, attempts to give a mathematically rigorous…
Physical theories must stem from observation. The possibility that perceived events are simulated, not real, raises a crucial dilemma about the credibility of known physics, known as the simulation hypothesis. To analyze this hypothesis in…
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…
[Abridged] Some cosmological theories propose that the observable universe is a small part of a much larger universe in which parameters describing the low-energy laws of physics vary from region to region. How can we reasonably assess a…
At this point in time, two major areas of physics, statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics, rest on the foundations of probability and entropy. The last century saw several significant fundamental advances in our understanding of the…
In 1929 Szilard pointed out that the physics of the observer may play a role in the analysis of experiments. The same year, Bohr pointed out that complementarity appears to arise naturally in psychology where both the objects of perception…
Quantum information science is a source of task-related axioms whose consequences can be explored in general settings encompassing quantum mechanics, classical theory, and more. Quantum states are compendia of probabilities for the outcomes…
In non relativistic physics it is assumed that both chronological ordering and causal ordering of events (telling whether there exists a causal relationship between two events or not) are absolute, observer independent properties. In…
I start from the fundamental principles of non-relativistic quantum mechanics, without probability, and interpret them using the notion of coexistence: a quantum state can be read, not uniquely, as a coexistence of other quantum states,…
Quantum theory makes the most accurate empirical predictions and yet it lacks simple, comprehensible physical principles from which the theory can be uniquely derived. A broad class of probabilistic theories exist which all share some…
In quantum experiments the acquisition and representation of basic experimental information is governed by the multinomial probability distribution. There exist unique random variables, whose standard deviation becomes asymptotically…
Although time is one of our most intuitive physical concepts, its understanding at the fundamental level is still an open question in physics. For instance, time in quantum mechanics and general relativity are two distinct and incompatible…
Quantum Darwinism offers an explanation for the emergence of classical objective features -- those we are used to at macroscopic scales -- from quantum properties at the microscopic level. The interaction of a quantum system with its…
Algorithmic idealism represents a transformative approach to understanding reality, emphasizing the informational structure of self-states and their algorithmic transitions over traditional notions of an external, objective universe. Rooted…