How can we test the holographic principle and nonlocality in quantum mechanics?

[RandallB]

The voluble Dr. Chinese keeps saying "why do most people not agree...

I disagree, the only time I see him to be a little “voluble” is when he seems in the troughs of sorting out some issues on his own and trying to make some progress with fleshing out a new idea. Everyone should be allowed some latitude in working though ideas in their own way.
I find the vast majority of posts by Dr. Chinese to be highly valuable to an independent researcher like myself; instructive, a reference, or referral to other information typically helpful stuff. And not insisting that folks agree with him.

I’m not so keen on Mr. Bells comments on observers and “beables”. But I too love his originality and thinking contained within the Bell Theorem, and most of all his belief in Einstein’s ‘local reality’ over QM, even after his own work seemed to have shown Einstein wrong.

I like your analogy to Von Neumann as I’d like to see Bell’s work recast to show that he and Einstein were right and QM was wrong after all. Not that I think the Bell work could ever be described as stupid, I just still feel there is something wrong there, maybe even silly. Which says a lot about why I’m an independent.

 

[Ernies]

Further to earlier postings, I have just obtained Rovelli's article and consider it contains a number of flaws---not mathematical ones but those of reasoning. For example it contains the statement that a fundamental presupposition implies that <quote>any physical system provides a potential observer<end of quote>. This is even worse than the opriginal Copenhagen suppositions. The term 'observers' is of course undefined.

I recall many years ago reading a book (edited by P.C.W. Davies) which gathered the comments of six or seven eminent physicists on the interpretation of QM as given in BBC broadcasts. ALL except one (I think Bell) said very firmly that there was only one interpretation, and proceeded to give it. The trouble was that all were different. Things don't seem to have changed much.

 

[gptejms]

I haven't gone thru all the posts carefully,but the crux seems to be:-ttn argues that violation of bell's theorem implies non-locality(which is equivalent to falsification of HV theories) whereas drchinese thinks otherwise.Is that right?

 

[Hurkyl]

It might be that ttn doesn't acknowledge forms of locality that don't reduce to Bell locality. I never managed to convince myself one way or the other on that question.

 

[Ernies]

In reply to qptejms, I would answer "Well,yes, they do disgree here, but is that really the crux?". What seems to me the point at which they are talking 'past each other' lies in ttn's point that, locally real theory or not, 'action at a distance' is required to agree with experiment. Or have I got it wrong as well?

 

[gptejms]

the point at which they are talking 'past each other' lies in ttn's point that, locally real theory or not, 'action at a distance' is required to agree with experiment.

You mean there can be 'action at a distance' in a locally real theory?

...see,my point is that action at a distance implies non-locality.Now whether there's action at a distance in EPR experiments--I think that's the whole point of such experiments--spooky action at a distance is taking place.If the photons really had (random in the classical sense though well defined)polarizations at a given time that were correlated,then Bell's inequality would not be violated.

 

[Ernies]

We are getting tied up on terminology again. What Bell wrote was that if the world did not depend on being observed (or some equivalent phrase-- I don't have the texts to hand) then non-local effects, (those I loosely described as action at a distance) must occur if the expermental results were to be accounted for.
I should add that Bell said to me personally that this was a fair interpretation of his views. Whether he would also consider it a precise one, I don't know.
ttn seemed to me to be saying that whether or not observers were required, non-local effects are necessary to account for the results.
I have been unable to formulate Dr. Chinese views in like terms. That is why I said they were 'talking past each other.
Bell and a number of other eminent physicists plumped firmly for the idea that observers are not essential for physical reality. So do I.
Just to stir the pot a bit more, perhaps it is like the problem of free will where we would be, perhaps are, compelled to act as though we had it even if we do not.

 

[gptejms]

I don't get this--it's only on being observed that there's spooky action at a distance.Before the observation,we can't even talk of the non-local effect(action at a distance).

