Putting Paradoxes to Work: Contextuality in Measurement-Based Quantum

The Kochen-Specker Theorem

The Kochen-Specker theorem is an important and subtle topic in the foundations of quantum mechanics (QM). The theorem demonstrates the impossibility of a certain type of interpretation of QM in terms of hidden variables (HV) that naturally suggests itself when one begins to consider the project of interpretating QM.We here present the theorem/argument and the foundational discussion surrounding it at different levels. The reader looking for a quick overview should read the following sections and subsections: 1, 2, 3.1, 3.2, 4, and 6. Those who read the whole entry will find proofs of some non-trivial claims in supplementary documents.

The Consistent Histories Approach to Quantum Mechanics

The consistent histories, also known as decoherent histories, approachto quantum interpretation is broadly compatible with standard quantummechanics as found in textbooks. However, the concept ofmeasurement by which probabilities are introduced in standardquantum theory no longer plays a fundamental role. Instead,all quantum time dependence is probabilistic (stochastic),with probabilities given by the Born rule or its extensions. Byrequiring that the description of a quantum system be carried outusing a well-defined probabilistic sample space (called a“framework”) this approach resolves many well-knownquantum paradoxes of quantum foundations. In particular, quantummechanics is local and consistent with special relativity. Classicalmechanics emerges as a useful approximation to the more fundamentalquantum mechanics under suitable conditions. The price to be paid forthis is a set of rules for reasoning resembling, but very much simplerthan, those of quantum logic. An important philosophical implicationis the absence of a single universally-true state of affairs at eachinstant of time. However, there is a correspondence limit in which thenew quantum logic becomes standard logic in the macroscopic world ofeveryday experience, and the laws of classical mechanics emerge as agood approximation to an underlying, and in principle more exact,quantum description.

QBism: Quantum Theory as a Hero's Handbook

This paper represents an elaboration of the lectures delivered by one of us (CAF) during "Course 197 -- Foundations of Quantum Physics" at the International School of Physics "Enrico Fermi" in Varenna, Italy, July 2016. Much of the material for it is drawn from arXiv:1003.5209, arXiv:1401.7254, and arXiv:1405.2390. However there are substantial additions of original material in Sections 4, 7, 8 and 9, along with clarifications and expansions of the older content throughout. Topics include the meaning of subjective probability; no-cloning, teleportation, and quantum tomography from the subjectivist Bayesian perspective; the message QBism receives from Bell inequality violations (namely, that nature is creative); the import of symmetric informationally complete (SIC) quantum measurements for the technical side of QBism; quantum cosmology QBist-style; and a potential meaning for the holographic principle within QBism.

The Causal Axioms of Algebraic Quantum Field Theory: A Diagnostic

This paper examines the axioms of algebraic quantum field theory (AQFT) that aim to characterize the theory as one that implements relativistic causation. I suggest that the spectrum condition (SC), microcausality (MC), and primitive causality axioms (PC), taken individually, fall short of fulfilling this goal against what some philosophers have claimed. Instead, I will show that the “local primitive causality” (LPC) condition captures each axiom’s advantages. However, this is only the case because SC, MC, and PC, taken together, imply LPC, as I will show from a construction by Haag and Schroer (1962).

‘Shut up and calculate’ does a disservice to quantum mechanics | Aeon Essays

The cliché has it that the Copenhagen interpretation demands adherence without deep enquiry. That does physics a disservice

Tethered Reasoning: Decoupling Entropy from Hallucination in Quantized LLMs via Manifold Steering

A fundamental challenge in quantized inference is the temperature-entropy trade-off: low sampling temperatures yield repetitive, mode-collapsed outputs, while high temperatures (T>2.0T{>}2.0) cause what is conventionally termed “hallucination”—semantic incoherence and factual errors. Quantization exacerbates this: 4-bit models exhibit earlier collapse than full-precision counterparts [5, 6]. Most inference frameworks cap temperature at T=2.0T{=}2.0, treating high-entropy regimes as inherently unstable.

