Is action at a distance possible as envisaged by the EPR Paradox.

[billschnieder]

Continuing from my last post, I am posting a simple simulation to illustrate my point. Python code is included.

Note we are trying to calculate the LHS of the following inequality which we will then compare with the RHS:
$$|ab + ac| - bc \leq 1$$
At each angle we record the channel (+1 or -1)
Scenario 1: Like in the derivation of Bell's inequality, each data point contains data for three angles a,b,c. Note that here we only only need one data point to calculate the LHS as each point contains all our combinations: In the following code, we iterate through all the possibilities and calculate the maximum value we can attain for the LHS

    max_val = -999
    for a in (-1,1):
        for b in (-1,1):
            for c in (-1,1):
                v = abs(a*b + a*c) - b*c
                if v > max_val: max_val = v
    print 'LHS <=', max_val

OUTPUT:

LHS <= 1

As you can see, the inequality is obeyed here.

Scenario 2: Like in Bell-test experiments, each data point consists of only two angles. We therefore need three different data points to be able to calculate the LHS of our inequality, one point in which we collected for (a,b), say (a1, b1), a different one in which we collected for (a, c) say (a2, c2) and yet a different point for which we collected for (b, c), say (b3, c3). We now iterate through all the possibilities and calculate the maximum value we can get for the LHS of our inequalities.

    max_val = -999
    for a1 in (-1,1):
        for b1 in (-1,1):
            for a2 in (-1,1):
                for c2 in (-1,1):
                    for b3 in (-1,1):
                        for c3 in (-1,1):
                            v = abs(a1*b1 + a2*c2) -b3*c3
                            if v > max_val: max_val = v
    print 'LHS <=', max_val

OUTPUT:

LHS <= 3

Clearly, the second scenario, violates the inequalities!

 

[DougW]

Why consider it? The multiverse is just an ontological construct crafted so as not to actually say anything new (provide any actual physics), that QM doesn't already contain. So if were considering the set of all possible models consistent with QM, for the purposes of BI, then QM already covers this special case. Unless you can say exactly what it entails in terms of BI in a relevant way.

Wow, I couldn't disagree more! The idea that you consider 'saying anything new' only as 'providing actual physics' is indicative of the lack of imagination in current physics. I wonder how many of the truly important theories we work with today would have been uncovered if everyone only thought in terms of the already established physics?

Multiple Universe theory is a way of explaining phenomenon, which I had thought was the ultimate goal of physics, and of all science. Take a step beyond the math involved and start asking some questions, such as 'when the quantum wave collapses, where do the virtually infinite number of particles that do not remain go?' Do we believe they never existed in the first place? Or can matter simply stop existing?

When considering how gravity relates to QM, Multiple Universes allows us to consider out-of-the-box ideas such as the relationship of gravity to the probability of change between adjacent universes (or to the amount of information needed to describe those changes). Could gravity be a force that spans multiple universes, and could that help answer some of the questions we have about why gravity doesn't always seem to behave the way we expect?

And, as I mentioned earlier, MU provides a common-sense explanation for the 'action at a distance' question that Einstien first puzzled over, and which has still not been satisfactorily answered.

Go back and read (or re-read) Flatland, and ask yourself the question, 'Should flatlanders limit their thinking to the dimensions in which they are constrained?' Should we then constrain ourselves to thinking only in terms of the physics we can measure? I'd prefer to be able to believe that we can imagine more that we can experience, and if we keep thinking about the larger picture, someone will come up with a way to measure or prove the theories we have that concern parts of existence that currently seem hidden to us.

 

[my_wan]

Wow, I couldn't disagree more! The idea that you consider 'saying anything new' only as 'providing actual physics' is indicative of the lack of imagination in current physics. I wonder how many of the truly important theories we work with today would have been uncovered if everyone only thought in terms of the already established physics?

I would call it a lack of imagination to think one particular manner of constructing the ontological format of a theory is special. It's like thinking Engish is a proper language, but not Russian or other language, or that one is right making the other wrong.

Multiple Universe theory is a way of explaining phenomenon, which I had thought was the ultimate goal of physics, and of all science. Take a step beyond the math involved and start asking some questions, such as 'when the quantum wave collapses, where do the virtually infinite number of particles that do not remain go?' Do we believe they never existed in the first place? Or can matter simply stop existing?

The goal of physics is to make phenomena predictable. What constitutes an "explanation" differs from person to person and what they already understand. Personal theories quiet often are not even wrong, they merely locked onto a singular ontological notion to the exclusion of others, like the language example. Your notion of "explanation" is a human or perspective induced construct.

When considering how gravity relates to QM, Multiple Universes allows us to consider out-of-the-box ideas such as the relationship of gravity to the probability of change between adjacent universes (or to the amount of information needed to describe those changes). Could gravity be a force that spans multiple universes, and could that help answer some of the questions we have about why gravity doesn't always seem to behave the way we expect?

Already been done in string theory. But what does it predict? Nothing to date. Many people accuse it of not being physics, but that is technically a premature claim. If they tried to claim it as the standard model, then I would start complaining about the lack of physics it provides.

And, as I mentioned earlier, MU provides a common-sense explanation for the 'action at a distance' question that Einstien first puzzled over, and which has still not been satisfactorily answered.

A common sense explanation of medical verses poisonous plants and compounds in the past was the 'spirit' they contained. A common-sense explanation that provides no physics, but only common-sense explanation, is not science. It leads us back to the dark ages of "explanation". Perhaps, when we learn enough, we can format it in comprehensible ontological constructs. But lagitamacy is not dependent on it, lagitamacy is dependent on empirical predictability.

Go back and read (or re-read) Flatland, and ask yourself the question, 'Should flatlanders limit their thinking to the dimensions in which they are constrained?' Should we then constrain ourselves to thinking only in terms of the physics we can measure? I'd prefer to be able to believe that we can imagine more that we can experience, and if we keep thinking about the larger picture, someone will come up with a way to measure or prove the theories we have that concern parts of existence that currently seem hidden to us.

Another question you can ask, can flatlanders construct a 2D set of force laws that doesn't require adding dimensions outside their experience to "explain" all such effects? A Dimensions is nothing more or less than a coordinate designation, and our laws are generally expressed in coordinate independent formulations these days. It makes meaning go away in many cases because meaning can depend on the choice of coordinates. Yet if two choices of meaning agree with the coordinate independent formulism, they are equivalent, even if they appear to disagree in meaning. There's nothing particularly special in the "meaning" of extra dimensions.

Personally, I like foundational issues. This puts the importance of phenomenology ahead of the formulism. Yet, the empirical validity of the existing formulism must be strictly honored. If I tried to reject a formulism, on the grounds of some ontological twist I claimed as the correct ontology, it would be pure unadulterated crackpottery. Same if I take some pure explanation, lacking any unique empirical consequences, as if it was the one true explanation of things. These considerations may be useful in considering foundational issues, but they aren't uniquely valid, even if they are valid.

Back to EPR...

 

[DrChinese]

Absolutly NOT! There is no assumption about locality or realism. We have a dataset from an experiment, in which we collected data for three boolean variables x, y, z. That is, each data point consists of 3 values one each for x, y and z, with each value either 1 or 0. We could say, our dataset is (xyz_i, i=1..n). Our task is then to derive inequalities which sums of products of pairs extracted from this dataset of triplets must obey. From our dataset we can generate pair products (xy, yz, xz). Note that there is no mention of the type of experiment, it could be anything, a poll in which we ask three (yes,no) question, or the EPR situation. We completely divorce ourselves from the physics or specific domain of the experiment and focus only on the mathematics. Note also, that there is no need for randomness here, we are using the full universe of the dataset to obtain our pair products. We do that and realize that the inequalities obtained are Bell-like. That is all there is to it.

