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

[DevilsAvocado]

The OP is asking about what's possible in reality, not what sorts of theories are possible. Your three options are about models, not reality. They don't address the OP's question.

They don’t...??

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

YES, action at a distance is possible as predicted by the EPR Paradox, because these are the 3 options:

• locality=true/realism=false
  
  
• locality=false/realism=true
  
  
• locality=false/realism=false

(locality=false --> action at a distance)

I could be wrong, but I thought that OP wanted us to describe the state of current professional mainstream science – not personal guessing...

 

[DevilsAvocado]

The original post was simply, "Is action at a distance possible as envisaged by the EPR Paradox?" The short answer is "yes." Nonetheless, PF has generated 89 web pages of responses so far

YES!

 

[DevilsAvocado]

New Scientist have a feature article on QM this week:

Is quantum theory weird enough for the real world?

Great article!

http://www.newscientist.com/article...ird-enough-for-the-real-world.html?full=true"

...
"Quantum mechanics is, in our range of experience, a correct theory. It is sort of fine and we don't know what is better." But there are niggles that make him and others itch for something new. One is the great unfinished business of unifying quantum theory with general relativity, Einstein's resolutely classical theory of gravity. "Quantum mechanics and general relativity don't like each other," says Plenio.
...
So how do we set about finding what makes quantum theory tick? Most of the recent work has homed in on one central yet unexplained feature of quantum physics- the degree of "correlation" between the states of unconnected bodies that the theory does, or does not,
...
In 1964, John Bell of the CERN particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, described the degree of correlation that classical theories allow. Bell's result relied on two concepts: realism and locality.
...
Realism amounts to saying that the properties of an object exist prior to, and independent of, measurement. In the classical world, that second sock in my drawer is red regardless of whether or not I "measure" its state by looking at it. Locality is the assumption that these properties are independent of any remote influence.

Great description of Bell's Inequality! And in the light of this – If we look back on the hundred of posts billschnieder produced on the theme that it’s impossible to formulate a Bell Inequality – YOU GOT TO LAUGH!

Lubos Motl has posted a slightly hysterical commentary (he mostly hates NS since it promotes climate change arguments so passionately), check out the comments section for some epr/bell related links.

Hehe, "slightly" is very diplomatic... Luboš Motl seems to have several problems with the climate, girls, strange Slavic names, name of magazines... As far as I know the Czech Republic is Slavic, and Luboš Motl can be strange to some...

I wish an extremely intelligent girl, with an extremely strange name, from Bulgaria, come along and give us the new paradigm in physics – that would make both Luboš Motl & Lawrence Summers drop their jaws and fall off their chairs!

 

[DevilsAvocado]

... Of course, the most sensible answer is "we don't know", ...

Great TT! I’m with you all the way on this! :!)

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

The original post was simply, "Is action at a distance possible as envisaged by the EPR Paradox?" The short answer is "yes." Nonetheless, PF has generated 89 web pages of responses so far

The answer is in fact NO. No one as acted in any way on an event spatially remote. There is no good reasons to believe that what Einstein called spooky action is possible, and ALL conclusions to the contrary are based on erroneous reading of Bell, Aspect, etc... or misquotes by these people themselves. Many time people have recalled that QM is non-local and only realist interpreters need non-locality, a phenomenon with no measurable effect that cannot be interpreted more simply otherwise.

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

YES!

Give ONE example where influence on a spatially remote object can be proven without invoking realism of micro-physics, please, and then you can honestly say yes. I can unfortunately give countless examples of mis-quotation, wrong attributions, circular reasoning etc... from all of the tenors of remote action, even typical examples of dishonesty.
I challenge the reciprocity for the people who like Leggett, think that the wrong hypothesis in the realism-locality pair is realism. If realism (at the microscopic level) goes, all "arguments" in favor of remote action fall. Another thread is devoted to Bell theorem without locality assumption, less known of course than the work of Leggett but aiming also at booting realsim out of microphysics.

 

[JesseM]

Bell's theorem proves that any "realist" picture of what is going on cannot be a local one under hypothetical experimental conditions described in his theory.
But because this hypothetical experimental conditions are too far from reality you have to establish some correspondence between this theory and feasible real experiments. That is done by CHSH inequalities. But in order to apply CHSH inequalities to real experiments you need fair sampling assumption and before this fair sampling assumption is experimentally investigated the link between Bell's theorem and physical reality is broken and Bell's theorem has quite limited bearing on possible interpretations of physical reality.

One thing that it proves (with the help of CHSH inequalities and experiments) is that non-contextual LHVs are ruled out. But that can be inferred from HUP anyways. It's just more obvious with help of Bell.

There is a version of the CHSH inequality that incorporates the fact that not all particle pairs are detected, although it requires that at least 82% of particle pairs are detected for the inequality to be violated (67% in the case of the Clauser-Horne test), which is higher than most experiments can do. But in fact a few experiments have closed the "detector efficiency loophole" (the loophole which depends on the idea that the measured particles may not be a 'fair sample' of all particles emitted), see here and here. Neither of these experiments managed to simultaneously close the locality loophole, but I think it would require a very contrived local realist theory to exploit both loopholes at once (i.e. exploit the locality loophole in experiments that closed the detector efficiency loophole, and exploit the detector efficiency loophole in experiments that closed the locality loophole), as I argued here:

In contrast, I think lots of very smart physicists would agree with the intuition that a local realist theory consistent with all past experiments but which predicted no Bell inequality violation in ideal loophole-free experiments would have to be rather "contrived". Perhaps one reason for this is that we know what is required to exploit each loophole individually--exploiting the detector efficiency loophole requires that in some pairs of particles, one of the pair has a hidden variable that makes it impossible to detect (see billschnieder's example in posts #113 and #115 on this thread), whereas exploiting the locality loophole requires that whichever member of the pair is detected first will send out some sort of signal containing information about what detector setting was used, a signal which causes the other particle to change its own hidden variables in just the right way as to give statistics that agree with QM predictions.

Also, there are a number of papers that claim it will be possible to close both loopholes simultaneously in experiments that may be doable in the near future, see here and here.

 

[RUTA]

Yes, I should have stated it something like this:
EPR-type action at a distance is possible iff there's no deep reality.
Experiments suggest the existence of a deep reality, ie., that this is the most reasonable assumption.
Therefore, EPR-type action at a distance is, most reasonably, not possible.

Of course, the existence or nonexistence of a deep reality can't be proven. It can only be inferred (or not, as one might choose) from instrumental behavior.

We can ask: are the various possible answers to the OP's question equally tenable? I don't think they are. The assumption of the existence of a deep reality seems to me to be an essential part of fundamental physics.

I'm probably misunderstanding you, but you can correct me if that's the case. When you say "the existence of a deep reality" I picture "microscopic" or "hidden" entities at work among, and distinct from, the elements of the experimental equipment.

We can assume that emitters don't emit anything, filters don't filter anything, and detectors don't detect anything -- ie., that there's no deep reality that's ultimately affecting and determining instrumental results. In which case, EPR-type action at a distance would be necessary, and the answer to the OP's question would be yes.

In RBW, there are no "microscopic" or "hidden" entities at work among, and distinct from, the elements of the experimental equipment, but there is no action at a distance either. That's because it's not a dynamical ontology, i.e., explanation isn't based on cause and effect, but on a nonseparable "4Dism."

Are you saying that the acceptance of your interpretation by the foundations communitiy is based on a generally held assumption that instrumental behavior is not determined by the existence and behavior of a reality deeper than the instrumental level?

The acceptance is based simply on its logical possibility (as shown by relevant calculations). Do they subscribe to it? No, by and large they hate it

The short answer is also "no", depending on what's inferred/assumed. Of course, the most sensible answer is "we don't know", which we might express as a "definite maybe" regarding the possible answers to the OP's question.

Perhaps we have different interpretations of the OP question. I read it, "Is non-locality possible given EPR phenomena?" Since it is generally agreed that EPR-Bell phenomena imply non-locality and/or nonseparability, the short answer is "yes, non-locality is a possibility."

