Entanglement as a Method to Reduce Uncertainty

TL;DR

This paper explores how entanglement reduces uncertainty in quantum physics and human cognition, proposing that entanglement acts as a collaborative process to lower entropy and explain non-classical logical connectives.

Contribution

It introduces a new hypothesis that entanglement represents a dynamic collaboration reducing uncertainty in both quantum systems and human concepts.

Findings

Entanglement reduces entropy in quantum and cognitive systems.

It explains non-classical logical connectives via Bell-type correlations.

Proposes entanglement as a process of collaborative uncertainty reduction.

Abstract

In physics, entanglement 'reduces' the entropy of an entity, because the (von Neumann) entropy of, e.g., a composite bipartite entity in a pure entangled state is systematically lower than the entropy of the component sub-entities. We show here that this 'genuinely non-classical reduction of entropy as a result of composition' also holds whenever two concepts combine in human cognition and, more generally, it is valid in human culture. We exploit these results and make a 'new hypothesis' on the nature of entanglement, namely, the production of entanglement in the preparation of a composite entity can be seen as a 'dynamical process of collaboration between its sub-entities to reduce uncertainty', because the composite entity is in a pure state while its sub-entities are in a non-pure, or density, state, as a result of the preparation. We identify within the nature of this entanglement a mechanism of contextual updating and illustrate the mechanism in the example we analyze. Our hypothesis naturally explains the 'non-classical nature' of some quantum logical connectives, as due to Bell-type correlations.