Quantum Social Science

Written by world experts in the foundations of quantum mechanics and its applications to social science, this book shows how elementary quantum mechanical principles can be applied to decision-making paradoxes in psychology and used in modelling information in finance and economics. The book starts with a thorough overview of some of the salient differences between classical, statistical and quantum mechanics. It presents arguments on why quantum mechanics can be applied outside of physics and defines quantum social science. The issue of the existence of quantum probabilistic effects in psychology, economics and finance is addressed and basic questions and answers are provided. Aimed at researchers in economics and psychology, as well as physics, basic mathematical preliminaries and elementary concepts from quantum mechanics are defined in a self-contained way.

A unique contribution to the understanding of social science, showing the implications of quantum physics for the nature of human society.

You Matter More Than You Think introduces a new way of thinking about climate change and social change. It focuses on how the small changes we make can have a big impact, and why each of us matters when it comes to sustainability.

This book examines the crossroads of quantum and critical approaches to International Relations and argues that these approaches share a common project of uncovering complexity and uncertainty. The “quantum turn” in International Relations theory has produced a number of interesting insights into the complex ways in which our assumptions about the physics of the world around us can limit our understanding of social life. While critique is possible within a Newtonian social science, core assumptions of separability and determinism of classical physics impose limits on what is imaginable. The author argues that by adopting a quantum imaginary, social theory can move beyond its Newtonian limits, and explore two methods for quantizing conceptual models—translation and application. This book is the first introductory book to quantum social theory ideas specifically intended for an audience of critical International Relations.

Shown here is how basic concepts of physics can be used to improve models in finance, economics, psychology and biology. Readers are introduced to how physical theory can inform non-physical phenomena in the social sciences, thereby improving decision making and modeling capabilities in research-based and professional settings. Consisting of three parts, the first part deals with the application of quantum operator methods to financial transactions and population dynamics. Part two develops physical concepts, working from classical Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics and leading to an introduction of quantum information and its application to decision making. The final part treats classical and quantum probability theory in some detail and deals, at a more advanced level, with the impact of quantum probabilities on common knowledge and common beliefs between agents in systems. Quantum Methods in Social Science is a high level textbook for advanced undergraduate or graduate students of economics, finance and business, while also being of interest to those with a background in physics. Request Inspection Copy Contents:Quantum Counting: The Number Operator in a Social Science Context:IntroductionClassical Interlude: Modelling Population DynamicsA Quantum Description of SystemsQuantum CountingQuantum TransactionsQuantum MigrationMore Elaborate SystemsConclusionsReferences — Part IThe Quantum-Like Paradigm with Simple Applications:Taking a Step BackModeling Information with an Operational FormalismDecision Making and Quantum ProbabilityReferences — Part IIThe Quantum-Like Paradigm with Advanced Applications:Basics of Classical ProbabilityQuantum ProbabilityCommon KnowledgeQuantum(-Like) Formalization of Common KnowledgeExamplesAppendixReferences — Part III Readership: Advanced undergraduate or graduate students of economics, finance and business, while also being of interest to those with a background in physics.

The ideas at the root of quantum theory remain stubbornly, famously bizarre: a solid world reduced to puffs of probability; particles that tunnel through walls; cats suspended in zombielike states, neither alive nor dead; and twinned particles that share entangled fates. For more than a century, physicists have grappled with these conceptual uncertainties while enmeshed in the larger uncertainties of the social and political worlds around them, a time pocked by the rise of fascism, cataclysmic world wars, and a new nuclear age. In Quantum Legacies, David Kaiser introduces readers to iconic episodes in physicists’ still-unfolding quest to understand space, time, and matter at their most fundamental. In a series of vibrant essays, Kaiser takes us inside moments of discovery and debate among the great minds of the era—Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Stephen Hawking, and many more who have indelibly shaped our understanding of nature—as they have tried to make sense of a messy world. Ranging across space and time, the episodes span the heady 1920s, the dark days of the 1930s, the turbulence of the Cold War, and the peculiar political realities that followed. In those eras as in our own, researchers’ ambition has often been to transcend the vagaries of here and now, to contribute lasting insights into how the world works that might reach beyond a given researcher’s limited view. In Quantum Legacies, Kaiser unveils the difficult and unsteady work required to forge some shared understanding between individuals and across generations, and in doing so, he illuminates the deep ties between scientific exploration and the human condition.

The recent years have been characterized by stormy social protests throughout the world. These protests have some commonalities, but at the same time, their sociopolitical, psychological, and economic contexts differ essentially. An important class of such protests is known as color revolutions. The analysis of these events in social and political literature is characterized by huge diversity of opinions. We remark that the sociopolitical perturbations under consideration are characterized by the cascade dynamics leading to the exponential amplification of coherent social actions. In quantum physics, such exponential and coherent amplification is the basic feature of laser’s functioning. (“Laser” is acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). In this book we explore the theory of laser to model aforementioned waves of social protests, from color revolutions to Brexit and Trump’s election. We call such social processes Stimulated Amplification of Social Actions (SASA), but to keep closer to the analogy with physics we merely operate with the term “social laser.”

An overview of how complex systems from a variety of fields can be modelled using principles of quantum mechanics; from biology and ecology, to sociology and decision-making. The mathematical basis of these models is fully described, providing a self-contained introduction for students and researchers in applied mathematics or theoretical physics.