Quantum Explanations for Destructive Interference in Engineering Decision Making
2022-01-0242
03/29/2022
- Content
- Engineering practice routinely involves decision making under uncertainty. Much of this decision making entails reconciling multiple pieces of information. As more information is collected, one is expected to make better and better decisions. However, conditional probability assessments made by human decision makers, as new information arrives does not always follow expected trends and instead exhibits interference effects. Understanding such positive or negative interference of two or more information inputs is necessary for a better modeling of the cognitive processes taking place in the customer or the end user's mind. Doing so enhances the likelihood that better products and product features can be designed. Quantum probability has been used in the literature to explain many commonly observed deviations from classical probability. Some examples include: question order effect, response replicability effect, Machina and Ellsberg paradoxes. In this work, we present results from a survey demonstrating responses that cannot be readily explained using classical probability. On the other hand, a quantum formulation easily models it by accommodating both positive and negative “interference” between events. Since quantum formulism is more general and can also match the predictions of classical probability, it serves as a richer paradigm for modeling decision making behavior in engineering practice.
- Citation
- Pandey, V., and Baiseva, I., "Quantum Explanations for Destructive Interference in Engineering Decision Making," SAE Technical Paper 2022-01-0242, 2022, .