183,076 research outputs found
Risk Regulation and the Faces of Uncertainty
Dr. Walker addresses the difficulty of regulators\u27 working with potentially inaccurate information and clarifies related aspects of decision making by presenting a taxonomy for the kinds of uncertainty inherent in necessarily incomplete data
Eddington & Uncertainty
Sir Arthur Eddington is considered one of the greatest astrophysicist of the
twentieth century and yet he gained a stigma when, in the 1930s, he embarked on
a quest to develop a unified theory of gravity and quantum mechanics. His
attempts ultimately proved fruitless and he was unfortunately partially shunned
by some physicists in the latter portion of his career. In addition some
historians have been less than kind to him regarding this portion of his work.
However, detailed analysis of how this work got started shows that Eddington's
theories were not as outlandish as they are often purported to be. His entire
theory rested on the use of quantum mechanical methods of uncertainty in the
reference frames of relativity. Though the work was ultimately not fruitful, in
hindsight it did foreshadow several later results in physics and his methods
were definitely rigorous. In addition, his philosophy regarding determinism and
uncertainty was actually fairly orthodox for his time. This work begins by
looking at Eddington's life and philosophy and uses this as a basis to explore
his work with uncertainty.Comment: new version to appear in Physics in Perspective (either Sept. or Dec.
issue
A New Principle in Physics: the Principle of "Finiteness", and Some Consequences
In this paper I propose a new principle in physics: the principle of
"finiteness". It stems from the definition of physics as a science that deals
(among other things) with measurable dimensional physical quantities. Since
measurement results, including their errors, are always finite, the principle
of finiteness postulates that the mathematical formulation of "legitimate" laws
of physics should prevent exactly zero or infinite solutions. Some consequences
of the principle of finiteness are discussed, in general, and then more
specifically in the fields of special relativity, quantum mechanics, and
quantum gravity. The consequences are derived independently of any other theory
or principle in physics. I propose "finiteness" as a postulate (like the
constancy of the speed of light in vacuum, "c"), as opposed to a notion whose
validity has to be corroborated by, or derived theoretically or experimentally
from other facts, theories, or principles.Comment: 13 pages, 0 figure
Contextual Risk and Its Relevance in Economics
Uncertainty in economics still poses some fundamental problems illustrated,
e.g., by the Allais and Ellsberg paradoxes. To overcome these difficulties,
economists have introduced an interesting distinction between 'risk' and
'ambiguity' depending on the existence of a (classical Kolmogorovian)
probabilistic structure modeling these uncertainty situations. On the other
hand, evidence of everyday life suggests that 'context' plays a fundamental
role in human decisions under uncertainty. Moreover, it is well known from
physics that any probabilistic structure modeling contextual interactions
between entities structurally needs a non-Kolmogorovian quantum-like framework.
In this paper we introduce the notion of 'contextual risk' with the aim of
modeling a substantial part of the situations in which usually only 'ambiguity'
is present. More precisely, we firstly introduce the essentials of an
operational formalism called 'the hidden measurement approach' in which
probability is introduced as a consequence of fluctuations in the interaction
between entities and contexts. Within the hidden measurement approach we
propose a 'sphere model' as a mathematical tool for situations in which
contextual risk occurs. We show that a probabilistic model of this kind is
necessarily non-Kolmogorovian, hence it requires either the formalism of
quantum mechanics or a generalization of it. This insight is relevant, for it
explains the presence of quantum or, better, quantum-like, structures in
economics, as suggested by some authors, and can serve to solve the
aforementioned paradoxes.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure
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