The Unreasonable Success of Quantum Probability I: Quantum Measurements as Uniform Fluctuations

We introduce a 'uniform tension-reduction' (UTR) model, which allows to represent the probabilities associated with an arbitrary measurement situation and use it to explain the emergence of quantum probabilities (the Born rule) as 'uniform' fluctuations on this measurement situation. The model exploits the geometry of simplexes to represent the states, in a way that the measurement probabilities can be derived as the 'Lebesgue measure' of suitably defined convex subregions of the simplexes. We consider a very simple and evocative physical realization of the abstract model, using a material point particle which is acted upon by elastic membranes, which by breaking and collapsing produce the different possible outcomes. This easy to visualize mechanical realization allows one to gain considerable insight into the possible hidden structure of an arbitrary measurement process. We also show that the UTR-model can be further generalized into a 'general tension-reduction' (GTR) model, describing conditions of lack of knowledge generated by 'non-uniform' fluctuations. In this ampler framework, particularly suitable to describe experiments in cognitive science, we define and motivate a notion of 'universal measurement', describing the most general possible condition of lack of knowledge in a measurement, emphasizing that the uniform fluctuations characterizing quantum measurements can also be understood as an average over all possible forms of non-uniform fluctuations which can be actualized in a measurement context. This means that the Born rule of quantum mechanics can be understood as a first order approximation of a more general non-uniform theory, thus explaining part of the great success of quantum probability in the description of different domains of reality. This is the first part of a two-part article.