Yes, isn't it awesome that there are so many interesting (more or less) considerations associated with the OP's question?

I've sure had a lot of fun with this thread!

 

[RUTA]

The answer is in fact NO. No one as acted in any way on an event spatially remote. There is no good reasons to believe that what Einstein called spooky action is possible, and ALL conclusions to the contrary are based on erroneous reading of Bell, Aspect, etc... or misquotes by these people themselves. Many time people have recalled that QM is non-local and only realist interpreters need non-locality, a phenomenon with no measurable effect that cannot be interpreted more simply otherwise.

As far as I know the DeBroglie-Bohm interpretation has not been ruled out by the foundations community. Therefore, non-locality as a possible consequence of EPR-Bell phenomena has not been ruled out by the foundations community. I haven't heard anyone argue for the dismissal of non-locality in general. Is someone championing this view in the foundations community? As someone with a local, nonseparble interpretation of QM, I'd like to read their work.

 

[Lampshade132]

I just read something interesting about entanglement that I have not seen discussed before. What is everyones thoughts on thinking of two entangled objects as single higher dimensional object passing through our 3D universe at two different locations. Much like how a 3D object could appear at separate locations, thus appearing like two objects in a 2D plane.

 

[DevilsAvocado]

I just read something interesting about entanglement that I have not seen discussed before. What is everyones thoughts on thinking of two entangled objects as single higher dimensional object passing through our 3D universe at two different locations. Much like how a 3D object could appear at separate locations, thus appearing like two objects in a 2D plane.

Welcome to PF Lampshade132!

Maybe this link from unusualname can be helpful:

Unfortunately it's looking like it will be a bit more involved, eg:
Holography and non-locality in a closed vacuum-dominated universe

 

[DevilsAvocado]

Give ONE example where influence on a spatially remote object can be proven without invoking realism of micro-physics, please,
...
I challenge the reciprocity for the people who like Leggett, think that the wrong hypothesis in the realism-locality pair is realism. If realism (at the microscopic level) goes, all "arguments" in favor of remote action fall.

I think that we both agree that nothing is proven definitely, right? So to say; "I’m sure of this or that", is no more than personal speculations, right?

And just because "realism goes" does not prove beyond all doubts that locality is true, right?

So, one of these three options must be correct:

• locality=true/realism=false
  
  
• locality=false/realism=true
  
  
• locality=false/realism=false

Right?

Then I don’t think it’s unfair to say: YES - action at a distance is a possibility, until we know better.

(To avoid any "translation errors" – We are not talking about faster than light communication! The outcome of EPR-Bell experiments is always 100% random.)

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

As far as I know the DeBroglie-Bohm interpretation has not been ruled out by the foundations community. Therefore, non-locality as a possible consequence of EPR-Bell phenomena has not been ruled out by the foundations community. I haven't heard anyone argue for the dismissal of non-locality in general. Is someone championing this view in the foundations community? As someone with a local, nonseparble interpretation of QM, I'd like to read their work.

See the comments of of Pauli and Einstein on deB-B theory. Anyway, why spend time on a theory so violently incompatible with Lorentz invariance, beside the attacks of Wolfgang P.
Many false theories are around, such as many version of Kaluza-Klein, Weyl, variations on super-strings: at least with those progress in math have been made. In fact, Wigner would have said (and he did, but in more general form covering all HV theories satisfying the hypothesis of Bell1964) that "Bell's Theorem is the nicest proof that HVs are false". Non-locality is not physics and cannot lead to any observation that is not a consequence of an a-priori stand on pre-existence of observable values to measurement. The fact that there is a club making themselves happy with dBB makes not dBB part of physics. There are such clubs in most disciplines. The problem is that more and more crazy viewpoints of QM (many words, many minds, many schmucks, etc...) are winning more and more support. Science is in danger when the most central piece of the most central discipline is under serious attack and the evil forces of magic and fantasy become the ruling (compare the extent of Bell theory vs elementary particles or thermodynamics on the www: see how many tenors of physics claim that actions can be taken upon the past). It is true that the Copenhagen team opened the doors to the flood by allowing religious stands where perpetual re-examination and progress should be the way to go. The interpretation by Wheeler of delayed measurement was the door open to violation of the time arrow at macroscopic scale. But the errors of the past should not excuse new errors but should rather make us more cautious. What would have happened to math if seeing mistakes in rigor by the old masted would have been an excuse for more lack of rigor instead of devising methods and language to allow modern analysis and its various applications? Math would be dead by now and physics is certainly in grave danger: it may soon come under control of engineering if we accept non-sense such as dBB as something else than anecdotes on what physics could have looked like.

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

I think that we both agree that nothing is proven definitely, right? So to say; "I’m sure of this or that", is no more than personal speculations, right?

And just because "realism goes" does not prove beyond all doubts that locality is true, right?

So, one of these three options must be correct:

• locality=true/realism=false
  
  
• locality=false/realism=true
  
  
• locality=false/realism=false

Right?

Then I don’t think it’s unfair to say: YES - action at a distance is a possibility, until we know better.

(To avoid any "translation errors" – We are not talking about faster than light communication! The outcome of EPR-Bell experiments is always 100% random.)

We have to be extra cautious: in similar circumstance, when a viewpoint is odd cannot be falsified, one gets rid of it by using Occam's razor, AND here we also have the work of Leggett and a (couple of) paper(s) discussed elsewhere on PF about Bell without locality assumption which is not far from proving that realism is the only issue since an hypothesis whose negation yields super-luminal info transmission when restricted to observed quantities replaces locality to get one Bell Theorem.

Saying YES is wrong here: we could say; the YES has not yet been ruled out but standard practice of physics lead to consider that the correct answer is "NO until otherwise proven", of something of that kind.

 

[zonde]

There is a version of the CHSH inequality that incorporates the fact that not all particle pairs are detected, although it requires that at least 82% of particle pairs are detected for the inequality to be violated (67% in the case of the Clauser-Horne test), which is higher than most experiments can do.

You don't have to reach theoretical limit of elimination of fair sampling assumption to investigate it's validity.
That can be done by performing experiments with different detection efficiencies and different coincidence rates that show trends (or no trends if fair sampling is valid) in observed results. Moreover such experiment is quite trivial comparing it to all the different photon entanglement experiments performed nowadays.

But still there are no such experiments so all the talk about extrapolating results of low efficiency Bell photon experiments to high efficiency case is unjustifiable.

In contrast, I think lots of very smart physicists would agree with the intuition that a local realist theory consistent with all past experiments but which predicted no Bell inequality violation in ideal loophole-free experiments would have to be rather "contrived". Perhaps one reason for this is that we know what is required to exploit each loophole individually--exploiting the detector efficiency loophole requires that in some pairs of particles, one of the pair has a hidden variable that makes it impossible to detect (see billschnieder's example in posts #113 and #115 on this thread), whereas exploiting the locality loophole requires that whichever member of the pair is detected first will send out some sort of signal containing information about what detector setting was used, a signal which causes the other particle to change its own hidden variables in just the right way as to give statistics that agree with QM predictions.

You are not proponent of local realism so you viewpoint about what is required to exploit each loophole does not really count, right?

Lets see it in more details.
You say: "exploiting the detector efficiency loophole requires that in some pairs of particles, one of the pair has a hidden variable that makes it impossible to detect"
This model does not lead to unfair sampling if "detection-HV" is attached to particle at source. Fair sampling still applies.

However we can have a different view. First PBS can't measure polarization of particle when we perform measurement (+45/-45 base) that is non-commuting with polarization measurement (H/V base) because in that case two measurements will be commuting.
So we have to have second measurement that performs phase measurement between H and V modes (where PBS only alters phase of photons depending from their polarization). That second measurement device can be detector or alternatively interference filter.
This fits orthodox QM quite well.

You say: "exploiting the locality loophole requires that whichever member of the pair is detected first will send out some sort of signal containing information about what detector setting was used"
This of course is not quite creditable as particles would have to produce other particles to carry information to second member.

