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Massimiliano Sassoli de Bianchi

Publications and source records attributed to Massimiliano Sassoli de Bianchi.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv2019

Quantum entanglement in physical and cognitive systems: a conceptual analysis and a general representation

We provide a general description of the phenomenon of entanglement in bipartite systems, as it manifests in micro and macro physical systems, as well as in human cognitive processes. We do so by observing that when genuine coincidence measurements are considered, the violation of the 'marginal laws', in addition to the Bell-CHSH inequality, is also to be expected. The situation can be described in the quantum formalism by considering the presence of entanglement not only at the level of the states, but also at the level of the measurements. However, at the "local'" level of a specific joint measurement, a description where entanglement is only incorporated in the state remains always possible, by adopting a fine-tuned tensor product representation. But contextual tensor product representations should only be considered when there are good reasons to describe the outcome-states as (non-entangled) product states. This will not in general be true, hence, the entangement resource will have to generally be allocated both in the states and in the measurements. In view of the numerous violations of the marginal laws observed in physics' laboratories, it remains unclear to date if entanglement in micro-physical systems is to be understood only as an 'entanglement of the states', or also as an 'entanglement of the measurements'. But even if measurements would also be entangled, the corresponding violation of the marginal laws (no-signaling conditions) would not for this imply that a superluminal communication would be possible.

q-bio.NC↗
arXiv2018

Quantum Theory Methods as a Possible Alternative for the Double-Blind Gold Standard of Evidence-Based Medicine: Outlining a New Research Program

We motivate the possibility of using notions and methods derived from quantum physics, and more specifically from the research field known as 'quantum cognition', to optimally model different situations in the field of medicine, its decision-making processes and ensuing practices, particularly in relation to chronic and rare diseases. This also as a way to devise alternative approaches to the generally adopted double-blind gold standard.

q-bio.NC↗
arXiv2018

Modeling Meaning Associated with Documental Entities: Introducing the Brussels Quantum Approach

We show that the Brussels operational-realistic approach to quantum physics and quantum cognition offers a fundamental strategy for modeling the meaning associated with collections of documental entities. To do so, we take the World Wide Web as a paradigmatic example and emphasize the importance of distinguishing the Web, made of printed documents, from a more abstract meaning entity, which we call the Quantum Web, or QWeb, where the former is considered to be the collection of traces that can be left by the latter, in specific measurements, similarly to how a non-spatial quantum entity, like an electron, can leave localized traces of impact on a detection screen. The double-slit experiment is extensively used to illustrate the rationale of the modeling, which is guided by how physicists constructed quantum theory to describe the behavior of the microscopic entities. We also emphasize that the superposition principle and the associated interference effects are not sufficient to model all experimental probabilistic data, like those obtained by counting the relative number of documents containing certain words and co-occurrences of words. For this, additional effects, like context effects, must also be taken into consideration.

cs.IR↗
arXiv2018

Modeling Human Decision-making: An Overview of the Brussels Quantum Approach

We present the fundamentals of the quantum theoretical approach we have developed in the last decade to model cognitive phenomena that resisted modeling by means of classical logical and probabilistic structures, like Boolean, Kolmogorovian and, more generally, set theoretical structures. We firstly sketch the operational-realistic foundations of conceptual entities, i.e. concepts, conceptual combinations, propositions, decision-making entities, etc. Then, we briefly illustrate the application of the quantum formalism in Hilbert space to represent combinations of natural concepts, discussing its success in modeling a wide range of empirical data on concepts and their conjunction, disjunction and negation. Next, we naturally extend the quantum theoretical approach to model some long-standing `fallacies of human reasoning', namely, the `conjunction fallacy' and the `disjunction effect'. Finally, we put forward an explanatory hypothesis according to which human reasoning is a defined superposition of `emergent reasoning' and `logical reasoning', where the former generally prevails over the latter. The quantum theoretical approach explains human fallacies as the consequence of genuine quantum structures in human reasoning, i.e. `contextuality', `emergence', `entanglement', `interference' and `superposition'. As such, it is alternative to the Kahneman-Tversky research programme, which instead aims to explain human fallacies in terms of `individual heuristics and biases'.

q-bio.NC↗
arXiv2018

Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the strange physics of spaghetti

This is an article written in a popular science style, in which I will explain: (1) the famous Heisenberg uncertainty principle, expressing the experimental incompatibility of certain properties of micro-physical entities; (2) the Compton effect, describing the interaction of an electromagnetic wave with a particle; (3) the reasons of Bohr's complementarity principle, which will be understood as a principle of incompatibility; (4) the Einstein, Podolski and Rosen reality (or existence) criterion, and its subsequent revisitation by Piron and Aerts; (4) the mysterious non-spatiality of the quantum entities of a microscopic nature, usually referred to as non-locality. This didactical text requires no particular technical knowledge to be read and understood, although the reader will have to do her/his part, as conceptually speaking the discussion can become at times a little subtle. The text has been written having in mind one of the objectives of the Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies (CLEA): that of a broad dissemination of scientific knowledge. However, as it also presents notions that are not generally well-known, or well-understood, among professional physicists, its reading may also be beneficial to them.

