The purpose of the present note is twofold. Firstly, we highlight the similarities between the ontologies of Kastner’s possibilist transactional interpretation (PTI) of quantum mechanics — an extension of Cramer’s transactional interpretation — and the authors’ hidden-measurement interpretation (HMI). Secondly, we observe that although a weighted symmetry breaking (WSB) process was proposed in the PTI, to explain the actualization of incipient transactions, no specific mechanism was actually provided to explain why the weights of such symmetry breaking are precisely those given by the Born rule. In other words, PTI, similarly to decoherence theory, provides a physical basis for the transition from a pure state to a fully reduced density matrix state, but doesn’t explain a quantum measurement in a complete way. On the other hand, the recently derived extended Bloch representation (EBR) — a specific implementation the HMI — precisely provides such missing piece of explanation, i.e., a qualitative description of the WSB as a process of actualization of hidden measurement-interactions and, more importantly, a quantitative prediction of the values of the associated weights that is compatible with the Born rule of probabilistic assignment. Therefore, from the PTI viewpoint, the EBR provides the missing link for a complete description of a quantum measurement.

Aerts, D. & Sassoli de Bianchi, M. (2017). Quantum measurements as weighted symmetry breaking processes: the hidden measurement perspective. International Journal of Quantum Foundations 3, pp. 1-16.