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Reflections on Zeilinger–Brukner Information Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

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In this short review I present my personal reflections on Zeilinger–Brukner information interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM).In general, this interpretation is very attractive for me. However, its rigid coupling to the notion of irreducible quantum randomness is a very complicated issue which I plan to address in more detail. This note may be useful for general public interested in quantum foundations, especially because I try to analyze essentials of the information interpretation critically (i.e., not just emphasizing its advantages as it is commonly done). This review is written in non-physicist friendly manner. Experts actively exploring this interpretation may be interested in the paper as well, as in the comments of “an external observer” who have been monitoring the development of this approach to QM during the last 18 years. The last part of this review is devoted to the general methodology of science with references to views of de Finetti, Wigner, and Peres.

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Notes

  1. In particular, recently three leading experimental groups [1–3] claimed that they were able to perform the loophole free test of violation of Bell’s inequality. This inequality plays of the role of borderline between classical and quantum physics. Experimental verification of its violation is the endpoint in the famous debate between Einstein and Bohr; it also justifies the mentioned quantum technological projects - quantum cryptography and random generators (especially the latter).

  2. Starting from conferences in Helsinki on quantum foundations in 1990th and conversations with Zeilinger at a number of conferences at the beginning of this century to my recent discussions with Zeilinger and Brukner during the Växjö conferences and my visiting fellowships in Vienna,

  3. Surprisingly they did not refer to von Neumann at all (of course, it might be that I missed some of their other papers with a corresponding reference to von Neumann as the inventor of irreducible quantum randomness). They use the term “objective randomness”, but the meaning of this term coincides with the meaning of von Neumann’s irreducible randomness.

  4. In general, Viennese do not like realism and even reality. The following story represents perfectly Viennese’s viewpoint on reality. Once my friend Johan Summhammer (Atom Institute, Vienna) spent two weeks in Växjö. This town is surrounded by beautiful lakes (“sjö” is a lake in Swedish). Once I met him looking at a lake, really excited. I asked him about reason of the excitement, expecting a typical comment about beauty of Swedish nature. But, Johan answered that he is excited by this great picture created by clicks of detectors composing his brain.’ From long conversations with Johan I learned that there is no objective reality, and bio-systems developed an ability to select some patterns from noisy and unstructured environment and cognition was developed in this way. Thus this world is composed of clicks of detectors. May be not all Viennese share this view of “clicks-made reality”, but the above story defintely reflects the general Vennese attitute. There is something in the spirit of the town...

  5. Here one of the important problems of this interpretations lies in assigning the meaning to “we”. “Whose knowledge?” as was asked by Mermin [23]. We shall come back to this problem later.

  6. The talk of Zeilinger generated very polarized reactions. For example, Aspect strongly commented that in the two slit experiment the photon “knows” from the very beginning that it is forbidden to go to some regions on the registration screen, independently of what happens in Zeilinger’s head. Then another provocative question was asked to Zeilinger: Is it important to be a human being in order to have a wave function in the head? The reply was in the spirit that this is not important and dog’s head is also a good machine to present a wave function! Of course, it might be that this was just a provocative joke response to this provocative question. If not, then additionally to the trouble with Schrödinger cat we got a new trouble - with a Zeilinger’s dog. I remark that all these strange creatures were born in Vienna. (But in general this discussion after Zeilinger’s lecture reminds the koan about whether a six-trunk white elephant can have a Buddha nature.)

  7. This problem also was understood well by QBists who tried to reconstruct the quantum formalism from their fundamental principle: QM is a special machinery for probability (information) update based on the special nonclassical version of the formula of total probability [29]. But QBists succeeded only partially in approaching this great aim. The same problem was actively studied in development the Växjö interpretation of QM which is based on the same principle as QBism, but explores another version of this formula, see [29, 41–47] for details. Nor this interpretation managed to solve the problem of quantum reconstruction.

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  1. International Center for Mathematical Modelling in Physics and Cognitive Sciences, Linnaeus University, 351 95, Växjö, Sweden

    Andrei Khrennikov

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Khrennikov, A. Reflections on Zeilinger–Brukner Information Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Found Phys 46, 836–844 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-016-0005-z

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