 

[Ernies]

Your answer begs the question. It ASSUMES that the world depends on observation: for example that the observation of an entangled particle causes the instantaneous collapse of the wave-function of both particles.The alternative point of view is that the observation of one particle affects the knowledge of the observer and he is able to deduce with certainty the state of the other. I do not see why I cannot talk about that.
If one does not accept that, one is driven to agree with Rovelli's statement that reality is different for every observer, and ultimately into solipsim. I can see no rational (and certainly no proven) intermediate state. For me, the world does not depend on observers, though obviously they may affect it.

 

[gptejms]

I was reacting to your statement in the last post "if the world did not depend on being observed (or some equivalent phrase-- I don't have the texts to hand) then non-local effects, (those I loosely described as action at a distance) must occur if the expermental results were to be accounted for".I don't know if you are saying the same thing below:-

The alternative point of view is that the observation of one particle affects the knowledge of the observer and he is able to deduce with certainty the state of the other. I do not see why I cannot talk about that.

Are you saying that one can know about the state of the other particle (without observation of that particle)so there is a non-local effect?

If one does not accept that, one is driven to agree with Rovelli's statement that reality is different for every observer, and ultimately into solipsim. I can see no rational (and certainly no proven) intermediate state. For me, the world does not depend on observers, though obviously they may affect it.

I know nothing of Rovelli's paper,so can't comment on that,but regarding your last statement "the world does not depend on observers"hysics talks only about observations;what happens when it's not observed is something nobody can answer.I think it's not even a valid question.

 

[Haelfix]

Half of you are using terminology so loosely, I can't disentangle the mess of what you are actually trying to say. This is a good example of why physics needs to be done on a blackboard and not a discussion forum.

The biggest offender:

Locality... several definitions, not all of them equivalent. Worse there are different contexts for locality, one in the shroedinger equation and two in the collapse postulate (and of course the various interpretations have different stages as well, further compounding the mess) and even another in field theory. Closely related, but not equivalent is causality (again different definitions). For instance you can have a manifestly non local theory (for instance string theory, it possesses tachyons) but that satisfies causality.

Anyway back to the point, I think the 'observer specific' interpretations of QM are more or less done away with these days with the advent of decoherence. We don't need to talk about 'consciousness' or any of that mysticism, and we don't need human beings to make the universe work.

 

[Rade]

...we don't need to talk about 'consciousness' or any of that mysticism, and we don't need human beings to make the universe work.

What do we need, non-human things that interact locally perhaps ?

 

[Ernies]

Haelfix says: Anyway back to the point, I think the 'observer specific' interpretations of QM are more or less done away with these days with the advent of decoherence. We don't need to talk about 'consciousness' or any of that mysticism, and we don't need human beings to make the universe work.<end of quote>.

I agree that the various definitions for locality etc. make for a mess. But to my mind 'decoherence' is part of the mess, and does not seem to be well-defined.
While I have been out of the professional game for some time, and may have missed it, has anyone reconciled General Relativity and QM yet? As many people, latterly including Suarez have pointed out, relativity means that the ordering of events need not be the same for all observers, so that one cannot unequivocally say that A is the cause of B. While Suarez particular solution was refuted by the experiments of Stefanov et al (Phys. Rev.A67,042115), they conclude 'Correlations reveal somehow dependence between events. But regarding quantum correlations, our experiment shows that the dependence does not correspond to any real time ordering'.
How is that for a result that 'sits on the fence'?

Ernies

 

[Farsight]

Haelfix: can you indicate a website that will give me a concept for decoherence? I can search google, but I'm not sure whether something that looks OK to me is OK.

 

[gptejms]

Anyway back to the point, I think the 'observer specific' interpretations of QM are more or less done away with these days with the advent of decoherence. We don't need to talk about 'consciousness' or any of that mysticism, and we don't need human beings to make the universe work.

There have been numerous threads here and as well at s.p.r. which address the question 'does decoherence solve the measurement problem?'--the answer is it doesen't.

In any case I wasen't talking of 'observer specific' interpretations or anything of that sort in my questions to Ernies.I was just trying to understand what exactly his point of view(or that of Bell as he claims) was and how that was consistent with whatever he wrote.

