andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-877 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: As we’ve discussed on occasion, conditional probability (“Boltzmann statistics,” in physics jargon) is false at the atomic level. (It’s false at the macroscopic level too, but with discrepancies too small to be detected directly most of the time.) Occasionally I’ve speculated on how quantum probability (that is, the laws of uncertainty that hold in the real world) might be applied to social science research. I’ve made no progress but remain intrigued by the idea. Chris Zorn told me he recently went to a meeting on applications of non-Kolmogorovian / quantum probability to social & human phenomena. Here’s his paper (with Charles Smith), “Some Quantum-Like Features of Mass Politics in Two-Party Systems,” which begins: We [Smith and Zorn] expand the substantive terrain of QI’s reach by illuminating a body of political theory that to date has been elaborated in strictly classical language and formalisms but has complex features that seem to merit generalizations of the prob
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1 As we’ve discussed on occasion, conditional probability (“Boltzmann statistics,” in physics jargon) is false at the atomic level. [sent-1, score-0.501]
2 (It’s false at the macroscopic level too, but with discrepancies too small to be detected directly most of the time. [sent-2, score-0.276]
3 ) Occasionally I’ve speculated on how quantum probability (that is, the laws of uncertainty that hold in the real world) might be applied to social science research. [sent-3, score-0.747]
4 I’ve made no progress but remain intrigued by the idea. [sent-4, score-0.083]
5 Chris Zorn told me he recently went to a meeting on applications of non-Kolmogorovian / quantum probability to social & human phenomena. [sent-5, score-0.43]
6 We describe how research in this area evolved in the last two decades in directions that bring it now to the point where further elaboration and study seem natural in the more general formalistic and philosophical environments embraced in QI research. [sent-8, score-0.162]
7 In the process, we find evidence that a restriction of a classical model that has animated work in the field appears violated in a form that leads one naturally to embrace the superposition principle. [sent-9, score-0.511]
8 Oddly enough, their paper is classified under “general physics. [sent-11, score-0.083]
9 It’s purely political science, not physics at all. [sent-13, score-0.329]
10 To call it “physics” because it uses probability laws derived by physicists . [sent-14, score-0.248]
11 that makes as much sense as labeling almost all of empirical political science as “physics” because linear regression was invented by Gauss and Laplace. [sent-17, score-0.228]
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Introduction: I read this article by Rivka Galchen on quantum computing. Much of the article was about an eccentric scientist in his fifties named David Deutch. I’m sure the guy is brilliant but I wasn’t particularly interested in his not particularly interesting life story (apparently he’s thin and lives in Oxford). There was a brief description of quantum computing itself, which reminds me of the discussion we had a couple years ago under the heading, The laws of conditional probability are false (and the update here ). I don’t have anything new to say here; I’d just never heard of quantum computing before and it seemed relevant to our discussion. The uncertainty inherent in quantum computing seems closely related to Jouni’s idea of fully Bayesian computing , that uncertainty should be inherent in the computational structure rather than tacked on at the end. P.S. No, I’m not working on July 4th! This post is two months old, we just have a long waiting list of blog entries.
Introduction: James Robins, Tyler VanderWeele, and Richard Gill write : Neyman introduced a formal mathematical theory of counterfactual causation that now has become standard language in many quantitative disciplines, but not in physics. We use results on causal interaction and interference between treatments (derived under the Neyman theory) to give a simple new proof of a well-known result in quantum physics, namely, Bellís inequality. Now the predictions of quantum mechanics and the results of experiment both violate Bell’s inequality. In the remainder of the talk, we review the implications for a counterfactual theory of causation. Assuming with Einstein that faster than light (supraluminal) communication is not possible, one can view the Neyman theory of counterfactuals as falsified by experiment. . . . Is it safe for a quantitative discipline to rely on a counterfactual approach to causation, when our best confirmed physical theory falsifies their existence? I haven’t seen the talk
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