The question then is, if a dataset violates these inequalities, what does it mean? Since there was no physical assumptions in their derivation, violation of the inequalities must mean ONLY that the dataset which violates the inequalities is not mathematically compatible with the dataset used to generate the inequalities.

The example I presented involving doctors and patients, shows this clearly.


I'm not sure you understand the point yet. The whole point is to show that any pairs extracted from a dataset of triples MUST obey the inequalities, but pairs from a dataset of just pairs will not! So your request is a bit strange. Do you agree that in Aspect type experiments, no triples are ever collected, only pairs? In other words, each data point consists of only two values of dichotomous variables, not three?

This shows that there is a simple mathematical reason why Bell-type inequalities are violated by experiments, which has nothing to do with locality or "realism" -- ie, Bell's inequalities are derived assuming values per data point (a,b,c), however in experiments only pairs are ever measured (a,b), therefore the dataset from the experiments is not mathematically compatible with the one assumed in Bell's derivation.

No, you can show me wrong by an example. Show me the triples, I will pick the doubles randomly. They will have matches of at least 1/3. All sets of triples will have this attribute (considering sample size).

Now, somehow you think it is OK to consider doubles by themselves. Well, that's fine if you are NOT a local realist. I don't think there are well defined values for counterfactual experiments. So I agree that the triples are not viable, and so everything seems fine to me. But you're the one asserting something extra, not me.

 

[DrChinese]

Continuing from my last post, I am posting a simple simulation to illustrate my point. Python code is included.

Note we are trying to calculate the LHS of the following inequality which we will then compare with the RHS:
$$|ab + ac| - bc \leq 1$$
At each angle we record the channel (+1 or -1)
Scenario 1: Like in the derivation of Bell's inequality, each data point contains data for three angles a,b,c. Note that here we only only need one data point to calculate the LHS as each point contains all our combinations: In the following code, we iterate through all the possibilities and calculate the maximum value we can attain for the LHS

    max_val = -999
    for a in (-1,1):
        for b in (-1,1):
            for c in (-1,1):
                v = abs(a*b + a*c) - b*c
                if v > max_val: max_val = v
    print 'LHS <=', max_val

OUTPUT:

LHS <= 1

As you can see, the inequality is obeyed here.

Scenario 2: Like in Bell-test experiments, each data point consists of only two angles. We therefore need three different data points to be able to calculate the LHS of our inequality, one point in which we collected for (a,b), say (a1, b1), a different one in which we collected for (a, c) say (a2, c2) and yet a different point for which we collected for (b, c), say (b3, c3). We now iterate through all the possibilities and calculate the maximum value we can get for the LHS of our inequalities.

    max_val = -999
    for a1 in (-1,1):
        for b1 in (-1,1):
            for a2 in (-1,1):
                for c2 in (-1,1):
                    for b3 in (-1,1):
                        for c3 in (-1,1):
                            v = abs(a1*b1 + a2*c2) -b3*c3
                            if v > max_val: max_val = v
    print 'LHS <=', max_val

OUTPUT:

LHS <= 3

Clearly, the second scenario, violates the inequalities!

Where is the dataset? Why do you hide behind the code? Answer: because you are completely mistaken. The question is NOT about what you are demonstrating above!

Yes, the first scenario respects the Inequality. That shows the triples. The second is where you go wrong. You must show the matches are less than 1/3 for randomly selected pairs from the first scenario. Oops, you calc something else entirely.

 

[billschnieder]

Where is the dataset? Why do you hide behind the code? Answer: because you are completely mistaken. The question is NOT about what you are demonstrating above!

Yes, the first scenario respects the Inequality. That shows the triples. The second is where you go wrong. You must show the matches are less than 1/3 for randomly selected pairs from the first scenario. Oops, you calc something else entirely.

Please take time and read carefully what I am saying here, because I don't think you understand the point yet.

The inequality |ab + ac| - bc <= 1, defines the maximum possible value obtainable. In other words, for every possible combination of values for (a,b,c) attainable within our experiment, that inequality will never be greater than 1.

The code posted, shows that the maximum possible value respects the inequality for the case with 3 values per data point, and violates the inequality for the case with 2 values per data point. This proves my point that a dataset of pairs is not equivalent to a dataset of triples.

So I don't know what you are talking about with respect to 1/3.

 

[billschnieder]

No, you can show me wrong by an example. Show me the triples, I will pick the doubles randomly. They will have matches of at least 1/3. All sets of triples will have this attribute (considering sample size).

Now, somehow you think it is OK to consider doubles by themselves. Well, that's fine if you are NOT a local realist. I don't think there are well defined values for counterfactual experiments. So I agree that the triples are not viable, and so everything seems fine to me. But you're the one asserting something extra, not me.

Evidently, you must be trying hard not to understand what I am saying.

The facts are the following:
1) Bell's inequality is derived assuming 3 values per dataset point
2) Bell-test experiments measure 2 values per dataset point
3) Bell-test experiments violate Bell's inequalities

Do you deny any of those facts? Do you know of an experiment in which triples are measured? If your answer is NO, as it should be, then it is mind bogling why you keep asking me to give you a dataset of triples.

The only important question then is:
Why do the experiments violate the inequalities?

Some would say, because the experimental situation is non-local, or not-real as Bell assumed. But my argument here is that there is an entirely mathematical reason why the inequalities are violated it owes to the fact that Bell used triples in his derivation, while actual experiments only measure pairs. The code I posted, demonstrates this, first by showing that the inequalities are indeed valid for triples, then by showing that the inequalities are not valid for pairs. This is clear and simple enough for anyone interested in understanding the argument. You don't have to agree with it to understand it.

And if you do understand it, surely you must see that asking me to provide a dataset of triples so you can randomly pick pairs out of is nonsensical. To calculate the LHS of the inequality you need triples occurring together. Therefore, for a single data point triple (a,b,c), you already have (a,b), (a,c) and (b,c) ocuring together. You don't need any random picking, you can calculate the inequality for each point. My simulation has already shown you that triples obey the inequality; and they should because the inequalities were derived from triples. And note that I considered all posibilities.

Now for a dataset from a real experiment, you only have pairs, therefore to get terms for the inequality, you need three data points.
One data point for which (a,b) occurred together, one in which (a,c) occurred together and one in which (b,c) occurred together. My simulation shows that this scenario violates the inequality just like Bell-test experiments do.

So the conclusion is clear: I have presented a simple mathematical reason why Bell-test experiments in which only pairs are recorded violates Bell inequalities in which triples are assumed.

The onus is no you to provide experimental data in which triples are recorded and Bell's inequality is still violated.

 

[DrChinese]

Please take time and read carefully what I am saying here, because I don't think you understand the point yet.

The inequality |ab + ac| - bc <= 1, defines the maximum possible value obtainable. In other words, for every possible combination of values for (a,b,c) attainable within our experiment, that inequality will never be greater than 1.

The code posted, shows that the maximum possible value respects the inequality for the case with 3 values per data point, and violates the inequality for the case with 2 values per data point. This proves my point that a dataset of pairs is not equivalent to a dataset of triples.

So I don't know what you are talking about with respect to 1/3.

