ACM SIGACT News - A special issue on cryptography
Five big questions with pretty simple answers
IBM Journal of Research and Development
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In order to deal most effectively with the unanalyzable quantum whole, the Copenhagen interpretation takes as a "frame of reference" the preparation parameters and outcomes of measurements. It represents a passive, Ptolemaic-like instrumentalism directly related to "what we see in the sky," i.e., to the "surface" of reality. However, the notion of quantum information leads to an active, Copernican-like realism which involves an (intrinsic) ordering principle and the view that the quantum whole is analyzable. It is then possible to consider subsystems as localized in space, controlled individually, and communicated. This makes it natural to treat quantum information (quantum states) not merely as knowledge. Moreover, it involves complementarity between local and nonlocal information. To avoid the dilemma between the Scylla of ontology and the Charybdis of instrumentalism, we propose the concept of quantum information isomorphism, according to which the quantum description of nature is isomorphic to nature itself. By definition it is not just one-to-one mapping, but it preserves the full structure of nature. In particular, it allows the treatment of the wave function of isomorphic images of quantum systems in the laboratory, implying that quantum information is indeed carried by these quantum systems.