However we again can have a different view. First experiments with efficient detection utilize fermions or at least particles that are confined to equipment. So these particles don't share the same context and all correlations between them are classical i.e. they are not entangled at all.
In that case only option left is crosstalk between measurement processes. For example if we look at Rowe's et al experiment we can see that scattered photons are allowed to interfere at detector but it is just assumed that it hasn't any effect on different measurement combinations (again fair sampling assumption). In experiment performed by Matsukevich et al manipulations of ions are done using microwave pulses but microwaves are definitely subject to crosstalk. But here we can test how reasonable is assumption of independence of two measurements by varying distance between two measurement places and observing presence or absence of any trends in results.

So you see that your argument about "contrived" LHV model is very subjective.

 

[DevilsAvocado]

We have to be extra cautious: in similar circumstance, when a viewpoint is odd cannot be falsified, one gets rid of it by using Occam's razor, AND here we also have the work of Leggett and a (couple of) paper(s) discussed elsewhere on PF about Bell without locality assumption which is not far from proving that realism is the only issue since an hypothesis whose negation yields super-luminal info transmission when restricted to observed quantities replaces locality to get one Bell Theorem.

I’m afraid this is just more personal speculations. We have physical experiments and rigorous QM predictions saying the same thing, and you are using Occam's razor to "prove" that it’s false??

I don’t get this? Let’s say you are right and locality=true/realism=false. How "spooky" is that?? Well, your body and brain and thoughts do not exist at the most fundamental level. It’s all a "spooky holography projection" on a "screen" that does not exist... And WHO is running the "projector"??

This looks very spooky to me...??

[PLAIN]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/Hologrammit.jpg/450px-Hologrammit.jpg

I don’t think Occam's razor can save us in this case...

I’m also afraid you have missed some very fundamental facts regarding EPR-Bell experiments:

"since an hypothesis whose negation yields super-luminal info transmission"​

There is NO super-luminal info transmission in EPR-Bell experiments. We all know that this is impossible, it would create completely crazy paradoxes of Causality, i.e. first you get a terrible headache and then you see the stone hitting your head.

EPR-Bell action at a distance <> super-luminal info transmission​

Saying YES is wrong here: we could say; the YES has not yet been ruled out but standard practice of physics lead to consider that the correct answer is "NO until otherwise proven", of something of that kind.

The problem with this reasoning is that to be rational you must also say NO to realism=false "until otherwise proven", and then you end up with something that Bell' Theorem and QM has proven wrong. One or both must be false, that’s a fact: Local Hidden Variable Theory (LHVT) is as dead as the https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2709354&postcount=241".

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

I’m afraid this is just more personal speculations. We have physical experiments and rigorous QM predictions saying the same thing, and you are using Occam's razor to "prove" that it’s false?

I don’t get this? Let’s say you are right and locality=true/realism=false. How "spooky" is that?? Well, your body and brain and thoughts do not exist at the most fundamental level. It’s all a "spooky holography projection" on a "screen" that does not exist... And WHO is running the "projector"??

This looks very spooky to me...??

[PLAIN]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/Hologrammit.jpg/450px-Hologrammit.jpg

I don’t think Occam's razor can save us in this case...

I’m also afraid you have missed some very fundamental facts regarding EPR-Bell experiments:

"since an hypothesis whose negation yields super-luminal info transmission"​

There is NO super-luminal info transmission in EPR-Bell experiments. We all know that this is impossible, it would create completely crazy paradoxes of Causality, i.e. first you get a terrible headache and then you see the stone hitting your head.

EPR-Bell action at a distance <> super-luminal info transmission​

The problem with this reasoning is that to be rational you must also say NO to realism=false "until otherwise proven", and then you end up with something that Bell' Theorem and QM has proven wrong. One or both must be false, that’s a fact: Local Hidden Variable Theory (LHVT) is as dead as the https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2709354&postcount=241".

Preamble in the for of an Apology. There is a misquotation and use of ridicule about non-realism in the post to which I respond (and a logical chain at the end that I cannot make sense of): this cannot be answered shortly (even if I do not respond to what I did not understand) . A "devilish" accumulation of malpractices in science. ? DevilsAvocado had (mostly at least) given me quite another image so far (so that perhaps my bad English only is to blame).

Misquotation: when I write "an hypothesis whose neegation..." I do not imply that non-locality implies Super Luminal Transmition (SLT): as you I know that it has been proven over and over again that non-locality does not imply SLT. People who want to explore what I mean can learn about the so called Effect After Cause Principle, an hypothesis that can be used to prove a Bell Theorem, in another thread about a Bell Theorem without locality assumption. I did mention that thread and did ever tell that non-locality implies SLT.

Now more serious stories (although misquotation is quite serious and is pervasive in the scientific literature around Bell's theorem"): of course lack of realism looks spooky, but lack of realism is "only" about "observables used both in macroscopic physics and to qualify particle by measurement".
Thus: Lack of realism does not mean limbo. Now Bernhardt Riemann in his thesis defended under Gauss, already noticed that it was quite possible that geometry does not make PHYSICAL sense at microscopic scale. Physics is a science, hence an experimental science. So let's us try to give experimental meaning to geometry at small scale. Most people expect problems at Plank scale, but the smallest clock with functions needed to develop relativity (even Special) is much larger than an atom, even if atoms are used in atomic clocks: a nice question here is "What is the smallest size of such a clock?". Same for the smallest tool to measure distances. Small distances and small times can be measured by interferometry, but the tools to do that are huge.
Now, notice that Copenhagen forbids us from trying other QM-compatible coordinates ( QM-compatible meaning in particular "that would be unable to produce a Bell Theorem" since "these coordinates would not allow to give simultaneous meaning to conjugate usual observables"). This type of QM-compatible, hence Bell-incompatible HVs are the things Shrödinger and Einstein were hopping for (which explains why Einstein was making fun of dBB realist theories, qualifying them as "too naive"). The existence of such QM-compatible HVs, as well as how to build on such ideas has eluded everyone so far and the extra dimensions of super-strings are probably not it (and again, perhaps this was all dreams of these two masters, and perhaps super-string will one day dispense us of trying that old idea). Anyway, Copenhagen was acting more like a church than a scientific center in this matter, with all due respect to its main priests.
- ANYWAY, non-realism (defended by Copenhagen in an unambiguous way, and in a way independent of the religious aspect around that which can be seen, e.g., the Heisenberg book on philosophy of physics) is not synonymous of reality depending on someone looking at it: it is only about observables.
- ANYWAY, we know that the UP already put severe limitation on the number of observable that make sense at once. If you feel comfortable with only momentum or position having a precise value at best, it does not seem such a big deal. After all, if particle P is in the superposition of two eigenvectors, say p1 and p2, what is the value of that observable for P just before measurement is made? Do YOU think that this observable make sense then?
That is not the way Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac, Pauli, Born, Jordan,... and even Einstein (after 1930 at least) would have seen physics but they might have been wrong. Yet except perhaps for CQT (Griffith, Omnes, Gell-Mann, Hartle), there is no much way in QM to give meaning to values of observable. Of course some invoke dBB but violates so much Lorentz invariance that I do not understand why some say that it is still part of physics (instead of being only a tiny part of its history).

At last, the experiment that proves...: those experiments (at least teh form used by Aspect et al. and repeated by Gisin and others) show "only" that a relatively simple correlation property predicted by QM holds true. This has consequences on 3 hypotheses taken together (and not two as in the theory that does not need "fair sampling"): more precisely we know that realism+locality+ fair sampling is false since (big surprise??) QM is once more right. Now since there is serious reasons to not believe in the type of realism needed in this conjunction of three hypothesis, Occam's razor (which has shaped ALL sciences as we know them by forcing the simplest explanation out of two that cannot be distinguished by experiments nor by otherwise decidable direct conclusions and logical consequences and theories built upon these two hypothesis) tells us tells us that unless there are good reasons to do otherwise, we should stick to the simpler view and consider like almost all the creators of QM (except for dB, who by the way almost destroyed French Physics, but this is another story) that it is realism that is the problem (so that there is no point in consider other hypotheses).

