Joy Christian, Disproof of Bell's Theorem

[Delta Kilo]

Florin,

There are 2 main things wrong.

First, is the conceptual BS, his insistence on extending the use of his fancy geometric formalism beyond the boundaries of the model and into the statistical processing of the outcomes of measurements. I spent the first 1/3 of my post debunking that, I'm not going to repeat myself again.

The second is the fact that equation 23 is plain WRONG. It violates basic rules of arithmetic.

DK

 

[FlorinM]

Dr. Chinese and DK,

I believe I made a wrong statement earlier when I said that Joy Christian's work contained no mathematical mistakes. I unfortunately got blinded by high level arguments and did not see the trees from the forest. However, I am here to set the record straight and point you to my latest preprint: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1109/1109.0535v1.pdf which hopefully will close this debate once and for all. (see also my FQXi blog post: http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/983)

By the way, I am still disagreeing with DK on σ(aA)=aσ(A). Suppose “a” is the unit of measurement (temperature, meters, kilograms, etc). Then the equation is actually correct, and therefore it is not incorrect in general and cannot be used as a decisive argument against Joy's math. Other more blatant mistakes can be used however. It is embarrassing to admit for me I never bothered to check Joy's math up close before, but now that I did I hope this would absolve me for at least part of the blame.

 

[DrChinese]

Dr. Chinese and DK,

I believe I made a wrong statement earlier when I said that Joy Christian's work contained no mathematical mistakes. I unfortunately got blinded by high level arguments and did not see the trees from the forest. However, I am here to set the record straight and point you to my latest preprint: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1109/1109.0535v1.pdf which hopefully will close this debate once and for all. (see also my FQXi blog post: http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/983)

Nice paper. I didn't follow all of it, but it is well written. No question that Christian is wrong in my opinion anyway, hardly surprising.

 

[FlorinM]

Thanks. There are some heated exchanges between Joy and me now on FQXi blog right now. The icing on the cake was when Joy called Hodge duality his own: "It is a Christian duality not Hodge duality, with a very specific Christian meaning attached to it." :) Now this is precious.

 

[billschnieder]

Florin,
After reading your paper, I doubt that you understand Joy's model at all. It does not appear you have recognized the difference between averaging over a series of events each of which can only be one of two possibilities, and picking a convention for a series of equations.

Your complex number example is humorous. If 3 + 2i and 3 - 2i are equal alternate posibilities for z, <z> is 3. But if you select a convention for your equations where only one is possible, then <z> = 3 is wrong. This is what you are missing.

 

[FlorinM]

Bill,

I don't quite get your criticism and I don't want to give an answer which may not be what you are looking for. Can you please specify the context a bit more? What do you mean by: "averaging over a series of events"? Let's frame the discussion around http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0703/0703179v3.pdf to be specific. Are you talking about Eqs. 18, 19 of that paper, or are you talking about what Bell does in his theorem?

Thanks,

Florin

 

[billschnieder]

Bill,

I don't quite get your criticism and I don't want to give an answer which may not be what you are looking for. Can you please specify the context a bit more? What do you mean by: "averaging over a series of events"? Let's frame the discussion around http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0703/0703179v3.pdf to be specific. Are you talking about Eqs. 18, 19 of that paper, or are you talking about what Bell does in his theorem?

Thanks,

Florin

Not sure what is not clear as I'm responding directly to what you have written in your paper for which you gave the complex number analogy. You are using the orientation of the 3-sphere as a convention in your equations, whereas Joy is using it as a hidden variable.

Remember Alice is making multiple measurements of different particles and averaging over them not repeated measurements of the same particle. But each particle has a different hidden variable or in other words, there is an ambiguity in the orientation for the different particles arriving at Alice. Finally remember that the hidden variables are not the outcomes of the experiments. The *different* hidden variables must interact with Alice's device in Alice's frame and only after that can you average and obtain Alice's result.

Until you understand this simple fact, you will not understand his model. Your rebuttal is flawed because of this.