I know you don't, and that is MY point. I keep telling you that the requirement is two fold. a) the inequality is respected for the triples, and b) the QM expectation value is met for the doubles. You succeeded with a), not too hard that since it is always true. You ignore b).

On the other hand, you are asserting that there is something which doubles violate every time. I say you are presenting hogwash that is meaningless to this discussion. Show me a dataset of triples. Then surprise me with something about random doubles from that dataset. Because your program isn't doing it for me.

 

[DrChinese]

The onus is no you to provide experimental data in which triples are recorded and Bell's inequality is still violated.

Hey, I'm not the one trying to assert there is a local realistic dataset.

P.S. I initially wrote dummy instead of "one" but realized that might be too harsh.

 

[billschnieder]

I keep telling you that the requirement is two fold. a) the inequality is respected for the triples, and b) the QM expectation value is met for the doubles. You succeeded with a), not too hard that since it is always true. You ignore b).

You conveniently left out the very important fact that I have already proved the inequality is violated for doubles. If you want to deny that proof just say so, rather than pretend it is not relevant. My interest is to explain the reason for violation of Bell's inequalities by Bell-test experiments. It is a fact that both QM and experiments agree with each other but disagree with Bell. Not surprising, as you yourself acknowledged, both QM and the experiments are working with doubles, and Bell is working with triples. My focus here is to show that this oft neglected detail, results in the violation of Bell-type inequality, due to pure mathematics, without any reference to physical assumptions. I have done that and you do not deny the fact that I have proven this.
I set out to prove that a dataset of triples is not compatible with a dataset of pairs. And I have done that. You do not deny that I have proven this.

On the other hand, you are asserting that there is something which doubles violate every time.

I never said that. I said the inequality is not guaranteed to be obeyed for doubles. If you go back and read what I actually wrote, you will see that the result for doubles was L <= 3 and for triples was L <=1. Clearly, this is not saying doubles violate the inequality "every time" as you misinterpreted, so please look carefully before you jump.

I say you are presenting hogwash that is meaningless to this discussion. Show me a dataset of triples.

Oh it is very relevant: The crucial question I am answering is "Why are Bell-type inequalities violated?" For anyone who is interested in whether action at a distance is a possible conclusion of the EPR paradox, this question is the most important question. Do you deny that?

Your answer to the question, if I may guess your position, is that Bell-type inequalities are violated because either realism or locality or both are false, therefore action at a distance is possible.

My answer to the question, which you are desperately trying to avoid is:
1) Bell's inequalities can be derived from triples of dichotomous variables without any physical assumption
2) In Bell-test experiments only pairs of values are ever collected
3) A dataset of pairs can be made to violate inequalities derived from a dataset of triples
4) I have provided mathematical proof of (1), (2) is an accepted fact. I have provided proof of (3) via simulation
5) Therefore, the violation of Bell's inequalities derived from triples, by an experiment which only collects pairs, is not surprising, it is expected for purely mathematical reasons, having nothing to do with realism or locality.


Now if you think my answer is wrong, be specific, about which of the above claims is false, and why it is false. What you can not do is pretend the above is not relevant to the discussion. If you can not be specific about what it is you think is wrong with my answer, it is you who is presenting hogwash.

Then surprise me with something about random doubles from that dataset. Because your program isn't doing it for me.

You still haven't gotten it have you. My program simulates two situations. Scenario 1 is the situation assumed in Bell's derivation, Scenario 2 is the situation actually measured in Bell-test experiments. And they disagree. Of course if you are trying to ignore my argument, you would say "it isn't doing it for me" without actually explaining what aspect of the simulation goes against what is actually measured in Bell-test experiments or assumed in Bell-inequalities.

The whole point of the simulation is to show that the dataset of triples disagrees with the dataset of doubles, thus giving you a framework for comparing Bell's inequalities (the dataset of triples) with Bell-test experiments (the dataset of doubles). The code presented showed both scenarios.

Now you must understand why asking me to give you a dataset of triples which disagrees with Bell and agrees with QM is nonsensical. Again in case you still do not understand, the whole point of the argument and the simulation is to show that Bell agrees with the triples but disagrees with the doubles, get it?

EDIT:
One thing that my treatment also shows is the following:
For a dataset of triples, Bell's inequality can never be violated, not even by spooky action at a distance! Since my proof does not make any physical assumptions, you can define the physical situation anyway you want, and even include spooky action at a distance and you will never violate Bell's inequality so long as you are dealing with a dataset of triples! In other words, it is mathematically impossible to violate the inequalities for a dataset of triples, irrespective of the physical situation generating the data, whether it is local causality or FTL.

As long as you have a dataset of only pairs, like in Bell-test experiments, all bets are off. What this proves is that Action at a distance is NOT a possible outcome of the EPR paradox.

 

[DrChinese]

You conveniently left out the very important fact that I have already proved the inequality is violated for doubles. If you want to deny that proof just say so, rather than pretend it is not relevant. My interest is to explain the reason for violation of Bell's inequalities by Bell-test experiments. It is a fact that both QM and experiments agree with each other but disagree with Bell. Not surprising, as you yourself acknowledged, both QM and the experiments are working with doubles, and Bell is working with triples. My focus here is to show that this oft neglected detail, results in the violation of Bell-type inequality, due to pure mathematics, without any reference to physical assumptions. I have done that and you do not deny the fact that I have proven this.
I set out to prove that a dataset of triples is not compatible with a dataset of pairs. And I have done that. You do not deny that I have proven this.

...

As long as you have a dataset of only pairs, like in Bell-test experiments, all bets are off. What this proves is that Action at a distance is NOT a possible outcome of the EPR paradox.

Interesting that you are taking credit for something that Bell discovered. And yes, I deny that you have proven anything beyond that. Perhaps you can explain the part about "a dataset of triples is not compatible with a dataset of pairs" with an example dataset.

The idea would be that that each triplet a, b, c yields 3 doubles ab, bc, ac. You would merely demonstrate that randomly selected doubles (i.e. 1 double from each triplet) do NOT reflect the universe of all doubles (which is 3 times the size) within statistical parameters. You supply the dataset, I will randomly select.

Oh wait, we've been through this before. There is no such dataset of triplets. And you won't submit one for inspection. And yet, you claim to have PROVED there is!

What gives??

 

[billschnieder]

You probably missed this part, here it is again:

My Claims:
1) Bell's inequalities can be derived from triples of dichotomous variables without any physical assumption
2) In Bell-test experiments only pairs of values are ever collected
3) A dataset of pairs can be made to violate inequalities derived from a dataset of triples
4) I have provided mathematical proof of (1), (2) is an accepted fact. I have provided proof of (3) via simulation
5) Therefore, the violation of Bell's inequalities derived from triples, by an experiment which only collects pairs, is not surprising, it is expected for purely mathematical reasons, having nothing to do with realism or locality.


Now if you think my answer is wrong, be specific, about which of the above claims is false, and why it is false.

...

For a dataset of triples, Bell's inequality can never be violated, not even by spooky action at a distance!

If you are interested in being specific, address these points and we can talk.

