Disturbance: It's a Feature, not a Bug

Arne Hansen, Stefan Wolf

Published 2019-02-06Version 1

Results of measurements give legitimacy to a physical theory: What if acquiring these results in the first place necessitates what the same theory considers to be an interaction? In this note, we assume that theories account for interactions so that they are empirically traceable, and that observations necessarily go with such an interaction with the observed system. We investigate consequences of this assumption: The unfolding language game, inspired by "quantum logic," leads to a class of contextual and probabilistic theories. Disturbance becomes a means to render interactions, thus, also measurements, empirically tangible. The measurement "problem" arises in all such theories, not only quantum mechanics: It is a consequence of the need for empirical evidence of interactions.