2025/12/28 by Alexei Grinbaum, Grinbaum, Alexei
Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · #Agency (philosophy) #Calculus (dental) #Class (philosophy) #Observer (physics) #Perspective (graphical) #Philosophy and Theoretical Science #Quantum #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #Unitary state #quant-ph
paper · pdf · open access · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2512.22879
published in arXiv (Cornell University) (Cornell University)
openalex publication_date 2025/12/28 · openalex created_date 2025/12/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
After two decades of research on indefinite causality, a conceptual lesson emerges: the tension between operational quantum theory and dynamical spacetime physics requires observers, or agents, to be defined within the theory itself. Agents arise from admissible groupings of input and output data in a global Hilbert space, and redefining these groupings may eliminate non-causality. Agency is perspectival: from Alice's perspective, Bob may fail to qualify as an observer, and vice versa. We interpret these results through an operational eternalism, a stance analogous to the block-universe view but applied to information rather than geometry. Observers are thus well-defined in the global eternalist picture, but they are not universal across local perspectives.