 

[FlorinM]

Dear billschnieder,

Or should I say Joy Christian?

First naming equations after yourself, and now sockpuppetry?

I have exchaged way too many messages with you already not to recognize your writing style. I guess it is time for a new pen name, this one was already exposed.



Florin

 

[Gordon Watson]

Dear billschnieder,

Or should I say Joy Christian?

First naming equations after yourself, and now sockpuppetry?

I have exchaged way too many messages with you already not to recognize your writing style. I guess it is time for a new pen name, this one was already exposed.



Florin

Are you sure? The styles are not nearly the same, imho!

 

[billschnieder]

Dear billschnieder,

Or should I say Joy Christian?

First naming equations after yourself, and now sockpuppetry?

I have exchaged way too many messages with you already not to recognize your writing style. I guess it is time for a new pen name, this one was already exposed.



Florin

Now this is funny. Your judgement is so obviously clouded for you to think that everyone challenging your rebuttal must somehow be Joy Christian.

In your paper you say on page 1:

"Even without spelling in detail the error, it is easy
to see that the exterior product term should not vanish
on any handedness average because handedness is just
a paper convention on how to consistently make compu-
tations."

All I have done is point out to you that you are missing the point because Joy Christian is not using handedness as a convention but as the hidden variable itself.

My criticism is very clear and instead of addressing it, you decide to accuse Joy Christian of acts for which you have no proof. Very disappointing.

 

[FlorinM]

Dear billschnieder,

Let me start by saying that on the very remote possibility that you are indeed not Joy Christian, I am apologizing to you.

I replied earlier, but my post did not appear and unfortunaley I did not saved it.

Let me list the reasons why Joy's model is wrong:

Physical reasons:

- Never in his model he is using the fact that the original state in in the Bell state. Start with any other Psi and you will still get -a.b if you believe his math.
- The model does not respect the detector swapping symmetry: Swap Alice and Bob's detectors and you get the same results. Joy is using DIFFERENT analyzers for Alice and Bob to recover the minus sign on -a.b. Restoring the symmetry results in + a.b
- Holman's argument: Once MU is set, perform the EPR-B experiment on z axis and do a subsequent measurement on one arm of the experiment on the x axis. You get 2 choices: MU does not change between measurement, or MU changes between measurement. MU does not change: this means the x measurement outcome is always the same as the z outcome. Experiments show you get 50% the same answer and 50% the opposite answer. MU does change: than you have problems explaining 3 1/2 spin particle experimental results.

Mathematical reasons:

-incorrect Hodge duality between pseudo-vectors and bivectors in a left handed basis. In a right handed bases a^b = I (axb) (Joys agrees with it). In a left handed basis Joy claims incorrectly a^b = -I (axb). This is wrong, it is still with +. Easy way of seeing this: changing handedness comes from a mirror reflection. In a mirror reflection I = e1^e2^e3 changes signs because it is a PSEUDO-scalar (Joy does this correctly). However (axb) changes signs as well (Joy forgets that axb is a PSEUDO-vectors and treats it like a vector)
-On FQXi website Joy now claims a different thing: he is using left and right algebras instead of left and right handedness. To debunk this I spelled out all 4 combinations: left algebra-left handedness, left algebra-right handedness, right algebra-left handedness, right algebra-right handedness. In each algebra Hodge duality preserves the sign, and mixing algebras is inconsistent (it is like adding kets with bras, row and column vectors: "go direcly to jail, do not pass go do not collect 200"). All associative algebras have left and right implementations (and the name comes from the matrix formalism). Only in 3D there is handedness-a property of the cross product. Handedness is the sign of the pseudo-scalar I = e1^e2^e3 = e1e2e3 and not of the bivector product: B1B2B3. The sign of the bivector product gives you the left or right algebra.
-Any generalization of Joy's model in the Clifford algebra formalism breaks either -a.b correlation, or the zero average in each arm of the experiment
-Joy takes a 0/0 limit: sin(epsilon)/sin(epsilon) and claims it equals zero because the nominator goes to zero.
-Joy computes incorrectly a rotation with a bad rotor in geometric algebra. (the last 2 errors are used to fight Holman's analysis)

