{"id":185540,"date":"2024-03-20T16:24:59","date_gmt":"2024-03-20T21:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/wigners-friend-the-quantum-thought-experiment-that-continues-to-confound"},"modified":"2024-03-20T16:24:59","modified_gmt":"2024-03-20T21:24:59","slug":"wigners-friend-the-quantum-thought-experiment-that-continues-to-confound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/wigners-friend-the-quantum-thought-experiment-that-continues-to-confound","title":{"rendered":"Wigner\u2019s friend: the quantum thought experiment that continues to confound"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/wigners-friend-the-quantum-thought-experiment-that-continues-to-confound2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Quantum information theorists have turned Wigner\u2019s friend into a powerful set of thought experiments for testing the plausibility of physical assumptions we make when we share information. These elaborated thought experiments involve <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1604.07422\">multiple participants in multiple labs<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41567-020-0990-x\">entangled quantum states between friends<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/sciadv.aaw9832\">real-life entangled photon experiments<\/a> to smoke out what our classical assumptions are.<\/p>\n<p>Is there a fork in the road, classical or quantum? To stick with the classical interpretation that says Wigner\u2019s friend involves two inconsistent descriptions of one state of affairs produces paradoxes. The quantum perspective implies there are descriptions of two different states of affairs. The first is intuitive but ends up in a contradiction, the other is less intuitive, but consistent. Quantum friendship means never having to say you\u2019re sorry for your use of the formalism.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Robert P Crease<\/strong> is a professor (click link below for full bio), <strong>Jennifer Carter<\/strong> is a lecturer and <strong>Gino Elia<\/strong> is a PhD student, all in the Department of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, US.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Quantum information theorists have turned Wigner\u2019s friend into a powerful set of thought experiments for testing the plausibility of physical assumptions we make when we share information. These elaborated thought experiments involve multiple participants in multiple labs, entangled quantum states between friends and real-life entangled photon experiments to smoke out what our classical assumptions are. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}