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

[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?

 

[ThomasT]

I think ThomasT has mixed up Counterfactual Definiteness (CFD) with Counterfactual Conditional ...

It's certainly possible DA, especially since I have no idea what any of that means.

Perhaps counterdefinite factualness might be a more appropriate designation of the general tone of my replies. And then again, perhaps not!

In any case, I shall now seek out and reply to any and all of your replies to me that I might reply to.

Ah, I've found one that I don't think I've replied to yet.

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

I could be wrong too, but my impression was that the OP wanted us to do a lot of personal guessing. In any case, I think he(she?) has gotten much more than he(she?) probably predicted. By the way, have we heard from the OP in, say, the last month or so? Does it matter?

And yet another!

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

Ah, the "we don't know" thing. Well of course. Everyone likes this. Have some fritos. Pass the beer. But don't get too comfortable. I'm not done looking yet.

Here's another (not in a reply to me):

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

I do agree, sort of. But look, we're never going to "know better". The point is that it's really just a matter of taste. We can posit the existence of nonlocality or not. It really doesn't matter wrt physical theories. Or maybe it does. I have no idea.

Well, that wasn't so bad was it? Let me know if I missed anything DA.

And spank you very much Helpy Helperton.

 

[ThomasT]

Clearly, we know from Bell that there cannot be "predetermined" hidden variables outside of what can be observed.

Really? How do we know that? What does a detection attribute associated with a unit vector tell you?

Now, before you rip me to shreds on this I want you to bear in mind that I've consumed LOTS of popcorn (and, oh yeah, a few beers).

So, if you could send along some of your latest software with the imminent rebuttal it would be most appreciated, and would certainly ease the pain.

 

[ThomasT]

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.

Charly, don't give no nevermind to the DevilsAvocado (the DA) -- unless he posts an informative ... post. He's sort of the thread jester. Wait, perhaps I have assumed that role, temporarily of course, and the DA is vying for preeminent protagonist. Yes, that's it. And you are his primary nemisis. It's all so clear now. Well, as a former physicist, or whatever, you shouldn't have any problems. Just try not to take us to the point of confusion. Regarding other contributors, DrC seems to have a reasonably good grasp of this stuff (he's either very very deep or just as confused as I am, I haven't really decided yet), RUTA is a professional physicist, JesseM is a skilled and diligent researcher, I am an ignorant layman, and I'm not sure about the other more or less regular posters in this thread.

Anyway, the DA does regularly produce some nice posts, and I do believe that he is sincerely interested in learning. So try not to be offended by anything he might say, even if it's actually offensive (and, oh yes, it will be). Just let him know, matter of factly, how you're thinking about something and you'll probably get a sincere reply. Or maybe not.

Anyway, I don't care if you're wrong or right. (Is there any wrong or right in this??) It's just interesting to hear different perspectives.

 

[nismaratwork]

ThomasT, from what I've read DevilsAvocado is funny, but the jester in the classic sense would be you and Zonde, in terms of your espoused beliefs.

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

DrChinese:"Clearly, we know from Bell that there cannot be "predetermined" hidden variables outside of what can be observed."

Really? How do we know that? What does a detection attribute associated with a unit vector tell you?

Now, before you rip me to shreds on this I want you to bear in mind that I've consumed LOTS of popcorn (and, oh yeah, a few beers).

So, if you could send along some of your latest software with the imminent rebuttal it would be most appreciated, and would certainly ease the pain.

To be rigorous, one has to specify that the HVs that are ruled out are naive ones (dBB and Bell) that were supposed to remove the indeterminacy from microphysics: HVs that would respect the UP, but that would be predictive on one at most of any pair of conjugate variable (and any of the two if that one ha not already a conjugate on which a prediction exists) are NOT ruled out by Bell's Theorem. From the way Einstein was making fun of
dBB theory (see his letter to Born) and his correspondence with Schrödinger (see Fine's book), we can infer that it is only about such type of HVs that Einstein was thinking, at least after 1927 when he abandoned his own attempt at dBB type variables, realizing it was too naive. Now, no one has so far produced such a HVs theory, and perhaps none exist. Copenhagen forbids us from even trying. If only I had an idea, frankly I would try.
BTW, notice that Einstein, with Tolman and Podolsky, wrote the first paper I now (ETP in1931) where microscopic realism is attacked by science and not only by a philosophical opinion. While Bohr, and eventually Heisenberg as well, accepted retrodictive violations of the UP, the ETP paper rules them out (although one can to check the proof does not cover EPR particles, but there is a good reason to treat those separately: I'll explain why if anyone is interested), so that Einstein who opposed the UP a last time at Solvay VI in 1930(*) became the main proponent of them in 1931, recognizing that, with usual coordinates, thy were here to stay (but he knew well that dBB-Bell type of HVs were not respecting the UP).

(*) He attacked in 1939, but according to Bohr, he is the one who concluded the computation involving General Relativity to kill his own shutter argument, as well as (as far as I understand from Bohr, Jammer, Fine) he always helped Bohr establish the truth, be it by destroying his former theses.
(**) Hope you enjoyed the Pop Corn (and the beer).

