PIRSA:16070050

An Extension of the Wigner’s Friend Gedankenexperiment

Renner, R. (2016). An Extension of the Wigner’s Friend Gedankenexperiment. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/16070050

Renner, Renato. An Extension of the Wigner’s Friend Gedankenexperiment. Perimeter Institute, Jul. 27, 2016, https://pirsa.org/16070050 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:16070050,
            doi = {10.48660/16070050},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/16070050},
            author = {Renner, Renato},
            keywords = {Quantum Fields and Strings, Quantum Gravity, Quantum Information},
            language = {en},
            title = {An Extension of the Wigner{\textquoteright}s Friend Gedankenexperiment},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2016},
            month = {jul},
            note = {PIRSA:16070050 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }

Renato Renner ETH Zurich

Talk numberPIRSA:16070050
DOI10.48660/16070050
Collection
Talk Type Conference
Subject

Abstract

In this talk I consider the following principle that one may impose on any physical theory T: "If an agent uses T to describe a system which includes another agent who herself uses T then no logical contradictions should arise.” I then propose a gedankenexperiment, which can be regarded as an extension of the Wigner’s Friend experiment, to test whether this principle holds for quantum mechanics. The conclusion is that this is indeed the case for “plain" quantum theory, but that the principle is violated by many of its common interpretations and extensions.