1996/04/30 by Adrian Kent · 5 citations
Arts and Humanities · Physics and Astronomy · #Philosophy and History of Science #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Statistical Mechanics and Entropy #cond-mat #gr-qc #hep-th #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.78.2874
published as Phys.Rev.Lett.78:2874-2877,1997 · 10 pages, TeX with harvmac. Revised version, with extended discussion and references added. To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett
arxiv created 1997/03/21 · openalex publication_date 1997/04/14 · arxiv updated 2010/11/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In the consistent histories formulation of quantum theory, the probabilistic predictions and retrodictions made from observed data depend on the choice of a consistent set. We show that this freedom allows the formalism to retrodict contrary propositions which correspond to orthogonal commuting projections and which each have probability one. We also show that the formalism makes contrary probability one predictions when applied to Gell-Mann and Hartle's generalized time-neutral quantum mechanics.