Computer simulation arguments:
-By now there are 2 independent simulations of Joy's model both recovering the classical limit. One of the simulation was validated by obtaining -cos correlation on other models

Sociological factors:
-I have never ever got any mathematical arguments from Joy. Instead he used only lies, insults, fallacious arguments, and obfuscation of simple mathematical facts.
-naming the Hodge duality after himself – a major score on Baez’s crackpot index.
-His archive replies are using a bullying tone which scared away critics. You want proof? Sure. The +1=-1 mistake from the wrong sign of Hodge duality was almost found by the very first critic and the tone of Joy’s reply: “rectify this pedagogical error”-like the first critic was an idiot, scared other people from checking his math.
Frankly, I have no explanation for his behavior and obstinate denial of obvious elementary mistakes except that he is doing a cover-up. But a coverup is worse than the offense, and if he can now say: look, I made a sign mistake and I did not treat axb as a pseudo-vector – I am only human, publishing anything else on the archive denying the obvious mistakes can only be achieved by doing other mistakes. And after that he will lose all his mathematical credibility. I plead with him to see reason and stop this self-destruction madness.

 

[DrChinese]

Simple refutation of Joy Christian's simple refutation of Bell's simple theorem

Posted today by Richard Gill, of the Mathematical Institute:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.1504

Abstract:

"I point out a simple algebraic error in Joy Christian's refutation of Bell's theorem. In substituting the result of multiplying some derived bivectors with one another by consultation of their multiplication table, he confuses the generic vectors which he used to define the table, with other specific vectors having a special role in the paper, which had been introduced earlier. The result should be expressed in terms of the derived bivectors which indeed do follow this multiplication table. When correcting this calculation, the result is not the singlet correlation any more. Moreover, curiously, his normalized correlations are independent of the number of measurements and certainly do not require letting n converge to infinity. On the other hand his unnormalized or raw correlations are identically equal to -1, independently of the number of measurements too. Correctly computed, his standardized correlations are the bivectors - a . b - a x b, and they find their origin entirely in his normalization or standardization factors; the raw product moment correlations are all -1. I conclude that his research program has been set up around an elaborately hidden but trivial mistake. "

--------------------------------------------

It is interesting to add this note, addressed to those who suggest Jaynes is the only person who properly understands how probability applies to Bell's Theorem, entanglement, etc: Gill is also an expert in statistical theory, and has done extensive research in this area (including the application of Bayes). He apparently does not see the issue Jaynes does. Gill frequently collaborates with the top scientists in the study of entanglement, so I think it is safe to say this area has been well considered and has not been overlooked somehow.

 

[kith]

I conclude that his research program has been set up around an elaborately hidden but trivial mistake.

Puh, this is definitely not something you want to read in a serious paper addressing your work. ;-)

 

[DrChinese]

Puh, this is definitely not something you want to read in a serious paper addressing your work. ;-)

That would sting. I would say that Gill addressing this shows that top teams take challenges to Bell quite seriously. Gill has previously brought down at least one of the Hess-Philipp stochastic models.

 

[Delta Kilo]

Told you so!

... and no-one actually bothered to look at the half-a-page of math to see the elephants lurking therein.

Well, let's look at eq (5). ...

 

[Zarqon]

Hehe, what's funny is that as I found this paper on the archives yesterday, my first thought was: wow, DrChinese will find that funny.

On another note, I think the strong language at the end of the abastract suggests that some people in the community is starting to get annoyed by joy christians continuing crusade against Bell. I guess he should maybe try to put up a bit more humble attitude in the future (assuming he has one )

 

[DrChinese]

Told you so!

Ahead of the pack is a good place to be...

 

[DrChinese]

Hehe, what's funny is that as I found this paper on the archives yesterday, my first thought was: wow, DrChinese will find that funny.