 

[Bonge]

We have to agree that after EPR it seems that Space-Time itself is more clearly than ever an illusion on the quantum level.
The interesting thing is that if we link this absurd behavior to our other theories of QED you will find that in fact all light, electrons, quarks u and d, Ws, Photons etc, are in fact really being defined by their behaviour in time, aside from the time aspect of their rotational rate/ wavelength of amplitude etc the only characteristic of these subatomic entities that exists differently is their weight!
And based on special relativity wee can safely assume some sort of relativistic weight, especially when considering the nature of time itself on these particles.
In conclusion to this highly concise point, I believe that it is impossible to refute that in fact everything is the same, and I don't just mean entangled since the big bang, but in fact all particles are inherently the same thing, none are different just because of the fact that in the absurd world of quantum physics it is impossible to prove any of this to the contrary.
Until we know more, we just have to assume that Higgs particle is a quantum black hole caused b the dense weight of the subatomic particles in every atom! In fact all EPR speaks of worm-holes between all aspects of physicality, linking them at rates faster than the speed of TIME (and obviously light) and in fact if all of the space-time continuum is a web of wormholes linking every quantum of physicality then we must conclude that TIME as we experience it is an illusion, and so to is SPACE.
Is it impossible to suggest that the whole universe is infinitessimally small based on the web of entangled worm-holes? Well One thing we know is that nothing is too absurd to consider - so consider this!
The same way that the internet links the whole world's information on a web of a different proprietary nature to the information itself, but we know that it works and makes data available throughout the Earth at rates much faster than DHL can send it because of the short-cuts, so just go a step further to understand my hypothesis, if the ADSL broadband internet wires were worm holes, then the whole universe could be linked, and just like the internet is big in its transport ability but tiny in it's physical hardware size because all it needs to be is the P2P cable, so too this worm-hole web can be of ZERO SIZE.
Finally, it is very easy to presume that the laws of physics in a worm hole are different to the ones we observe, and C-the speed of light can certainly be much faster even if the size of the WHW (worm-hole-web) is not infinitessimally small.

Thanks
THoughts?

 

[unusualname]

^^ It's no good trying to derail this thread with wild flights of fancy, I already tried that tactic way back on page 17 or so

btw, the answer to the OP's question is, according to modern consensus, yes, action at a distance is possible as envisaged by the EPR Paradox.

(There is a minority who maintain otherwise)

 

[DougW]

^^ It's no good trying to derail this thread with wild flights of fancy, I already tried that tactic way back on page 17 or so

btw, the answer to the OP's question is, according to modern consensus, yes, action at a distance is possible as envisaged by the EPR Paradox.

(There is a minority who maintain otherwise)

Again, action at a distance is only 'possible' if you believe that you as the observer can not be affected. Multiple Universe allows that all of the 'action' taking place is local. When the observer measures the particle on one end of the entanglement the information they obtain changes their relationship with the multiverse...a local action which occurs at lightspeed. At that moment, the only version of the second particle of the entanglement that they can interact with is the one which corresponds with the first particle measured.

Think about it this way. Does donning a pair of polarized sunglasses send a messsage to a distant lightsource telling it to only emit light with a particular polarization? That would also be considered 'spooky action at a distance'. But, of course, with this example, we easily accept that the action is local, that we are filtering out some of the light from reaching our eyes. But, change the subject ever so slightly, and people find it difficult to make the next step. We can't imagine how 'information' can be filtered in this way. As Deustch has pointed out, we can see, and even measure, the effects of particles that clearly do not 'exist' in our universe the way we have always understood existence. Then after a measurement, we also can clearly see that our ability to measure these particles is gone. Did the particles stop existing, or is perhaps the information about these particles simply filtered from our senses?

my_wan's earlier insult to the MU theory notwithstanding (comparing it to 'spirits' in plants? Really? That is wrong on so many levels...), this theory actually causes fewer 'problems' with our understanding of classic physics that any other 'theory of everything' that has been proposed so far. Is it being rejected because it diminshes us phycologically (i.e. how important am I if there might be a near-inifinite number of copies of 'me' out there)?

Anyway, perhaps action at a distance hasn't been disproven, but it is a long way from proven...

 

[DrChinese]

You probably missed this part, here it is again:

3) A dataset of pairs can be made to violate inequalities derived from a dataset of triples

If you are interested in being specific, address these points and we can talk.

I think I have asked every way possible. Show me an example of your 3). A dataset. DATA SET. D A T A S E T. Set du data.

I don't understand how 2 values alone are made to violate an inequality (as you claim), but I guess your example will show that. Of course, I don't actually expect you to produce anything remotely approaching your baseless claims.

QM predicts values for doubles, but does not predict anything for triples. For 120 degrees separated a, b, c that is a correlation rate of .25. You cannot come closer than .33 when I randomly select doubles from your triples.

Or consider this dataset:

a b
+ +
+ -
- +
+ -

Gosh, that is a correlation rate that matches QM's expectation .25. Notice how there is no c. Let's add c.

a b c
+ + -
+ - +
- + -
+ - -

ab=.25. But looky here: bc=.25 and ac=.50. Oops, an average of... .33. Just as I said. In a true experiment, there are no streams with .50. They are all .25. Come on bill, you know all this already. Now, how does nature manage to hide the ac stream from us all the time? THERE IS NO c!

 

[unusualname]

A
Anyway, perhaps action at a distance hasn't been disproven, but it is a long way from proven...

You can say that about every theory in science.

This particular "theory" allows for a lot of (so called) philosophical discussion because it's not known how the non-local mechanism works.

At the boundary of scientific knowledge you always get philosophical speculation and muddled analysis, which often looks silly with historical hindsight.

I'll be happy when string theory or some other higher dimensional model finally gives a convincing explanation for the non-local mechanism, but we'll just have to wait a little longer.

 

[billschnieder]

Or consider this dataset:

a b
+ +
+ -
- +
+ -

No! Can you calculate the expression |ab + ac| - bc from that?
You still have not understood anything in my argument, nothing at all. So let me break it down for you.

(a,b,c) should refer to angles which Alice and Bob are allowed to change between at random, just like in a real Bell-test experiment. So the dataset from an experiment consists of two columns, 1 for Alice and 1 for Bob as follows:
(a=1, b=-1) ie, Alices angle was a and she got +1, Bobs angle was b and he got -1
(c=1, b=1) ie,Alices angle was c and she got +1 Bobs angle was b and he got 1
...
(b=-1, a=-1)

Each row contains 2 values, 1 for Bob and 1 for Alice, in other words, each data point is a pair. This is the meaning of a dataset of pairs. It doesn't mean you have only two angles in the whole dataset as you mistakenly thought. It means only two angles are collected at a time, get it?

Therefore, to calculate |ab + ac| - bc, you have to calculate the three terms just like they do for Bell-test experiments as follows
ab - look for a row in which Alice's angle was [a] and Bob's was and multiply what they got
ac - look for a row in which Alice's angle was [a] and Bob's was [c] and multiply what they got
bc - look for a row in which Alice's angle was and Bob's was [c] and multiply what they got

Again, now you hopefully understand that, there are three angles involved even if we have just a dataset of pairs. So the above is how Bell-test experiments proceed which is one part of my simulation and we got the valid inequality to be

|ab + ac| - bc <= 3

Now on to the part which covers Bell's derivation:
Bell assumes that there are values existing for three angles (a,b,c). So the dataset from an experiment consists of three columns, 1 for Alice and 1 for Bob as follows, plus a mythical Jane, ie, what Jane would have observed if she had measured at the same time as Alice and Bob. This is what you and JesseM have been calling the "realism assumption":
(a=1, b=-1, c=+1) ie, Alices angle was a and she got +1, Bobs angle was b and he got -1, Janes angle is c and she got +1
etc.
This is a dataset of triples.