 

[DrChinese]

We are getting tied up on terminology again. What Bell wrote was that if the world did not depend on being observed (or some equivalent phrase-- I don't have the texts to hand) then non-local effects, (those I loosely described as action at a distance) must occur if the expermental results were to be accounted for.

I should add that Bell said to me personally that this was a fair interpretation of his views. Whether he would also consider it a precise one, I don't know.

ttn seemed to me to be saying that whether or not observers were required, non-local effects are necessary to account for the results.
I have been unable to formulate Dr. Chinese views in like terms. That is why I said they were 'talking past each other.

Bell and a number of other eminent physicists plumped firmly for the idea that observers are not essential for physical reality. So do I.
Just to stir the pot a bit more, perhaps it is like the problem of free will where we would be, perhaps are, compelled to act as though we had it even if we do not.

Please keep in mind that I often try to push the "orthodox" view because many readers here are not familiar with the nuances of some of the arguments being presented. I think it is good to be aware of the standard interpretations even if you do not agree with them. I am quite aware that the orthodox view changes with the eye of the beholder as Ernies points out, but there is still something to be gained by being aware of this. We are not doing original research here, so my presentation of a standard view should not really be considered controversial. I do not argue that it is some absolute truth that will never change in the future, but rather that this view reflects "generally accepted" scientific opinion at this time.

Specifically, I pretty well agree with what Ernies is saying about his conversation with Bell: either there is non-locality, or reality is observer dependent. (An observer dependent reality corresponds to the "non-realistic" viewpoint I have mentioned many times.) If you don't like the idea of an observer dependent reality, then that is a reasonable opinion. I simply point out that is *not* equivalent to asserting that Bell's Theorem requires non-locality to agree with experimental results - which is essentially ttn's position.

 

[vanesch]

Anyway back to the point, I think the 'observer specific' interpretations of QM are more or less done away with these days with the advent of decoherence. We don't need to talk about 'consciousness' or any of that mysticism, and we don't need human beings to make the universe work.

Well, this is not entirely true, if you mean by that that decoherence "solves" entirely the issue. Decoherence is a great help, in that it suggests that there is a "natural basis" in which to write your wavefunction. But it STILL doesn't tell you why you only see ONE term, while your body is present in all of them. It only explains you why you do not see weird interferences.
So let's say that decoherence tackles ONE of the two main aspects of the measurement problem: the preferred-basis problem. There is (on a coarse-grained level) a natural emerging preferred basis.
But it doesn't solve the AND/OR issue. Now, the AND/OR issue has no physical consequences ! You can happily *continue* to work in all your decohered terms *in parallel*, and in these different terms, there's no "influence" from the neighbouring term. The AND/OR issue only comes about because we don't see the world that way. We don't see the world in "many parallel terms", we only see one. Maybe that is because there only IS one (but then, decoherence is of no help), or maybe it has something to do with our perception (and then all this consciousness stuff comes in whether you like it or not).

 

[ttn]

Specifically, I pretty well agree with what Ernies is saying about his conversation with Bell: either there is non-locality, or reality is observer dependent. (An observer dependent reality corresponds to the "non-realistic" viewpoint I have mentioned many times.) If you don't like the idea of an observer dependent reality, then that is a reasonable opinion. I simply point out that is *not* equivalent to asserting that Bell's Theorem requires non-locality to agree with experimental results - which is essentially ttn's position.

This is an illogical statement of the "options" because the kind of "observer-dependence" that would be *needed* in order to achieve consistency with the data would be a dependence of some facts "over there" depending on an observer "over here". In other words, not any old "observer dependence" will get you out of the trouble here. What you need is *non-local* "observer dependence"... which is not exactly an *alternative* to non-locality, now is it?

