{ "schema": "observer-notebook/findings@1", "note": "Generated from the observer-effect project notebook. Only entries marked ready are published; held entries are listed with the reason.", "verdict_kinds": { "new": "Possibly new", "partly": "Partly known", "known": "Known, reproduced", "corrected": "We were wrong", "open": "Open", "map": "Map / survey" }, "findings": [ { "slug": "primer", "date": "2026-09-28", "title": "Observer effect primer", "verdict": "map", "headline": "The observer is whatever holds the which-path record; why ONE outcome is still open", "claim": "Decoherence explains why records kill interference (V² + D² ≤ 1). Nothing yet explains why you get one outcome with |ψ|² odds.", "check": "Survey with citations on the page.", "page": "/labs/observer/primer/" }, { "slug": "agent-friends", "date": "2026-09-29", "title": "Agent-like Wigner's friends (arXiv 2609.12527)", "verdict": "map", "headline": "Every record leaves a mark: the observer effect is both the lock and the tripwire", "claim": "Getting info into or out of a quantum box disturbs it; a passing rewind shows that nothing leaked.", "check": "A read of one paper (arXiv 2609.12527).", "page": "/labs/observer/agent-friends/" }, { "slug": "time-which-path", "date": "2026-09-30", "title": "Time as a which-path detector (local)", "verdict": "known", "headline": "A clock's path record doesn't vanish under an echo; it moves into the correlations", "claim": "Gravity's time dilation writes a which-path record in an atom's own clock; echo drives hide it only at a cost, and the record moves into spin-field correlations.", "check": "Exact sim, papers fetched.", "page": "/labs/observer/time-which-path/" }, { "slug": "darwinism", "date": "2026-10-03", "title": "Quantum Darwinism: which records win", "verdict": "known", "headline": "Copies needed R ≈ N·ξ/2 (Chernoff law); phase info stays hidden until 99/100 of the environment", "claim": "The environment keeps redundant copies of pointer facts only; scrambling destroys redundancy while total info stays put.", "check": "Exact sim; some references from memory, flagged on the page.", "page": "/labs/observer/darwinism/" }, { "slug": "ifm", "date": "2026-10-03", "title": "Interaction-free measurement (bomb tester)", "verdict": "known", "headline": "Zeno-looped bomb test: 78% at N = 10, 97.6% at N = 100; loss caps it at ~91%", "claim": "You can detect an object without touching it; repeated checks push success toward 100% until optical loss bites.", "check": "Exact sim; some references from memory, flagged on the page.", "page": "/labs/observer/ifm/" }, { "slug": "lit-check", "date": "2026-10-03", "title": "Literature check on three candidates", "verdict": "known", "headline": "None of our three 'possibly new' results was new as stated", "claim": "QRF rule partly known and partly wrong; watcher's bill partly known; friend leak budget known.", "check": "Papers fetched and read.", "page": "/labs/observer/lit-check/" }, { "slug": "no-deleting", "date": "2026-10-03", "title": "No-deleting and AI unlearning", "verdict": "known", "headline": "Only retrain-and-discard truly forgets; fine-tuned 'forgetting' hides secrets", "claim": "A quantum copy can't be deleted, only moved; small neural nets behave analogously when asked to unlearn.", "check": "Exact sim and 5-seed runs; papers named.", "page": "/labs/observer/no-deleting/" }, { "slug": "qrf", "date": "2026-10-03", "title": "Quantum reference frames: whose superposition?", "verdict": "corrected", "headline": "Entanglement depends on whose seat you sit in; our 'only two families' rule was wrong", "claim": "Hopping frames turns one particle's fuzziness into entanglement between the others; the amount is set by one ratio.", "check": "Correction with a check script; closest paper read.", "page": "/labs/observer/qrf/" }, { "slug": "rewindable-friend", "date": "2026-10-03", "title": "Rewindable friend (local)", "verdict": "known", "headline": "Perfect rewind beats Local Friendliness 2.83 vs 2; the lab has a fixed total leak budget", "claim": "A friend whose memory can be rewound violates Local Friendliness; a bigger mind needs a tighter seal, not a looser one.", "check": "Local sim; prior art read in the lit check.", "page": "/labs/observer/rewindable-friend/" }, { "slug": "watchers-bill", "date": "2026-10-03", "title": "Thermodynamics of measurement (watcher's bill)", "verdict": "partly", "headline": "Watching is free in principle, ~37,000x over the floor in practice", "claim": "The Landauer floor for Zeno records falls ~1/N, but resetting each record alone costs ~log N, and the probe light dwarfs both.", "check": "Closed form + ledger; closest papers read.", "page": "/labs/observer/watchers-bill/" }, { "slug": "zeno", "date": "2026-10-03", "title": "Quantum Zeno deep dive", "verdict": "known", "headline": "10 checks per flip keep 78% unflipped; a state can only change if its record can", "claim": "Watching freezes a qubit; watching off-resonance speeds it up; a vague check protects a subspace a sharp one destroys.", "check": "Exact sims; papers verified.", "page": "/labs/observer/zeno/" }, { "slug": "bigger-fish", "date": "2026-10-04", "title": "Bigger fish: open problems", "verdict": "map", "headline": "8 open problems ranked; 5 still open after a prior-art sweep", "claim": "Aiming the toolkit at problems with no published answer instead of corollaries.", "check": "Map; prior art fetched per problem.", "page": "/labs/observer/bigger-fish/" }, { "slug": "fact-horizon", "date": "2026-10-04", "title": "The fact horizon", "verdict": "known", "headline": "A friend's outcome becomes a fact at exactly k = n/2 + 1 leaked qubits", "claim": "Once her memory is scrambled, Wigner can't undo the observation after the environment holds just over half of it; looking alone never makes a fact.", "check": "Toolkit, gated vs exact; three papers read in full.", "page": "/labs/observer/fact-horizon/" }, { "slug": "cooling-by-watching", "date": "2026-10-05", "title": "Price of cooling by watching", "verdict": "known", "headline": "Energy bill is classical directed percolation; blind to the entanglement transition", "claim": "Cooling by measurement switches off at p ≈ 0.356, a classical transition; energy flows can't see the quantum one.", "check": "Exact sims; closest papers read.", "page": "/labs/observer/cooling-by-watching/" }, { "slug": "mipt-record-cost", "date": "2026-10-05", "title": "Record cost at the measurement tipping point (toolkit)", "verdict": "partly", "headline": "0.947 ± 0.003 bits per measurement at p_c; universal part already known", "claim": "The toolkit reproduces the measurement-induced phase transition and prices the hidden record; the number is real but model-specific.", "check": "Toolkit result; universal part matched to a paper. 20 vs 24 crossing still open.", "page": "/labs/observer/mipt-record-cost/" }, { "slug": "undo-budget", "date": "2026-10-07", "title": "Undo-precision budget", "verdict": "partly", "headline": "Rewind survives if gate error eps < ~1/sqrt(gates in the record's light cone); one unknown gate is fatal", "claim": "To rewind a friend's measurement, Wigner's per-gate error can be fuzzy at about 1/sqrt(light-cone gates), but every gate in the record's light cone must be known; one unknown gate drops restored coherence to ~1/16.", "check": "Exact sims; prior art fetched.", "page": "/labs/observer/undo-budget/" } ], "held": [ { "slug": "frontier-map", "reason": "Two papers seen via search only; the news-level numbers were never fetched." }, { "slug": "underlooked-rocks", "reason": "Citations from memory, never re-fetched." }, { "slug": "turnstile-spiral", "reason": "Already covered by The Honest Spiral and The Sound Windmill on the site; fold in as a note, not a new page." } ] }