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

Charly, don't give no nevermind to the DevilsAvocado (the DA) -- unless he posts an informative ... post. He's sort of the thread jester. Wait, perhaps I have assumed that role, temporarily of course, and the DA is vying for preeminent protagonist. Yes, that's it. And you are his primary nemisis. It's all so clear now. Well, as a former physicist, or whatever, you shouldn't have any problems. Just try not to take us to the point of confusion. Regarding other contributors, DrC seems to have a reasonably good grasp of this stuff (he's either very very deep or just as confused as I am, I haven't really decided yet), RUTA is a professional physicist, JesseM is a skilled and diligent researcher, I am an ignorant layman, and I'm not sure about the other more or less regular posters in this thread.

Anyway, the DA does regularly produce some nice posts, and I do believe that he is sincerely interested in learning. So try not to be offended by anything he might say, even if it's actually offensive (and, oh yes, it will be). Just let him know, matter of factly, how you're thinking about something and you'll probably get a sincere reply. Or maybe not.

Anyway, I don't care if you're wrong or right. (Is there any wrong or right in this??) It's just interesting to hear different perspectives.

Thanks, A LOT (but I am back to physics for many years: I just stopped for a while when I turned to math and had not the strength to make a deep learning-based transition while continuing front line research in physics, a field where it is easy to produce zero value paper, that are merely exercises, not even false). But thanks again: some people attack others without knowing what impact bad words can have, and what can I say?, It made me feel good to see the quote post of yours.

 

[DrChinese]

Now, before you rip me to shreds on this I want you to bear in mind that I've consumed LOTS of popcorn (and, oh yeah, a few beers).

 

[DevilsAvocado]

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

Please charlylebeaugosse, I apologize if I caused you a trauma. I absolutely do not want to scare you away from PF.

All I’m asking for is that we follow the recommendations in https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=414380", and keep the discussion intellectually sound and stick to what can be regarded as current professional mainstream science.

That’s all, and I apologize if my critic was too harsh.


As for the 1935 EPR paper, this is what Einstein later expressed to Erwin Schrödinger:

"For reasons of language this [paper] was written by Podolsky after much discussion. Still, it did not come out as well as I had originally wanted; rather the essential thing was, so to speak, smothered by the formalism."

(page 147)

http://web.mit.edu/dikaiser/www/Kaiser.AENB.pdf"
British Journal for the History of Science 27 (1994): 129-152.

http://web.mit.edu/dikaiser/www/"

With all due respect, to me this is not 'compatible' with the picture you have painted in this thread.

But that’s just my opinion, and I may be wrong...


(P.S. Don’t listen too much to ThomasT, he lives on popcorn & beers, and it’s a pure miracle he can write a nice post, once in a while...)

 

[DevilsAvocado]

ThomasT, from what I've read DevilsAvocado is funny, but the jester in the classic sense would be you and Zonde, in terms of your espoused beliefs.

This is the best analysis in this thread! Thanks nismaratwork!

 

[RUTA]

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.
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.

Ok, I understood you correctly. Thanks for clearing that up.

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.

Your view is absolutely in the majority.

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.

Hmmm, I'm trying to understand your point here. I believe I get it in a later statement, so I'll respond there.

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.

... 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?

RBW definitely strikes people as "nothing but" instrumentalism. The reason for that is we claim QM describes distributions of relations comprising the experimental equipment, but until this last paper (arXiv 0908.4348) we didn't paint an ontological picture with a consistent underlyling formalism. So, since introducing RBW, I've worked to produce said formalism. The candidate for such a formalism, as outlined in the arXiv paper, did intrigue PSA and the referee at Foundations. But, we've yet to present at PSA and the revised version of that FoP manuscript has been under review since mid March and still no final verdict, so the jury is still out as to whether or not it's a bunch of hot air

Overall, I'd say we paint (commit to) enough of an ontological picture in the arXiv paper to get us out of the instrumentalist camp. You're free to disagree of course

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?

Per RBW, QM is a statistics providing the distribution of relations comprising the experimental equipment. Accordinlgy, the most fundamental elements of reality (our version of "deep reality") are relations, not "'something' propagating from emitter to filter to detector." So, given the RBW understanding of QM, which contains no further articulation of the "relational ontology," yes, some (most?) people would conclude QM is a form of instrumentalism.

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?

In our form of nonseparability, GR must be corrected (this is explained in the conclusion of the arXiv paper). We're working on the implied correction to GR now using "direct action" Regge calculus, i.e., all legs in the thatch (spacetime network) connect sources, so every leg is associated with non-zero energy-momentum. Anyway, if this actually works (which means it must replace GR! ... ya, right), "quantum gravity" would be a very different animal than anything currently pursued. The good news (if there is any) is that quantum gravity would be "all over but the shouting."

Didn't Bub like it? Or, did he just offer that eventually, after several epiphanies, he understood it -- not that he actually liked it?