Of course, you can go *completely* anti-realist -- not just say that what is real is affected by (i.e., depends on) interaction with some observer, but say that there is no such thing as "real", really, there is no physical reality out there independent of us at all, what we (erroneously) speak of as physical happenings at various places are actually just ideas in somebody's head. In other words, you can assimilate the whole content of physics onto the philosophical brain-in-vat scenario. And then, I grant, you have successfully eluded the conclusion (from Bell's work) that there are real non-local influences out there in nature. But you've done it by surrendering the whole fort. There are (in this scheme) no non-local influences out there in nature, only because there are no "influences" at all (even local ones), no "out there", and no "nature". And, I say, anyone who thinks that is a rational way out of the dilemma is crazy. By giving up this broad philosophical notion of realism, you also ipso facto give up any meaningful claim that reality is local. If there's no reality, reality ain't local. You cannot "save locality" by giving up realism -- which is the kind of sloppy thinking that usually motivates people to go this route in the first place.

 

[vanesch]

Of course, you can go *completely* anti-realist -- not just say that what is real is affected by (i.e., depends on) interaction with some observer, but say that there is no such thing as "real", really, there is no physical reality out there independent of us at all, what we (erroneously) speak of as physical happenings at various places are actually just ideas in somebody's head.

You can just stop short of that, by considering that each observer observes only ONE ASPECT of a multi-observer reality, which could be assigned the status of "what is real".

Instead of having one Bob and one Alice, after each photon pair, you have doubled the number of Bobs and Alices, each with their respective observations. But a "particular Bob" will just meet "a particular Alice" in such a way that their observations match.

So, what's "objectively real" are then the miriads of Bobs and Alices, and what's "real for (a) Bob" is just one small aspect of it, which this Bob erroneously thinks as of "all what is out there".

In other words, you can assimilate the whole content of physics onto the philosophical brain-in-vat scenario. And then, I grant, you have successfully eluded the conclusion (from Bell's work) that there are real non-local influences out there in nature. But you've done it by surrendering the whole fort. There are (in this scheme) no non-local influences out there in nature, only because there are no "influences" at all (even local ones), no "out there", and no "nature".

No, on the contrary: there's MUCH MORE out there than what you see, not much less. There's not only "you" with all your past observations, but there are also all "your alternatives" with all THEIR observations ; and idem for all the other observers out there. Myriads of copies, but you only see one.
So instead of denying reality, it goes the other way: there's in a way "too much" reality and you are only aware of one small small part of it.

And, I say, anyone who thinks that is a rational way out of the dilemma is crazy.

There are so many strange ideas around that people one day found crazy. I'd say it is rather encouraging

Now, I realize what you are saying, but out of two things one:
or, indeed, this is crazy, and the world really IS what we seem to think it is (and not a much bigger place, of which we only see one small "version" and think that it is all there is to it). In that case, we have been seriously misguided for most of the 20th century. This _could_ be the case.
or, this is correct, and then it is just that the world is a much more subtle place than we thought it was, and this is one of the biggest insights ever. This _could_ also be the case. It happened before, that we found out, to our almost unbelievable astonishment, that the world was way bigger than we thought it was.

Weird ? For sure ! Crazy ? Not so sure. Correct ? No idea.

 

[ttn]

You can just stop short of that, by considering that each observer observes only ONE ASPECT of a multi-observer reality, which could be assigned the status of "what is real".

So, it's just the brain-in-vat scenario I described before, but you add two seemingly arbitrary additions: 1. in addition to me, there are lots of other "people" (i.e., other brains in other vats) "out there" who are, for all practical purposes, in different universes (where "universe" means, in good philosophically idealist style, all the conscious experiences of one of the brains-in-vats). and 2. in addition to all these brains-in-vats with their experiences, there's a real objective physical world (which, however, doesn't correspond to any of the beliefs of any of the brains in vats).

All I can say is, yes, that's a third alternative. Either there's a real world which corresponds to all the stuff we've known for a long time (e.g., observed experimentally and/or perceptually) -- or that's a delusion and I'm just a brain in vat (except there's no physical brain and no physical vat, just my conscious experience) -- or there is a real physical world but it is nothing like what we believe (based on experiment/perception) and so everything we do believe (even the good scientifically/experimentally proved stuff, like that Bell's inequalities are *really* violated, or that there's a table in front of me) is a delusion.

Those are indeed the three options. Either we're all crazy, we're all *really* crazy, or there are superluminal causal influences out there in physical reality.

