Viable Worlds Theory (VWT) presents a constraint-based framework for understanding why some worlds, systems, or environments are able to persist while others cannot. At its core, VWT is grounded in Quantum Coherence Theory (QCT), which provides a physical account of coherence, decoherence, and classical emergence without appeal to observer privilege, epistemic collapse, or branching ontologies. In QCT, the quantum–classical transition is treated not as a discontinuous event or interpretive choice, but as a continuous restriction of admissible configurations under increasing constraint density. Classical behavior emerges when alternative trajectories are no longer structurally viable, not because new laws are introduced, but because constraint accumulation renders deviation unsustainable. Decoherence is therefore understood as a structural phenomenon driven by environmental coupling, record formation, and invariant alignment, rather than as a measurement artifact or probabilistic selection. Viable Worlds Theory generalizes this insight beyond physics. It proposes that persistence under constraint is the primary explanatory primitive across domains. A “world” is defined not by belief, equilibrium, optimization, or narrative coherence, but by whether its structure can continue to exist under interaction, accumulated load, and environmental coupling. Many systems fail not because they are locally inconsistent or inefficient, but because they violate global viability conditions that only become visible under scale, interaction, or time. Within this framework, coherence is defined as the capacity of a system to maintain internal consistency relative to its own invariant structure while interacting with externally imposed invariants without loss of identity or stability. Where this condition fails, persistence fails with it—regardless of substrate or domain. Quantum systems provide the minimal physical test case for this claim, making QCT the foundational regime from which VWT is derived rather than merely illustrated. VWT explicitly distinguishes itself from Many-Worlds and other branching interpretations. While QCT allows for vast ontic possibility at the quantum level, it denies that unconstrained proliferation yields enduring worlds. Instead, only configurations that satisfy shared invariants and constraint compatibility can stabilize as persistent environments. The contribution of Viable Worlds Theory is not a new dynamics or a universal optimization principle, but a diagnostic framework for identifying why only certain structures—physical, informational, biological, cognitive, or engineered—are able to endure. By grounding world viability in quantum coherence and extending it through scale-agnostic constraint analysis, VWT offers a unified explanation for persistence, collapse, and the limits of admissible reality. (For ongoing discussion and additional material related to Coherence Science, Viable Worlds Theory (VWT), Quantum Coherence Theory (QCT), and Artificial Coherence Intelligence (ACI), see: r/CoherenceScience)
Viable Worlds Theory (VWT) presents a constraint-based framework for understanding why some worlds, systems, or environments are able to persist while others cannot. At its core, VWT is grounded in Quantum Coherence Theory (QCT), which provides a physical account of coherence, decoherence, and classical emergence without appeal to observer privilege, epistemic collapse, or branching ontologies. In QCT, the quantum–classical transition is treated not as a discontinuous event or interpretive choice, but as a continuous restriction of admissible configurations under increasing constraint density. Classical behavior emerges when alternative trajectories are no longer structurally viable, not because new laws are introduced, but because constraint accumulation renders deviation unsustainable. Decoherence is therefore understood as a structural phenomenon driven by environmental coupling, record formation, and invariant alignment, rather than as a measurement artifact or probabilistic selection. Viable Worlds Theory generalizes this insight beyond physics. It proposes that persistence under constraint is the primary explanatory primitive across domains. A “world” is defined not by belief, equilibrium, optimization, or narrative coherence, but by whether its structure can continue to exist under interaction, accumulated load, and environmental coupling. Many systems fail not because they are locally inconsistent or inefficient, but because they violate global viability conditions that only become visible under scale, interaction, or time. Within this framework, coherence is defined as the capacity of a system to maintain internal consistency relative to its own invariant structure while interacting with externally imposed invariants without loss of identity or stability. Where this condition fails, persistence fails with it—regardless of substrate or domain. Quantum systems provide the minimal physical test case for this claim, making QCT the foundational