Misusing Freud: Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Homosexual Conversion Therapy

Current ideas of conversion therapy often focus on extremist religious groups that wish to cleanse the world of what they view as an immoral abomination, homosexuality. However, conversion therapy started out as mostly scientific curiosity. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic research on human sexuality helped set the standards on psychosexual study in the twentieth century. Unfortunately, his views on homosexuality became distorted in the 1950s when psychoanalysts and psychiatrists used his methods of therapy but ignored his conclusions on homosexuality and sexual nature itself. Such distortions led to the destruction of many lives within the homosexual community. Reparative therapy on homosexuals exploded into a crusade in the 1950s to attempt to cure what many psychoanalysts considered a pathological disease. But well before the post-World War II era, homosexuality was looked upon as abnormal or pathological. It began in the late-nineteenth century when those in the medical field started studying sexuality and understanding its relation to human behavior. Psychologists and psychiatrists like James Kiernan and Richard Von Kraft-Ebing defined sexual identity, and they used hypnosis to condition patients’ sexuality, which marked the beginning of the study of human sexuality at the turn of the twentieth century. It was when Sigmund Freud began to research sexuality as it related to behavior patterns and the makeup of the human psyche that the psychosexual field began to evolve

The de Finetti theorem for test spaces

We prove a de Finetti theorem for exchangeable sequences of states on test spaces, where a test space is a generalization of the sample space of classical probability theory and the Hilbert space of quantum theory. The standard classical and quantum de Finetti theorems are obtained as special cases. By working in a test space framework, the common features that are responsible for the existence of these theorems are elucidated. In addition, the test space framework is general enough to imply a de Finetti theorem for classical processes. We conclude by discussing the ways in which our assumptions may fail, leading to probabilistic models that do not have a de Finetti theorem.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, revtex

Noncontextuality, Finite Precision Measurement and the Kochen-Specker Theorem

Meyer recently queried whether non-contextual hidden variable models can, despite the Kochen-Specker theorem, simulate the predictions of quantum mechanics to within any fixed finite experimental precision. Clifton and Kent have presented constructions of non-contextual hidden variable theories which, they argued, indeed simulate quantum mechanics in this way. These arguments have evoked some controversy. One aim of this paper is to respond to and rebut criticisms of the MCK papers. We thus elaborate in a little more detail how the CK models can reproduce the predictions of quantum mechanics to arbitrary precision. We analyse in more detail the relationship between classicality, finite precision measurement and contextuality, and defend the claims that the CK models are both essentially classical and non-contextual. We also examine in more detail the senses in which a theory can be said to be contextual or non-contextual, and in which an experiment can be said to provide evidence on the point. In particular, we criticise the suggestion that a decisive experimental verification of contextuality is possible, arguing that the idea rests on a conceptual confusion.Comment: 27 pages; published version; minor changes from previous versio

Popescu-Rohrlich correlations as a unit of nonlocality

A set of nonlocal correlations that have come to be known as a PR box suggest themselves as a natural unit of nonlocality, much as a singlet is a natural unit of entanglement. We present two results relevant to this idea. One is that a wide class of multipartite correlations can be simulated using local operations on PR boxes only. We show this with an explicit scheme, which has the interesting feature that the number of PR boxes required is related to the computational resources necessary to represent a function defining the multipartite box. The second result is that there are quantum multipartite correlations, arising from measurements on a cluster state, that cannot be simulated with n PR boxes, for any n.Comment: 5 pages, no figures. v2: minor modification

