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Two oppositely charged droplets of (say) water in e.g. oil or air will tend to drift together under the influence of their charges. As they make contact, one might expect them to coalesce and form one large droplet, and this indeed happens…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2014-01-07 Sebastian Helmensdorfer , Peter Topping

The ``Gibbs Paradox'' refers to several related questions concerning entropy in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics: whether it is an extensive quantity or not, how it changes when identical particles are mixed, and the proper way to…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2009-11-07 Chih-Yuan Tseng , Ariel Caticha

We argue that the double-slit experiment can be understood much better by considering it as an experiment whereby one uses electrons to study the set-up rather than an experiment whereby we use a set-up to study the behaviour of electrons.…

General Physics · Physics 2017-05-12 Gerrit Coddens

Discussions on indeterminism in physics focus on the possibility of an open future, i.e. the possibility of having potential alternative future events, the realisation of one of which is not fully determined by the present state of affairs.…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2023-02-21 Flavio Del Santo , Nicolas Gisin

It is a widespread belief that results like G\"odel's incompleteness theorems or the intrinsic randomness of quantum mechanics represent fundamental limitations to humanity's strive for scientific knowledge. As the argument goes, there are…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2021-08-30 Markus P. Mueller

In quantum gravity there is no notion of absolute time. Like all other quantities in the theory, the notion of time has to be introduced "relationally", by studying the behavior of some physical quantities in terms of others chosen as a…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2009-03-12 Rodolfo Gambini , Jorge Pullin

Classical physics is generally regarded as deterministic, as opposed to quantum mechanics that is considered the first theory to have introduced genuine indeterminism into physics. We challenge this view by arguing that the alleged…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-12-11 Flavio Del Santo , Nicolas Gisin

Entanglement, or quantum inseparability, is a crucial resource in quantum information applications, and therefore the experimental generation of separated yet entangled systems is of paramount importance. Experimental demonstrations of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2009-11-07 M. G. Raymer , A. C. Funk , B. C. Sanders , H. de Guise

We establish the undecidability of conditional affine information inequalities, the undecidability of the conditional independence implication problem with a constraint that one random variable is binary, and the undecidability of the…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2022-02-11 Cheuk Ting Li

This paper presents a theory of systemic undecidability, reframing incomputability as a structural property of systems rather than a localized feature of specific functions or problems. We define a notion of causal embedding and prove a…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-09-03 Seth Bulin

We provide a decision-theoretic framework for dealing with uncertainty in quantum mechanics. This uncertainty is two-fold: on the one hand there may be uncertainty about the state the quantum system is in, and on the other hand, as is…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-01 Keano De Vos , Gert de Cooman , Alexander Erreygers , Jasper De Bock

The letter submitted is an executive summary of our previous paper. To solve the Einstein Podolsky Rosen 'paradox' the two boundary quantum mechanics is taken as self consistent interpretation of quantum dynamics. The difficulty with this…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-02-07 Fritz W. Bopp

Decisions are often based on imprecise, uncertain or vague information. Likewise, the consequences of an action are often equally unpredictable, thus putting the decision maker into a twofold jeopardy. Assuming that the effects of an action…

General Economics · Economics 2022-05-03 Stefan Rass , Sandra König , Stefan Schauer

Causal inference from observational data provides strong evidence for the best action in decision-making without performing expensive randomized trials. The effect of an action is usually not identifiable under unobserved confounding, even…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-02 Md Musfiqur Rahman , Ziwei Jiang , Hilaf Hasson , Murat Kocaoglu

These lectures deal with the problem of inductive inference, that is, the problem of reasoning under conditions of incomplete information. Is there a general method for handling uncertainty? Or, at least, are there rules that could in…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2016-09-08 Ariel Caticha

The study of word equations (or the existential theory of equations over free monoids) is a central topic in mathematics and theoretical computer science. The problem of deciding whether a given word equation has a solution was shown to be…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2018-02-05 Joel Day , Vijay Ganesh , Paul He , Florin Manea , Dirk Nowotka

Here we continue with the ideas expressed in "On the strangeness of quantum mechanics" aiming to demonstrate more concretely how this philosophical outlook might be used as a key for resolving the measurement problem. We will address in…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-03-13 Marcello Poletti

Recent philosophical discussions about metaphysical indeterminacy have been substantiated with the idea that quantum mechanics, one of the most successful physical theories in the history of science, provides explicit instances of worldly…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2024-03-12 Andrea Oldofredi

The calculation of the band-gap by density-functional theory (DFT) methods is examined by considering the behavior of the energy as a function of number of electrons. It is found that the incorrect band-gap prediction with most approximate…

Materials Science · Physics 2009-11-13 Aron J. Cohen , Paula Mori-Sánchez , Weitao Yang

The basic problem posed by free will (FW) for physics appears to be not the \textit{physical} one of whether it is compatible with the laws of physics, but the \textit{logical} one of how to consistently define it, since it incorporates the…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2012-10-24 Chetan S. Mandayam Nayakar , R. Srikanth