Scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China have given a quantum physics-based answer to the main question: if people are so smart, why are they doing so many stupid things?
Psychologists have spent a lot of effort trying to figure out why people don't always make the right choices, even when they know the consequences of their decisions. In theory, we can all make simple and intelligent choices, but remember how often you or your friends made deliberately wrong decisions. So why are none of us perfect?
The answer was simple - uncertainty. The very uncertainty that drives theories of quantum mechanics. The researchers adopted a problem-solving paradigm called quantum reinforcement learning (QRL), which is based on a technique used in psychology and artificial intelligence development called classical reinforcement learning (CRL).
The essence of classical reinforcement learning is simple and involves reward and punishment. Whether you teach a child or a robot, it doesn't matter: successful tasks should be rewarded, and failures should be punished.
When applied to the question of stupid decisions, the idea is that we make them on the basis of perceived reward, not punishment.
That is, when making decisions, people take into account the uncertainty that exists in the quantum universe, without even knowing it. In Russia, for example, such a method is called “maybe”, when it is impossible to truly predict the outcome of an event at the quantum level, but hope for the best prevails.
Accordingly, human cognition is quantum, and the only way to somehow explain human memory, cognition and consciousness is the theory of quantum mechanics.
Kirill Panov
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