On the significance of Wigner's Friend in contexts beyond quantum foundations

Jones & Müller: the Wigner's-friend structure is not specifically quantum

what the source states

The paper argues that the gist of the Wigner's-friend paradox can be reproduced without quantum physics: classical thought experiments involving the duplication of agents recover some implications for the absoluteness of observations, and the essential ingredient is "Restriction A" — that a physical theory may fail to provide a single probabilistic description of the observations of all agents — a difficulty the authors locate at the core of puzzles from extended Wigner's-friend scenarios to the Boltzmann-brain problem.

what we infer

Cuts in an unexpected direction: written by the flagship program's own authors, it weakens any attempt (by anyone) to read Wigner's-friend experiments as distinctively quantum evidence about observers — while simultaneously showing the first-person problem the program targets is broader than quantum foundations. Both edges are kept.

limitations

• Characterized from the abstract; full text not read this run.