{
  "annotation_id": "13b90964-22ca-452a-94a1-93a6b54d4371",
  "date_created": "2026-03-02T18:02:30.810000Z",
  "date_modified": "2026-03-02T18:02:30.810000Z",
  "file_hash": "95de70ef0d3da100984f350d09862151d8a0147e0ef5bb19e8fcb7734a75b1a0",
  "private": false,
  "record": {
    "abstract": "We consider the hypothesis that quantum mechanics is an approximation to\nanother, cosmological theory, accurate only for the description of subsystems\nof the universe. Quantum theory is then to be derived from the cosmological\ntheory by averaging over variables which are not internal to the subsystem,\nwhich may be considered non-local hidden variables. We find conditions for\narriving at quantum mechanics through such a procedure. The key lesson is that\nthe effect of the coupling to the external degrees of freedom introduces noise\ninto the evolution of the system degrees of freedom, while preserving a notion\nof averaged conserved energy and time reversal invariance.\n  These conditions imply that the effective description of the subsystem is\nNelson\u0027s stochastic formulation of quantum theory. We show that Nelson\u0027s\nformulation is not, by itself, a classical stochastic theory as the conserved\naveraged energy is not a linear function of the probability density. We also\ninvestigate an argument of Wallstrom posed against the equivalence of Nelson\u0027s\nstochastic mechanics and quantum mechanics and show that, at least for a simple\ncase, it is in error.",
    "arxiv_id": "quant-ph/0609109",
    "authors": [
      "Lee Smolin"
    ],
    "categories": [
      "quant-ph",
      "gr-qc",
      "hep-th"
    ],
    "title": "Could quantum mechanics be an approximation to another theory?",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0609109"
  },
  "schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
  "source": {
    "execution_id": "42f55c48-f134-4945-9e47-e9311807874c",
    "id": "arXiv Dataset IDs",
    "type": "Model",
    "variant": "snapshot-2026-03-01",
    "version": "0.1.0"
  },
  "user_id": 1000002
}