Why “decoherence” is being discussed
The most recent Hacker News stories and comments contributing to this topic's mentions.
That’s a misunderstanding of what an observer is. An observer is better thought of as an interaction which distinguishes between states; there need not be a conscious observer.…
by derektank · Oct 21, 2026
In the day since I posted this, I've seen a few good links on HN that touch on this question. 1. The Decoherence Trap: https://maevyn.codes/decoherence 2. SlopCod…
by jackb4040 · Oct 21, 2026
Outside of engineering, nomading and migration in general creates a form of social decoherence (eg, difficult for foreigners to get things done, hard to make friends, etc.).
by yowayb · Oct 21, 2026
Sounds like a decoherence trap
by CGMthrowaway · Oct 21, 2026
Your premise about coding agents’ ability to manage complexity and decoherence for themselves sounds conjectural to me. Have you seen it reliably do this? For my part, I spent a…
by bunderbunder · Oct 21, 2026
This points back to a more general problem. I love to haul out the quote "All models are wrong, but some models are useful", and it's actually attributed to a statistician talki…
by digikata · Oct 21, 2026
Interest
Proportion of Hacker News items mentioning "decoherence" over time.
Mentions
Total number of Hacker News items mentioning "decoherence" over time.
Quantum decoherence is the loss of quantum coherence. It involves generally a loss of information of a system to its environment. Quantum decoherence has been studied to understand how quantum systems convert to systems that can be explained by classical mechanics. Beginning out of attempts to extend the understanding of quantum mechanics, the theory has developed in several directions and experimental studies have confirmed some of the key issues. Quantum computing relies on quantum coherence and is one of the primary practical applications of the concept. Read more on Wikipedia