physics.pop-ph↗
arXiv2018

From Quantum Axiomatics to Quantum Conceptuality

Since its inception, many physicists have seen in quantum mechanics the possibility, if not the necessity, of bringing cognitive aspects into the play, which were instead absent, or unnoticed, in the previous classical theories. In this article, we outline the path that led us to support the hypothesis that our physical reality is fundamentally conceptual-like and cognitivistic-like. However, contrary to the 'abstract ego hypothesis' introduced by John von Neumann and further explored, in more recent times, by Henry Stapp, our approach does not rely on the measurement problem as expressing a possible 'gap in physical causation', which would point to a reality lying beyond the mind-matter distinction. On the contrary, in our approach the measurement problem is considered to be essentially solved, at least for what concerns the origin of quantum probabilities, which we have reasons to believe they would be epistemic. Our conclusion that conceptuality and cognition would be an integral part of all physical processes comes instead from the observation of the striking similarities between the non-spatial behavior of the quantum micro-physical entities and that of the human concepts. This gave birth to a new interpretation of quantum mechanics, called the 'conceptualistic interpretation', currently under investigation within our group in Brussels.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2018

On Aerts' overlooked solution to the EPR paradox

The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox was enunciated in 1935 and since then it has made a lot of ink flow. Being a subtle result, it has also been largely misunderstood. Indeed, if questioned about its solution, many physicists will still affirm today that the paradox has been solved by the Bell-test experimental results, which have shown that entangled states are real. However, this remains a wrong view, as the validity of the EPR ex-absurdum reasoning is independent from the Bell-test experiments, and the possible structural shortcomings it evidenced cannot be eliminated. These were correctly identified by the Belgian physicist Diederik Aerts, in the eighties of last century, and are about the inability of the quantum formalism to describe separate physical systems. The purpose of the present article is to bring Aerts' overlooked result to the attention again of the physics' community, explaining its content and implications.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2018

Quantum cognition goes beyond-quantum: modeling the collective participant in psychological measurements

In psychological measurements, two levels should be distinguished: the 'individual level', relative to the different participants in a given cognitive situation, and the 'collective level', relative to the overall statistics of their outcomes, which we propose to associate with a notion of 'collective participant'. When the distinction between these two levels is properly formalized, it reveals why the modeling of the collective participant generally requires beyond-quantum - non-Bornian - probabilistic models, when sequential measurements at the individual level are considered, and this though a pure quantum description remains valid for single measurement situations.

q-bio.NC↗
arXiv2018

Towards a Quantum World Wide Web

We elaborate a quantum model for the meaning associated with corpora of written documents, like the pages forming the World Wide Web. To that end, we are guided by how physicists constructed quantum theory for microscopic entities, which unlike classical objects cannot be fully represented in our spatial theater. We suggest that a similar construction needs to be carried out by linguists and computational scientists, to capture the full meaning carried by collections of documental entities. More precisely, we show how to associate a quantum-like 'entity of meaning' to a 'language entity formed by printed documents', considering the latter as the collection of traces that are left by the former, in specific results of search actions that we describe as measurements. In other words, we offer a perspective where a collection of documents, like the Web, is described as the space of manifestation of a more complex entity - the QWeb - which is the object of our modeling, drawing its inspiration from previous studies on operational-realistic approaches to quantum physics and quantum modeling of human cognition and decision-making. We emphasize that a consistent QWeb model needs to account for the observed correlations between words appearing in printed documents, e.g., co-occurrences, as the latter would depend on the 'meaning connections' existing between the concepts that are associated with these words. In that respect, we show that both 'context and interference (quantum) effects' are required to explain the probabilities calculated by counting the relative number of documents containing certain words and co-ocurrrences of words.

cs.AI↗
arXiv2017

Using abstract elastic membranes to learn about quantum measurements

We provide an accessible popular science version of a research article published by Diederik Aerts and the author [Ann. Phys. 351 (2014) 975--1025, arXiv:1404.2429], where an extended version of the quantum formalism was proposed as a possible solution to the measurement problem.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2017

On the quantum "self-teleportation" probability of a human body

The probability of quantum relocation of a human body, at a given distance, is estimated using two different methods, giving comparable results. Not only the obtained values for the probabilities are inconceivably small, but assumptions of a sci-fi nature are also necessary to ensure that they are not identical to zero. The notions of 'non-spatiality' and 'superselection rule' are also briefly discussed.