We had many discussions with him because Cifone (co-author on our early papers) was his student. He never said he didn't like it and seemed to appreciate it as an intellectual novelty, but his quantum information program doesn't require him to commit to any particular ontology, so there's nothing else he need say about it.

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?

Ok, it looks to me like your idea of "action at a distance" is some form of nonseparability, rather than causal non-locality.

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.

In fact, Healey uses the terms "constitutive non-locality" and "causal non-locality" in his discussions of the AB effect. It looks to me like you're thinking of constitutive non-locality, which I associate with nonseparability.

In any event, I'm not sure you can rule out the logical possibility of either given EPRB phenomena, that's why I answered the OP's question affirmatively.

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)?

I learn to teach and teach to learn -- just the way I'm made -- and PF is a great place to do that!

As for help, I realize that no one is going to jump into the mathematical quagmire of RBW unless highly motivated to do so, i.e., until it generates new physics. I wouldn't, it's a freakin' nightmare

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

Please charlylebeaugosse, I apologize if I caused you a trauma. I absolutely do not want to scare you away from PF.

All I’m asking for is that we follow the recommendations in https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=414380", and keep the discussion intellectually sound and stick to what can be regarded as current professional mainstream science.

That’s all, and I apologize if my critic was too harsh.


As for the 1935 EPR paper, this is what Einstein later expressed to Erwin Schrödinger:



With all due respect, to me this is not 'compatible' with the picture you have painted in this thread.

But that’s just my opinion, and I may be wrong...


(P.S. Don’t listen too much to ThomasT, he lives on popcorn & beers, and it’s a pure miracle he can write a nice post, once in a while...)

The facts that need to be added are that Einstein was very noble in some sense at ;east and never complained publicly about co-workers, but Podolsky had a hidden agenda: to kill QM, as he did (or so he thought) in the paper. If you read the logical analysis of the
EPR paper (by Fine or others), you will see that in one step of the argument to prove that QM s incomplete, there is a step that implies that QM is false. Then, Jammer and/or Fine tell us that Podolsky wrote to the NY Time that Einstein and co-workers had proven QM false, something that infuriated Einstein who essentially ceased all relations with Podolsky.

There is more of that but perhaps that transforms the picture, especially f you take into account the facts I have reported previously, e.g., that Einstein never used elements of reality, and had his own version of QM nont complete, telling to Schrodinger for instance that coexistence of two observable was irrelevant to him. I also already mentioned that Einstein never gave his imprimatur to the version that went to Phys Rev...

Enough of that, as for standard science etc..., beside spending time with PF, I am an active scientist and my carrier is mostly made of elements that broke with previous knowledge.
My role as journal editor is in part to filtrate crank pseudo-papers, and the fact is that I have more read misquotations around EPR and Bell (including by professionals, including by my heroes) than in any other field that I have worked in. Notice that I source my divergence of opinions on the history of the field, and for where my scientific opinion differ, I provide arguments.

I will consider for now that you only read the part about Einstein-Podolsky that you chose to mention and did not read the rest, which would have made your appreciation of my own description inappropriate.
CleBG

 

[RUTA]

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?

I don't believe my work will be of any use for your project, i.e., showing that non-locality has nothing to with EPR-Bell phenomena. I'll ask my philosophy of science colleague if he can suggest a good starting point for a literature search. Once you get up to speed in that subset of the foundations community, you'll know how to construct and pitch your argument. Again, I'll read it and offer feedback for you when it's done.

 

[phywjc]

It's not just possible, it has been experimentally demonstrated. Read up on some of the entanglement threads that have been running on here for a while. Or you could just visit Dr Chinese's website ...

something may be changed in specific situation~

 

[nismaratwork]

something may be changed in specific situation~

Not to be too blunt, but like what?

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

It's not just possible, it has been experimentally demonstrated.

This quote being about the original question. Of course this is only misinterpretation of facts.
Aspect's experiment showed that QM correlations are as one expected, i.e., minus the value given by Malus law, for reasons not too hard to understand. So in order to come close to the question from the experiment, one has to invoke 3 hypothesis conjointly. While one (fair sampling) does not cause problems except if one believes little green man plot to sabotage physics, the other ones are realism, condemned by the very creators of QM, and locality, supported by all of them. So there has been lots of PR around non-locality, but the masters of modern sciences thought that the false hypothesis was realism, without which what happen in a superposition is hard to grasp. Of course, the two hypotheses could be false, but that is where Occam's razor, that has shaped all sciences as we know them, come to tell us to make the minimal changes for similar predictive power. Here the minimal change consists in fact in not making changes to QM and realize that all the crazy hysteria about non-locality was due only to one single false hypothesis, realism.
Now, one realist interpretation of QM was developed, at least twice, by de Broglie and then by Bohm: it is so violently non-Lorentz invariant that many consider that it is not physics, and Pauli and others gave other arguments. One of the nicest discussion of Bell theory was given by Wigner, one of the few old masters still around to discuss that: guess what. For Wigner, Bell's Theorem was the most elegant proof that there are no HVs (although) he should have been more cautious as strange HVs not covered by Bell's Theory are not disqualified, but no one has built such a theory.