regime from which VWT is derived rather than merely illustrated. VWT explicitly distinguishes itself from Many-Worlds and other branching interpretations. While QCT allows for vast ontic possibility at the quantum level, it denies that unconstrained proliferation yields enduring worlds. Instead, only configurations that satisfy shared invariants and constraint compatibility can stabilize as persistent environments. The contribution of Viable Worlds Theory is not a new dynamics or a universal optimization principle, but a diagnostic framework for identifying why only certain structures—physical, informational, biological, cognitive, or engineered—are able to endure. By grounding world viability in quantum coherence and extending it through scale-agnostic constraint analysis, VWT offers a unified explanation for persistence, collapse, and the limits of admissible reality. (For ongoing discussion and additional material related to Coherence Science, Viable Worlds Theory (VWT), Quantum Coherence Theory (QCT), and Artificial Coherence Intelligence (ACI), see: r/CoherenceScience)
(This version has been superceeded, see v.3) Contemporary approaches to physical unification typically emphasize dynamical laws, interpretive frameworks, or information-theoretic reconstructions. Less attention is given to the structural constraints that determine which physical descriptions can remain coherent and stable under interaction, scale transition, and aggregation. This paper develops a constraint-first analysis of coherence, arguing that persistence and unification require restrictions on admissible physical continuations that are not reducible to dynamics alone. Within the framework referred to here as Quantum Coherence Theory (QCT), coherence is treated not as a fragile quantum resource but as a structural property governed by interaction geometry and constraint density. On this view, classical behavior emerges when accumulated constraints sufficiently narrow admissible evolution, while quantum behavior re-emerges when constraints are relaxed. The account does not introduce new dynamics, collapse mechanisms, or modifications of quantum formalism, but instead clarifies the conditions under which existing formalisms yield stable, unified descriptions. The resulting constraints distinguish QCT from observer-centric, intrinsic-collapse, and purely descriptive decoherence accounts, while remaining compatible with globally unitary dynamics. Formal analysis in later sections develops operational redundancy conditions, admissibility constraints on joint states, and rigidity-style arguments linking redundant record structure to the stability of classical descriptions. These results do not constitute a complete theory of unification, but they narrow the space of physically admissible descriptions and clarify the structural role of coherence in bridging quantum and classical regimes.
This preprint presents a foundations-level analysis of physical description based on structural dependency rather than dynamical construction. Quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, and relativistic spacetime are treated as effective regimes arising under different structural conditions, rather than as competing ontologies. The analysis identifies persistence under interaction, irreversible constraint accumulation, stable relational structure, and interaction as minimal requirements for physical behaviour. Collapse is characterised as irreversible loss of compatibility between alternative continuations, without appeal to observers, stochastic dynamics, or additional postulates. Time is treated as structural ordering induced by exclusion, rather than as a primitive background parameter. No new dynamics are proposed and no empirically successful theories are modified. The aim is to clarify explanatory dependencies that underlie familiar physical regimes and to dissolve persistent foundational problems that arise when regime-level descriptions are misidentified as foundations.
The Quantum Continuum Theory (QCT) presents a meta-theoretical framework in which quantum mechanics, spacetime geometry, and cognition emerge as projections from an invariant pre-ontic continuum (Ω). Unlike Copenhagen, Many-Worlds, Bohm, or QBism, QCT eliminates auxiliary mechanisms—collapse, branching, hidden variables—by treating projection as the fundamental generative principle. Five axioms formalize invariance, emergent spacetime as projection interference, and relational objectivity through projection overlap. QCT resolves the measurement problem structurally, reinterprets entanglement without nonlocality, addresses the preferred-basis problem, and aligns with timeless quantum cosmology (Wheeler–DeWitt equation). By deriving coherence, nonlocality, and spacetime from projection principles rather than postulating them independently, QCT provides explanatory depth across quantum foundations, emergent gravity, and quantum cognition, maintaining formal equivalence with standard quantum mechanics in projection-dense limits.
