DIALOGUE CONCERNING TWO VIEWS ON QUANTUM COHERENCE: FACTIST AND FICTIONIST
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A controversy that has arisen many times over in disparate contexts is whether quantum coherences between eigenstates of certain quantities are fact or fiction. We present a pedagogical introduction to the debate in the form of a hypothetical dialogue between proponents from each of the two camps: a factist and a fictionist. A resolution of the debate can be achieved, we argue, by recognizing that quantum states do not only contain information about the intrinsic properties of a system but about its extrinsic properties as well, that is, about its relation to other systems external to it. Specifically, the coherent quantum state of the factist is the appropriate description of the relation of the system to one reference frame, while the incoherent quantum state of the fictionist is the appropriate description of the relation of the system to another, uncorrelated, reference frame. The two views, we conclude, are alternative but equally valid paradigms of description.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.034 | 0.047 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.011 | 0.075 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.017 | 0.040 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.019 | 0.025 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".