Poet and McGill University emeritus professor of chemistry Bryan Sanctuary (Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=iqR_MusAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao; personal blog: https://mchmultimedia.com/sanctuaryblog/) is betting me 5000 Euro that he can resolve the EPR-Bell paradox to the satisfaction of the majority of our peers. Moreover, he will do it by a publication (or at least, a pre-publication) within the year. That’s this calendar year, 2022. Naturally, he expects public (scientific) acclaim to follow “in no time”. I don’t expect that. We will settle the bet by consultation with our peers, and this consultation will be concluded by the end of the following year. So that’s by the end of the succeeding calendar year, 2023.
I, therefore, expect his gracious admission of defeat and a nice check for 5000 Euro, two years from now.
He expects the opposite. (Poor Bryan! It’s like taking candy from a baby…)
(He presumably thinks the same)
The small print
Small print item 1: Who are our peers? Like a jury, they will be determined by having our mutual approval. To begin with, we will invite the members of a couple of Google groups/internet seminars in which one or both of us already participate. Here are links to two of them: Jarek Duda’s (Krakow) “QM foundations & nature of time seminar”: https://groups.google.com/g/nature-of-time/about and http://th.if.uj.edu.pl/~dudaj/QMFNoT; and Alexandre de Castro’s Google group “Bell inequalities and quantum foundations”: https://groups.google.com/g/Bell_quantum_foundations.
Small print item 2: What does Bryan think he’s going to achieve? Restoration of locality and realism, and banning of weirdness and spookiness from quantum mechanics.
Small print item 3: What do I think about his putative theory? Personally, but it is not up to me to decide, I would accept that he has won if his theory (which he has not yet revealed to the world) would allow me to win my Bell game challenge https://gill1109.com/2021/12/22/the-bell-game-challenge/ “against myself”. i.e., it would allow me to write computer programs to simulate a successful loophole-free Bell experiment – thus satisfying the usual spatiotemporal constraints on inputs and outputs while preventing conspiracy, and reliably violating a suitable Bell inequality by an amount that is both statistically and physically significant. This means that, in my opinion, he should only win if he can convince the majority of our peers that those constraints are somehow unphysical. I mention that if experimenters voluntarily impose those constraints (to the best of their ability) in real experiments, then there cannot be a metaphysical reason to forbid them. However, the bet will be settled by a democratic vote of our peers! Clearly, this does constitute a loophole for me: a majority of our peers might still fall for superdeterminism or any other craziness.
I suspect that Bryan believes he can now resurrect his previous attempt https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.3219. I think it is very brave of him but doomed to failure, because I don’t think he will come up with a theory that will catch on. (I even believe that such a theory is not even possible, but that’s my personal belief).
To reiterate: our peers will determine who has won our bet. Bryan is betting that a year from now he will have revolutionised quantum mechanics, restoring locality and realism and that his then appearing paper will rapidly force Zeilinger, Gisin, me, and a host of others, to retract our papers on quantum teleportation, quantum non-locality, and all that. I am betting that the world will not be impressed. Our peers will vote whether or not they believe that Bryan has achieved his goal.
Thank you Richard for this. Small point is that we have not made the bet formal yet. I do not see any issues, except I hope this is all done in much less time than 2 years.
Frankly I don’t eat much candy, but I hope I am offering you all a few plums, or maybe they are Adam’s Apples. Since I was first moon struck in India in 1997 (Sorry my old blog is under repair now but link works)
https://mchmultimedia.com/a-moon-struck-awakening-in-india/
I have been obsessed with finding a rationale for non-locality. Since the concept made NO sense to me, I logically sought an alternate solution, and so wallowed for 25 years!! Now I believe I can knock Bertlmann’s socks off and convert the missionaries of “Quantum Weirdness” to believe in Ontology.
You, Richard, have been a beacon of Bell, defending him and pointing out the errors in the ways of others. You most certainly have taken great pains to defend Bell against any disparaging remarks, filling the press with tits-for-tats with many who raise their voices against Bell; guarding the concept of non-locality and his Honour. A new Dawn is breaking (See my poem at the end) and there is only one objective, “The Truth” rather than the current goals of quantum info theory which to me has gotten sidetracked into, “Quantum Business!”. The goal is pure knowledge, to see through to the purity that is offered by our Mother, and it is awe-inspiring and dazzling.
Having said that, I do of course respect your abilities, accomplishments and the contributions you have made. Your ideas give good food for thought, and I don’t object to you calling me a “quantum crackpot” or even rejecting my papers. (Those early ones of mine are naïve and pretty bad anyway, although carry the kernels). I hold no grudges, but this is a battle about our basic understanding of our mother Nature.
We talked of betting before, and you indicated to me that if I won, you would withdraw a lot of your papers. Suppose I do win, which papers of yours would you withdraw?? Can you send a list?
Beyond the Dawn.
