Joy Christian, "Disproof of Bell's Theorem"

Mathematech

I'm still having no joy trying to understand Joy Christian's rebuttal. If A(a,\lambda) = +1 when \lambda = +1 and A(a,\lambda) = -1 when \lambda = -1, in what sense doesn't A(a,\lambda) = \lambda? or is the +/-1 that A(a\lambda) is set to something other than normal +/-1 which don't multiply together as we expect? Surely someone with his credentials hasn't completely lost the plot?

gill1109

"Surely someone with his credentials hasn't completely lost the plot?"

What credentials? A PhD in the foundations of physics means you are good with words and ideas and imagery, and are well-read. It doesn't mean that you can do mathematics.

In earlier versions of Christian's model, the sign error was much more deeply hidden. Florin Moldoveanu carefully studied all versions and found the same error in about four different guises.

Mathematech

I think there is a whole range of unrecognized "cognitive disorders" out there that aren't being diagnosed or treated by psychologists.

The other day I found a paper by someone who thought that they had proven that the standard definition of natural numbers implied the existence of a greatest natural number if the natural numbers are not treated as a proper class. The author was clearly intelligent, had a PhD, but was completely failing to grasp the very basics of the theory of ordinals - and was unaware that he was failing to grasp it.

Worse, there was the case of a fairly capable student, who picked up the basics of Pascal programming within a day ... and went on to write a program which in his words was for testing if infinity existed ...by writing an unending loop that incremented a counter and printed the result. oO

DrChinese

Here is a new paper with another take:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.4854

Abstract: "I present a local, deterministic model of the EPR-Bohm experiment, inspired by recent work by Joy Christian, that appears at first blush to be in tension with Bell-type theorems. I argue that the model ultimately fails to do what a hidden variable theory needs to do, but that it is interesting nonetheless because the way it fails helps clarify the scope and generality of Bell-type theorems. I formulate and prove a minor proposition that makes explicit how Bell-type theorems rule out models of the sort I describe here. "

(Of course Christian disagrees...)

mbd

Ontologically speaking, infinity does not exist, nor does probability.

In C#, though, both negative infinity and positive infinity exist:
Double.PositiveInfinity and Double.NegativeInfinity.

gill1109

Why should probability not ontologically exist? What kind of prejudice is that? I think quantum mechanics is telling us that it does exist, despite our intuition or instinct to the contrary. Our brains evolved and led us from success to success by hard-wiring in us a belief that nothing happens without a cause... this belief worked just fine, till we ran up against quantum mechanics.

Mathematech

Its even got infinitisimals (in a sense) Double.Epsilon :)

Mathematech

Theory of Hidden Authors ... just a thought, is it possible that Joy Christian really doesn't know much math at all and all the math is being ghost written for him by someone else who is trying to rigorize some hand waving from Christian and stuff is getting lost in translation somewhere?

Nugatory

Digression: That's not a C# thing, it's a property of the IEEE 754/854 floating point arithmetic standard, which is honored by just about all modern programming languages and processor architectures. The IEEE "Infinity"values have a number of useful arithmetic properties for dealing with corner cases in numerical computations, but they are not infinity in any mathematical sense, and thinking about them that way almost guarantees a program that will deliver bogus results under some conditions.

mbd

It is an open question, and, in my opinion, the biggest and most interesting open question. Certainly, though, the evidence points very strongly toward an ontology of randomness. I do in fact think God plays dice with the Universe. But, he rolls spherical dice and the result depends on when you ask the question.

Mathematech

Maybe this student went on to develop IEEE standards :D

mbd

Speaking of intuition and instinct, QM depends critically on a point-particle view of matter. It is this view that has, as its consequence, indefiniteness of state, non-locality, and such.

Bell clearly shows that a point-particle viewpoint of matter leads to non-locality, and experiments do seem to confirm this.

If you execute a "loophole-free" EPR experiment against the loopholes that are motivated only by a particle viewpoint of matter, then the results will certainly seem to confirm an ontology of randomness and non-locality. In other words, the definitive experiment can at best claim to say (assuming success), that "If the world is made of particles, then the world is indefinite and non-local."

<Speculation>
However, if the "star stuff" are relationships, rather than particles, each end of which depends on the other at the speed of light, then there's no need for randomness or non-locality. A definitive experiment must rule this out. I call it the "aparticle" loophole.
</Speculation>

Here's a link to some recent work confirming the theoretical potential of an "aparticle" based theory at the astrophysics level. Note they still model the interaction over distance as a particle. I model it as a series of step waves through the relationship with observable events the consequence of a threshold having been reached.

http://physics.aps.org/synopsis-for/...ett.109.231301

DrChinese

Actually, it is not QM that depends on that view. It is classical-type theories (that are ruled out by Bell) that depend on that "point-particle" view. There are plenty of folk who do NOT see quantum particles as point-like. If you accept the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle as fundamental (or perhaps as a fundamental deduction of QM postulates), you probably will reject the point-like characterization of particles completely. Your conclusion will still be somewhat interpretation dependent. For example, Bohmian class theories typically view particles as point-like with a well-defined position. But in the general case, I see QM as silent on this point (sorry for unintended pun).

mbd

By point particle I mean in the Dirac delta sense, not in the absolute sense. Sorry for the imprecision.

Perhaps another way to look at it is as something separable from its context, or something that can exist in isolation.

In the Dirac delta sense, it is something for which there is a distance beyond which the upper bound of its influence on any other thing is on the order of 1/d^2.

Darwin123

I suspect that if it is ghost written, then the ghost doesn't know much mathematics either. Please show me anyplace where the writer shows any "rigor".

Just out of curiosity, though:

Is "Joy Christian" his original name? The one that his parents gave him? Or did he pick this name as an adult?

mbd

I'm bothered by the personal attacks and speculation about mental health aimed at the subject of this thread. Can we please keep the criticism to the papers and the science?

Mathematech

If someone writes something like A(L) = 1 when L = 1 and A(L) = -1 when L = -1 and then denies that A(L) = L when L = +/-1 then you start worrying about some form of mental disorder.