An intrinsic causality principle in histories-based quantum theory: a proposal
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Relativistic causality (RC) is the principle that no cause can act outside its future light cone, but any attempt to formulate this principle more precisely will depend on the foundational framework that one adopts for quantum theory. Adopting a histories-based (or ‘path integral’) framework, we relate RC to a condition we term ‘Persistence of Zero’ (PoZ), according to which an event E of measure zero remains forbidden if one forms its conjunction with any other event associated to a spacetime region that is later than or spacelike to that of E. We also relate PoZ to the Bell inequalities by showing that, in combination with a second, more technical condition it leads to the quantal counterpart of Fine’s patching theorem in much the same way as Bell’s condition of local causality leads to Fine’s original theorem. We then argue that RC per se has very little to say on the matter of which correlations can occur in nature and which cannot. From the point of view we arrive at, histories-based quantum theories are nonlocal in spacetime, and fully in compliance with RC.
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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 | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.011 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 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".