Therefore, to calculate |ab + ac| - bc, you have to calculate the three terms just like Bell did. You already have all three combinations ab, ac and bc within a single data point of Bell's assumed dataset so for each point you just
ab - multiply the angle [a] outcome with the angle outcome
ac - multiply the angle [a] outcome with the angle [c] outcome
bc - multiply the angle outcome with the angle [c] outcome

So the above is how Bell's inequality is derived, and we do the simulation and indeed it confirms Bell's inequality

|ab + ac| - bc <= 1

There is 'c' in both scenarios, they both deal with 3 angles. The difference is, one is a dataset of pairs the other is a dataset of triples. I can not make it any easier than this. If you still do not understand this, you are on your own.

 

[DrChinese]

There is 'c' in both scenarios, they both deal with 3 angles. The difference is, one is a dataset of pairs the other is a dataset of triples. I can not make it any easier than this. If you still do not understand this, you are on your own.

After all this, still no dataset.

Yours are some of the dopiest responses I can seriously imagine. So either you are one of the 5 smartest people in the world (since there are probably 4 more who agree with you) or you need to go hide in a cave until you see what is being asked.

And I was on my own long before you showed up!

 

[DrChinese]

For those following this discussion, billschnieder is basically addressing this question:

For a stream of particles, we'll call them Alice, does Alice have well defined polarization values for angle settings a=0, b=120 and c=240 degrees which match the QM expectation value of .25?

EPR says YES, Alice does, unless you unreasonably require this to be proven by simultaneous prediction of those values. Their explanation is that since a, b OR c can be predicted (but not all simultaneously), that should be adequate as proof. You can predict a, b or c of course by first observing Alice's twin partner, Bob.

Now the reason I choose the angle settings I did for a, b and c is that allows me to construct a very simple dataset to test for Alice, and then compare to the QM expectation value. Assuming 4 photons in Alice's stream (to get us started):

a b c
+ + -
+ - +
- + -
+ - -

So the above would be possible realistic values per EPR. I made these up, in an attempt to provide values that would be as close as possible to the Quantum Mechanical predictions. Obviously, 4 is way too few to be rigorous but yet is sufficient to discuss. So let's consider what Alice's twin Bob would look like:

a b c
+ + -
+ - +
- + -
+ - -

I.e. the same as Alice. So suppose we compare all the permutations of observing Alice and Bob at different angle pairs ab, bc, and ac. What would we see? And the answer is that even for as few as 4 items, it is not possible to get closer than a 33% average correlation rate.

ab=.25
bc=.25
ac=.50
------
average=.333333

QM would predict 25%, i.e. cos^2(theta=120 degrees). Obviously, you would have a standard deviation which is too large to be meaningful for this few items. But in a larger sample the actual experimentally observed value is in fact 25%. Using the EPR logic, something is clearly wrong.

Bill's argument has something to do with 3 observers and either 2 or 3 attributes (I am not really sure which). But the actual question is whether 1 particle has 3 well defined values. If 1 does, then 2 do too. And that is what is being considered in Bell tests. Whenever you question this point, simple consider that EPR is saying:

Alice stream =
a b c
+ + -
+ - +
- + -
+ - -

Bob stream =
a b c
+ + -
+ - +
- + -
+ - -

On the other hand, QM goes no farther than this:

Alice stream =
a b
+ +
+ -
- +
+ -

Bob stream =
a b
+ +
+ -
- +
+ -

Which matches QM just fine.

 

[DevilsAvocado]

... you need to go hide in a cave ...

... Maybe we should hint billschnieder that Crackpot Kracklauer has lots of rooms for rent in his poco-loco cave ... AFAICT, very private and excellent for deep contemplation regarding the proposed schizophrenic nature of wave functions (!?), and exactly how quantum mechanics may be involved in abortion (!?).

 

[DevilsAvocado]

For those following this discussion, billschnieder is basically addressing this question: ...

Great explanation DrC. Now... I just wonder... how billschnieder is going to mess-up this beautiful and simple explanation...? Huh? Maybe some "chains" of probability? Maybe some hilarious (Monty) Python code? Or maybe a groundless personal attack??

I’m going for the later: billschnieder are now going to accuse you for not answering his question, and writing too looooooooong posts (that takes hours for him to understand) about the totally wrong subject, and you are doing all these "bad things" just to avoid the fact that billschnieder is right and have proven a sensational fact that nobody knew before.

Let’s see...

 

[DevilsAvocado]

... In fact all EPR speaks of worm-holes between all aspects of physicality, linking them at rates faster than the speed of TIME

Que? Speed of TIME ??

The same way that the internet links the whole world's information on a web of a different proprietary nature to the information itself, but we know that it works and makes data available throughout the Earth at rates much faster than DHL can send it because of the short-cuts, so just go a step further to understand my hypothesis, if the ADSL broadband internet wires were worm holes, then the whole universe could be linked, and just like the internet is big in its transport ability but tiny in it's physical hardware size because all it needs to be is the P2P cable, so too this worm-hole web can be of ZERO SIZE.

Look, there are no ADSL-worm-holes-short-cuts on the internet. Just digital information transferred close to the speed of light. And I can guarantee you that if you were to collect all the hardware that makes up the internet infrastructure – it would not be "tiny". And there are no "P2P cables" (peer-to-peer), just twisted-pair cables (Cat-5, Cat-5e, Cat-6, etc), and these cables are not the internet, since they only work properly on distances < 100 meters (= LAN).

Internet is a hardware and software infrastructure that provides connectivity between computers.

THoughts?

I admire your imagination, but I doubt this has anything to do with real science...

 

[DevilsAvocado]

... my_wan's earlier insult to the MU theory

There is no such thing called the "MU theory", unless you just made it up. Are you talking about the Many-worlds interpretation (MWI), or the Ultimate Ensemble hypothesis?

I hope you do know the difference between theory/hypothesis/interpretation?

 

[DevilsAvocado]

... Yours are some of the dopiest responses I can seriously imagine. So either you are one of the 5 smartest people in the world (since there are probably 4 more who agree with you) or you need to go hide in a cave until you see what is being asked.

I wish billschnieder would read and understand this quote:

"One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision." -- Bertrand Russell​

 

[billschnieder]

For those following this discussion, billschnieder is basically addressing this question:
...

This is bait-and-switch. Those following the discussion know exactly what I am addressing which is different from your misrepresentation of my position.

The question I am addressing is the clearly the following:
"Is action at a distance a possible conclusion from Bell's inequalities and the results of Bell-test experiments?"
In other words,
"Why are Bell's inequalities violated by Bell-test experiments, and what can we conclude from this violation?"

My answer to the above question can be summarized in the following points which remain unchallenged:
1) Bell's inequalities can be derived from triples of dichotomous variables without any physical assumption
2) In Bell-test experiments only pairs of values are ever collected at a time (a dataset of pairs)
3) A dataset of pairs can be made to violate inequalities derived from a dataset of triples for purely mathematical reasons
4) I have provided mathematical proof of (1), (2) is an accepted fact. I have provided proof of (3) via simulation
5) Therefore, the violation of Bell's inequalities derived from triples, by experiments such as Bell-test experiments which only collect pairs, is not surprising, it is expected for purely mathematical reasons, having nothing to do with realism or locality.
6) Therefore, Bell's inequality can never be violated by a dataset of triples, even if the physical assumption of of spooky action at a distance is mandated!

Now if anyone thinks my answer is wrong, be specific, about which of the above claims is false, and why it is false.