Now the camp telling otherwise (i.e., that we are in a non local world) has done repeatedly
misquotations and use of bad faith to defend its positions. For instance, trying for some, to forbid invoking conservation laws to (simply) explain (as: conservation +Malus law) what is going on in the correlation between two entangled particles. Or like in the post to which I respond, trying to say that we have a theory +experiments to support the views opposed to mine.

Now coming back to: "Is action at a distance possible as envisaged by the EPR Paradox."
1) The EPR paradox precisely rejected the possibility of action at a distance.
2) The action at a distance if any would be of a type that does not permit to transmit information faster than the speed of light, and the same applies of course to matter (even in energy form).
3) Many misquotation have invaded this part of physics where many actors are of bad faith or lack professional rigor by committing a huge number of:
- Wrong citations,
- Misquotations,
- Telling of imaginary histories, e.g., of who did what or who said what.
This explains why a question like "Is action at a distance possible as envisaged by the EPR Paradox." can be asked (in good faith I am sure) while the authors of the EPR Paradox precisely "envisaged" action at a distance to tell that it was impossible.

For instance, many heroes of the school defending non-locality (and I care here only about people who have done excellent physics indeed) have written that the word "Paradox" was attached to the EPR story (in the paper form, or the quote different form used by Einstein, but most people do not make this important distinction) by physicists that saw something wrong with that paper or more generally by what was related to it. In fact Einstein had a preliminary version of all that as far back at least as 1933 (in a form very close indeed from the way he described the issue himself (remember: the EPR paper was written by Podolsky and was not agreed to by Einstein, as explained by Jammer and Fine for instance)).

According to Rosenfeld's recollection, when in 1933 Einstein spoke about that to Rosenfeld, a very close close collaborator of Bohr, he used the word paradox. He did the same in writing many time starting at least in 1935 when discussing the matter by letters exchanged with Schrödinger.

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

Originally Posted by DevilsAvocado (1451)
"that’s a fact: Local Hidden Variable Theory (LHVT) is as dead as the Norwegian Blue Parrot. "

False: this only applies to the type of local hidden variables used by Bell, which are not compatible with HVs. Other local HVs might only predict at most one of a pair of conjugate variables. In tehcase of teh EPR-Bohm setting, only one spin projection per particle could be given meaning, so two spin projections for an EPRB pair in the singlet state, not enough to get a Bell inequality that would be of any use, not enough thus to be ruled out that way. As Einstein said after 1930, the UP is here to stay (otherwise, he would not have used his influence to get the Nobel price to Heisenberg rather than to Schrödinger, I presume: in fact I am not sure of this causla relation and would like to know better) any way, the UP is here to stay, so other variables (HV in the sense that we do not know what they are, but also probably because only theory can be made with them, theories that would then be judged by prediction about the variables that we can have access to) can only respect the UP and should not give meaning to many spin projections at once.

I do not know if such local HVs exist and can be hopped for: certainly the ban on looking for them enunciated by the Copenhagen school did not help. Dirac besides Einstein and Schödinger believed that there were such variables have i read recently (can someone validate that position of Dirac or its negation: for the two others, see Fine's book and references therein). Now, I have paid a high price in the beginning of both of my careers as physicist and mathematician that opinions of world expert are worse nothing much: they know what they know and their beliefs are just beliefs. Even if a pool among physicist would indicate a direction we would not know: such variables need to be proven to not exist (like the local dBB-Bell HVs are using Bell's Theorem) or one has to build a theory and make a non-trivial falsifiable prediction. Perhaps we need to make the thery relativistic before we get the right setting and trying to start from QM is almost as bad as trying to start from Classical Mechanics,... who knows? But one thing is sure: Local HVs have not been proven to not exist. It is Local and non QM-compatible HVs that are ruled out by Bell + verification of the twisted Malus law for singlets. Sorry DevilsAdocado (But you have taken me also in positions where I wrote more extreme conclusions than I wanted to.. and I do not mean in my previous post, nor in the present one).

 

[DrChinese]

Originally Posted by DevilsAvocado (1451)
"that’s a fact: Local Hidden Variable Theory (LHVT) is as dead as the Norwegian Blue Parrot. "

False: this only applies to the type of local hidden variables used by Bell, which are not compatible with HVs. Other local HVs might only predict at most one of a pair of conjugate variables...

But it is not about predicting the HVs, it is about their existence when not being observed that is in question. Do they exist independently of observation? What values MIGHT they be allowed if they existed?

Clearly, we know from Bell that there cannot be "predetermined" hidden variables outside of what can be observed. EPR's elements of reality obviously fail. So you must give us an example of HVs which do NOT follow Bell.

 

[DevilsAvocado]

Misquotation: when I write "an hypothesis whose neegation..." I do not imply that non-locality implies Super Luminal Transmition (SLT):

I’m terribly sorry for "misquoting" you, I copied the text and then... well, I don’t know what happened...

But, could you please tell me exactly what you mean (instead of telling me what you don’t mean)?

We have to be extra cautious: in similar circumstance, when a viewpoint is odd cannot be falsified, one gets rid of it by using Occam's razor, AND here we also have the work of Leggett and a (couple of) paper(s) discussed elsewhere on PF about Bell without locality assumption which is not far from proving that realism is the only issue since an hypothesis whose negation yields super-luminal info transmission when restricted to observed quantities replaces locality to get one Bell Theorem.

I interpret this as the negation of locality (non-locality) yields super-luminal info transmission, and I think I’m not alone...

But one thing is sure: Local HVs have not been proven to not exist. It is Local and non QM-compatible HVs that are ruled out by Bell + verification of the twisted Malus law for singlets. Sorry DevilsAdocado (But you have taken me also in positions where I wrote more extreme conclusions than I wanted to.. and I do not mean in my previous post, nor in the present one).

Don’t be sorry. I think it’s pretty obvious that you have a very personal version of science and EPR-Bell... You say you are a professional scientist, but honestly, I don’t know what to think...


Could you please, in simple English, without long historical anecdotes from the 1930s, tell me exactly what you mean by this?

Local HVs have not been proven to not exist. It is Local and non QM-compatible HVs that are ruled out by Bell

What is "Local and non QM-compatible HVs" and in what way are they different from "Local HVs"??

verification of the twisted Malus law for singlets.

What on Earth is "the twisted Malus law for singlets"?? Please, explain in simple English, without historical anecdotes.

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

DEVILSAVOCADO
"I interpret this as the negation of locality (non-locality) yields super-luminal info transmission, and I think I’m not alone..."

NO: the meaning is that the new hypothesis (called EACP= Effect After Cause Principle) is weaker than locality since:

Non(Locality) =/=> SLT
while
Non(EACP restricted to observed quantities) ==>SLT

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

What on Earth is "the twisted Malus law for singlets"?? Please, explain in simple English, without historical anecdotes.

Sorry for the shortcut: singlets was short for EPRB pair in a singlet state.

Now for such a pair (say (e,p)), there is conservation of total projection of the spin on any axis. If s is measured on particle e, say, then -s will always measured on particle e on the same axis, so that, by conservation, measuring on one particle essentially prepares the other particles along the symmetric state. Now apply Malus law to the second particle, you get minus the usual Malus law (<s1,s2>=cos(axis for s1, axis for s2) ), the minus sign being the reason to call the composition of conservation and Malus law "Twisted Malus Law", I presume.

 

[DrChinese]

What is "Local and non QM-compatible HVs" and in what way are they different from "Local HVs"??

This is technically accurate but somewhat confusing. You could put forth a LHV theory which does not match the predictions of QM. Of course, those can usually be dispatched quickly on the basis of their disagreement with experiment. The De Raedt model is such an example, although I don't consider it an actual theory.

 

[nismaratwork]

This is technically accurate but somewhat confusing. You could put forth a LHV theory which does not match the predictions of QM. Of course, those can usually be dispatched quickly on the basis of their disagreement with experiment. The De Raedt model is such an example, although I don't consider it an actual theory.

