Elise Crull: When Philosophy Becomes an Engineering Problem
This week's podcast episode features a stimulating conversation about the philosophical questions posed by quantum information science and technology and how they defy the usual stereotypes about the esoterica, abstract nature of philosophy.
On this week's podcast episode I talked with a philosopher of physics, and I came away hearing the word "entanglement" differently. It was a real illustration of a feeling I've long had about quantum technologies, that they are a really unique opportunity to see how philosophical discourse can have real world implications. Because of course, if you are unclear on just what you mean by entanglement, or decoherence, or superposition, that can have real consequences if you build or fund quantum hardware.
Elise Crull is Associate Professor of Philosophy at CCNY and the CUNY Graduate Center, a 2025 APS Fellow, and co-author of The Einstein Paradox (Cambridge, 2024).
- Why "decoherence" and "noise" are not interchangeable — and why your error correction strategy depends on telling them apart
- What Einstein actually objected to in EPR, recovered from Schrödinger's correspondence folder
- Why "it's just a tool" is the most insidious thing an engineer can say about quantum technology
- How even causality itself is subject to debate within the weird context of quantum computing.
There are six-plus working definitions of entanglement currently circulating in physics. Crull walks through why that ambiguity isn't academic — it shows up in how experiments get designed and how results get claimed.
If you are as intrigued as I by the philosophical approach to quantum technologies, give it a listen.
