Preface to Special Issue: Quantum Information Revolution: Impact to Foundations
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Preface to Special Issue: Quantum Information Revolution: Impact to Foundations Christopher A. Fuchs1 · Andrei Khrennikov2 Accepted: 4 November 2020 / Published online: 20 November 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
The year 2019 witnessed the 20th Jubileum of the Växjö conference series on quantum foundations and probability in physics. This has been the longest running series of conferences on the subject in history. Many old and new friendships were forged at Linnaeus University and the beautiful surrounding lakes of Småland, where once yearly everyone gathers to renew the debate and report their latest progress. 2019 also represents the Porcelain Anniversary—18 years—of the point of view on quantum theory known as QBism. In this regard, the 2001 meeting in the series was pivotal in more ways than one. Not only did it instigate Fuchs’s break [1] from the earlier (Jaynes style) “objective Bayesianism” and neo-Copenhagen thinking of Caves et al. [2], but it was the first meeting at an international scale to indicate that the quantum information revolution might have something genuine to contribute to quantum foundational thought. That meeting set the pace far beyond Växjö by the participation of a number of luminaries of quantum information: The late Asher Peres, Daniel Greenberger, David Mermin, Herbert Bernstein, Carlton Caves, Rüdiger Schack, Richard Jozsa, Benjamin Schumacher, and John Smolin. One could almost hear a battle cry echo from the woods, “Quantum foundations from quantum information or die!” The foundations debate had turned so stale by the time, it would surely die without an influx of new thinking. Starting with the conference proceedings from the 2001 meeting [3] with its two programmatic papers [4, 5], the series has never wavered in its support of a vigorous debate on the battle cry. (See e.g., the collections [6–15]). This year seemed a special opportunity to reassess where we stand, and we thus came to the conference title, “Quantum Information Revolution: Impact to Foundations‽” The interrobang ‽ seemed perfect for the boisterous debate we expected! Indeed one will see it even in these proceedings.
* Christopher A. Fuchs [email protected] 1
Department of Physics, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125, USA
2
International Center for Mathematical, Modeling in Physics and Cognitive Sciences, Linnaeus University, Växjö 351 95, Sweden
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1758
Foundations of Physics (2020) 50:1757–1761
This special issue of Foundations of Physics starts with a line-up of papers from the QBism session. The year 2019, like 2001, was a watershed for QBism, both deepening the theory at the same time as sharpening its promise for a new physics, even a new understanding of spacetime. The paper of Pienaar “Extending the Agent in QBism” addresses a gap in the QBist interpretation of quantum theory concerning its tenet that ‘’the instruments of observation are a prolongation of the sense organs of the observer.”
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