This can be made fun of, but what about a scientific discussion? For instance, about dealing with realism when considering a superposition associated to different paths in an interference experiment?

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

I don't believe my work will be of any use for your project, i.e., showing that non-locality has nothing to with EPR-Bell phenomena. I'll ask my philosophy of science colleague if he can suggest a good starting point for a literature search. Once you get up to speed in that subset of the foundations community, you'll know how to construct and pitch your argument. Again, I'll read it and offer feedback for you when it's done.

Not my project: Leggett (well known across physics but no thread bout him running that I could see / but I am new) and Tresser (not known in QM but with a thread now associated to papers of his: Devilavocado judged this work false-or-something-like-that (at least implicitly), by the measured impact on www) seem to have well advanced that. So I am more interested in killing what remains of realism after the attacks by Leggett, and then proceed to get rid of any trace of actions backward in time, whether or not they allow SLT (rather not since those which permit SLT are killed by the kill one's father paradox, in my view).

This being said you seem to have some intimacy with the philosophers, among which I only can get those who deal with history, except for some who indeed do math or physics. I wanted to see if your work gives access to what I know least in what I know that I want to know)

+ I know how to get work published: produce non interesting epsilon steps. Each I tried, it worked (unwillingly in facT: in all cases or about, I only realized later the epsilon-type
character of my work). Best indication of such work: an easy and fast publication, although there is no easy publication- trivial work equivalence, of course.

 

[RUTA]

Not my project: Leggett (well known across physics but no thread bout him running that I could see / but I am new) and Tresser (not known in QM but with a thread now associated to papers of his: Devilavocado judged this work false-or-something-like-that (at least implicitly), by the measured impact on www) seem to have well advanced that. So I am more interested in killing what remains of realism after the attacks by Leggett, and then proceed to get rid of any trace of actions backward in time, whether or not they allow SLT (rather not since those which permit SLT are killed by the kill one's father paradox, in my view).

I could call it "the idea you're passionate about and want to argue." Or, we could dispense with semantic arguments and you can understand my use of the phase "your project" to mean "the idea you're passionate about and want to argue."

This being said you seem to have some intimacy with the philosophers, among which I only can get those who deal with history, except for some who indeed do math or physics. I wanted to see if your work gives access to what I know least in what I know that I want to know)

We don't argue for or against realism or locality, but you may find what we cite to justify RBW of value to your project. See G. Kaiser, J. Math. Phys. 22, 705-714 (1981); A. Bohr & O. Ulfbeck, Rev. Mod. Phys. 67, 1-35 (1995); A. Bohr, B. Mottelson & O. Ulfbeck, Found. Phys. 34, #3, 405-417 (2004).

+ I know how to get work published: produce non interesting epsilon steps. Each I tried, it worked (unwillingly in facT: in all cases or about, I only realized later the epsilon-type character of my work). Best indication of such work: an easy and fast publication, although there is no easy publication- trivial work equivalence, of course.

I'm not suggesting publication for the sake of publication, I've never done so (not at an R1 institute, so I didn't have to) and I wouldn't advocate it in this case. As I said, a good argument against non-locality would be of interest to the foundations community. The best way to disseminate such an argument is through the publication process.

I infer from your posts that the idea of non-locality is something you feel strongly opposed to. I also disagree with non-locality and, while not head on, my research agenda reflects that. I'm willing to help another line of attack by offering critical reading of preprints. The offer stands.

 

[nismaratwork]

I could call it "the idea you're passionate about and want to argue." Or, we could dispense with semantic arguments and you can understand my use of the phase "your project" to mean "the idea you're passionate about and want to argue."



We don't argue for or against realism or locality, but you may find what we cite to justify RBW of value to your project. See G. Kaiser, J. Math. Phys. 22, 705-714 (1981); A. Bohr & O. Ulfbeck, Rev. Mod. Phys. 67, 1-35 (1995); A. Bohr, B. Mottelson & O. Ulfbeck, Found. Phys. 34, #3, 405-417 (2004).



I'm not suggesting publication for the sake of publication, I've never done so (not at an R1 institute, so I didn't have to) and I wouldn't advocate it in this case. As I said, a good argument against non-locality would be of interest to the foundations community. The best way to disseminate such an argument is through the publication process.

I infer from your posts that the idea of non-locality is something you feel strongly opposed to. I also disagree with non-locality and, while not head on, my research agenda reflects that. I'm willing to help another line of attack by offering critical reading of preprints. The offer stands.

What makes your posts so interesting compared to some others... cough... is that as you say, you're not simply railing AGAINST non-locality, but strenuously arguing for a different framework.

Charlyebeaugoss: I'd take RUTA up on his offer if I were you; the best way to learn how to publish in any field is with a taste of peer review, and RUTA is a worthy peer (even though I respectfully disagree with his conclusions).

 

[DevilsAvocado]

What makes your posts so interesting compared to some others... cough... is that as you say, you're not simply railing AGAINST non-locality, but strenuously arguing for a different framework.

This must be a proof* of non-local mind reading!