De Raedt's model is a theory much as some poems are the ramblings of drunkards. Once in a while you get 'Kuhbla Kahn', but usually you end with gibberish. Lord I'm SO tired of hearing about Malus' law applied where it has no business being applied.

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

This is technically accurate but somewhat confusing. You could put forth a LHV theory which does not match the predictions of QM. Of course, those can usually be dispatched quickly on the basis of their disagreement with experiment. The De Raedt model is such an example, although I don't consider it an actual theory.

Notice that the HVs of Bell are not compatible with QM in the sense that several conjugate observable make sense at once. While this is only impossible by the spirit of the usual UP, it is actually impossible from another piece of QM, i.e., the time -reversed UP of Einstein, Tolman and Podolsky. Which is why several people are not very impressed by Bell's theory: it has an hypothesis that was already weak in 1964 (indeed in 1931). Unfortunately, the ETP which made initially a big impact is now vastly not known about by most people. Of course, the issue is that the front of QM is busy with superstrings, Higgs boson, etc. while back then, the foundation and front of science were at the same place.
Q-Information and Q-computation may change that, but Information is perhaps too simple while computation is perhaps too hard... Let's wait and see as speculation would not help much, except perhaps in helping young fellows in choosing their path.

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

Don’t be sorry. I think it’s pretty obvious that you have a very personal version of science and EPR-Bell... You say you are a professional scientist, but honestly, I don’t know what to think...

This was not about science in general but about logic: the hypotheses of Bell involve not only that observable value pre-exit measurement but also that they pre-exist (or at least co-exist) the measurement of other quantities (or read the paper again). Now, while pre-existence of one observable to its own measurement shocks the opinion of the founding fathers of QM (except for deBroglie), the other form, that is what is needed to have a Bell Theorem, i.e., that co-exist the measurement of other quantities is in direct conflict with the time -reversed UP of Einstein, Tolman, and Podolsky (that someone has posted recently I think, or let m know if you need it). Thus it is not a matter of opinion, but of logic: if the hypotheses of Bell1964 violate QM, a form of HVs that would not produce such violation is NOT ruled out by Bell's Theorem +Aspect (and in fact as you know, one needs teh CHSH form and a fair sampling hypothesis). Now, this does not mean that such a HV theory can be built.

Personally, I have a view like in Plato's myth of the cavern, but who cares as long as I cannot make it of any use.

Now, having personal views on science is (almost) the only way to avance science by non-trivial moves (and the same applies to math), no? And I will not get into a fight (on who has the longest... list of often cited publications) since you seem to often have a point, and I mostly approve of your posts, whether or not you are a professional (and after all, Fermat was not), and our respective ages may be unfairly in my advantage. Just, please, recognize that originality is not a plague for scientists, professional or not.

 

[RUTA]

See the comments of of Pauli and Einstein on deB-B theory.

I've read a few books on the historical development of quantum physics and I enjoyed reading them, but I'm not asking what the founding fathers thought in this case. Einstein was dead before Bell's inequality and the numerous experiments in accord with variations thereof. I was asking whether you knew of someone who had actually proven that non-locality was not the culprit. Or, less rigorously, perhaps some papers presenting credible arguments for locality over separability. I've talked to Don Howard and read some of his work and he's in our camp, but he doesn't have any "arguments" per se against non-locality. His position is more like Relational Blockworld in that it simply favors nonseparability.

Anyway, why spend time on a theory so violently incompatible with Lorentz invariance, beside the attacks of Wolfgang P.

SR got me to major in physics and I did my PhD in GR, so Relational Blockworld is local and nonseparable. You're preaching to the choir here

But, I'd say dBB is the second most popular QM interpretation (behind MW), so anyone presenting a credible argument against non-locality would definitely get the attention of the foundations community.

Many false theories are around, such as many version of Kaluza-Klein, Weyl, variations on super-strings: at least with those progress in math have been made. In fact, Wigner would have said (and he did, but in more general form covering all HV theories satisfying the hypothesis of Bell1964) that "Bell's Theorem is the nicest proof that HVs are false". Non-locality is not physics and cannot lead to any observation that is not a consequence of an a-priori stand on pre-existence of observable values to measurement. The fact that there is a club making themselves happy with dBB makes not dBB part of physics. There are such clubs in most disciplines. The problem is that more and more crazy viewpoints of QM (many words, many minds, many schmucks, etc...) are winning more and more support. Science is in danger when the most central piece of the most central discipline is under serious attack and the evil forces of magic and fantasy become the ruling (compare the extent of Bell theory vs elementary particles or thermodynamics on the www: see how many tenors of physics claim that actions can be taken upon the past). It is true that the Copenhagen team opened the doors to the flood by allowing religious stands where perpetual re-examination and progress should be the way to go. The interpretation by Wheeler of delayed measurement was the door open to violation of the time arrow at macroscopic scale. But the errors of the past should not excuse new errors but should rather make us more cautious. What would have happened to math if seeing mistakes in rigor by the old masted would have been an excuse for more lack of rigor instead of devising methods and language to allow modern analysis and its various applications? Math would be dead by now and physics is certainly in grave danger: it may soon come under control of engineering if we accept non-sense such as dBB as something else than anecdotes on what physics could have looked like.

Maybe you should write a formal argument against non-locality, present it in the appropriate venues and get it published. I'll be glad to read it and offer comments before you submit.

 

[DevilsAvocado]

DEVILSAVOCADO
"I interpret this as the negation of locality (non-locality) yields super-luminal info transmission, and I think I’m not alone..."

NO: the meaning is that the new hypothesis (called EACP= Effect After Cause Principle) is weaker than locality since:

Non(Locality) =/=> SLT
while
Non(EACP restricted to observed quantities) ==>SLT

This is what I call "A Personal Version of Science"

You don’t have to be a genius to check these things. If I Google "Effect After Cause Principle" I get 10 results, where one is this thread, and one is a double, giving a total of 8 unique results. The actual arXiv paper was submitted on 1 Aug 2006 – "A Bell Theorem with no locality assumption".

Now, you are telling me that Charles Tresser has found the solution to the paradox that Einstein & Bohr argued about for 20 years, followed by +40 years of intensive research and attention among the brightest minds in the scientific community – AND THE BIG SOLUTION TO ALL THIS GIVES 8 RESULTS ON GOOGLE, 4 YEARS AFTER THE "DISCOVERY" !? !?

Do you really want me to believe in this?

It doesn’t make sense, does it?

This is what I call "A Personal Version of Science"

This thread has been more or less terrorized by dishonest and cranky troglodytes, that will say and do absolutely anything to get as far as possible from what Physics Forums Global Guidelines characterize as current professional mainstream science, and after 4 months of this, I’m not sure if I can handle a new case of anti-intellectual smokescreens.

First you say:

Altogether one needs to be very precise

And then you say:

the minus sign being the reason to call the composition of conservation and Malus law "Twisted Malus Law", I presume.

And I presume that this is your own little "homemade expression", right?
And I presume you know that "Twisted" has several meanings, right?

to combine, as two or more strands or threads, by winding together; intertwine.

to distort the meaning or form of; pervert: He twisted my comment about to suit his own purpose.​

Personally, I think that the later fits your homemade "Twisted Malus Law" perfectly.

To me this kind of "argumentation" is just ridiculous and unprofessional, but there are many anonymous readers who will misinterpret your "clever ambiguity", and that is bad, real bad.

This is what I call "A Personal Version of Science"

RUTA is a real scientist. He says CLEARLY what he has learned is true and does not hide stupid agendas behind ambiguous games of words:

obscure publication of Bell

- I hate "your" statement about "Einstein's name was on the 1935 paper"

This last quote makes me laugh. This idea that you and Charles Tresser promote, that Einstein disliked the EPR paper, and he was "kidnapped" by Podolsky to put his name on a paper that he did not believed in??

How likely is this?? And why didn’t Einstein publish a refuting paper??