Computation in generalised probabilistic theories

From the existence of an efficient quantum algorithm for factoring, it is likely that quantum computation is intrinsically more powerful than classical computation. At present, the best upper bound known for the power of quantum computation is that BQP is in AWPP. This work investigates limits on computational power that are imposed by physical principles. To this end, we define a circuit-based model of computation in a class of operationally-defined theories more general than quantum theory, and ask: what is the minimal set of physical assumptions under which the above inclusion still holds? We show that given only an assumption of tomographic locality (roughly, that multipartite states can be characterised by local measurements), efficient computations are contained in AWPP. This inclusion still holds even without assuming a basic notion of causality (where the notion is, roughly, that probabilities for outcomes cannot depend on future measurement choices). Following Aaronson, we extend the computational model by allowing post-selection on measurement outcomes. Aaronson showed that the corresponding quantum complexity class is equal to PP. Given only the assumption of tomographic locality, the inclusion in PP still holds for post-selected computation in general theories. Thus in a world with post-selection, quantum theory is optimal for computation in the space of all general theories. We then consider if relativised complexity results can be obtained for general theories. It is not clear how to define a sensible notion of an oracle in the general framework that reduces to the standard notion in the quantum case. Nevertheless, it is possible to define computation relative to a `classical oracle'. Then, we show there exists a classical oracle relative to which efficient computation in any theory satisfying the causality assumption and tomographic locality does not include NP.Comment: 14+9 pages. Comments welcom

Maximally Non-Local and Monogamous Quantum Correlations

We introduce a version of the chained Bell inequality for an arbitrary number of measurement outcomes, and use it to give a simple proof that the maximally entangled state of two d dimensional quantum systems has no local component. That is, if we write its quantum correlations as a mixture of local correlations and general (not necessarily quantum) correlations, the coefficient of the local correlations must be zero. This suggests an experimental programme to obtain as good an upper bound as possible on the fraction of local states, and provides a lower bound on the amount of classical communication needed to simulate a maximally entangled state in dxd dimensions. We also prove that the quantum correlations violating the inequality are monogamous among non-signalling correlations, and hence can be used for quantum key distribution secure against post-quantum (but non-signalling) eavesdroppers.Comment: 5 pages, no figure

So It Vanished: Art, Taboo and Shared Space in Contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand

In February 2012, The Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt, near Wellington, planned to host So It Vanishes, an exhibition by acclaimed Mexican artist Teresa Margolles, whose often shocking works seek to highlight how dispensable human life has become in the parts of Mexico riven by drugs wars. Margolles’s installation would have used infinitesimal amounts of morgue water in a bubble mixture dispensed into an empty, silent room in the same building that sacred Māori treasures are housed. The incorporation of water used to wash corpses in So It Vanishes, particularly in proximity to cultural treasures, would have been deeply offensive, indeed dangerous, for Māori people. Following objections, the exhibition was cancelled. This article analyses the cancellation of So It Vanishes and seeks to answer whether and how transgressive art and indigenous beliefs may be reconciled in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand

Limits on non-local correlations from the structure of the local state space

The outcomes of measurements on entangled quantum systems can be nonlocally correlated. However, while it is easy to write down toy theories allowing arbitrary nonlocal correlations, those allowed in quantum mechanics are limited. Quantum correlations cannot, for example, violate a principle known as macroscopic locality, which implies that they cannot violate Tsirelson's bound. This work shows that there is a connection between the strength of nonlocal correlations in a physical theory, and the structure of the state spaces of individual systems. This is illustrated by a family of models in which local state spaces are regular polygons, where a natural analogue of a maximally entangled state of two systems exists. We characterize the nonlocal correlations obtainable from such states. The family allows us to study the transition between classical, quantum, and super-quantum correlations, by varying only the local state space. We show that the strength of nonlocal correlations - in particular whether the maximally entangled state violates Tsirelson's bound or not - depends crucially on a simple geometric property of the local state space, known as strong self-duality. This result is seen to be a special case of a general theorem, which states that a broad class of entangled states in probabilistic theories - including, by extension, all bipartite classical and quantum states - cannot violate macroscopic locality. Finally, our results show that there exist models which are locally almost indistinguishable from quantum mechanics, but can nevertheless generate maximally nonlocal correlations.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figures. v2: Document structure changed. Main theorem has been extended. It applies to all quantum states now. v3: new abstrac