Great nismaratwork! I couldn’t have said it better myself!

...hope the message gets thru... cough...


(*joke)

 

[DevilsAvocado]

The facts that need to be added are that Einstein was very noble in some sense at ;east and never complained publicly about co-workers, but Podolsky had a hidden agenda: to kill QM, as he did (or so he thought) in the paper.

When you do statements like "hidden agenda: to kill QM", that could be thought of as 'remarkable' by some, it would be great if you could provide a reference, or clarify if this is your own conclusions/research.

To me, it seems like you are maybe making too 'drastic' conclusions on the history of EPR.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-epr/"
...
Whatever their precursors, the ideas that found their way into EPR were worked out in a series of meetings with Einstein and his two assistants, Podolsky and Rosen. The actual text, however, was written by Podolsky and, apparently, Einstein did not see the final draft (certainly he did not inspect it) before Podolsky submitted the paper to Physical Review in March of 1935, where was sent for publication the day after it arrived, without changes. Right after it was published Einstein complained that his central concerns were obscured by the overly technical nature of Podolsky's development of the argument.

For reasons of language this [paper] was written by Podolsky after several discussions. Still, it did not come out as well as I had originally wanted; rather, the essential thing was, so to speak, smothered by the formalism [Gelehrsamkeit]. (Letter from Einstein to Erwin Schrödinger, June 19, 1935. In Fine 1996, p. 35.)​

It is probably correct that Einstein never complained publicly about co-workers, but this was a private letter to Erwin Schrödinger. Don’t you think that it’s plausible that Einstein would at least have indicated to Schrödinger that Podolsky made a terrible fraud, and put Einstein’s name on paper that he totally rejected (according to you)?

Since Einstein was not perfectly happy with the 1935 EPR paper, he almost immediately started to work on a clearer and more focused version of the argument. He began that process within few weeks of EPR, in the June 19 letter to Schrödinger:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-epr/"
...
In the letter to Schrödinger of June 19, Einstein sketches a simple argument for the dilemma, roughly as follows.

Consider an interaction between the Albert and Niels systems that conserves their relative positions. (We need not worry about momentum, or any other quantity.) Consider the evolved wave function for the total (Albert+Niels) system when the two systems are far apart. Now assume a principle of locality-separability (Einstein calls it a Trennungsprinzip—separation principle): Whether a physical property holds for Niels' system does not depend on what measurements (if any) are made locally on Albert's system. If we measure the position of Albert's system, the conservation of relative position implies that we can immediately infer the position of Niels'; i.e., we can infer that Niels' system has a determinate position. By locality-separability it follows that Niels' system must already have had a determinate position just before Albert began that measurement. At that time, however, Niels' system has no independent state function. There is only a state function for the combined system and that total state function does not predict with certainty the position one would find for Niels' system (i.e., it is not a product one of whose factors is an eigenstate for the position of Niels' system). Thus the description of Niels' system afforded by the quantum state function is incomplete. A complete description would say (definitely yes) if a physical property were true of Niels' system. (Notice that this argument does not even depend on the reduction of the total state function for the combined system.) In this formulation of the argument it is clear that locality-separability conflicts with the eigenvalue-eigenstate link, which holds that a quantity of a system has an eigenvalue if and only if the state of the system is an eigenstate of that quantity with that eigenvalue (or a mixture of such eigenstates). The “only if” part of the link would need to be weakened order to interpret quantum state functions as complete descriptions (see entry on Modal Interpretations).

Although this simple argument concentrates on what Einstein saw as the essentials, stripping away most technical details and distractions, he had another slightly more complex argument that he was also fond of producing. (It is actually buried in the EPR paper, p. 779.) This second argument focuses clearly on the interpretation of quantum state functions and not on any issues about simultaneous values (real or not) for incompatible quantities. It goes like this.

Suppose, as in EPR, that the interaction between the two systems preserves both relative position and zero total momentum and that the systems are far apart. As before, we can measure either the position or momentum of Albert's system and, in either case, we can infer the position or momentum for Niels' system. It follows from the reduction of the total state function that, depending on whether we measure the position or momentum of Albert's system, Niels' system will be left (respectively) either in a position eigenstate or in a momentum eigenstate. Suppose too that separability hold for Niels; that is, that Niels' system has some real physical state of affairs. If locality holds as well, then the measurement of Albert's system does not disturb the assumed “reality” for Niels' system. However, that reality appears to be represented by quite different state functions, depending on which measurement of Albert's system one chooses to carry out. If we understand a “complete description” to rule out that one and the same physical state can be described by state functions with distinct physical implications, then we can conclude that the quantum mechanical description is incomplete. Here again we confront a dilemma between separability-locality and completeness. Many years later Einstein put it this way (Schilpp 1949, p. 682);

[T]he paradox forces us to relinquish one of the following two assertions:
(1) the description by means of the psi-function is complete
(2) the real states of spatially separate objects are independent of each other​

It appears that the central point of EPR was to argue that in interpreting the quantum state functions we are faced with these alternatives.