The fairly unknown Podolsky used Albert Einstein as a "sidekick" for his own cranky personal ideas...????

This crazy conspiracy theory just doesn’t make sense, especially if you are claiming to be a serious and professional scientist.


Finally, please read the whole thread before reintroducing the "unfair sampling loophole", we have been over and over this subject several times, and anyone who claims any validity in this is not a part of current professional mainstream science:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bell-theorem/"
...
In the face of the spectacular experimental achievement of Weihs et al. and the anticipated result of the experiment of Fry and Walther there is little that a determined advocate of local realistic theories can say except that, despite the spacelike separation of the analysis-detection events involving particles 1 and 2, the backward light-cones of these two events overlap, and it is conceivable that some controlling factor in the overlap region is responsible for a conspiracy affecting their outcomes. There is so little physical detail in this supposition that a discussion of it is best delayed until a methodological discussion in Section 7.

Personally, I don’t think that non-locality is "the biggest threat" against physics - I think dishonest cranks with a "dogmatic-religious" approach is a much bigger threat than anything in nature can ever be.

 

[ThomasT]

I'm probably misunderstanding you, but you can correct me if that's the case. When you say "the existence of a deep reality" I picture "microscopic" or "hidden" entities at work among, and distinct from, the elements of the experimental equipment.

Yes, that's what I'm picturing. But only for the purpose of the conjecture I was making regarding how the OP's question might be answered. I'm not saying that that is a candidate for a true picture of reality. I'm not saying that that's the best metaphysical picture of reality that can be conjured. I'm not saying that picturing things that way is the best way to approach formulating a viable interpretation of qm (your RBW way is obviously better in that respect). And, I myself don't actually picture reality in such a 'separable' way. (How I 'picture' it is much too abstract and, well, fuzzy to be of any use theoretically. It's a picture of an unresolvable chaotic cacaphony of simple and complex waveforms in a hierarchy of 3 dimensionally interspersed particulate media all, ultimately, governed by a single fundamental wave dynamic and built, ultimately, from wavelike disturbances in a fundamental structureless, ie. nonparticulate, medium. In this, overall, view the moon really isn't there. We aren't really there. There are no 'physical objects' per se. We are we and the moon is the moon and ponderable objects are ponderable objects because of the resonant properties that characterize us and the moon and any complex bounded, and more or less persistent, wave structures that constitute our continually moving, and evolving, universe. This is a wholistic and nonseparable view of reality, though I'm not sure it accords with your specific RBW view because it's also, necessarily, a dynamical view -- ie. the universal configuration is in a constant state of flux, the universal configuration that characterized 'yesterday' no longer exists, ie. it really no longer exists.)

Anyway wrt the OP's question, we assume that emitters are emitting submicroscopic or hidden wavelike disturbances in some unknown medium, some medium of unknown structure. The emissions might even be particles in the sense of bounded, and at least somewhat persistent, complex waveforms. Like, say, the light (photons) that is being emitted, analyzed and detected in optical Bell tests (or any quantum optical tests for that matter -- but optical Bell tests are particularly relevant wrt to considerations of the OP's question, even if Bell's theorem might not be). For our purposes here, I'm calling some picture, any picture, of 'something' propagating from emitter to filter to detector the 'deep reality' that exists whether we probe it with filters and detectors or not.

I stated that the existence or nonexistence of a deep reality can't be proven. It can only be inferred (or not, as one might choose) from instrumental behavior. I also stated that the assumption of the existence of a deep reality seems to me to be an essential part of fundamental physics. That is, quantum physics seems to be grounded on the assumption, based on inferences from observations of instrumental behavior, that such a deep reality exists. So I asked if the various possible answers to the OP's question are equally tenable, and answered that I don't think they are because of inferences by mainstream physicists regarding the existence, and certain characteristics, of a deep reality based on quantum experimental phenomena which have become an integral part of the development of qm and the standard model.

In other words, regardless of Zeilinger's, or whoever's, momentary expression of things, it seems to me that the mainstream development of fundamental physics is based on the assumption that there is something real with real and persistent properties that's produced via emission processes and that is moving from emitter to filter, then interacting with the filter, then moving from the filter to the detector and interacting with the detector.

And the contention is that if this assumption accords with reality (and of course we have no way of knowing, definitively, if this accords with reality), then EPR-type action at a distance has to be ruled out, because EPR-type action at a distance says that the deep reality of particle B is dependent on the macroscopically recorded reality of particle A, and vice versa.

In any case, EPR-type action at a distance is, prima facie, paradoxical and nonsensical -- so, EPR rightly dismissed it, even if not for precisely that reason, as not worthy of consideration.

So, I tentatively (pending you or someone else pointing out mistakes in how I'm thinking about this) conclude that EPR-type action at a distance isn't possible given the observations and inferences of modern physics, and some simple (maybe too simple?) logic.

By the way, can I look at certain parts (the parts that might be at odds with my own 'realistic' view of things) of your RBW construction as just necessary mathematical conveniences? I really am beginning to understand, and like, your approach and rationale, even if I still don't understand some parts of your construction.

Continuing with the main theme (is there a main theme?) of this thread, I stated:

We can assume that emitters don't emit anything, filters don't filter anything, and detectors don't detect anything -- ie., that there's no deep reality that's ultimately affecting and determining instrumental results. In which case, EPR-type action at a distance would be necessary, and the answer to the OP's question would be yes.

Wrt which, given my 'definition' of EPR-type action at a distance above, this statement of mine doesn't seem to make much sense now. I'm learning, refining, thinking a little and modifying my view as I go. It's quite possible that I'll adopt an entirely different way of looking at things in the next few pages (I sense that this thread is far from over.). I hope that you don't find that too annoying.

In any case, given the first part (the assumption, not the conclusion) of my last quote-shaded statement, then this would seem to entail some sort of action at a distance, even if not, strictly speaking, the EPR-type.

To which you replied:

In RBW, there are no "microscopic" or "hidden" entities at work among, and distinct from, the elements of the experimental equipment, but there is no action at a distance either.

To which my initial response was "how can that be"?.

And then I read your next statement:

That's because it's not a dynamical ontology, i.e., explanation isn't based on cause and effect, but on a nonseparable "4Dism."

And then I could only say, "oh, ok then" -- still (while liking it's rhetorical possibilities, and beginning to vaguely appreciate it's theoretical necessariness) not fully understanding how your "nonseparable 4Dism" can be nondynamical or adynamical while my pedestrian "nonseparable 3Dism" plus time/change = "nonseparable 4Dism" seems, to me to be, so necessarily dynamical. And then it hit me. While I'm simply musing about 'fundamental reality' based on some possibly quite 'loose' associations, you and your associate authors of RBW have actually constructed a viable physical theory/interpretation.

Until I fully understand and appreciate RBW, and maybe even after, can I think of RBW as being essentially an instrumentalist approach?

If so, and not to put you on the spot (as if I could), then what about the notion that standard qm (the bare formalism with the basic probabilistic interpretation) is already essentially an instrumentalist approach?

Ok, I do think that you've added some illuminating and constructive stuff. Your rationale and conceptual approach is somewhat compelling. So, have I answered that particular question adequately, or might you add something to aid my, and others, understanding?

And, if not, then nevermind, and any elaboration you might offer is appreciated.

Are we getting away from the OP theme? Does it matter?

Are you saying that the acceptance of your interpretation by the foundations communitiy is based on a generally held assumption that instrumental behavior is not determined by the existence and behavior of a reality deeper than the instrumental level?

The acceptance is based simply on its logical possibility (as shown by relevant calculations).

Ok, so at some point your conceptual approach sort of segues into the probability calculus of standard qm? Even so, a consistent 'conceptual' approach and rationale would seem to be an advance. Would you say that RBW in some sense, in any sense, reconciles GR with QM?

Are you and your group planning or now working on any revisions?

Do they subscribe to it? No, by and large they hate it.

I think you're just being modest. Didn't Bub like it? Or, did he just offer that eventually, after several epiphanies, he understood it -- not that he actually liked it?