The Quantum Convergence Threshold (QCT) framework presents a deterministic, first-principles model in which wavefunction collapse arises as an informational convergence process rather than a stochastic or observer-dependent event. Collapse occurs when a system’s internal informational flux Λ(x,t) and temporal resolution Δt exceed its coherence-sustaining capacity Ω, modulated by a dimensionless awareness-threshold function Θ(t). The formal criterion Θ(t)·Δt·Λ/Ω ≥ 1 defines the transition point at which quantum superposition becomes informationally unsustainable, forcing a deterministic convergence to a single outcome. This replaces probabilistic postulates with a continuous, measurable buildup of informational density that can, in principle, be monitored experimentally. QCT introduces explicit, physically motivated terms — informational flux density (Λ), coherence pressure (Ω), and the awareness threshold function (Θ) — into the Schrödinger framework, producing a modified evolution equation that preserves unitarity until convergence becomes unavoidable. The theory predicts measurable threshold signatures in interferometric visibility, hysteresis effects under repeated weak measurement, and scaling relationships between collapse time, decoherence rate, and informational load. Beyond addressing the measurement problem, QCT connects quantum foundations with quantum information theory and thermodynamics, suggesting a unified informational ontology for the transition from quantum potentiality to classical actuality. Its implications extend to quantum computing, decoherence control, and the emergence of classicality itself, providing a rigorous platform for experimental falsification and theoretical expansion.
This paper constructs a logically self-consistent emergent structural frameworkfor the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) based on decoherence theory, quantum information geometry, and self-referential dynamics. Within this framework,a ”world” is rigorously defined as a quasi-classical branch formed in Hilbert spacethrough environmental decoherence and information-geometric boundaries. Its independence is quantitatively characterized by the branch separation degree Dab defined by the quantum relative entropy between branches. When Dab exceeds a critical value Dc determined jointly by the energy scale of environmental fluctuationsand the decoherence time, the branches separate irreversibly in the informationgeometric sense, constituting independent ”worlds”. Furthermore, by introducingthe concept of a self-consistent observer, this paper demonstrates the dynamic selection mechanism of cosmological laws within the string theory landscape: only thosevacuum branches that can support self-consistent observers (satisfying conditionssuch as the memory decoherence time being much greater than the cognitive operation time) have their wavefunction weights effectively preserved during evolution,thereby acquiring physical reality. Finally, combining Zurek’s envariance argumentwith the requirement of observer memory stability, we show that the Born ruleP(i) = |⟨i|ψ⟩|2 is not an additional assumption but a necessary consequence forthe stable existence of self-consistent observers. This framework provides an operational mathematical foundation for the many-worlds interpretation, transforms theanthropic principle into a dynamic selection problem, and offers an explanation forthe origin of probability based on quantum information principles.
Contemporary physics increasingly challenges the classical assumption that information is stored locally within isolated physical systems. Quantum entanglement, relational interpretations of quantum mechanics, spacetime dynamics, and holographic approaches to information all suggest that persistence in nature may be fundamentally relational rather than object-bound. In this paper, we develop a multi-scale interpretive framework in which “memory” is understood not as internal storage within particles or systems, but as the persistence of correlations across quantum states, fields, spacetime geometry, biological organization, and cognitive processes.At the quantum level, relational correlations and entanglement are examined as forms of distributed informational persistence that do not require localized memory carriers. At the spacetime level, curvature and holographic structure are interpreted as persis-tent geometric constraints encoding the historical influence of interactions. Extending beyond physics, biological systems are treated as active stabilizers of relational infor-mation through genetic, metabolic, and neural organization, while consciousness is ex-plored as a higher-order form of integrated relational memory arising from hierarchical informational integration.The framework integrates established theoretical approaches—including relational quantum mechanics, holographic information theory, decoherence theory, and inte-grated information theory—with clearly demarcated speculative hypotheses concerning field-mediated persistence, frequency-based encoding, and cross-scale informational coherence. Throughout, explicit distinctions are maintained between accepted physical formalism, interpretive extension, and speculative proposal.Rather than introducing a new physical theory, this work proposes a unifying concep-tual platform for understanding information persistence across scales. Within this per-spective, memory becomes a distributed structural feature of reality itself: not a proper-ty stored inside isolated objects, but a persistent relational constraint shaping how physical, biological, and cognitive systems evolve through time.