A review and analysis of six extended Wigner's friend arguments
- URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2308.16220v2
- Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2023 20:59:21 GMT
- Title: A review and analysis of six extended Wigner's friend arguments
- Authors: David Schmid, Y\`il\`e Y\=ing, Matthew Leifer
- Abstract summary: Wigner's friend thought experiment was intended to illustrate the difficulty one has in describing an agent as a quantum system.
We show that all of the arguments hinge on assumptions about correlations between measurement outcomes that are not accessible to any observer.
Although some of these assumptions are not entirely well-motivated, all of the arguments do shed light on the nature of quantum theory.
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- License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
- Abstract: The Wigner's friend thought experiment was intended to illustrate the
difficulty one has in describing an agent as a quantum system when that agent
performs a measurement. While it does pose a challenge to the orthodox
interpretation of quantum theory, most modern interpretations have no trouble
in resolving the difficulty. Recently, a number of extensions of Wigner's ideas
have been proposed. We provide a gentle introduction to six such arguments,
modifying the specifics of many of them so that they are as simple and unified
as possible. In particular, we show that all of the arguments hinge on
assumptions about correlations between measurement outcomes that are not
accessible to any observer, even in principle. We then provide a critical
analysis of each argument, focusing especially on how well one can motivate the
required assumptions regarding these inaccessible correlations. Although we
argue that some of these assumptions are not entirely well-motivated, all of
the arguments do shed light on the nature of quantum theory, especially when
concerning the description of agents and their measurements. Although there are
other possible responses, the most compelling of these no-go theorems can be
taken to support the view that measurement outcomes are perspectival rather
than absolute.
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