Title: Is Quantum Uncertainty All in the Mind? - SAND
Headings: Is Quantum Uncertainty All in the Mind?
Is Quantum Uncertainty All in the Mind?
“A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself.”
Frequently wrong
End of observers

Content: For a QBist, the quantum-classical boundary is the split between what is going on in the real world and your subjective experience of it. End of observers
Quantum theorist William Wootters of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, thinks this is the most exciting interpretation of quantum theory to have emerged in years, and points to historical precedents. “ It addresses Schrödinger’s concern that our own subjective experience has been explicitly excluded from physical science, and both requires and provides a place for the experiencing subject,” he says. Others are less keen. Carlo Rovelli of Aix-Marseille University in France proposed a similar, less extreme, observer-dependent idea called relational quantum mechanics in 1996. He worries that QBism relies too much on a philosophy espoused by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century – that there is no direct experience of things, only that which we construct in our minds from sensory inputs. “ I would prefer an interpretation of quantum theory that would make sense even if there were no humans to observe anything,” he says. Antony Valentini of Clemson University in South Carolina also thinks it moves things in the wrong direction. He paints a picture of someone setting up equipment to measure the energy of a particle, and then going off for a cup of tea. During the tea break, did the pointer on the equipment’s dial have no definite orientation?