On the significance of Wigner's Friend in contexts beyond quantum foundations

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2402.08727v2
• Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 15:54:12 GMT
• Title: On the significance of Wigner's Friend in contexts beyond quantum foundations
• Authors: Caroline L. Jones, Markus P. Mueller,
• Abstract summary: Wigner's Friend highlights a counterintuitive feature that is unique to quantum theory. We argue that the gist of the Wigner's Friend paradox can be reproduced without assuming quantum physics.
• Score: 0.0
• License:
• Abstract: There has been a surge of recent interest in the Wigner's Friend paradox, sparking several novel thought experiments and no-go theorems. The main narrative has been that Wigner's Friend highlights a counterintuitive feature that is unique to quantum theory, and which is closely related to the quantum measurement problem. Here, we challenge this view. We argue that the gist of the Wigner's Friend paradox can be reproduced without assuming quantum physics, and that it underlies a much broader class of enigmas in the foundations of physics and philosophy. To show this, we first consider several recently proposed Extended Wigner's Friend scenarios, and demonstrate that some of their implications for the absoluteness of observations can be reproduced by classical thought experiments that involve the duplication of agents. Crucially, some of these classical scenarios are technologically much easier to implement than their quantum counterparts. Then, we argue that the essential structural ingredient of all these scenarios is a feature that we call "Restriction A": essentially, that a physical theory cannot give us a probabilistic description of the observations of all agents. Finally, we argue that this difficulty is at the core of other puzzles in the foundations of physics and philosophy, and demonstrate this explicitly for cosmology's Boltzmann brain problem. Our analysis suggests that Wigner's Friend should be studied in a larger context, addressing a frontier of human knowledge beyond quantum foundations: to obtain reliable predictions for experiments in which these predictions can be privately but not intersubjectively verified.

Related papers

• What Does '(Non)-Absoluteness of Observed Events' Mean? [0.0]
  We argue that the Wigner's friend paradox, the theorem of Bong et al and the theorem of Lawrence et al are all best understood as demonstrating that if quantum mechanics is universal. We also argue that these theorems taken together suggest interesting possibilities for a different kind of relational approach in which dynamical states are relativized whilst observed events are absolute.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-09-06T17:13:31Z)
• Logic meets Wigner's Friend (and their Friends) [49.1574468325115]
  We take a fresh look at Wigner's Friend thought-experiment and some of its more recent variants and extensions. We discuss various solutions proposed in the literature, focusing on a few questions.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-07-04T13:31:56Z)
• A general quantum circuit framework for Extended Wigner's Friend Scenarios: logically and causally consistent reasoning without absolute measurement events [0.0]
  Wigner's Friend Scenarios go beyond the standard usage of quantum theory. We develop a general quantum circuit framework for EWFSs. We show that an objective notion of measurement events emerges in real-world experiments.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2022-09-19T18:13:42Z)
• Quantum realism: axiomatization and quantification [77.34726150561087]
  We build an axiomatization for quantum realism -- a notion of realism compatible with quantum theory. We explicitly construct some classes of entropic quantifiers that are shown to satisfy almost all of the proposed axioms.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-10-10T18:08:42Z)
• Consistency in the description of quantum measurement: Quantum theory can consistently describe the use of itself [8.122270502556372]
  I propose a slight addition to standard textbook quantum mechanics, in the form of two rules, which avoids the paradox. The first specifies when a given quantum dynamics can be interpreted as a measurement. The second requires that a joint context be used to determine whether several different dynamical evolutions can all be interpreted as measurement.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-07-05T18:00:15Z)
• Testing quantum theory with thought experiments [4.847980206213335]
  How should one model systems that include agents who are themselves using quantum theory? We give a state-of-the-art overview on quantum thought experiments involving observers.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-06-09T18:08:23Z)
• Quantum Causal Inference in the Presence of Hidden Common Causes: an Entropic Approach [34.77250498401055]
  We put forth a new theoretical framework for merging quantum information science and causal inference by exploiting entropic principles. We apply our proposed framework to an experimentally relevant scenario of identifying message senders on quantum noisy links. This approach can lay the foundations of identifying originators of malicious activity on future multi-node quantum networks.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-04-24T22:45:50Z)
• Observers of quantum systems cannot agree to disagree [55.41644538483948]
  We ask whether agreement between observers can serve as a physical principle that must hold for any theory of the world. We construct examples of (postquantum) no-signaling boxes where observers can agree to disagree.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-02-17T19:00:04Z)
• A no-go theorem for the persistent reality of Wigner's friend's perception [0.0]
  We formulate a no-go theorem for the persistent reality of Wigner's friend's perception. In a Wigner's friend scenario, there is no joint probability distribution for the friend's perceived measurement outcomes at two different times. We briefly discuss which of the theorem's assumptions are more likely to be dropped within various popular interpretations of quantum mechanics.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-09-20T18:56:52Z)
• Understanding Quantum Mechanics (Beyond Metaphysical Dogmatism and Naive Empiricism) [0.0]
  We will argue that the reason behind the impossibility to reach a meaningful answer to this question is strictly related to the 20th Century Bohrian-positivist re-foundation of physics. We will also argue that the possibility of understanding QM is at plain sight, given we return to the original framework of physics in which the meaning of understanding has always been clear.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-09-01T14:40:44Z)

This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.

This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.