Dieks' Realistic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: A Comment

D. Dieks has proposed a semantical rule which he claims yields a realistic interpretation of the formalism of quantum mechanics without the projection postulate. I argue that his proposal is unacceptable because it violates a natural requirement of psychophysical parallelism. His "semantical rule" is not an acceptable interpretive rule because it does not identify structures in the theory with structures in our experience, but postulates a merely probabilistic relationship between the two. Dieks' interpretation is contrasted with Everett's relative state interpretation, which attempts the same task but respects psychophysical parallelism

The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Psychological versus Physical Bases for the Multiplicity of "Worlds"

This unpublished 1990 preprint argues that a crucial distinction in discussions of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (MWI) is that between versions of the interpretation positing a physical multiplicity of worlds, and those in which the multiplicity is merely psychological, and due to the splitting of consciousness upon interaction with amplified quantum superpositions. It is argued that Everett's original version of the MWI belongs to the latter class, and that most of the criticisms leveled against the MWI, in particular that it is illogical or incoherent, are not valid against such "psychological-multiplicity" versions. Attempts to derive the quantum-mechanical probabilities from the many-worlds interpretation are reviewed, and Everett's initial derivation is extended in an attempt to show that these are the unique possible probabilities. But there remains a challenge for proponents of the MWI: to show that their interpretation requires probabilities, rather than merely nonprobabilistic indeterminacy. A 2002 preface, revised in 2004, briefly discusses the extent to which I still agree with the claims in the paper. While its derivation of probabilities used, and failed to justify, noncontextuality, I still agree with the paper's general interpretation of the MWI, though not with the MWI itself

Interaction of infant mortality and fertility and the effectiveness of health and family planning programs

The interaction of fertility and infant mortality is well established. Lower infant mortality can lead to lower fertility by reducing the need for replacement births. Conversely, birth spacing improves the chances of child survival. To find out how these programs reinforce each other, a study done in Indonesia estimated the effects that family planning programs have on infant mortality and the effects of reduced infant mortality on fertility. The research compared the cost-effectiveness of health and family planning programs and looked at whether the interaction of infant mortality and fertility influenced estimates of the costs of both programs. The results demonstrate a substantial spillover effect, confirming that the interaction does raise the cost-effectiveness of both programs. These findings are sufficiently consistent that policymakers should consider the mortality-fertility interaction as a regular part of the appraisal of health and population projects. Integrated programs offer lower costs and more effective promotion. They also improve efforts to assure infant survival and achieve birth prevention objectives.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Health Systems Development&Reform,Early Child and Children's Health,Health Economics&Finance,Reproductive Health

Semidefinite programming characterization and spectral adversary method for quantum complexity with noncommuting unitary queries

Generalizing earlier work characterizing the quantum query complexity of computing a function of an unknown classical ``black box'' function drawn from some set of such black box functions, we investigate a more general quantum query model in which the goal is to compute functions of N by N ``black box'' unitary matrices drawn from a set of such matrices, a problem with applications to determining properties of quantum physical systems. We characterize the existence of an algorithm for such a query problem, with given error and number of queries, as equivalent to the feasibility of a certain set of semidefinite programming constraints, or equivalently the infeasibility of a dual of these constraints, which we construct. Relaxing the primal constraints to correspond to mere pairwise near-orthogonality of the final states of a quantum computer, conditional on black-box inputs having distinct function values, rather than bounded-error determinability of the function value via a single measurement on the output states, we obtain a relaxed primal program the feasibility of whose dual still implies the nonexistence of a quantum algorithm. We use this to obtain a generalization, to our not-necessarily-commutative setting, of the ``spectral adversary method'' for quantum query lower bounds.Comment: Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings 06391, "Algorithms and Complexity for Continuous Problems," ed. S. Dahlke, K. Ritter, I. H. Sloan, J. F. Traub (2006), available electronically at http://drops.dagstuhl.de/portals/index.php?semnr=0639

Quantum Knowledge, Quantum Belief, Quantum Reality: Notes of a QBist Fellow Traveler

I consider the "Quantum Bayesian" view of quantum theory as expounded in a 2006 paper of Caves, Fuchs, and Schack. I argue that one can accept a generally personalist, decision-theoretic view of probability, including probability as manifested in quantum physics, while nevertheless accepting that in some situations, including some in quantum physics, probabilities may in a useful sense be thought of as objectively correct. This includes situations in which the ascription of a quantum state should be thought of as objectively correct. I argue that this does not cause any prima facie objectionable sort of action at a distance, though it may involve adopting the attitude that certain dispositional properties of things are not "localized" at those things. Whether this insouciant view of nonlocality and objectivity can survive more detailed analysis is a matter for further investigation.Comment: 13 page