As we have seen, in framing his own EPR-like arguments for the incompleteness of quantum theory, Einstein makes use of separability and locality, which are also tacitly assumed in the EPR paper.

There are other sources, saying more or less the same thing:

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0310010"

Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen, and Shannon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asher_Peres"
Department of Physics, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, 32000 Haifa, Israel

Foundations of Physics, Vol. 35, No. 3, March 2005 (© 2005)
DOI: 10.1007/s10701-004-1986-6

...
Entangled wave-functions were not new at that time: you can find one, for example, in Eq. (10) of Rosen’s 1931 seminal paper on the ground state of the hydrogen molecule [7], which is probably more famous among chemists than the EPR paper is among physicists.

Some time after that work, Rosen became a post-doc of Einstein at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton. One day, at the traditional 3 o’clock tea, Rosen mentioned to Einstein a fundamental issue of interpretation related to entangled wave-functions. Einstein immediately saw the implications for his long standing disagreement with Bohr. As they discussed the problem, Boris Podolsky joined the conversation, and later proposed to write an article. Einstein acquiesced. When he later saw the text, he disliked the formal approach, but agreed to its publication. Then, as soon as the EPR article appeared, Podolsky relased its contents to the New York Times (4 May 1935, page 11) in a way implying that the authors had found that quantum mechanics was faulty. This infuriated Einstein, who after that no longer spoke with Podolsky.

Again, with all due respect, the picture you have painted in this thread, regarding Einstein & EPR, is (to me) not 'compatible' with the above.

There is more of that but perhaps that transforms the picture, especially f you take into account the facts I have reported previously, e.g., that Einstein never used elements of reality, and had his own version of QM nont complete,

I have to be frank and tell you – I have no idea what you are talking about...

Unless we should regard the 30 years of Bohr–Einstein debates as "misquoted", it’s clear that Einstein presupposed the objectively existing real world. Einstein strove to include this ultimate reality, independent of what we observe, in our physical theories. He wrote:

"Without the belief that it is possible to grasp reality with our theoretical constructions... there would be no science."

"Physics is an attempt conceptually to grasp reality as it is thought independently of its being observed. In this sense one speaks of “physical reality”."​

Einstein believed that all of reality was open to rational consideration, guided by visualizeable mathematical models. The ultimate goal of science for Einstein was to be able to bring all of these rational investigations into a single unified Weltbild (conception of the world).

Einstein’s discontent with the 1935 EPR paper is that he did not only consider quantum mechanics to be incomplete, but fundamentally inadequate. Einstein believed that quantum theory was not the appropriate starting point for constructing the new theory he thought was needed.

Yes, Einstein was one of the architects behind QM, but; when Werner Heisenberg in 1925 introduced matrix equations that removed space and time from any underlying reality, and when Max Born in 1926 proposed that QM was to be understood as a probability without any causal explanation, and when Heisenberg and Born declared at the Solvay Conference in 1927 that the revolution was over and nothing further was needed – Einstein's skepticism turned to dismay.

In 1926 he wrote a letter to Max Born, and made a remark that is now famous:

"Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."​

I love Einstein, he is my hero, but he was only human and humans do make mistakes – God does play dice with the universe, according to Stephen Hawking:

"Einstein's view was what would now be called, a hidden variable theory. Hidden variable theories might seem to be the most obvious way to incorporate the Uncertainty Principle into physics. They form the basis of the mental picture of the universe, held by many scientists, and almost all philosophers of science. But these hidden variable theories are wrong. The British physicist, John Bell, who died recently, devised an experimental test that would distinguish hidden variable theories. When the experiment was carried out carefully, the results were inconsistent with hidden variables. Thus it seems that even God is bound by the Uncertainty Principle, and can not know both the position, and the speed, of a particle. So God does play dice with the universe. All the evidence points to him being an inveterate gambler, who throws the dice on every possible occasion."​

 

[DevilsAvocado]

Tresser (not known in QM but with a thread now associated to papers of his: Devilavocado judged this work false-or-something-like-that (at least implicitly), by the measured impact on www)

I just considered these Google facts:

Entanglement 29,400,000 results
Albert Einstein 14,800,000 results
EPR-Bell 1,740,000 results
John S. Bell 410,000 results​

And that the solution to all this, the "Effect After Cause Principle", render 8 results on Google after 4 years...?

It must be one of the most "secret" discoveries in history of science...

 

[naturale]

It is possible to formulate a consistent relativistic field theory of quantum mechanics without assuming any hidden-variable in the theory and using essentially deterministic mechanics (Compact time and determinism: foundation; Found. Phys, arXiv:0903.3680). The quantization is obtained by imposing a periodic boundary conditions to solve the relativistic wave equation. It is similar to the quantization of a particle in a box where the quantized energies are obtained by imposing boundary conditions to the matter waves. In this way there are not local hidden variable at all. The EPR problem and Bell theorem are bypassed.

 

[DevilsAvocado]

naturale, not assuming any hidden-variable in the theory is probably very wise...

The final nail in the coffin for Detection Loopholes and Hidden Variables ...?

