Pith Number

pith:MS36OCR7

pith:2026:MS36OCR7UD7FAUSKJDOXVSK3CG

not attested not anchored not stored refs pending

Can the present be the average of the future?

Z. Gedik

Quantum probabilities arise by averaging deterministic measurement assignments over all possible backward-evolving future states.

arxiv:2604.11968 v2 · 2026-04-13 · quant-ph

Open paper page JSON Open Graph Bundle Merged state Verified badge What is a Pith Number?

Add to your LaTeX paper

\usepackage{pith}
\pithnumber{MS36OCR7UD7FAUSKJDOXVSK3CG}

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Record completeness

1 Bitcoin timestamp

2 Internet Archive

3 Author claim open · sign in to claim

4 Citations open

5 Replications open

✓ Portable graph bundle live · download bundle · merged state

The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

probabilistic outcomes can be derived from a deterministic assignment and averaging over all possible future states traveling backward in time. The assignment rule provides an alternative statement and demonstration of the Pusey, Barrett, Rudolph theorem.

C2weakest assumption

That the hidden variable can be given physical significance as a backward-evolving state and that the proposed deterministic time-symmetric rule for measurement outcomes, when averaged, exactly reproduces the Born rule without additional fitting or post-hoc choices.

C3one line summary

The present quantum state is the average of all possible future states traveling backward in time, from which the Born rule follows deterministically.

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-05-20T01:06:09.512682Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

64b7e70a3fa0fe50524a48dd7ac95b11ac62e424370d557de8555a33fd0e3f5d

Aliases

arxiv: 2604.11968 · arxiv_version: 2604.11968v2 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2604.11968 · pith_short_12: MS36OCR7UD7F · pith_short_16: MS36OCR7UD7FAUSK · pith_short_8: MS36OCR7

Agent API

Resolver JSON Graph JSON Events JSON Schema Signing key

Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/MS36OCR7UD7FAUSKJDOXVSK3CG \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: 64b7e70a3fa0fe50524a48dd7ac95b11ac62e424370d557de8555a33fd0e3f5d

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "febe61493012fa14c8558adc49483e482f7cf16dfe7029b41e1b375e4f9cf8ff",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "primary_cat": "quant-ph",
    "submitted_at": "2026-04-13T19:00:16Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "d9c12157c644df228bc410f584c047954f5bfd129e6cdfc57b9ee798d414d336"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2604.11968",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 2
  }
}