On another note, I think the strong language at the end of the abastract suggests that some people in the community is starting to get annoyed by joy christians continuing crusade against Bell. I guess he should maybe try to put up a bit more humble attitude in the future (assuming he has one )

Heh, I'm so predictable...

Yes, I think the issue is: if someone (such as Christian) really has an angle on something, why not collaborate on it rather than this process of trying to upend something which has been thoroughly studied (Bell)? Every entanglement test shows the same pattern of impossibly high correlations, which again should be a tip-off. Some mathematical sleight of hand is not going to do it, there is going to need to be something very convincing - something like a new testable prediction.

 

[ThomasT]

Posted today by Richard Gill, of the Mathematical Institute:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.1504

Abstract:

"I point out a simple algebraic error in Joy Christian's refutation of Bell's theorem. In substituting the result of multiplying some derived bivectors with one another by consultation of their multiplication table, he confuses the generic vectors which he used to define the table, with other specific vectors having a special role in the paper, which had been introduced earlier. The result should be expressed in terms of the derived bivectors which indeed do follow this multiplication table. When correcting this calculation, the result is not the singlet correlation any more. Moreover, curiously, his normalized correlations are independent of the number of measurements and certainly do not require letting n converge to infinity. On the other hand his unnormalized or raw correlations are identically equal to -1, independently of the number of measurements too. Correctly computed, his standardized correlations are the bivectors - a . b - a x b, and they find their origin entirely in his normalization or standardization factors; the raw product moment correlations are all -1. I conclude that his research program has been set up around an elaborately hidden but trivial mistake. "

--------------------------------------------

It is interesting to add this note, addressed to those who suggest Jaynes is the only person who properly understands how probability applies to Bell's Theorem, entanglement, etc: Gill is also an expert in statistical theory, and has done extensive research in this area (including the application of Bayes). He apparently does not see the issue Jaynes does. Gill frequently collaborates with the top scientists in the study of entanglement, so I think it is safe to say this area has been well considered and has not been overlooked somehow.

I thought at first that Christian might be on to something, because I intuited a connection between his approach and mine. But, after further consideration, imho, his stuff is just too mathematically circuitous to be considered. I've read his papers and his replies to various discussions, and in none of it is there a clear explanation of why his stuff should be considered a local realistic model of quantum entanglement.

 

[billschnieder]

Richard Gill's refutation is not a new critique. It is essentially the same as one of the critiques advanced by a certain Florin Moldoveanu in the fall last year to which Joy Christian has already replied (http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.5876). It originates from a misunderstanding of Joy's framework which admittedly is not very easy to understand especially for those who have blinders of one kind or another.

Gill thinks Joy is using a convoluted more difficult method to do a calculation and prefers a different method which ultimately leads him to a different result, not realizing/understanding that the calculation method Joy used is demanded by his framework. This is hardly a serious critique not unlike his failed critique of Hess and Phillip. He should at least have read Joy's response to Moldoveanu which he apparently did not, since he does not cite or mention it. It's been available since October 2011, one-month after Moldoveanu posted his critique.

I remember Florin came here to boast about his critique and I pointed out his misunderstanding at the time in this thread: https://www.physicsforums.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=3806400

... you are missing the point because Joy Christian is not using handedness as a convention but as the hidden variable itself.

This is the same error Gill has made. See section (II) of Joy's response to Moldoveanu.

 

[bohm2]

More on this from Joy Christian and I don't understand any of it:

Refutation of Richard Gill's Argument Against my Disproof of Bell's Theorem
http://lanl.arxiv.org/pdf/1203.2529.pdf

 

[Delta Kilo]

More on this from Joy Christian and I don't understand any of it:

Refutation of Richard Gill's Argument Against my Disproof of Bell's Theorem
http://lanl.arxiv.org/pdf/1203.2529.pdf

Oh-ho, here we go again. No, Joy, measurement outcomes are not bivectors from unit sphere, they are numbers { -1; 1 }. That's how they are defined in Bell's paper and that is also the way how they come out of experiments. And their mean is 0 and their standard deviation is 1. Not bivectors, just numbers 0 and 1.

with \sigma(A) = (−I · \textbf{a} ) and \sigma(B) = (+I · \textbf{b} ), respectively, being the standard deviations in the results A and B.