Here are the detailed explanations:
Claim 1: Bell's inequalities can be derived from triples of dichotomous variables without any physical assumption
We have three binary variables (x, y, z) (ie, each can have a value of 0 or 1 and such that $$\overline{x} = 1 - x$$)
For our three variables, the triple products of all possible combinations must obey the following equation:

$$1 = \overline{xyz}+x\overline{yz}+x\overline{y}z+\overline{x}y\overline{z}+xy\overline{z}+\overline{xy}z+\overline{x}yz + xyz$$

We can then group the terms as follows so that each group in parentheses can be reduced to products of only two variables.

$$1 = \overline{xyz}+(x\overline{yz}+x\overline{y}z)+(\overline{x}y\overline{z}+xy\overline{z})+(\overline{xy}z+\overline{x}yz) + xyz$$

Performing the reduction, we obtain:

$$1 = \overline{xyz}+(x\overline{y})+(y\overline{z})+(\overline{x}z) + xyz$$

Which can be rearranged as:

$$x\overline{y}+y\overline{z}+\overline{x}z = 1 - (\overline{xyz} + xyz)$$

But since the last two terms on the RHS are either 0 or 1, we can write the following inequality:

$$x\overline{y}+y\overline{z}+\overline{x}z \leq 1$$

In Bell's treatment, we are interested not in boolean variables of possible values (0,1) but in variables with values (+1, -1). So we define three such two-valued variables (a,b,c), which are simply transformations of our x, y, z as follows: a = 2x - 1 , b = 2y - 1 and c = 2z - 1

Remembering that $$\overline{x} = 1 - x$$, and substituting for a, b,c in the above inequality and maintaining on the LHS only terms involving products of pairs, you obtain the following inequality

$$-ab - ac - bc \leq 1$$

Replacing a with -a and you obtain the following inequality

$$ab + ac - bc \leq 1$$

Combine the above two into the form

$$|ab + ac| - bc \leq 1$$

Which is Bell's inequality, except derived without any assumptions about locality or realism. This inequality MUST therefore be obeyed by any three 2-valued variables with possible values, NO MATTER the physical meaning ascribed to them. You could even assume that the three values represent measurements at three different galaxies, with non-local signalling, or even backward signalling between them and it would not make a difference, the inequality MUST still be obeyed. You can verify this by randomly picking three values from the set (-1, +1) and calculate this inequality. It is always obeyed. The only assumption is that we have three such variables, and each one can only have values (-1, or +1).


Claim 2: In Bell-test experiments only pairs of values are ever collected at a time (a dataset of pairs)

Continuing from claim 1, in Bell-test experiments, our three variables (a,b,c) correspond to the 3 angles. Values (-1, +1) correspond to the channels at each arm of the experiment Bob has two channels (-1, +1) and Alice has two channels (-1, +1). An assignment such as (a=-1) means, the photon reached the (-1) channel when measured with the setting at angle (a). To calculate a correlation between two settings (a, b), all we need to do is multiply together the values obtained for that angle.Therefore C(a,b) = ab. To see this, if a=-1, and b=-1, then C(a,b) = 1 which is perfect correlation, but if a=1 and b=-1, C(a,b) = -1 which is perfect anti-correlation.

Prior to the start of the experiment, Alice and Bob are each given the three angles which they are going to randomly switch between. The possible angle combinations are therefore for Alice (first) and Bob (second) are (aa), (ab), (ac), (bb), (ba), (bc), (cc), (ca), (cb). Pairs of photons are then emitted from the source and one heads to Alice, the other to Bob. At each arm, Alice and Bob set their random angle and make a reading which the record down. At the end of the experiment, they meet and tally their results into something as follows:

(c=-1, a=+1)
(b=+1, a=+1)
...

Each row simply corresponds to the results for a single photon pair and contains only two settings even though for the whole experiment they are randomly changing between THREE angles. Therefore their dataset can be called a dataset of pairs. This is how Bell-test experiments are always done. The only insignificant difference in some cases, is when they decide to use FOUR angles rather than three. In that case, a different Bell-type inequality with 4 terms has to be used.

Claim 3: A dataset of pairs can be made to violate inequalities derived from a dataset of triples for purely mathematical reasons
We now have our experimental data of pairs. But since Bell-test experiments are done in order to test Bell's-inequality, we need to calculate the LHS of the inequality (ie |ab + ac| - bc <= 1) using our experimental data. In Bell-test experiments we calculate each of the terms (ab), (ac) and (bc) from our data. However, for each photon pair we only have two angles so we need three data points to be able to calculate all the terms. We calculate (ab) from the data point where the angles chosen at Alice and Bob were (a,b) respectively, and the same for the other two terms. Since we know all the possibilities, that can be realized in an actual experiment, ie, 9 possible angle pairs, each yielding 4 possible value pairs (++, +-, -+, --), we have a total of 36 distinct possible data points for our dataset of pairs. The question then is Is Bell's inequality obeyed for any combination of 3 angles angles extracted from within this dataset of pairs? We can answer this by calculating the LHS of our inequality for all the possibilities. The following Python code does the calculation:

max_val = -999
for a1 in (-1,1):
    for b1 in (-1,1):
        for a2 in (-1,1):
            for c2 in (-1,1):
                for b3 in (-1,1):
                    for c3 in (-1,1):
                        v = abs(a1*b1 + a2*c2) -b3*c3
                        if v > max_val: max_val = v
print 'LHS <=', max_val

And it tells us that the inequality is violated, since we obtain |ab + ac| - bc <= 3, instead of |ab + ac| - bc <= 1. This proves that for any dataset involving THREE two-valued variables, but for which you have ONLY pairs of variables per data point, like in Bell-test experiments, the correct inequality is |ab + ac| - bc <= 3 and NOT |ab + ac| - bc <= 1. In other words, for purely mathematical reasons, Bell's inequality is not a valid model for the dataset obtained in Bell-test experiments. The two are mathematically incompatible. This means, violation of Bell's inequality by Bell-type experiments is simply due to a mathematical discrepancy between the meaning of the terms, and not due to anything physical. Which means, even if we assumed spooky action at a distance was in play, Bell-test experiments will still violate Bell's inequality.

Note:
- There is no mention about QM in the above, as the above is valid for purely mathematical reasons, no matter what QM says or does not say. So any counter argument trying to claim that QM says "this" or "that", is moot.
- The above describes what is actually done in Bell-test experiments and the simulation actually generates a dataset. So any counter argument trying to claim that I still need to provide a dataset is moot. Anyone serious bout countering this, can run the code and obtain the dataset.
- The above derives Bell's inequality without any physical assumption, therefore any claim that violation of such inequalities implies anything physical is moot.


So again, for any Bell proponent who thinks I am wrong, point out where exactly and provide a coherent explanation as to why you think the above is wrong.

I'm sure DevilsAvocado with all his Bell expertise will provide a point by point rebuttal which makes sense. I await it.
-----------------------
Brådköp ångerköp

 

[DevilsAvocado]

OMG! I’m dying! https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=2803101#post2803101" DrC didn’t answer the question! This is tooooooooooo much! HAHAHAH!


P.S. Advise to any reader – Don’t bother to run the Monty Python code unless you want a good laugh. There are no initialized variables, and 0*0 is always zero, zip, nada, zilch. HAHAHAHAH!

 

[my_wan]

my_wan's earlier insult to the MU theory notwithstanding (comparing it to 'spirits' in plants? Really? That is wrong on so many levels...), this theory actually causes fewer 'problems' with our understanding of classic physics that any other 'theory of everything' that has been proposed so far. Is it being rejected because it diminshes us phycologically (i.e. how important am I if there might be a near-inifinite number of copies of 'me' out there)?