The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate But Not Instantiate Consciousness

Computational functionalism dominates current debates on AI consciousness. This is the hypothesis that subjective experience emerges entirely from abstract causal topology, regardless of the underlying physical substrate. We argue this view fundamentally mischaracterizes how physics relates to information. We call this mistake the Abstraction Fallacy. Tracing the causal origins of abstraction reveals that symbolic computation is not an intrinsic physical process. Instead, it is a mapmaker-dependent description. It requires an active, experiencing cognitive agent to alphabetize continuous physics into a finite set of meaningful states. Consequently, we do not need a complete, finalized theory of consciousness to assess AI sentience—a demand that simply pushes the question beyond near-term resolution and deepens the AI welfare trap. What we actually need is a rigorous ontology of computation. The framework proposed here explicitly separates simulation (behavioral mimicry driven by vehicle causality) from instantiation (intrinsic physical constitution driven by content causality). Establishing this ontological boundary shows why algorithmic symbol manipulation is structurally incapable of instantiating experience. Crucially, this argument does not rely on biological exclusivity. If an artificial system were ever conscious, it would be because of its specific physical constitution, never its syntactic architecture. Ultimately, this framework offers a physically grounded refutation of computational functionalism to resolve the current uncertainty surrounding AI consciousness.

A Post-Quantum Future for Let's Encrypt

Let’s Encrypt is committed to a post-quantum-safe Web PKI. The path we’re planning to take is Merkle Tree Certificates (“MTCs”), a new approach that adds post-quantum authentication to the web without sacrificing the speed and reliability that have made TLS universal. This post is about these plans and why we believe MTCs are worth pursuing as a key to a post-quantum future. An increasingly urgent problem For much of the last several years, the conversation about post-quantum cryptography has been a conversation about encryption. The reasoning was straightforward: an attacker who records encrypted traffic today might be able to decrypt it years from now once quantum computers can break the underlying math. Authentication, the part of TLS that indicates a server is who it says it is, has been a less urgent problem. A quantum computer needs to forge a signature in real time, not retroactively, so threats to authentication hinge on the existence of a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC).

Quantum Country

A free introduction to quantum computing and quantum mechanics

Collapse Theories

Quantum mechanics, with its revolutionary implications, has posedinnumerable problems to philosophers of science. In particular, it hassuggested reconsidering basic concepts such as the existence of aworld that is, at least to some extent, independent of the observer,the possibility of getting reliable and objective knowledge about it,and the possibility of taking (under appropriate circumstances) atleast some properties to be objectively possessed by physical systems.It has also raised many others questions which are well known to thoseinvolved in the debate on the interpretation of this pillar of modernscience. One can argue that most of the problems are not only due tothe intrinsic revolutionary nature of the phenomena which have led tothe development of the theory. They are also related to the fact that,in its standard formulation and interpretation, quantum mechanics is atheory which is excellent (in fact it has an unprecedented success inthe history of science) in telling us everything about what weobserve, but it meets with serious difficulties in telling uswhat there is. We are making here specific reference to thecentral problem of the theory, usually referred to as themeasurement problem, which is accompanying quantum theory sinceits birth. It is just one of the many attempts to overcome thedifficulties posed by this problem that has led to the development ofCollapse Theories, i.e., to the Dynamical ReductionProgram (DRP). As we shall see, this approach consists inaccepting that the dynamical equation of the standard theory should bemodified by the addition of stochastic and nonlinear terms. The nicefact is that the resulting theory is capable, on the basis of a singledynamics which is assumed to govern all natural processes, to accountat the same time for all well-established facts about microscopicsystems as described by the standard theory, as well as for theso-called postulate of wave packet reduction (WPR), which accompaniesthe interaction of a microscopic system with a measuring device. As iswell known, such a postulate is assumed in the standard scheme just inorder to guarantee that measurements have outcomes but, as weshall discuss below, it meets with insurmountable difficulties if onetries to derive it by assuming the measurement itself to be a processgoverned by the linear laws of the theory. Finally, the collapsetheories account in a completely satisfactory way for the classicalbehavior of macroscopic systems.

Alexander Lerchner, The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate But Not Instantiate Consciousness - PhilPapers

Computational functionalism dominates current debates on AI consciousness. This is the hypothesis that subjective experience emerges entirely from abstract causal topology, regardless of the underlying physical substrate. We argue this view ...

Alexander Lerchner, The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate But Not Instantiate Consciousness - PhilArchive

Computational functionalism dominates current debates on AI consciousness. This is the hypothesis that subjective experience emerges entirely from abstract causal topology, regardless of the underlying physical substrate. We argue this view ...

Spirits and the incompleteness of physics

Complexity, renormalization, and the spirits beyond the horizon of theory