The short answer is also "no", depending on what's inferred/assumed. Of course, the most sensible answer is "we don't know", which we might express as a "definite maybe" regarding the possible answers to the OP's question.

Perhaps we have different interpretations of the OP question. I read it, "Is non-locality possible given EPR phenomena?"

Perhaps. I read it as the OP wrote it. "Is action at a distance possible as envisaged by the EPR paradox?" Which might be condensed to, "Is EPR-type action at a distance possible?". Which then requires that we define EPR-type action at a distance. And when we do that we find that it's different than other types of action at a distance. Specifically, it requires that the deep reality of a particle (or wave or whatever), b, assumed to be incident on a filter or detector, B, is dependent on an instrumental event, A, spacelike separated from the predicted instrumental events at B. And when we consider that the deep reality of, a, assumed to be incident on a filter or detector, A, is also dependent on an instrumental event, B, then we have a bit of a problem. Or do we? I don't really know. Help?

Since it is generally agreed that EPR-Bell phenomena imply non-locality and/or nonseparability, the short answer is "yes, non-locality is a possibility."

But, what sort of nonlocality? Given the inability to describe the entanglement correlations in a detailed local realistic way, there are at least two different sorts of nonlocality that we can consider to, at least quantitatively, account for the observed results. If EPR-type nonlocality is ruled out, then the answer to the OP's question is no.

I've sure had a lot of fun with this thread!

I'm glad you have that attitude. It's certainly appreciated that a physicist such as yourself is willing to take the time to answer questions from people like me who are not even remotely as knowledgeable as you, but are nonetheless fascinated by this stuff. Of course, that's part of what PF is all about. And also of course, I'll bet that you would really like it if some heavyweight bona fide working physicists would come down from their self-erected, but nonetheless justified, thrones for a time and make some comments about your interpretation/theory. Or are they already doing that in another, more technically oriented, thread (most of the comments within which I probably, at this time, would, generally, not understand)?

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

This is what I call "A Personal Version of Science"

You don’t have to be a genius to check these things. If I Google "Effect After Cause Principle" I get 10 results, where one is this thread, and one is a double, giving a total of 8 unique results. The actual arXiv paper was submitted on 1 Aug 2006 – "A Bell Theorem with no locality assumption".

Now, you are telling me that Charles Tresser has found the solution to the paradox that Einstein & Bohr argued about for 20 years, followed by +40 years of intensive research and attention among the brightest minds in the scientific community – AND THE BIG SOLUTION TO ALL THIS GIVES 8 RESULTS ON GOOGLE, 4 YEARS AFTER THE "DISCOVERY" !? !?

Do you really want me to believe in this?

It doesn’t make sense, does it?

This is what I call "A Personal Version of Science"

This thread has been more or less terrorized by dishonest and cranky troglodytes, that will say and do absolutely anything to get as far as possible from what Physics Forums Global Guidelines characterize as current professional mainstream science, and after 4 months of this, I’m not sure if I can handle a new case of anti-intellectual smokescreens.

First you say:
And then you say:

And I presume that this is your own little "homemade expression", right?
And I presume you know that "Twisted" has several meanings, right?

to combine, as two or more strands or threads, by winding together; intertwine.

to distort the meaning or form of; pervert: He twisted my comment about to suit his own purpose.​

Personally, I think that the later fits your homemade "Twisted Malus Law" perfectly.

To me this kind of "argumentation" is just ridiculous and unprofessional, but there are many anonymous readers who will misinterpret your "clever ambiguity", and that is bad, real bad.

This is what I call "A Personal Version of Science"

RUTA is a real scientist. He says CLEARLY what he has learned is true and does not hide stupid agendas behind ambiguous games of words:



This last quote makes me laugh. This idea that you and Charles Tresser promote, that Einstein disliked the EPR paper, and he was "kidnapped" by Podolsky to put his name on a paper that he did not believed in??

How likely is this?? And why didn’t Einstein publish a refuting paper??

The fairly unknown Podolsky used Albert Einstein as a "sidekick" for his own cranky personal ideas...????

This crazy conspiracy theory just doesn’t make sense, especially if you are claiming to be a serious and professional scientist.


Finally, please read the whole thread before reintroducing the "unfair sampling loophole", we have been over and over this subject several times, and anyone who claims any validity in this is not a part of current professional mainstream science:



Personally, I don’t think that non-locality is "the biggest threat" against physics - I think dishonest cranks with a "dogmatic-religious" approach is a much bigger threat than anything in nature can ever be.

Insults are cheap: read the historians such as Jammer and Fine instead of propaganda to the glory of the realist point of view: cite a serious historian who disagrees what I say about Einstein and the EPR paper, and notice that this historian would have to explain what kind of sickness hit Einstein to make him write to Schrodinger that Podolsky wrote the paper and that he was not happy. Fine explains why Einstein did not react. Did you know about the letter of Podolsky to the New York Time. Citing the Stanford dictionary will not help. Most of what is there but what is from Fine (and perhaps a few others) was written by tenors supporting Bell's ideas. But in good circles, one cites people and not encyclopedia (except to show what is in popular accounts). Again, find one historian who agrees with you and not with me. No need to comment your other comments before that.

Making fun of the truth is the first step toward totalitarian thinking.
CleBG

 

[ThomasT]

JesseM, thanks for the reply, sorry for the delay in answering.

You seemed to be saying that since we don't know the exact details of the supposed "disturbances" we can't give an affirmative answer to the OP

My thinking is that if we assume any reality underlying instrumental behavior, then we can't give an affirmative answer to the OP.

Of course, we don't have to assume that. Maybe reality is just emitters and filters and detectors.

But in that case we still can't give an affirmative answer to the OP, because EPR-nonlocality entails that a detection event at A instantaneously determines the reality of an underlying disturbance, or particle, b, incident on B. The particle, b, simply didn't exist before the detection, A. And, of course, vice versa. Do you see the problem here, and how it relates my first statement above?

... if the "disturbances" are meant to be disturbances in local realistic variables, then hell yes it "makes sense to say that they don't exist", that's exactly what Bell's theorem proves!

Ok, then maybe they don't exist. Maybe emitters and filters and detectors is it. But what about the 'light' in, say, optical Bell tests. Are emitters emitting it? Are filters filtering it? Are detectors detecting it?

What do we have in optical Bell tests? Initiate the emission process, then record individual detection events at A and individual detection events at B. Then turn off the emission process and combine the detection attributes at A and the detection attributes at B according to some criterion, usually time-stamping of the detection attributes. Low and behold, they're correlated, not just wrt the time-stamping but also wrt an optical law that says that the rate of coincidental detection will vary as the cos^2 of the angle between the crossed polarizers. But this can't be just optics. It must be due to instantaneous or at least ftl communication of some sort between the ... between what? ... who knows, it's like magic. Let's call it nonlocality, and deem it the new paradigm in physics.

Look, nonlocality, physical nonlocality, is never demonstrated. It isn't even inferred by violations of BIs, even given that the BIs might be endowed with some meaning relating to the deep nature of reality. It's simply, "we have no local mechanistic explanation for these correlations". That's it. So, we bestow upon them a nonmechanistic nonlocal 'explanation'. Which, of course, is no explanation at all. But then, it does simplify the 'physics', doesn't it?

'Nonlocality' as it relates to standard qm or dbb is simply a "formal" phenomenon.

Anyway, ok I'll stipulate that 'nonlocality' exists. Whatever you want 'nonlocality' to refer to, in some metaphysical 'picture' of reality. So what?

As I said in a previous post, the 'definitive' answer to the OP's question is that we have absolutely no way of knowing. On the other hand, the most sensible answer to the OP's question is, no, EPR-type nonlocality isn't possible given extant observations and what can be logically inferred from them.

 

[ThomasT]

What are the references of the results of Bell that are quoted: this does not resemble what I know. If this has to do with Bell1964(Physics) , then please explain the relation between this work of Bell and the proposed interpretation.
Thanks,
CleBG

Hi Charley, I think there might have been a typo in there somewhere. Do you know what I mean?