A test with a stable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_calcium"[/URL].
[QUOTE][PLAIN]http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.1655"[/URL]

[B]State-independent experimental test of quantum contextuality[/B]
G. Kirchmair, F. Zähringer, R. Gerritsma, M. Kleinmann, O. Gühne, A. Cabello, R. Blatt, C. F. Roos

[SIZE="1"](Submitted on 10 Apr 2009 (v1), last revised 5 May 2009 (this version, v2))
Journal reference: Nature 460, 494 (2009)
DOI: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7254/full/nature08172.html"

The question of whether quantum phenomena can be explained by classical models with hidden variables is the subject of a long lasting debate. In 1964, Bell showed that certain types of classical models cannot explain the quantum mechanical predictions for specific states of distant particles. Along this line, some types of hidden variable models have been experimentally ruled out. An intuitive feature for classical models is non-contextuality: the property that any measurement has a value which is independent of other compatible measurements being carried out at the same time. However, the results of Kochen, Specker, and Bell show that non-contextuality is in conflict with quantum mechanics. The conflict resides in the structure of the theory and is independent of the properties of special states. It has been debated whether the Kochen-Specker theorem could be experimentally tested at all. Only recently, first tests of quantum contextuality have been proposed and undertaken with photons and neutrons. Yet these tests required the generation of special quantum states and left various loopholes open. Here, using trapped ions, we experimentally demonstrate a state-independent conflict with non-contextuality. [B]The experiment is not subject to the detection loophole and we show that, despite imperfections and possible measurement disturbances, our results cannot be explained in non-contextual terms[/B].[/QUOTE]

 

[nismaratwork]

naturale, not assuming any hidden-variable in the theory is probably very wise...

The final nail in the coffin for Detection Loopholes and Hidden Variables ...?

A test with a stable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_calcium" .

I really enjoyed that paper, thanks for the link DA. :)

 

[DevilsAvocado]

You’re welcome Nismar. ;)

 

[charlylebeaugosse]

I just considered these Google facts:

Entanglement 29,400,000 results
Albert Einstein 14,800,000 results
EPR-Bell 1,740,000 results
John S. Bell 410,000 results​

And that the solution to all this, the "Effect After Cause Principle", render 8 results on Google after 4 years...?

It must be one of the most "secret" discoveries in history of science...

I could not find a www version of what got printed, so these four years cover other papers even if a title is misleading. But this is science and not the schoolyard: stop counting google entries (that include those that you hate most) and start analyzing argument: didn't you write somewhere that your read the paper twice and could not find a mistake?

Do you want to see serious problems with conventional treatments or even in texts written by some VERY prominent people? Some people form the PF crowd could then help you, others would help me but each of us could reject help we do not find scientifically sound.

As for the very long post on history, again you put words in my mouth by amplifying statements that I make and other transformations.

Just two examples telling ho science history may be delicate: as analyzed by Fine, when Einstein mention the language as the reason why Podolsky wrote, it is not about English but about the technical language of Godel's theory on which Godel was lecturing at the institute, lecures that Podolsky only was following. The very issue of the EPR paper is indeed "Godelian" rather than typical in Physics. As for the English, see that Podolsky use phrases that indicate his Russian origin. Rosen was born and raised in the USA and if language as usual had been the issue, he would have written.
None of all the history is mine: I am a Mathematicia and a physicis, not a historian. What I report comes from Jammer, Fine, Einstein, Poper, Born, Rosen (in a 1985 conference paper on 50 years after EPR), Rosenfeld in a book about Bohr, a story copied in Wheeler-Zurek and a few others (a few physics papers have exact citations and exact quotes). Only some guesses on how Enstein would have mocked Bell are mine but the source of that is quite direct and the hypothesis rater obvious.

The New York time story is largely documented but may have been known to Einstein after the letter to Shrodinger: anyway, Einstein had been a protector of Podolsky since at least 1931, and was probably not to revert quickly the way he spoke of him to anyone else.
But get into Jammer (books and papers) and Fine (book and papers) and I do not advertise for their philosophical stands, none of which I like: just basic facts and simple analyzes, with enough different sources to double check (and more) and look for consistency
Here also you can ask me point by point instead of trying to win by kill or by submersion (I am too frail now to get into an endurance war. You may well discourage me, but is it what you want? Fairness is crucial for us all, since science is besieged by many enemies. We have to be fair, precise, honest, accurate, suspicious of any place unclear etc. if we want to help science and not only help ourselves.

Now for the science, you can check that Einstein version of EPR in 1933 (Rosenfeld in Wheeler-Zurek) was very close to what he told Shrodinger, and later Born, and many others till almost his end.He never used "elements" of reality.

By the way, encyclopedias are not a great primary source, except if the article has a known author.

If only you had quietly reported the material you collected and proposed that we go over it, everyone being able to add her/his own sources, further comments, further data so that we end up recognizing the polluted sources, perhaps even understanding the reasons and.or mechanisms for pollution...won't this be more profitable than destroying CleBG or killing a paper that has barely come out and that no-one seem to have analyzed yet.
As for me I understand why the EACP is not Locality: remains to understand if Realism + ECP => A Bell Theorem.

