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From: "andrew cooke" <andrew@...>

Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 17:30:26 -0400 (CLT)

There's an article in the current issue of Science describing a conference
on the foundations of QM.  It mentions the work of Jeffrey Bub:

"Last year Bub and his colleagues showed that three restrictions on how
information can be transmitted and copied can reproduce from scratch the
basic features of quantum mechanics [...]  the laws: no instantaneous
transmission of information, no perfect copying of information and no
sharing of information in a particular way called 'unconditional bit
commitment'".  Those restrictions produce a mathematical formalism that
looks like quantum mechanics."

Unfortunately the article is pay-per-view on the 'net.

A paper from Bub - http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000887/ -
Characterizing quantum theory in terms of information-theoretic
constraints

Another paper, also very technical in parts, but with more discussion -
http://netlib.bell-labs.com/who/cafuchs/Oviedo.pdf

Bub's course page with more papers -
http://carnap.umd.edu/philphysics/bub_courses.html

This sounds fascinating.  Anyone have more popular references?

Andrew

-- 
` __ _ __ ___  ___| |_____   work web site: http://www.ctio.noao.edu/~andrew
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