physics.pop-ph↗
arXiv2017

On the Conceptuality Interpretation of Quantum and Relativity Theories

How can we explain the strange behavior of quantum and relativistic entities? Why do they behave in ways that defy our intuition about how physical entities should behave, considering our ordinary experience of the world around us? In this article, we address these questions by showing that the comportment of quantum and relativistic entities is not that strange after all, if we only consider what their nature might possibly be: not an objectual one, but a conceptual one. This not in the sense that quantum and relativistic entities would be human concepts, but in the sense that they would share with the latter a same conceptual nature, similarly to how electromagnetic and sound waves, although very different entities, can share a same undulatory nature. When this hypothesis is adopted, i.e., when a 'conceptuality interpretation' about the deep nature of physical entities is taken seriously, many of the interpretational difficulties disappear and our physical world is back making sense, though our view of it becomes radically different from what our classical prejudice made us believe in the first place.

physics.hist-ph↗
arXiv2017

Spin and Wind Directions I: Identifying Entanglement in Nature and Cognition

We present a cognitive psychology experiment where participants were asked to select pairs of spatial directions that they considered to be the best example of 'Two Different Wind Directions'. Data are shown to violate the CHSH version of Bell's inequality with the same magnitude as in typical Bell-test experiments with entangled spins. Wind directions thus appear to be conceptual entities connected through meaning, in human cognition, in a similar way as spins appear to be entangled in experiments conducted in physics laboratories. This is the first part of a two-part article. In the second part we present a symmetrized version of the same experiment for which we provide a quantum modeling of the collected data in Hilbert space.

q-bio.NC↗
arXiv2017

Spin and Wind Directions II: A Bell State Quantum Model

In the first half of this two-part article, we analyzed a cognitive psychology experiment where participants were asked to select pairs of directions that they considered to be the best example of 'Two Different Wind Directions', and showed that the data violate the CHSH version of Bell's inequality, with same magnitude as in typical Bell-test experiments in physics. In this second part, we complete our analysis by presenting a symmetrized version of the experiment, still violating the CHSH inequality but now also obeying the marginal law, for which we provide a full quantum modeling in Hilbert space, using a singlet state and suitably chosen product measurements. We also address some of the criticisms that have been recently directed at experiments of this kind, according to which they would not highlight the presence of genuine forms of entanglement. We explain that these criticisms are based on a view of entanglement that is too restrictive, thus unable to capture all possible ways physical and conceptual entities can connect and form systems behaving as a whole. We also provide an example of a mechanical model showing that the violations of the marginal law and Bell inequalities are generally to be associated with different mechanisms.

q-bio.NC↗
arXiv2017

Testing Quantum Models of Conjunction Fallacy on the World Wide Web

The 'conjunction fallacy' has been extensively debated by scholars in cognitive science and, in recent times, the discussion has been enriched by the proposal of modeling the fallacy using the quantum formalism. Two major quantum approaches have been put forward: the first assumes that respondents use a two-step sequential reasoning and that the fallacy results from the presence of 'question order effects'; the second assumes that respondents evaluate the cognitive situation as a whole and that the fallacy results from the 'emergence of new meanings', as an 'effect of overextension' in the conceptual conjunction. Thus, the question arises as to determine whether and to what extent conjunction fallacies would result from 'order effects' or, instead, from 'emergence effects'. To help clarify this situation, we propose to use the World Wide Web as an 'information space' that can be interrogated both in a sequential and non-sequential way, to test these two quantum approaches. We find that 'emergence effects', and not 'order effects', should be considered the main cognitive mechanism producing the observed conjunction fallacies.

cs.AI↗
arXiv2016

Context and Interference Effects in the Combinations of Natural Concepts

The mathematical formalism of quantum theory exhibits significant effectiveness when applied to cognitive phenomena that have resisted traditional (set theoretical) modeling. Relying on a decade of research on the operational foundations of micro-physical and conceptual entities, we present a theoretical framework for the representation of concepts and their conjunctions and disjunctions that uses the quantum formalism. This framework provides a unified solution to the 'conceptual combinations problem' of cognitive psychology, explaining the observed deviations from classical (Boolean, fuzzy set and Kolmogorovian) structures in terms of genuine quantum effects. In particular, natural concepts 'interfere' when they combine to form more complex conceptual entities, and they also exhibit a 'quantum-type context-dependence', which are responsible of the 'over- and under-extension' that are systematically observed in experiments on membership judgments.

cs.AI↗
arXiv2016

The extended Bloch Representation of Entanglement and Measurement in Quantum Mechanics

The quantum formalism can be completed by assuming that a density operator can also represent a pure state. An 'extended Bloch representation' (EBR) then results, in which not only states, but also the measurement-interactions can be represented. The Born rule is obtained as an expression of the subjective lack of knowledge about the measurement-interaction that is each time actualized. Entanglement can also be consistently described in the EBR, as it remains compatible with the principle according to which a composite entity exists only if its components also exist, and therefore are in pure states.

quant-ph↗