Quantum models of cognition and decision

What Hacker News says

1. GorgeRondeJun 2019
   The more I read about quantum mechanics the less i understand, and I'm absolutely unable to get into a proper learning path because it requires mathematics beyond my level and for which I'm not able to develop a taste on my own.

   Of course I'm not interested in doing calculations but to appreciate quantum physics you have to know what the formalism behind are about and physicists are unable to explain it in simple terms for reasons I think I make out but can't properly formulate.

   As an alternative path, Quantum Models of Cognition and Decision [1], may offer a less steep learning curve for the fact "you are the quantum system" and as such get to have actual experience with phenomena discussed in this book. To clear up the new-age vibe introduced in the last sentence, I think studying the maths through a phenomenon whose ambiguity is not questioned as a metaphysical abyss but is accepted as just being here in its mundane simplicity (semantic ambiguity in daily language use, that kind of thing) alleviates a lot of trouble in grasping what the maths mean in a physics course. Also the book is written for people coming from the fields related to psychology so it's a lot more approachable.

   [1] http://bacon.umcs.lublin.pl/~lukasik/wp-content/uploads/2010...

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2. kgwgkJul 2025
   https://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.5673

   > Decision making – When people are given a chance to play a particular gamble twice, if they think they won the first play, or alternatively if they think they lost the first play, then the majority chooses to play again on the second round. Given these preferences, they should also play the second round even if they don’t think about the outcome of the first round. Yet people do just the opposite in the latter case (Tversky & Shafir, 1992). This finding violates the law of total probability, yet it can be explained as a quantum interference effect

   I wouldn't say that "it can be explained as a quantum interference effect" for any respectable definition of "explained" but your mileage may vary.

   > The Contextual Nature of Concepts and their Combinations – When quantum entities become entangled, they form a new entity with properties different from either constituent, and one cannot manipulate one constituent without simultaneously affecting the other. The mathematics of entanglement has been used to model the nonmonotonic relations observed among concepts when they are combined to form a new concepts such as STONE LION

   https://scispace.com/pdf/the-emergence-and-evolution-of-inte...

   > Different possible ways of looking at this combination exist, and a positive answer to both questions ‘is STONE LION a LION’ and ‘is STONE LION a STONE’ make sense. Hence a better approach is to consider both as entities, and use Fock space for a two entity situation, and forgo the more simple model of considering one of them as a context.

   Vanilla Quantum Models of Cognition and Decision are not enough. One really needs Quantum Field Theory Models of Cognition and Decision. "The genuine structure of quantum field theory is needed to match predictions with experimental data." https://arxiv.org/pdf/0705.1740

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