The extended Wigner's friend, many- and single-worlds and reasoning from observation
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2605.08375 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 8 May 2026] Title:The extended Wigner's friend, many- and single-worlds and reasoning from observation Authors:Andrew Steane View a PDF of the paper titled The extended Wigner's friend, many- and single-worlds and reasoning from observation, by Andrew Steane View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:The concept of an isolated system, and Frauchiger and Renner's extended `Wigner's friend' scenario are discussed. It is argued that: (i) it is questionable whether the approximation of the isolated system is valid when measurement-like processes are involved; (ii) one may infer, from Frauchiger and Renner's thought-experiment, and similar thought-experiments, that any interpretation of quantum theory involving *subjective collapse* fails; (iii) this does not distinguish single-world from many-world (relative-state) interpretations of quantum theory; (iv) reasoning from observations has to take into account the possible quantum-erasure of those observations if it is to be valid reasoning; (v) a single-world interpretation is valid if certain kinds of outcome are not quantum-erased in the future. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2605.08375 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2605.08375v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.08375 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Andrew Steane [view email] [v1] Fri, 8 May 2026 18:31:54 UTC (142 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled The extended Wigner's friend, many- and single-worlds and reasoning from observation, by Andrew SteaneView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-05 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)