 

[gptejms]

Specifically, I pretty well agree with what Ernies is saying about his conversation with Bell: either there is non-locality, or reality is observer dependent. (An observer dependent reality corresponds to the "non-realistic" viewpoint I have mentioned many times.) If you don't like the idea of an observer dependent reality, then that is a reasonable opinion. I simply point out that is *not* equivalent to asserting that Bell's Theorem requires non-locality to agree with experimental results - which is essentially ttn's position.

Ernies has not answered my questions(in my last to last post).Since you seem to be in agreement with Ernies,may be you can answer those questions.

 

[vanesch]

So, it's just the brain-in-vat scenario I described before, but you add two seemingly arbitrary additions: 1. in addition to me, there are lots of other "people" (i.e., other brains in other vats) "out there" who are, for all practical purposes, in different universes (where "universe" means, in good philosophically idealist style, all the conscious experiences of one of the brains-in-vats). and 2. in addition to all these brains-in-vats with their experiences, there's a real objective physical world (which, however, doesn't correspond to any of the beliefs of any of the brains in vats).

You formulate it in a highly pejorative way , but yes, it's some summary of the viewpoint. Except that you can replace "vat" by "body state".

All I can say is, yes, that's a third alternative. Either there's a real world which corresponds to all the stuff we've known for a long time (e.g., observed experimentally and/or perceptually) -- or that's a delusion and I'm just a brain in vat (except there's no physical brain and no physical vat, just my conscious experience) -- or there is a real physical world but it is nothing like what we believe (based on experiment/perception) and so everything we do believe (even the good scientifically/experimentally proved stuff, like that Bell's inequalities are *really* violated, or that there's a table in front of me) is a delusion.

Again, it's in the choice of words. Compare it to looking at a hologram: you think you see an object, and you DO see the lightwaves that come from an object, but the object is not what you think it is.

Those are indeed the three options. Either we're all crazy, we're all *really* crazy, or there are superluminal causal influences out there in physical reality.

Sort of. And given that the last alternative goes against relativity's founding principle, only the first two are open for discussion, if you want to keep the otherwise nice formalism of relativity.
In other words, by thinking hard enough about all we've seen, we realize finally that we've been looking at a hologram all the time. (maybe a poor analogy, don't know). Delusion ? Discovery ? Things still look the same.

 

[Ernies]

Let me make a number of points
1. I do not claim any personal relationship with Bell other than after-session coffee chats between half-a-dozen people two or three times. In these one is not so careful to distinguish between 'views' and scientific assertions to be proven or refuted as on more formal occasions.
2. Our current forum discussions get hung up on different definitions of 'local', 'real', and so on. I therefore will descend to using words in the layman's sense, which most people find understandable, even if less precise.
3. On at least one occasion it was agreed that we all believed statements like "The book in a drawer is still there even when not being observed" to be true. If some versions of physics did not agree, whether as accidental fact or by the definition of physics, too bad for those versions.
4. The experimental results disproved the EPR thesis, and implied superluminality.
5. I have yet to see a believable theory which truly reconciles General Relativity and QM.

I do not know whether this answers the questions on my point of view or not. But if not we are not going to get anywhere at all
Ernies

 

[RandallB]

I think it's great that we have someone here that had the chance to be conversational with Bell.

And I like the idea of things been put in layman terms, a good scientist should be able to translate from their. I think it was Einstein and Born that used to say a good theory should be understandable to a barmaid. I'm sure they used something else like children in their lectures.

In the simplest of layman's terms I'm convinced that QM and GR can never be reconciled. Fundamentally QM expects gravity to be explained by particle exchange (gravitons), while GR accounts for it entirely by the warped shape of space-time. Although both can be seen as nonlocal I cannot see how they can ever be compatible with each other. It's just too big a fundamental difference.
In fact in layman's terms it may be easier to see this; then in some of the cryptic scientific efforts to force the two theories together.

 

[Farsight]

Somebody on another thread gave me a lead to this article on Relational Quantum Mechanics.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-relational/

I can't vouch for it, but it struck me as "Quantum Relativity", and I found it interesting.