I can't be bothered anymore, but if you substitute I and \textbf{a} from definitions elsewhere in his paper, you will get \sigma(\textbf{a})=\sum a_{j}\beta_{j} where a_{j} are coefficients of unit vector \textbf{a} and \beta_{j} are "basis bivectors". Brain ruptures at this point...

 

[gill1109]

Richard Gill's refutation is not a new critique. It is essentially the same as one of the critiques advanced by a certain Florin Moldoveanu in the fall last year to which Joy Christian has already replied (http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.5876). It originates from a misunderstanding of Joy's framework which admittedly is not very easy to understand especially for those who have blinders of one kind or another.

Gill thinks Joy is using a convoluted more difficult method to do a calculation and prefers a different method which ultimately leads him to a different result, not realizing/understanding that the calculation method Joy used is demanded by his framework. This is hardly a serious critique not unlike his failed critique of Hess and Phillip. He should at least have read Joy's response to Moldoveanu which he apparently did not, since he does not cite or mention it. It's been available since October 2011, one-month after Moldoveanu posted his critique.

I remember Florin came here to boast about his critique and I pointed out his misunderstanding at the time in this thread: https://www.physicsforums.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=3806400 This is the same error Gill has made. See section (II) of Joy's response to Moldoveanu.

It's true that Moldoveanu had earlier seen the same error, in a sense ... but Joy's definitions have not remained constant over the years, so it's a moot point whether the error in one of the earlier, long accounts, is the same error as in Joy's beautiful and simple one-page paper. Florin's focus was not the one-page paper, but the whole corpus of work at that point.

Joy and Bill Schnieder may find it legitimate, when one has freedom to make an arbitrary choice of "handedness", to make different and mutually contradictory choices at different locations in the same computation, but to my mind this is just license to get any result one likes by use of poetry.

Joy's one page paper and my refutation are exercises in simple algebra. I suggest that Bill Schnieder and others work through my algebra and through Joy's algebra, themselves.

The reference to Hess and Phillip is also amusing. Not many people actually read through all the details of Hess and Phillips "counterexample" to Bell's theorem. Somewhere in the midst of that, a variable which had three indices suddenly only had two. This is where a joint probability distribution is being factored into a marginal and the product of two conditionals. Because of the notational slip-up, the normalization factor was wrong. All rather sad.

 

[gill1109]

DrChinese referred to Jaynes. Jaynes (1989) thought that Bell was incorrectly performing a routine factorization of joint probabilities into marginal and conditional. Apparently Jaynes did not understand that Bell was giving physical reasons (locality, realism) why it was reasonable to argue that two random variables should be conditionally *independent* given a third. When Jaynes presented his resolution of the Bell paradox at a conference, he was stunned when someone else gave a neat little proof using Fourier analysis that the singlet correlations could not be reproduced using a network of classical computers, whose communication possibilities "copy" those of the traditional Bell-CHSH experiments. I have written about this in quant-ph/0301059. Jaynes is reputed to have said "I am going to have to think about this, but I think it is going to take 30 years before we understand Stephen Gull's results, just as it has taken 20 years before we understood Bell's" (the decisive understanding having been contributed by E.T. Jaynes.

 

[gill1109]

PS, Bill Schnieder thinks that I prefer a different route to get Joy Christian's result because it gives a different answer, but this means he has not read my paper carefully. I discovered a short route, and it appeared to give Joy's answer. I showed this proudly to Joy. He pointed out that I was making a mistake, there was a missing term. I went back and looked more closely at his longer route, and discovered that they both gave the same answer. With the missing term.

