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Link between quantum physics and game theory found

bristol.ac.uk

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Re: Link between quantum physics and game theory found

#31

Post by fdovila »

floobynewb wrote: post #20
aneth4 wrote: post #6

I'm very interested in any theoretical connections between interactions of conscious beings and quantum physics. I've read a number of physicists discounting any such possibility, but it's clear to me nobody understands these things well enough to know. Personally I think consciousness, perception, and free will are a great unknown, and likely involve the makeup of the cosmos including quantum interactions. If anyone…

I think many people have a hunch in this direction. But that may just be because we desire ourselves to be in some way special. I would be wary of anyone discounting it out of hand. What you are really asking is how does the brain work? If you really want to think sensibly about this you are going to need to: 1) be prepared to spend decades thinking about it. 2) become really, really good at maths. 3) get really, rea…

By the mean time, the rest of us, we can dig into Stuart A. Kauffman and Stuart Hameroff's ideas on Penrose's counciousness.

http://www.edge.org/memberbio/stuart_a_kauffman http://www.edge.org/conversation/five-problems-in-the-philos...

An updated critic on this ideas by Göran Wendin: http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/qcontrol13/wendin/pdf/Wen...

Re: Link between quantum physics and game theory found

#32

Post by GuiA »

greeneggs wrote: post #3
GuiA wrote: post #2

Original article is behind a paywall ( http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130703/ncomms3057/full/nco... ), and author's page ( http://theory.physics.unige.ch/~brunner/ ) does not have a PDF :(

It is on the arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1173

Thanks!

Re: Link between quantum physics and game theory found

#33

Post by Strilanc »

nawitus wrote: post #13

>Next, by bringing quantum mechanics into the game, the researchers showed that players who can use quantum resources, such as entangled quantum particles, can outperform classical players. That is, quantum players achieve better performance than any classical player ever could. Classical players can build a classical computer which simulates quantum computers. Of course, I really should read the paper instead of zer…

They're not using computational advantages, they're using coordination advantages via entanglement.

See: the quantum pseudo-telepathy article on wikipedia [1], which has an example of a game where players with entangled particles do better than classical players.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_pseudo-telepathy

Re: Link between quantum physics and game theory found

#34

Post by d23 »

Since this is being upvoted on hacker news, I'm assuming this is more than the typical BS filled science journalism. But I wish there were a site that allowed individuals respected in a similar field to have a disproportionate weight when upvoting articles like this. Or perhaps they could give a summary of the context surrounding the article. It'd be nice to get a sense of the magnitude of these discoveries.

Given that this is coming directly from a university, I don't doubt that it is important. I'd just like to know how important.

Re: Link between quantum physics and game theory found

#35

Post by d23 »

seiji wrote: post #16
aneth4 wrote: post #6

I'm very interested in any theoretical connections between interactions of conscious beings and quantum physics. I've read a number of physicists discounting any such possibility, but it's clear to me nobody understands these things well enough to know. Personally I think consciousness, perception, and free will are a great unknown, and likely involve the makeup of the cosmos including quantum interactions. If anyone…

Personally I think consciousness, perception, and free will are a great unknown, and likely involve the makeup of the cosmos including quantum interactions. They are not great unknowns. They are kinda dull knowns and they get more known-er by the year. Nothing in the brain (or the "cosmos") requires quantum juju for our conscious experience. There's lots written about perception: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_…

> They are not great unknowns. They are kinda dull knowns and they get more known-er by the year. Nothing in the brain (or the "cosmos") requires quantum juju for our conscious experience.

Oh great one, please tell me your all encompassing theory of consciousness and how existence came to be! Then we can all gather around the Altar of the Great Seiji and marvel at his linking to a couple of wikipedia articles! What a wondrous time to be alive and in your presence!

Re: Link between quantum physics and game theory found

#36

Post by summerdown2 »

seiji wrote: post #16
aneth4 wrote: post #6

I'm very interested in any theoretical connections between interactions of conscious beings and quantum physics. I've read a number of physicists discounting any such possibility, but it's clear to me nobody understands these things well enough to know. Personally I think consciousness, perception, and free will are a great unknown, and likely involve the makeup of the cosmos including quantum interactions. If anyone…

Personally I think consciousness, perception, and free will are a great unknown, and likely involve the makeup of the cosmos including quantum interactions. They are not great unknowns. They are kinda dull knowns and they get more known-er by the year. Nothing in the brain (or the "cosmos") requires quantum juju for our conscious experience. There's lots written about perception: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_…

CS Lewis explored the idea of a shed with a window onto the sun. Looked at from the doorway, you see a shaft of light with dancing dust motes. But if you step inside and become bathed in sunlight you get quite another experience.

Likewise, looking at a brain from the outside, it's a squishy biological construct with some electrical stuff going on.

Viewed from the inside, though: what a difference!

Re: Link between quantum physics and game theory found

#38

Post by jostmey »

jostmey wrote: post #37

Just because the mathematical operations are similar does not mean the two fields are at all related. The quadratic equation has many uses, but that does not mean that everything the equation is used for is in some way fundamentally related.

UPDATE: To quote the authors: "In the present paper, we discuss such a link, ALBEIT a much more MODEST one, between Bell nonlocality and the theory of Bayesian games—also referred to as games with incomplete information."

Re: Link between quantum physics and game theory found

#39

Post by nawitus »

iliis wrote: post #27
nawitus wrote: post #13

>Next, by bringing quantum mechanics into the game, the researchers showed that players who can use quantum resources, such as entangled quantum particles, can outperform classical players. That is, quantum players achieve better performance than any classical player ever could. Classical players can build a classical computer which simulates quantum computers. Of course, I really should read the paper instead of zer…

Actually this is not possible for some definition of possible (mainly performance). Feynman showed that you get an exponential slowdown when simulating QM with a classical computer: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~christos/classics/Feynman.pdf See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_quantum_simulator In this particular case I don't think a quantum computer is necessarily any help (so simulating it won't work eit…

That's like saying "you can't calculate x on a cell phone because it's slower than on a desktop". Yes, there's an exponential slowdown, but that doesn't mean impossible.

Re: Link between quantum physics and game theory found

#40

Post by domdip »

anigbrowl wrote: post #30

(from http://arxiv.org/pdf/1210.1173v1.pdf ) However, in certain cases the players may adapt their strategy depending on a piece of advice. The latter is delivered to all players by an advisor. This opens the possibility for the players to adopt correlated strategies, which can outperform independent strategies. There are various forms that advice can take. For example in the case of correlated classical advice, the…

It's not about some players performing better than others.

It's about the game maybe having a better outcome (for everyone) in one case than the other. Maybe it's not surprising that 'extra' information improves the game. But a point of this article (IMO) was to formally show that you could link the notion of 'extra' in physics to 'better' in game theory.

I'm not arguing that this is profound, but it's not completely trivial either.

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