By
Bryan Sanctuary
December 29, 2021
I feel an eerie frost descend
to freeze the morning dew,
The sunlight scatters in sparkling rays
To polarize my view.
The dancing light lifts my heart,
In ways I cannot know,
But Nature seems to work it out,
To bring that light to soul.
Our senses give us all we know,
From which we must perceive.
But can we know or formulate
Beyond what sense receives?
There lies beyond our normal ken,
Real things we are not suited.
With blinkered eyes we forge a view
That’s incomplete and muted.
But from this prop there’s something wrong,
What should be up is down,
We don’t know why, we make a guess,
But there’s no way around.
The unknown leaves us all agog,
Some turn to God for hope.
The cults arise, the dark obscures
That for which we grope.
But they are there, the subtle points,
and some can see the shift,
A different place, a different space
That project their hints of rift.
Now I see the sparkling rays,
So soothing on my eyes,
They spin right through and carry code
And there remains no lies.
Dear Bryan, we are both in search of the truth, and we both accept that if it might turn out to be different from what we had expected, then we would not deny the truth when we were forced to see that we had had it wrong. I’ll compile the list, soon. But basically, all my publications in physics journals about Bell’s theorem, plus one or two in statistics journals on the same topic. Check out my Google scholar page.
Richard Gill, I formally accept your bet.
Richard Gill may (or may not) make a long list of papers he will withdraw if I win. It is not that important, just that it is a long list. If I win, they are all toast. See Richard’s publication list:
https://scholar.google.ca/citations?hl=en&user=yJj_DosAAAAJ
How about
Anton Zeilinger, https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=cuqIY0oAAAAJ&hl=en
And
Nickolas Gisin https://scholar.google.ch/citations?user=SwLIrjAAAAAJ&hl=fr
Maybe its time that Chris Fuchs started to listen to local-realists as his ideas will finally crash in flames. Are you still looking for no-go theorems? https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fe9uXzkAAAAJ&hl=en
I am suggesting that almost every paper these people have written on non-locality must be withdrawn. There are so many that I cannot sift through them, and these cascade down to myriad of their students and so on who carry on the myth of non-locality.
I’m ok with the experimental results, but I recall, for example, a paper of Gisin’s, I cannot now find, about 2002, in which he measured the speed of connectivity between Alice and Bob to be in excess of a staggering 10 billion times faster than the speed of light! I recall Gisin said, playing on EPR, “Relativity is Incomplete!!” That MUST go if I win, along with most of his others that support the bizarre notion of non-locality.
And how about those enigmatic and elusive “Einstein Podolsky Rosen Channels” of the famous paper
Bennett, C. H., Brassard, G., Crépeau, C., Jozsa, R., Peres, A., & Wootters, W. K. (1993). Teleporting an unknown quantum state via dual classical and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen channels. Physical review letters, 70(13), 1895.???
If I win, I will demand this paper be withdrawn. It is so misleading. Its fundamental basis will be shown to be flawed.
And Nickolas, Anton, Arnold, Gilles, Gregor and all others, are you willing to join in the bet of 5,000 Euros to defend your last 25 years of research and put your money where your mouth is?
Let us wait and see who is willing to comment.
Who are Nickolas and Arnold? Are you proposing parallel bets with all those guys, or are you just suggesting they help cover the loss which you expect me to suffer?
Nicolas Gisin sorry typo but Charles Bennett . I am asking which papers they, and others, must withdraw if non-locality is finally debunked. What will happen if Bell’s theorem is no more?
I do not think they will reply, but I suggest they are having trouble sleeping.
Bertlmann has two “n”s
So why don’t you email them?
Yes I know, two socks, two n’s no e. Remember to capitalize Nature and Earth!
Depends on whether you are thinking of a journal, or of Gaia
What an exciting start into 2022!
Bryan, I love the poem, I didn’t know you were so poetic, that is really nice!
Good luck, and I hope you will win :-),
Chantal
Thanks Chantal, and also for all your input and help you have given me. So hold onto your hat as I knock the socks off Bertlmann.
The story of the awakening in India is lovely.
I sent the following email to Nicolas Gisin, Charles Bennett, Anton Zeilinger and Chris Fuchs:
Hello Nicolas, Charles, Chris, Anton,
You may have seen that I took up a bet with Richard Gill. If not, here it is
https://gill1109.com/2022/01/02/the-big-bell-bet/
I bet I can resolve the EPR paradox and prove Bell’s theorem is wrong. There is no question about this, although the work is not yet reviewed. I suspect you all to be skeptical. I would not bet unless I was 100% sure I can win.
You all are great proponents of teleportation and other non-local effects, and my results will show that almost everything that you have deduced using non-locality is incorrect.
In a nutshell, I have declared an academic war on non-locality and you guys are in the firing line. What is your response? Do you want to put 5,000 euros up to bet I am wrong? Richard says he will withdraw his papers supporting non-locality if I win. Will you?
