Related papers: Friendly thoughts on thoughtful friendliness
It is argued that Feynman's rules for evaluating probabilities, combined with von Neumann's principle of psycho-physical parallelism, help avoid inconsistencies, often associated with quantum theory. The former allows one to assign…
"Wigner's friend" refers to a quantum process of which different observers, following the rules of quantum mechanics, give contradictory descriptions. Lostaglio and Bowles have recently claimed to describe a classical system showing the…
The relational approach to quantum states asserts that the physical description of quantum systems is always relative to something or someone. In relational quantum mechanics (RQM) it is relative to other quantum systems, in the…
We show how a nonlocal gravitational interaction can circumvent the Weinberg no-go theorem on cosmological constant, which forbids the existence of any solution to the cosmological constant problem within the context of local field theories…
The basic question in the long-standing debate about free will (FW) is not whether FW can be demonstrated to exist nor even whether it exists, but instead how to define it scientifically. If FW is not dismissed as an illusion nor identified…
It is difficult to extract reliable criteria for causal locality from the limited ingredients found in textbook quantum theory. In the end, Bell humbly warned that his eponymous theorem was based on criteria that "should be viewed with the…
Cognitive abilities, such as Theory of Mind (ToM), play a vital role in facilitating cooperation in human social interactions. However, our study reveals that agents with higher ToM abilities may not necessarily exhibit better cooperative…
Orthodox Copenhagen quantum theory renounces the quest to understand the reality in which we are imbedded, and settles for practical rules that describe connections between our observations. However, an examination of certain nonlocal…
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…
We attempt to dissolve the measurement problem using an anthropic principle which allows us to invoke rational observers. We argue that the key feature of such observers is that they are rational (we need not care whether they are…
The ability to interpret the mental state of another agent based on its behavior, also called Theory of Mind (ToM), is crucial for humans in any kind of social interaction. Artificial systems, such as intelligent assistants, would also…
Wigner's friend paradoxes highlight contradictions between measurements made by Friends inside a laboratory and superobservers outside a laboratory, who have access to an entangled state of the measurement apparatus. The contradictions lead…
The problems connected with a causality of space-time universe and with the paradox of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen are considered. A main philosophical problem and its possible solutions are briefly discussed. A concept of unified local…
Within a global physical theory, a notion of locality allows us to find and justify information-processing primitives, like non-signalling between distant agents. Here we propose exploring the opposite direction: to take agents as the basic…
We explore the notion of events at the intersection between quantum physics and gravity, inspired by recent research on superpositions of semiclassical spacetimes. By going through various experiments and thought experiments -- from a…
Functional theories of consciousness, based on emergence of conscious experiences from the execution of a particular function by an insentient brain, face the hard problem of consciousness of explaining why the insentient brain should…
The intuitive notion of evidence has both semantic and syntactic features. In this paper, we develop an {\em evidence logic} for epistemic agents faced with possibly contradictory evidence from different sources. The logic is based on a…
Quantum cognition is an emerging field making uses of quantum theory to model cognitive phenomena which cannot be explained by classical theories. Usually, in cognitive tests, subjects are asked to give a response to a question, but in this…
We present a formalism within which the relationship (discovered by Drinfel'd) between associators (for quasi-triangular quasi-Hopf algebras) and (a variant of) the Grothendieck-Teichmuller group becomes simple and natural, leading to a…
In all local realistic theories worked out till now, locality is considered as a basic assumption. Most people in the field consider the inconsistency between local realistic theories and quantum mechanics to be a result of non-local nature…