(I'm guessing MU stands for 'Multiple Universe' as in MWI.)

I was not insulting any theory. I was making a factual statement about the value of 'explanation' when that explanation provides absolutely nothing except an interpretation of post-facts.

The MWI is quiet good at supplying a coherent interpretation of QM, and I can't claim it to be factually false. But it is not even a theory, it's an interpretation. Look at it this way: if without QM we were given a complete explanation of the MWI, it would tell us nothing about QM. It includes none of the predictions of QM, much less QM itself. The same cannot be said of the Uncertainty Principle, Born rule, Pauli exclusion principle, etc. It does not add any predictive power to any part of science.

These various interpretations are far from being useless. I'm as interested in them as I am the science, hopefully they'll even help us to extend science. But once you start mistaking interpretation for science it's no better than trying to identify which god blew the volcano. No, this is not an insult to those interpretations, which I think even the most outrageous are quiet valuable. The insult, if any, is reserved for the conflation between theory and interpretation.

 

[Dmitry67]

The MWI is quiet good at supplying a coherent interpretation of QM, and I can't claim it to be factually false. But it is not even a theory, it's an interpretation. Look at it this way: if without QM we were given a complete explanation of the MWI, it would tell us nothing about QM. It includes none of the predictions of QM, much less QM itself. The same cannot be said of the Uncertainty Principle, Born rule, Pauli exclusion principle, etc. It does not add any predictive power to any part of science.

I don't agree.
MWI made very important falsifiable prediction - there is no collapse - at any scale.
Experiments with C60, with superconductive rings etc prove it
While collapse theories (CI, TI) are now the history

 

[billschnieder]

OMG! I’m dying!

... of ignorance.

P.S. Advise to any reader – Don’t bother to run the Monty Python code unless you want a good laugh. There are no initialized variables, and 0*0 is always zero, zip, nada, zilch.

Python is free (http://www.python.org/download/), and it takes 1 minute to install and test my code. Anyone with more than one braincell will actually run the code BEFORE triumphantly proclaiming their idiocy with an outburst such as yours

 

[DrChinese]

... of ignorance.

...of Dataset. Why program when data is not ambiguous? Ah, because there is no data matching the claim. Otherwise, the programmer would merely execute his program and show us the dataset.

 

[DevilsAvocado]

Why program when data is not ambiguous?

OMG! I’m dying x 2!

 

[DevilsAvocado]

Great explanation DrC. Now... I just wonder... how billschnieder is going to mess-up this beautiful and simple explanation...? Huh? Maybe some "chains" of probability? Maybe some hilarious (Monty) Python code? Or maybe a groundless personal attack??

I’m going for the later: billschnieder are now going to accuse you for not answering his question, ...

This is bait-and-switch. Those following the discussion know exactly what I am addressing which is different from your misrepresentation of my position.

Of course I’m laughing in triumph. I was right!

Only a totally deranged oddball, locked in the Cranky Cave of Grandmaster Crackpot Kracklauer, would repeatedly continue this head-banging lunacy, which we now are experiencing in this and other threads on PF. You have by far driven this brainless "tactic" over the edge of hilarious parody, and I can assure you – I’m not the only one laughing out loud.

Python is free (http://www.python.org/download/), and it takes 1 minute to install and test my code. Anyone with more than one braincell will actually run the code BEFORE triumphantly proclaiming their idiocy with an outburst such as yours

Please Mr. BS, don’t be mad. Once again you have misinterpreted everything about everything. The numeric example "0*0" was not referring to your silly little code, but your brain cells. The recommendation to not even spend even 1 minute on this intellectual fraud still remains solid, because you’re trying to "prove" something that solely exists inside your own crooked head, and not outside, in the real world of balanced and sincere scientists.

The question I am addressing is the clearly the following:
"Is action at a distance a possible conclusion from Bell's inequalities and the results of Bell-test experiments?"

And here we go again. Not even wrong. You’re all over the place with your skewed picture of mainstream science. Deliberately or not, you’re leaving out the most important part in Bell's theorem:

"No physical theory of local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics."​

Consequently, your "personal theories" is an attack on the predictions of quantum mechanics, more than anything else, and I do hope you truly realize what this means, and how utterly ridiculous 10 lines of iterative Python code are in the light of this fact. That’s why we are all laughing.

But, maybe this oddball "approach" is perfectly "natural" to you, having Crackpot Kracklauer as the one and only guiding "star".

My answer to the above question can be summarized in the following points which remain unchallenged:
1) Bell's inequalities can be derived from triples of dichotomous variables without any physical assumption
2) In Bell-test experiments only pairs of values are ever collected at a time (a dataset of pairs)
3) A dataset of pairs can be made to violate inequalities derived from a dataset of triples for purely mathematical reasons
4) I have provided mathematical proof of (1), (2) is an accepted fact. I have provided proof of (3) via simulation
5) Therefore, the violation of Bell's inequalities derived from triples, by experiments such as Bell-test experiments which only collect pairs, is not surprising, it is expected for purely mathematical reasons, having nothing to do with realism or locality.
6) Therefore, Bell's inequality can never be violated by a dataset of triples, even if the physical assumption of of spooky action at a distance is mandated!

Now if anyone thinks my answer is wrong, be specific, about which of the above claims is false, and why it is false.

Maybe someone thinks I’m too harsh, accusing you for being an intellectual fraud. But, here’s the proof:

1) Bell's ansatz (equation 2 in his paper) correctly represent those local-causal hidden variables
2). Bell's ansatz necessarily lead to Bell's inequalities
3). Experiments violate Bell's inequalities
Conclusion: Therefore the real physical situation of the experiments is not Locally causal.

There is no doubt in my mind that statement (2) has been proven mathematically since I do not know of any mathematical errors in Bells derivation. Similarly, there is very little doubt in my mind that experiments have effectively demonstrated that Bell's inequalities are violated. I say little doubt because no loophole-free experiments have yet been performed but for the sake of this discussion we can assume that loopholes do not matter.

No mathematical errors in Bells derivation. Well, well, well, what happened here??


What happened is that JesseM proved, by immense patience and great skills, that your "chains of probability" where dead wrong. Then you changed your madcap "approach" to the "triplet mess". Once again JesseM where about to prove you wrong, and to get out of this, you started a totally groundless personal attack on JesseM:

I did respond to that post, but I didn't end up responding to your later post #128 on the subject here because before I got to it you said you didn't want to talk to me any more unless I agreed to make my posts as short as you wanted them to be and for me not to include discussions of things I thought were relevant if you didn't agree they were relevant.

As you no doubt remember I gave extended arguments and detailed questions intended to show why your claims that Bell's theorem is theoretically flawed or untestable don't make sense, but you failed to respond to most of my questions and arguments and then abruptly shut down the discussion, in multiple cases (As with my posts here and here where I pointed out that your argument about the failure of the 'principle of common cause' ignored the specific types of conditions where it failed as outlined in the Stanford Encyclopedia article you were using as a reference, and I asked you to directly address my argument about past light cones in a local realist universe without relying on nonapplicable statements from the encyclopedia article. Your response here was to ignore all the specific quotes I gave you about the nature of the required conditions and declare that you'd decided we'd have to 'agree to disagree' on the matter rather than discuss it further...if you ever change your mind and decide to actually address the light cone argument in a thoughtful way, you might start by saying whether you disagree with anything in post #63 here).

