Related papers: Two Wrongs Make One Right
It is argued that quantum mechanics follows naturally from the assumptions that there are no fundamental causal laws but only probabilities for physical processes that are constrained by symmetries, and reality is relational in the sense…
Probability theory, epistemically interpreted, provides an excellent, if not the best available account of inductive reasoning. This is so because there are general and definite rules for the change of subjective probabilities through…
Quantum theory is formulated as the uniquely consistent way to manipulate probability amplitudes. The crucial ingredient is a consistency constraint: if the amplitude of a quantum process can be computed in two different ways, the two…
Classical law and economics is foundational to the American legal system. Centered at the University of Chicago, its assumptions, most especially that humans act both rationally and selfishly, informs the thinking of legislatures, judges,…
Classical-realistic analysis of entangled systems have lead to retrodiction paradoxes, which ordinarily have been dismissed on the grounds of counter-factuality. Instead, we claim that such paradoxes point to a deeper logical structure…
Human agents happen to judge that a conjunction of two terms is more probable than one of the terms, in contradiction with the rules of classical probabilities---this is the conjunction fallacy. One of the most discussed accounts of this…
We prove several conjectures made by Z.-W. Sun on the existence of permutations conditioned by certain rational functions. Furthermore, we fully characterize all integer values of the "inverse difference" rational function. Our proofs…
That science and other domains are now largely data-driven means virtually unlimited opportunities for statisticians. With great power comes responsibility, so it's imperative that statisticians ensure that the methods being developing to…
The confrontation between General Relativity and experimental results, notably binary pulsar data, is summarized and its significance discussed. The agreement between experiment and theory is numerically very impressive. However, some…
Several new physics experiments in 1998 were performed and analyzed to show the subtlety of quantum theory, including the "wave-particle duality" and the non-separability of two-particle entangled state. Here it is shown that the…
We look afresh at the deduction of the "Lorentz contraction" of a "rod" from the Lorentz transformation equations of the special theory of relativity. We show that under special conditions, which include acceleration of the "rod", length…
In forecasting competitions, the traditional mechanism scores the predictions of each contestant against the outcome of each event, and the contestant with the highest total score wins. While it is well-known that this traditional mechanism…
Bayesian probability theory is used to analyze the oft-made assumption that humans are typical observers in the universe. Some theoretical calculations make the {\it selection fallacy} that we are randomly chosen from a class of objects by…
Quantum theory describes our universe incredibly successfully. To our classically-inclined brains, however, it is a bizarre description that requires a re-imagining of what fundamental reality, or "ontology", could look like. This thesis…
Farkas established that a system of linear inequalities has a solution if and only if we cannot obtain a contradiction by taking a linear combination of the inequalities. We state and formally prove several Farkas-like theorems over…
Results of measurements give legitimacy to a physical theory. What if acquiring these results in the first place necessitates what the same theory considers to be an interaction? In this note, we assume that theories account for…
We elaborate on the idea of fake particle and study its physical consequences. When a theory contains fakeons, the true classical limit is determined by the quantization and a subsequent process of "classicization". One of the major…
We propose an interpretation of physics named potentiality realism. This view, which can be applied to classical as well as to quantum physics, regards potentialities (i.e. intrinsic, objective propensities for individual events to obtain)…
One purpose -- quite a few thinkers would say the main purpose -- of seeking knowledge about the world is to enhance our ability to make good decisions. An item of knowledge that can make no conceivable difference with regard to anything we…
Because there are similarities between the evaluation of alternative stories in criminal trials and the evaluation of scientific theories, scholars have looked to literature in epistemology and the philosophy of science for insights on the…