Wigner and his many friends: A new no-go result?

Abstract

In April 2016, Daniela Frauchiger and Renato Renner published an article online in which they introduce a Gedankenexperiment that led them to conclude that single-world interpretations of quantum theory cannot be self-consistent. In a new version of the paper, published in September 2018, the authors moderate their original claim by concluding that quantum theory cannot be extrapolated to complex systems, at least not in a straightforward manner. The purpose of this short article is to clarify the core of the F-R argument, in order to show how the contradiction is obtained. On the basis of this clarification, we argue that the result of the F-R argument has been overestimated and should be reconsidered from a more cautious perspective.

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References found in this work

Relational quantum mechanics.Carlo Rovelli - 1996 - International Journal of Theoretical Physics 35 (8):1637--1678.
Interpreting the Quantum World.Jeffrey Bub - 1998 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (4):637-641.

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