Agency under indefinite causality: operational eternalism in higher-order quantum theory

Abstract:After two decades of research on indefinite causality, a conceptual lesson emerges: the tension between operational quantum theory and dynamical spacetime physics requires observers, or agents, to be defined within the theory itself. Agents arise from admissible groupings of input and output data in a global Hilbert space, and redefining these groupings may eliminate non-causality. Agency is perspectival: from Alice's perspective, Bob may fail to qualify as an observer, and vice versa. We interpret these results through an \emph{operational eternalism}, a stance analogous to the block-universe view but applied to information rather than geometry. Observers are thus well-defined in the global eternalist picture, but they are not universal across local perspectives.

arXiv:2512.22879 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2512.22879v2 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2512.22879 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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