Intro to One of Those Chatty Quantum Physics Papers

I repost a quantum physics catch from Subcommander Sum.

THE FREE WILL THEOREM
JOHN CONWAY AND SIMON KOCHEN

Abstract. On the basis of three physical axioms, we prove that if the
choice of a particular type of spin 1 experiment is not a function of the
information accessible to the experimenters, then its outcome is equally
not a function of the information accessible to the particles. We show
that this result is robust, and deduce that neither hidden variable theories
nor mechanisms of the GRW type for wave function collapse can be made
relativistic. We also establish the consistency of our axioms and discuss the
philosophical implications.

1. Introduction
Do we really have free will, or, as a few determined folk maintain, is it all
an illusion? We don’t know, but will prove in this paper that if indeed there
exist any experimenters with a modicum of free will, then elementary particles
must have their own share of this valuable commodity.

“I saw you put the fish in!” said a simpleton to an angler who had used a
minnow to catch a bass. Our reply to an analogous objection would be that
we use only a minuscule amount of human free will to deduce free will not
only of the particles inside ourselves, but all over the universe.

To be more precise, what we shall show is that the particles’ response∗ to a
certain type of experiment is not determined by the entire previous history of
that part of the universe accessible to them. The free will we assume is just
that the experimenter can freely choose to make any one of a small number of
observations. In addition, we make three physical assumptions in the form of
three simple axioms.

The fact that they cannot always predict the results of future experiments
has sometimes been described just as a defect of theories extending quantum
mechanics. However, if our physical axioms are even approximately true, the
free will assumption implies the stronger result, that no theory, whether it
extends quantum mechanics or not, can correctly predict the results of future

Date: March 31, 2006.

∗More precisely still, the universe’s response in the neighborhood of the particles.
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2 JOHN CONWAY AND SIMON KOCHEN
spin experiments. It also makes it clear that this failure to predict is a merit
rather than a defect, since these results involve free decisions that the universe
has not yet made.

Our result is by no means the first in this direction. It makes use of the notorious
quantum mechanical entanglement brought to light by Einstein, Podolsky,
and Rosen, which has also been used in various forms by J. S. Bell, Kochen
and Specker, and others to produce no-go theorems that dispose of the most
plausible hidden variable theories. Our theorem seems to be the strongest and
most precise result of this type, and in particular implies that there can be
no relativistically invariant mechanism of the GRW-type (see Section 10) that
explains the collapse of the wave function.

Physicists who feel that they already knew our main result are cautioned
that it cannot be proved by arguments involving symbols such as <, |,>, ,⊗,
since these presuppose a large and indefinite amount of physical theory.

I note the comment about the description of unpredictability as a defect- it might seem strange to say that there is an unexamined bias towards predictability in theory; I'd conjecture it goes far beyond this instance. Theories which confirm predictability are potentially useful - so there is a natural bias towards confirming them.