I'm not convinced that QM and GR cannot be reconciled, and I think there are possibiliites for a layman's explanation connecting warped spacetime and particles. Let's give it a whirl:

Imagine a charged particle as a tent pole at one end of a "rubber tent" Universe, with another charged particle at the other end. Kick your nearest tentpole and a little rubber ripple of height variation shoots away in the direction of your kick. That's basically a photon. If it goes anywhere near the other tentpole it gets absorbed and vanishes, and you see the other tentpole moving like you'd kicked it directly. Or like you'd shot it with a bullet - which is why we think of the photon as a particle too. We think gravitons are similar, but we haven't found them yet.

 

[RandallB]

I'm not convinced that QM and GR cannot be reconciled, and I think there are possibiliites for a layman's explanation connecting warped spacetime and particles. Let's give it a whirl: ...

But that doesn’t reconcile the two, or get them to work together.
You have put into layman’s terms why they are not reconcilable.

One system uses a rubber tent to transfer gravity information.
No need for “bullets” it is complete as is within the warping approach.

The other is complete by using “bullets” or gravitons alone.
Additional movement from rubber tent forces being taken into account can only interfere with the complete results of the particle exchange approach.

Particle exchange vs. warped space-time:
two different and incompatible ways to explain the same thing.

So if someone can build a theory that does combine these two non-local theories into one compatible explanation, consistent with both GR and QM, no doubt they would go into the history books.

 

[Farsight]

Here's how I see it Randall:

You can't see the bullets. But something hits you like a bullet, so you call it a bullet, and you start calculating. The sums work for bullets, but these bullets are mysterious, and seem to be in two places at once. Plus you can't see how your bullets can be reconciled with a rubber tent.

I think your problem is with those bullets. Those "billiard ball" particles. Stop calling them particles, call them something else. Think of those everyday objects with no tangible substance of their own, like a knot, a crease, a shout, a wave, a wibble. Call your particles "entities" or something suitably neutral. Get the hang of it, then look again at the difference between QM and GR.

 

[Ernies]

I think your problem is with those bullets. Those "billiard ball" particles. Stop calling them particles, call them something else. Think of those everyday objects with no tangible substance of their own, like a knot, a crease, a shout, a wave, a wibble. Call your particles "entities" or something suitably neutral. Get the hang of it, then look again at the difference between QM and GR.

Many people went down that route. I recall in the 40's the popular term was 'wavicles'. But it didn't achieve anything. What precisely is meant by having 'no tangible sustance of their own'? Do they have some substratum for their existence, as a knot or crease does, or are they, like wave-functions, merely a statement of probabilties.? I can't see how either would help.

Ernies

 

[Farsight]

What precisely is meant by having 'no tangible sustance of their own'?

I can't say for all entities Ernie, but if we consider a photon, it has no edge or surface that you can touch, so you could not hope to locate it in a particular place. It isn't made out of something, or anything. It's a self-propagating electromagnetic distortion with a given energy, that could have been created by acclerating a charged "particle". A running warp if you like. Kinetic Energy leakage from the charged particle's resistance to motion.

Do they have some substratum for their existence, as a knot or crease does, or are they, like wave-functions, merely a statement of probabilties?

I think yes, the electrical permittivity v magnetic permeability of space, but please seek expert input.

 

[RandallB]

(from Ernies) What precisely is meant by having 'no tangible sustance of their own'?
Do they have some substratum for their existence, as a knot or crease does, or are they, like wave-functions, merely a statement of probabilties?

I think yes, the electrical permittivity v magnetic permeability of space, but please seek expert input.

You're missing the point he wasn't asking for your help or direction to an expert.
Ernies, IS the expert on this point!
He is giving you some significant advice in the form of a question that needs to be addressed completely, in your attempt to mash together QM & GR in something more than a mystical imagination to call them reconciled.

It needs to fit BOTH:
GR; that expects no gravitons just curved Space-Time.
And QM; that may well use SR plus maybe 10 or 11 dimensions, but would not need GR as it expects particle exchange to account for gravity.
I see nothing in your speculations to account for the discrepancies between the two or even in any small may start to reconcile them.