Some Examples of Contextuality in Physics: Implications to Quantum Cognition

TL;DR

This paper explores the concept of contextuality in quantum mechanics and its implications for quantum cognition, highlighting how negative quasi-probabilities can address limitations in modeling social systems.

Contribution

It analyzes key quantum contextuality examples and discusses their relevance to quantum cognition, proposing negative quasi-probabilities as a solution for social system modeling.

Findings

Contextuality appears in quantum experiments like double-slit and Bell-EPR.

Negative quasi-probability distributions can improve modeling of social systems.

Quantum probabilities have limitations in social system applications.

Abstract

Contextuality, the impossibility of assigning a single random variable to represent the outcomes of the same measurement procedure under different experimental conditions, is a central aspect of quantum mechanics. Thus defined, it appears in well-known cases in quantum mechanics, such as the double-slit experiment, the Bell-EPR experiment, and the Kochen-Specker theorem. Here we examine contextuality in such cases, and discuss how each of them bring different conceptual issues when applied to quantum cognition. We then focus on the shortcomings of using quantum probabilities to describe social systems, and explain how negative quasi-probability distributions may address such limitations.