 

[bohm2]

Just curious. Doesn't the new PBR theorem reach the same conclusion as Bell's making Joy Christian's refutation of Bell's theorem (even if it was conceivable) a mute point, at least with respect to arguing for a local realistic model:

Thus, prior to Bell’s theorem, the only open possibility for a local hidden variable theory was a psi-epistemic theory. Of course, Bell’s theorem rules out all local hidden variable theories, regardless of the status of the quantum state within them. Nevertheless, the PBR result now gives an arguably simpler route to the same conclusion by ruling out psi-epistemic theories, allowing us to infer nonlocality directly from EPR.

Quantum Times Article on the PBR Theorem
http://mattleifer.info/2012/02/26/quantum-times-article-on-the-pbr-theorem/

The quantum state cannot be interpreted statistically
http://lanl.arxiv.org/pdf/1111.3328v1.pdf

 

[DrChinese]

DrChinese referred to Jaynes. Jaynes (1989) thought that Bell was incorrectly performing a routine factorization of joint probabilities into marginal and conditional. Apparently Jaynes did not understand that Bell was giving physical reasons (locality, realism) why it was reasonable to argue that two random variables should be conditionally *independent* given a third. When Jaynes presented his resolution of the Bell paradox at a conference, he was stunned when someone else gave a neat little proof using Fourier analysis that the singlet correlations could not be reproduced using a network of classical computers, whose communication possibilities "copy" those of the traditional Bell-CHSH experiments. I have written about this in quant-ph/0301059. Jaynes is reputed to have said "I am going to have to think about this, but I think it is going to take 30 years before we understand Stephen Gull's results, just as it has taken 20 years before we understood Bell's" (the decisive understanding having been contributed by E.T. Jaynes.

Thanks so much for taking time to share this story. For those interested, here is the direct link to your paper:

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0301059

I like your example of Luigi and the computers. I would recommend this paper to anyone who is interested in understanding the pros AND cons of various local realistic positions - and this is a pretty strong roundup!

 

[gill1109]

Thanks, Bohm2 and thanks DrChinese.

Regarding PBR: I have to admit to have not got the point of PBR. PBR argue that the quantum state is not statistical, but real. That argument depends on definitions of those two words "statistical", "real". My own opinion about quantum foundations is summarized by statements that (1) the real world is real, and its past is now fixed (2) the future of the real world is random, (3) the quantum state is what you need to know about the past in order to determine the probability distribution of the future (so it's just as real as the real world, if you like, since the past real world is real and the probability distribution of the future is real too). This point of view is argued in http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.2723 which is actually just an attempt to explain the ideas which I got from V.P. Belavkin But you could also say that this is just a rigorous Copenhagen approach in which we don't talk about things which we don't need to, and in which we admit the necessity of defining quantum physics on a platform of naive classical physics.

 

[harrylin]

DrChinese referred to Jaynes. Jaynes (1989) thought that Bell was incorrectly performing a routine factorization of joint probabilities into marginal and conditional. Apparently Jaynes did not understand that Bell was giving physical reasons (locality, realism) why it was reasonable to argue that two random variables should be conditionally *independent* given a third. When Jaynes presented his resolution of the Bell paradox at a conference, he was stunned when someone else gave a neat little proof using Fourier analysis that the singlet correlations could not be reproduced using a network of classical computers, whose communication possibilities "copy" those of the traditional Bell-CHSH experiments. I have written about this in quant-ph/0301059. Jaynes is reputed to have said "I am going to have to think about this, but I think it is going to take 30 years before we understand Stephen Gull's results, just as it has taken 20 years before we understood Bell's" (the decisive understanding having been contributed by E.T. Jaynes.

Thanks for giving your opinion on this matter which happens to be the discussion topic of a parallel thread:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=581193
I can copy your comment there, but it would be nicer if you would do it yourself.

 

[DrChinese]

Thanks for giving your opinion on this matter which happens to be the discussion topic of a parallel thread:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=581193
I can copy your comment there, but it would be nicer if you would do it yourself.

I copied my comment + reference over there, which has the effect of including the above.