Then you continued the crazy "triplet mess", knowing that JesseM would prove your initial attack on Bell dead wrong:

The facts are the following:
1) Bell's inequality is derived assuming 3 values per dataset point
2) Bell-test experiments measure 2 values per dataset point
3) Bell-test experiments violate Bell's inequalities

JesseM showed patience:

So this critique appears to be rather specific to the Leggett-Garg inequality, maybe you could come up with a variation for other inequalities but it isn't obvious to me ...

But you continued your wacky crankiness:

This is not a valid criticism for the following reason:

1) You do not deny that the LGI is a Bell-type inequality. Why do you think it is called that?
2) You have not convincingly argued why the LGI should not apply to the situation described in the example I presented
3) You do not deny the fact that in the example I presented, the inequalities can be violated simply based on how the data is indexed.
4) You do not deny the fact that in the example, there is no way to ensure the data is correctly indexed unless all relevant parameters are known by the experimenters
5) You do not deny that Bell's inequalities involve pairs from a set of triples (a,b,c) and yet experiments involve triples from a set of pairs.
6) You do not deny that it is impossible to measure triples in any EPR-type experiment, therefore Bell-type inequalities do not apply to those experiments. Boole had shown 100+ years ago that you can not substitute Rij for Sij in those type of inequalities.

JesseM tried to explain:

5) You do not deny that Bell's inequalities involve pairs from a set of triples (a,b,c) and yet experiments involve triples from a set of pairs.

I certainly deny this too, in fact I don't know what you can be talking about here. Different inequalities involve different numbers of possible detector settings, but if you look at any particular experiment designed to test a particular inequality, you always find the same number of possible detector settings in the inequality as in the experiment. If you disagree, point me to a particular experiment where you think this wasn't true!

6) You do not deny that it is impossible to measure triples in any EPR-type experiment, therefore Bell-type inequalities do not apply to those experiments. Boole had shown 100+ years ago that you can not substitute Rij for Sij in those type of inequalities.

This one is so obviously silly you really should know better. The Bell-type inequalities are based on the theoretical assumption that on each trial there is a λ which either predetermines a definition outcome for each of the three detector settings (like the 'hidden fruits' that are assumed to be behind each box on my scratch lotto analogy), or at least predetermines a probability for each of the three which is not influenced by what happens to the other particle at the other detector (i.e. P(A|aλ) is not different from P(A|Bbaλ)). If this theoretical assumption were valid, and the probability of different values of λ on each trial did not depend on the detector settings a and b on that trial, then this would be a perfectly valid situation where these inequalities would be predicted to hold. Of course we don't know if these theoretical assumptions actually hold in the real world, but that's the point of testing whether the inequalities hold up in the real world--if they don't, and our experiments meet the necessary observable conditions that were assumed in the derivation, then this constitutes an experimental falsification of one of the predictions of our original theoretical assumptions.

But you are still continuing your ridiculous crusade against John Bell, without listening to professionals.

If we just take one step back, and look at your new main cranky "argument":

If your silly little code, by a grand miracle, proves that the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leggett%E2%80%93Garg_inequality" is wrong, then you are hoping to run Bell's theorem down the drain as well, right?

(To those who don’t know: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_James_Leggett" got the Nobel Prize in Physics 2003)​

There’s only one 'little' problem with this "advanced crackpot approach" – Bell's theorem was formulated in 1964 and the Leggett–Garg inequality is from 1985, published in the paper: http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v54/i9/p857_1"

Are you claiming that John Bell used a time machine in 1964 that made Bell's theorem unconditionally depending on something that were to happen in 1985??

Or are you claiming that George Boole was working on a "Leggett–Garg inequality" already in 1840, and this is the real reason for John Bell’s claimed failure in 1964??

I know you & Crackpot Kracklauer have some really crazy ideas, but this is (hopefully) a little too absurd even to you...

I don’t know why you are doing the bizarre stuff you do, but too the casual reader – this is not science.

To me, this looks like a severe case of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect" .

I’m not going to spend more time on you, since there is undoubtedly NO hope.

 

[billschnieder]

1) Bell's inequalities can be derived from triples of dichotomous variables without any physical assumption
2) In Bell-test experiments only pairs of values are ever collected at a time (a dataset of pairs)
3) A dataset of pairs can be made to violate inequalities derived from a dataset of triples for purely mathematical reasons
4) I have provided mathematical proof of (1), (2) is an accepted fact. I have provided proof of (3) via simulation
5) Therefore, the violation of Bell's inequalities derived from triples, by experiments such as Bell-test experiments which only collect pairs, is not surprising, it is expected for purely mathematical reasons, having nothing to do with realism or locality.
6) Therefore, Bell's inequality can never be violated by a dataset of triples, even if the physical assumption of of spooky action at a distance is mandated!

Now if anyone thinks my answer is wrong, be specific, about which of the above claims is false, and why it is false.

Still no response. Lots of insults and grand-standing but no response. I wonder why?

P.S. Advise to any reader – Don’t bother to run the Monty Python code unless you want a good laugh. There are no initialized variables, and 0*0 is always zero, zip, nada, zilch. HAHAHAHAH!

Once again you have misinterpreted everything about everything. The numeric example "0*0" was not referring to your silly little code, but your brain cells.

Liar

And you can add that to the following list, my comments in square brackets:

- I am a layman/amateur. [obviously]
- I have no real education in cosmology or physics (one introduction-course in astronomy). [obviously]
- I read popular-science. [obviously]
- I spend time on the web, searching and reading about cosmology & physics. [apparently not very much ]
- I do not understand the advanced math, required for modern science. [it shows]
- I admire all hardworking people who spend a great part of their lives, struggle to solve the mysteries of nature – to the benefit for all of us (guys drinking beer and watching football). [I doubt it]
- I do accept physics as practiced by the scientific community (of course). [except when you don't like it]
- I am not religious, and I believe that religion should not have any part in science (or politics). [yeah right]
- I think it is important that scientist do all possible to communicate new science to the public. [except the ones you don't like should shut up]
- I like to question subjects (that could be questioned by a layman), if they don't make sense to me. [and obviously also the ones you have no clue about]
- My only hope in the complexity of science: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." -- Albert Einstein [at least we agree on something]
- I am curious [are you sure?]
...
- A deterministic law of physics sounds a little 'disturbing'. I like my free will.. [it shows]

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Småväxt man är högfärdig.

 

[DrChinese]

Still no response. Lots of insults and grand-standing but no response. I wonder why?

Show us a dataset. How hard can it be? Such as this hypothetical local realistic one showing values at polarization angle settings a, b and c:

Alice:

a b c
+ + -
+ - +
- + -
+ - -
etc

Bob (her entangled twin):

a b c
+ + -
+ - +
- + -
+ - -
etc

According to EPR, there are elements of reality to Alice because we can predict Alice with certainty by observing Bob. We do this by observing Bob's a when we want to predict Alice's a; Bob's b when we want to predict Alice's b; etc.

So far, so good: QM and Local Realism (LR) in sync as to predictions. But here is where it all goes wrong. Per above (and for larger samples too), LR predicts average coincidence rate of no less than 33% when the angles are different (such as a separation of 120 degrees). QM predicts a coincidence rate of 25% for that separation.

Experiments plainly support QM and reject LR, without exception. So the above dataset I presented is flawed because the values a, b and c are not simultaneously well defined independent of observation. EPR felt that was unreasonable, but they did not know about Bell and they did not know about Bell tests.

-------

Bar är broderlös bak.