By the way, welcome to the thread. I've enjoyed reading your stuff even though I must say that some of it confuses me, and some of it I have no idea what you're talking about. So, you should fit in quite well with the general tenor of the thread.

But of course, much of what you've written is quite understandable and informative. So thanks for the contributions.

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

I gave an argument showing that the Bell+Aspect story disprove only local realism that would conflict the UP. Deviladvocado responds by personal attacks and judgment based on thin air, even making fun of history statements without giving references for the thesis he defends against me (who gave references, many times). Worse, he puts words in my mouth (and over again after mocking me by providing fake excuses), last time by insinuating that I was appealing to a "fair sampling loophole" while I only mentioned that, while Bell's Theorem only needs realism + locality (at least in original form), the relevance of Aspect experiment also requires fair sampling.

I have no idea of who is that person (who find him/her-self good enough to attribute stars and injures to people whose footprint on math and science he has no idea about, and whom I naively thought honest for a (short) while), but if he/she agrees to take, say DrC, or Ruta, or Thomas T, assuming one of them accepts, as a judge who would keep us anonymous and unknown from each other, I'd be happy to have such a (willing) judge comparing our respective scientific impacts. On the other hand, it is not me but Tresser who is attacked by Deviladvocado when he counts (as in the last post of him that I have seen) the impact of a paper by Tresser: Tresser's work has been cited in the description of the work of two people who got field medals, and has solved himself with others a long standing conjecture of Smale, and formulated conjectures that have animated many great scientists and mathematicians (answering himself to many questions and pointing out new ones). He has collaborated with John Milnor, proving a conjecture of Milnor (one of major mathematicians of the the 20th century and still alive) a conjecture that was a goal for many of the tenors of dynamics. He is or has been on several editorial boards, he has a total; of about 200 papers and granted US patents (with more in the pipeline). He has collaborated with about 80 people in science and mathematics (half of them chosen by their grate fame (Milnor, Sullivan, Bass, Libchaber, Procaccia, Coullet, Spiegel, Young, Adler, Shub, Pugh, Martens, Lanford, Misiurewicz, Mackay, Gambaudo, Iooss, Llibre, Kitchens Alseda, etc... the other chosen by their young age and lack of experience, to create a bridge between those and the former), and about the same number in technology. He has launched several sub-subjects of dynamics, both as a physicist and as a mathematician. This can be seen from the www and has more statistical value than the fact that ONE paper (that if true is quite original snd so much of a problem for he establishment) takes time to gain recognition. I know several people who were almost kicked out of science to see their work eventually recognized: none of them was close to be as known then (when they made their decisive contributions to science) as Tresser is known now. Since Tresser has also left a trail of modesty (before his leave for disability a few years ago), it is not surprising that a work of his, especially in a field new to him, takes time to attract attention. Popularity is not truth, and vice versa truth does not mean popularity. Originality is not a plague for scientists. Devilavocado has an attitude problem as he/she seems to equate reason and/or being right with the result of a popularity contest. Galois, Post are examples of fame that came too late and as great scientists are a bit artists, one can expect that such things happen rather often even for people not quiet as good as these two.

Making fun of truth is the type of attitude that has sent many people in my family to their death: you can make fun of friends or of yourself, not of people with whom you are in a conflict of ideas, or any other sort of conflict for that matter. If it is science, or the honesty that must go with it, that is sent to its death, it is also sad for the future of human kind. For instance, Devilavocado picks a sentence of mine about "an obscure paper of Bell" from a section where I was explaining that for some time the paper was obcure enough for Richard Friedberg to redo it all using EPR's elements of reality instead of predictive HVs.

What would be my IQ if I claimed that Bell 1964 is an obscure paper now, as the fragment of Deviladvocado suggests?

And is there anything more pathetic than counting by citations on the www what is the value of a scientific paper. Counting pages for a mature scientist has a meaning as a statistical tool, but for instance, I have had all my best papers rejected by journals accepting much lesser papers of mine, and I have a paper with little science in it that has hundreds of citations (an aspect of the statistical value only of brutal counting). Abramov, when received as member of the French Academy of Sciences, mentioned the counting habit and pointed out that his most cited paper had this status because it contained a mistake that was rediscovered by successive generations of young physicists very proud to make him wrong.

At last, Deviladvocado seems to imply that I should have read all the thread, but he attacks me on the fact that Einstein did not give his imprimatur to the EPR paper, subject on which I had recently responded to DrC with gory details and sources for my non-professional knowledge as I am not an historian (although anyone can check that in his most public accounts of the completeness issue, Einstein never used "elements of reality" and neither the complicated line of arguments that Podolsky used and that is described for instance by Fine (Jammer counted at least 3 people who studied the formal structure of the argument in the EPR paper, a practice rather rare in physics as Jammer pointed out).

I also mentioned to Devilavocado that I was waiting for reference to back his making fun of the knowledge I shared in this thread about Einstein and EPR: this part of the history of science is important (and the attitude of Devilavocado proves it) because of the number of people who use false info about Einstein to position themselves and their own work (and or opinions) in a way that may abuse people who think a priori that scientists are honest: we will see if he can back his mockeries by solid references. I have provided mine many time, and offered to post what I can access and that others want but cannot get.

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

Hi Charley, I think there might have been a typo in there somewhere. Do you know what I mean?

By the way, welcome to the thread. I've enjoyed reading your stuff even though I must say that some of it confuses me, and some of it I have no idea what you're talking about. So, you should fit in quite well with the general tenor of the thread.

But of course, much of what you've written is quite understandable and informative. So thanks for the contributions.

Thanks: if I am not clear enough, let me know. When on speaks about things one has thought a lot about, one has a tendency to use jargon (words and/or sentences or pieces of them). Now if I contribute, I expect to be understandable but make it my responsibility if I am not: please do not hesitate to ask for clarification, references, details, etc... For references, I'll do what I can, for the rest, no excuse if I cannot explain so that many if not all can understand clearly.

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

I've read a few books on the historical development of quantum physics and I enjoyed reading them, but I'm not asking what the founding fathers thought in this case. Einstein was dead before Bell's inequality and the numerous experiments in accord with variations thereof. I was asking whether you knew of someone who had actually proven that non-locality was not the culprit. Or, less rigorously, perhaps some papers presenting credible arguments for locality over separability. I've talked to Don Howard and read some of his work and he's in our camp, but he doesn't have any "arguments" per se against non-locality. His position is more like Relational Blockworld in that it simply favors nonseparability.



SR got me to major in physics and I did my PhD in GR, so Relational Blockworld is local and nonseparable. You're preaching to the choir here

But, I'd say dBB is the second most popular QM interpretation (behind MW), so anyone presenting a credible argument against non-locality would definitely get the attention of the foundations community.



Maybe you should write a formal argument against non-locality, present it in the appropriate venues and get it published. I'll be glad to read it and offer comments before you submit.

I have nothing ready yet, a lot in preparation (but I am looking for collaborators as I always hatted to work alone and have kept projects for years before closing them, sometimes alone when at the end, I still could not find one or more partners). Meanwhile, I have proposed to DrC to initiate a thread on Bell's Theorem without locality, about 2 papers from the same author, one in preprint form I must say, that I have posted and where arguments are made against non-locality (but no claim of a decisive blow is made there, a definite blow (or many of them) being what I hope myself to do... soon enough I hope). DrC has kindly opened that Thread (I am still new and did not know where to find instructions to do that). Your opinion on those papers would be most appreciated. You seem to know a lot about the philosophy of the foundation of QM, something which is my own weakest point probably: I would really love to have your assessment of that pair of papers by Tresser. I have begun to read some of your posts and they are quite substantial in content: is there a way to have a global view on them? (perhaps if I go to you page I can follow the patrh of what you wrote... I'll let you know if I need help). With the trauma of Devilavocado attacks on me, I will need to get back to other science work and leave the pleasure of PF for later, but as soon as I have time, I'll go to your material: what is the firat post of yours? do you remember?