There are also side issues such as what allows o compute which correlation: worth exploring?
Well I have found some good science on other threads and will go there if no serious discussion or info, or answer to many questions I have asked along my posts (e.g., asking for corroborations in many instances when I had unchecked sources only and real science I guess). Nice to know that such threads exist, and too bad if this one does not use the rich mixture of its participants to let us all progress (and learning a new joke IS definitely progress for me , but i English, I can often appreciate but hardly be the source.

.

 

[naturale]

naturale, not assuming any hidden-variable in the theory is probably very wise...

The final nail in the coffin for Detection Loopholes and Hidden Variables ...?

A test with a stable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_calcium" .

Thank you DA. Indeed a deterministic quantum theory with no other variables than space and time is a very fair theory. Is absolutely not trivial to obtain such amazing results without introducing the trick of new degrees of freedom that can be then fine tuned to obtain the result you want. I repeat that as far as I can see https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=424579" gives an exact correspondence with ordinary quantum field theory.

 

[DevilsAvocado]

You’re welcome naturale. I’ll check out 'your' paper ASAP.

 

[DevilsAvocado]

... what did I do wrong now??

Please charlylebeaugosse, I did apologize for my post #1463, twice. I thought this was a discussion between adults on a scientific subject, not personal at all...

Frankly, I have no idea where you get your 'impression' and words like; "hate", "win by kill", "submersion", "discourage", "enemies"... this is very odd to me...

I know you are fairly new on PF, but I think I can promise you that basically all users here are friends, in one way or another. Yes, we can have different opinions about different matters, but I don’t think I have ever seen anyone hating anyone literally...

For heaven's sake, even ThomasT and I are friends! (Even though he have made several really rough personal attacks on me, and then regretted everything. You just have to trust that people basically are kind, and when adding popcorn+beers+keyboards an 'accident' may happen before you know it... )

As new on PF, you maybe also 'misinterpret' when we shift between serious and humorous? I know I am guilty to this 'ambivalence' (sorry, something is probably slightly 'wrong' in the upper storey...).

If you see a smiley like this it’s most probably humorous. If you see a smiley like this it’s unquestionably humorous.

If RUTA says: "Is action at a distance possible as envisaged by the EPR Paradox?" The short answer is "yes."

And I answer: YES!

It means that we are partly smiling at our own 'stubbornness'! Get it? The EPR-Bell question is not finally and definite solved yet, and then it becomes slightly amusing to be stubbornly sure about the answer. And if you include the fact that many have declared a very definite "NO!" and "YES!" during the ~1,500 posts in this thread... then maybe it is funny. Get it?

One important thing that you should know; many PF users are laymen or students, here to learn. As far as I know RUTA is the only true professional in this thread (besides you).

Don’t take it too darned serious, it is what it is.

You have read zillions more books on mathematics and physics, than me, and of course you know these things better. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have an opinion on subjects that to me, on logical basis, seems 'strange'.

I will not get into Podolsky vs. Einstein, and "reality" again. I leave it to the reader to judge what is plausible or not.

But I think I have to comment on your critics on internet and Google. The World Wide Web was invented at CERN by MIT professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who publicly introduced the project in December 1990:

"The World-Wide Web (W3) was developed to be a pool of human knowledge, and human culture, which would allow collaborators in remote sites to share their ideas and all aspects of a common project."​

Yes, today there is a lot of BS on the web, but to call it a "schoolyard" is maybe not accurate. As far as I understand, the web and internet is very important tools for professional scientists, in communicating and spreading information globally.

Trillions of web pages and documents (including PDF) are indexed by Google, who has over one million servers in data centers around the world, and processes over one billion search requests and twenty petabytes of user-generated data every day. Companies and governments buy advertising and statistics from Google. It is a billion dollar industry, and pretty big for being a "schoolyard"...

I’m afraid you are wrong about the paper "A Bell Theorem with no locality assumption", it was submitted on 1 Aug 2006. Click the link and check for yourself http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0608008" .

Now, my maybe very silly "layman intuition" tells me that if the "Effect After Cause Principle" is the final solution to the EPR paradox, that will tells us if the world is mysterious non-local or shockingly non-real, it would not only render thousands of documents on the web, but it will also be on TV primetime news. But as I said, this is only my "layman vision" on the subject, and you probably know better...

Besides that, I also have the natural feeling the "Effect After Cause Principle" is not very 'revolutionary'... effect is always after the cause, just by definition... unless we are talking faster-than-light (superluminal or FTL) communication? And we all agree that this is not the case in EPR-Bell.

So, I honestly don’t see how Charles Tresser is going to save your day...

But why not talk me thru, step by step, my example halfway down in https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2833234&postcount=1241" (<-- click on the link), and show me how the "Effect After Cause Principle" can explain the violation of this simple Bell Inequality:

N(+30°, -30°) ≤ N(+30°, 0°) + N(0°, -30°)​

Cheers!

 

[DevilsAvocado]

Wow! 1500 posts!

(Why am I impressed by this...??)