How Quantum is Life?

Voting Deadline: December 1, 2025 at 10AM US EST

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Abstract

From its earliest days nearly a century ago, quantum mechanics has proven itself to be a tremendously accurate yet intellectually unsatisfying theory to many. Not the least of its problems is that it is a theory about the results of measurements. As John Bell once said in introducing the concept of `beables', it should be possible to say what _is_ rather than merely what _is_observed_. In this essay I consider the question of whether a universe can be a beable and what that implies about the fundamental nature of that universe. I conclude that a universe that is a beable within the framework of some theory, cannot be fundamental.
Ian Durham
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