Wigner's convoluted friends
R. Muci\~no, E. Okon

TL;DR
This paper demonstrates that a simple EPR setup can replicate the paradoxical conclusions of Frauchiger and Renner's complex scenario, suggesting their result offers no new insights into quantum theory's conceptual issues.
Contribution
The authors show that a straightforward EPR arrangement suffices to reproduce FR's result, challenging its claimed novelty and emphasizing the lessons already present in the original EPR paper.
Findings
EPR setup can replicate FR's paradoxical result
FR's result depends on non-trivial collapse assumptions
Lessons from FR are contained in the original EPR paper
Abstract
Considering a complicated extension of a Wigner's friend scenario, Frauchiger and Renner (FR) allegedly showed that "quantum theory cannot consistently describe the use of itself". However, such a result has been under severe criticism, as it has been convincingly argued to crucially depend on an implicit, non-trivial assumption regarding details of the collapse mechanism. In consequence, the result is not as robust or general as intended. On top of all this, in this work we show that a much simpler arrangement--basically an EPR setting--is sufficient to derive a result fully analogous to that of FR. Moreover, we claim that all lessons learned from FR's result are essentially contained within the original EPR paper. We conclude that FR's result does not offer any novel insights into the conceptual problems of quantum theory.
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Taxonomy
TopicsQuantum Mechanics and Applications · Biofield Effects and Biophysics · Quantum Information and Cryptography
