Quantum Minds

The formation of Strategies in Quantum Games

Quantum Moves players performed surprisingly well. Especially, some player’s solutions were remarkably different from computer-generated solutions. How do players achieve such unique performance? To answer this question, the CODER team, in cooperation with a cognitive scientist, has designed Quantum Minds.

Your plays help us to answer: How do humans achieve unique solutions? How do they form strategies in the quantum games? How do they learn from mistakes? The answers have implications for quantum physics. Particularly good game plays have the potential to overcome obstacles on the way to building a quantum computer. The answers also have implications for cognitive science.

Cognitive science is the study of human learning, memory, attention, and decision making. A number of findings from this field indicate that the human mind can achieve rather accurate solutions to rather complex problems, such as categorizing objects or recognizing patterns. Sometimes, the mind can even outsmart machine-learning tools, supposedly by utilizing the information structure in the environment¹‾² , thereby generating solutions as good as (or sometimes better than) computer-generated solutions.

That humans sometimes outsmart machines is especially interesting considering the capacity limitations of the mind.

• Human working memory is limited – we forget things all the time, e.g. we write shopping lists rather than memorizing twenty groceries, because we can simply not keep everything in memory at once.
• Human attention is selective – we tend to focus on one dimension at a time rather than integrate a huge number of pieces of information at once.
• Usually, computers are quicker in explicitly solving complicated equations – we mostly have a hard time doing complex algebra actively and deliberately in our head.

Nonetheless, humans are doing well in many decision situations. Often, this is because the mind has plenty of experience through learning, trial-and-error, and feedback.

But how exactly do players perform uniquely in a novel task, such as a quantum game? Help us to find this out by playing Quantum Minds.

Your plays and solutions give insights into the strategies that the human mind employs to efficiently tackle complex problems.

¹Gigerenzer, G., Hertwig, R. & Pachur, T. (2011) Heuristics: The Foundations of Adaptive Behavior eds. Gerd Gigerenzer, Ralph Hertwig, Thorsten Pachur. New York: Oxford University Press.

²Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. M. A. & ABC Research Group, A. (1999) Simple heuristics that make us smart. Oxford University Press.