The Quantum Sequence
From Amplitudes to Agency
This sequence develops the Axio framework for understanding reality as a structured ensemble of branching quantum timelines. It introduces the formal machinery—Measure, Vantage, Branchcones, Pattern Identifiers—and uses them to clarify causation, probability, identity, agency, ethics, and free will inside a deterministic multiverse. Each post refines a different facet of the Quantum Branching Universe (QBU), showing how branching replaces mystery with structure, how probability becomes a relation between measure and credence, and how agency becomes the art of steering amplitude. Together, these pieces form a coherent ontology of choice and perspective in an endlessly splitting universe.
The Quantum Branching Universe (QBU)
A formal map of parallel timelines.
Defines the QBU as a DAG of quantum events, where each path is a complete timeline. Introduces Strong and Weak Pattern Identifiers for selecting and comparing timelines with or without shared ancestry.
Identifying Branches in the QBU
Strong and weak identifiers in a branching reality.
Clarifies how timelines are selected in the QBU by contrasting Strong Pattern Identifiers—such as genotypes, which guarantee a shared causal ancestor—with Weak PIs like names, which cut across unrelated histories.
A Rigorous Definition of Causality
Counterfactual structure in a branching universe.
Defines causation in the QBU by grounding counterfactual implication in the nearest common ancestor event shared by timelines, showing that event a causes event b when every descendant timeline containing a also contains b.
Quantum Agency in the Emergent Multiverse
Quantum decision theory meets the thermodynamics of agency.
Integrates Wallace’s Quantum Decision Theory with the Three Thermodynamic Laws of Agency, demonstrating that rational choice corresponds to physical “quantum work” constrained by decoherence, entropy, and the limits of frictionless control.
Measure, Vantage, Branchcone, and Counterfactuals
The conceptual toolkit of the QBU.
Defines four core structures—Measure, Vantage, Branchcone, and Counterfactuals—that ground objective probability, temporal perspective, and hypothetical reasoning within a branching universe.
QBism vs. Many Worlds
Subjective belief vs objective structure.
Contrasts QBism’s view of quantum states as subjective beliefs with MWI’s realist ontology of a deterministically branching universe, showing how the QBU resolves confusions about probability and experience through the Measure/Credence distinction.
A Gigaplex of Parallel Lives
Identity across astronomical timelines.
Explores how personal identity persists across an immense but finite set of phenotype-level timelines, clarifying why vast counts of branches do not imply high probability for extreme outcomes such as radical longevity.
Heads or Tails
Objective vs subjective probability in action.
Uses a coin flip to illustrate how Measure evolves smoothly during physical processes while Credence remains fixed until new evidence arrives, clarifying the QBU distinction between physical probability and belief.
Do Ideas Move Atoms?
Semantic and physical causation aligned.
Shows that ideas, understood as neural activation patterns, satisfy the QBU definition of causality because the atomic configurations underlying Idea B cannot arise without those underlying Idea A.
Yes, We Can Assign Probabilities to Counterfactuals
Counterfactuals as real branches.
Argues that counterfactuals in the QBU are real branches with measurable weight, allowing probabilities to be assigned even to outcomes we do not observe.
Observer Class Alignment
Shared basis and communication in the multiverse.
Treats observers as Strong Pattern Identifiers whose shared ancestry, decohered environment, and compatible interpretive models determine whether they inhabit the same effective “basis” within a branchcone.
Randomness and Determinism
Two forms of uncertainty.
Uses the digits of π to illustrate purely epistemic randomness and contrasts this with QBU randomness, which is structurally real for embedded observers due to branching.
Quantum Foundations of Daily Chaos
Quantum roots of everyday unpredictability.
Shows how daily unpredictability—from conversations to hockey games—arises from quantum fluctuations that influence neural and physical behavior, generating genuine ontological randomness in the QBU.
Quantum Chess
Strategic thought as quantum branching.
Explains how seemingly deterministic chess decisions arise from neural processes shaped by quantum fluctuations, causing subtle variations that branch into distinct outcomes.
Everett’s Demon
Perfect knowledge reveals multiple futures.
Contrasts Laplace’s classical demon with an Everettian demon who foresees a branching structure of genuinely realized outcomes due to quantum indeterminacy.
Probability Without Collapse
Born rule as rational measure alignment.
Shows that aligning Credence with Measure is the only strategy that avoids systematic regret across future branches, yielding the Born rule as a normative requirement for rational agents.
Navigating the Multiverse
Ethics as amplitude navigation.
Argues that responsibility in an Everettian universe becomes measure-weighted rather than binary, with obligations and blame tied to vantage-indexed patterns rather than single outcomes.
Quantum Free Will
Choice as conditional identification.
Shows that free will in the QBU is the process by which an agent determines which portion of measure continues to instantiate them, aligning internal computation with higher-measure futures.
Quantum Local Realism
A structured reconciliation of physics and agency.
Demonstrates how Raymond-Robichaud’s model mirrors Axio’s Measure/Credence split, preserves local agency, and provides a rigorous physical corollary to the Physics of Choice.