According to quantum mechanics, the outcome of an experiment exists relative to an Experimenter who performs a measurement on the system under study. Witnessing the outcome of an experience requires the measurement on...According to quantum mechanics, the outcome of an experiment exists relative to an Experimenter who performs a measurement on the system under study. Witnessing the outcome of an experience requires the measurement on a physical system whose size must match the complexity of the Experimenter’s observation. We argue that such a physical system must have a certain space-time extension so that it can encode the rich and complex data embedded in the witnessed experience. The complementarity principle in quantum mechanics leads us to conjecture that the observable events constituting an experience have space-like separation with each other. This seems to be in contradiction with our perceived locality of physical laws, and encourages us to think that the act of measurement is not a physical process, in the sense that a measurement outcome witnessed by an Experimenter is not necessarily related to the physical description of the Experimenter observed from the outside.展开更多
Environment induced decoherence, and other quantum processes, have been proposed in the literature to explain the apparent spontaneous selection—out of the many mathematically eligible bases—of a privileged measurem...Environment induced decoherence, and other quantum processes, have been proposed in the literature to explain the apparent spontaneous selection—out of the many mathematically eligible bases—of a privileged measurement basis that corresponds to what we actually observe. This paper describes such processes, and demonstrates that—contrary to common belief—no such process can actually lead to a preferred basis in general. The key observation is that environment induced decoherence implicitly assumes a prior independence of the observed system, the observer and the environment. However, such independence cannot be guaranteed, and we show that environment induced decoherence does not succeed in establishing a preferred measurement basis in general. We conclude that the existence of the preferred basis must be postulated in quantum mechanics, and that changing the basis for a measurement is, and must be, described as an actual physical process.展开更多
This paper questions the generally accepted assumption that one can make a random choice that is independent of the rest of the universe. We give a general description of any setup that could be conceived to generate ...This paper questions the generally accepted assumption that one can make a random choice that is independent of the rest of the universe. We give a general description of any setup that could be conceived to generate random numbers. Based on the fact that the initial state of such setup together with its environment cannot be known, we show that the independence of its generated output cannot be guaranteed. Some consequences of this theoretical limitation are discussed.展开更多
文摘According to quantum mechanics, the outcome of an experiment exists relative to an Experimenter who performs a measurement on the system under study. Witnessing the outcome of an experience requires the measurement on a physical system whose size must match the complexity of the Experimenter’s observation. We argue that such a physical system must have a certain space-time extension so that it can encode the rich and complex data embedded in the witnessed experience. The complementarity principle in quantum mechanics leads us to conjecture that the observable events constituting an experience have space-like separation with each other. This seems to be in contradiction with our perceived locality of physical laws, and encourages us to think that the act of measurement is not a physical process, in the sense that a measurement outcome witnessed by an Experimenter is not necessarily related to the physical description of the Experimenter observed from the outside.
文摘Environment induced decoherence, and other quantum processes, have been proposed in the literature to explain the apparent spontaneous selection—out of the many mathematically eligible bases—of a privileged measurement basis that corresponds to what we actually observe. This paper describes such processes, and demonstrates that—contrary to common belief—no such process can actually lead to a preferred basis in general. The key observation is that environment induced decoherence implicitly assumes a prior independence of the observed system, the observer and the environment. However, such independence cannot be guaranteed, and we show that environment induced decoherence does not succeed in establishing a preferred measurement basis in general. We conclude that the existence of the preferred basis must be postulated in quantum mechanics, and that changing the basis for a measurement is, and must be, described as an actual physical process.
文摘This paper questions the generally accepted assumption that one can make a random choice that is independent of the rest of the universe. We give a general description of any setup that could be conceived to generate random numbers. Based on the fact that the initial state of such setup together with its environment cannot be known, we show that the independence of its generated output cannot be guaranteed. Some consequences of this theoretical limitation are discussed.