I look forward to converting you all to local-realism!!
Happy New Year,
Bryan Sanctuary
I apologize for my old blog. I just had a new one created (this week) and is not yet released. Also my old blog lost links from my old ISP to the new. Frustrating but I will get the links fixed one day.
Richard is asking about link to my rejected paper in 2013 in the post:
https://mchmultimedia.com/undeterred-by-rejection-of-epr-paper/?fbclid=IwAR0rdgT8NE5LSvDS9tuaKxl5TaFrkdhH3RsLe1jwPgX1CuOxYA_5o04n4io
Here is the paper:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ucwgp0wbtwjqsp3/Reconciliation%20of%20the%20EPR%20paradox.pdf?dl=0
Also I found my youtube channel which contains a lot of stuff and EPR. You should note that my ideas have evolved since these works. I do not agree with everything I said in the past, but the kernels are there.
https://www.youtube.com/user/bryansanctuary
Dear Bryan
I superficially read your paper and watch one of your youtube video’s and I think I know why you believe the Bell theorem is incorrect. I am afraid that you share a very common misunderstanding regarding the Bell inequality derivation. You seem to believe the inequality requires counterfactual reasoning. That is a common mistake because the inequality does have a rational derivation and in fact, Bell never used counterfactual reasoning or incompatible experiments.
Although I am not a statistician, I am afraid that any virtual or real experiment that is performed according to the hypothesis that Bell used, i.e., hidden variables and statistical independence has a high chance to be bounded by 2 (because of finite statistics, in the ideal case it is exactly bounded by 2).
I have been fighting against the counterfactual nonsense regarding the Bell theorem for some time now and wrote some papers explaining the rationale of the Bell inequality.
If you want to see a simple and explicit down to earth explanation of why, if hidden variables determine the results locally and statistical independence hold, the inequality cannot be violated please read section 4 of this paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353607701_A_Note_on_Bell's_Theorem_Logical_Consistency
I already suggested to you this in another thread but I don’t know if you read it. You do not need to read the whole paper only section 4 is enough. Your counterfactual objection does not apply to that derivation.
Richar Gill is intellectually honest but he is cheating without the intention to do so. He presents the Bell inequality as an unfalsifiable result and then bets that it is falsifiable. The problem is that the Bell inequality can be derived correctly as a falsifiable result, therefore it is indeed falsifiable!
Justo, you wrote “Richard Gill is intellectually honest but he is cheating without the intention to do so. He presents the Bell inequality as an unfalsifiable result and then bets that it is falsifiable. The problem is that the Bell inequality can be derived correctly as a falsifiable result, therefore it is indeed falsifiable!”
I am not cheating. You are being very inaccurate. I present a mathematical truth, and I challenge anyone who disbelieves it to provide a counterexample through a computer simulation. The Bell inequality which I talk about is a statement which is falsifiable, but which will never ever be falsified.
For instance, I could challenge people to find a counter-example to Fermat’s last theorem. The theorem is true, as far as I can judge. It is in principle falsifiable. But I believe it will never be falsified. If I made such a challenge, it would be a perfectly honest challenge. It is not cheating. People who make very implausible claims must be challenged to produce strong evidence supporting their claims. This is scientific debate. It is also science outreach.
I agree, the Bell theorem is a mathematical truth (whan correctly interpreted). I just questioned your derivation which is different from Bell’s.
By the way I do not quite understand your bet because Bryan does not seem to question the mathematical and statistal implications of the Bell theorem. He questions quantum nonlocaly and does not claim has a counterexample to Bell’s theorem as crapkpots ussually do.
Indeed! Bryan hasn’t integrated logic into his deepest thought! That’s why I say that he’s a chemist, not a mathematician, because I’ve noticed that many Bell-deniers come from chemistry. For Bryan, intuition/instinct trumps logic. I’m built the other way round. I’m not saying it’s better. If you are lost in the forest with no food you could better have Bryan with me than him.
By the way, my mathematical theorem is different from Bell’s. I proved a stronger result under a stronger assumption.
Thanks for that and the suggestions. I looked at section 4, and you are likely right about the way I express things, but I have long ago stopped thinking about BI beyond the way they used relative to EPR, which is, “Where is that extra correlations?” BI just define what is missing, and they have little other significance to me. They are 100% classical, they just define the limit of classical correlation and nothing else. BI is a tool for me and little more.
Please do not think my work is about BI, it is not, although his theorem is a casualty.
I have never accepted Richard’s challenge, and you see that I did not this time either. Long ago I saw that the challenge is set up do the impossible, reproduce the conditions of Bertlmann’s sock proof without non-locality. So I never tried. I tried to break the rules in ways that I believe in (of course no loopholes introduced), but I could not. I used Chantal Roth’s program. I now know why I failed and I do hope that Richard will win his own challenge when he sees the answer.
But you say:
“I am afraid that any virtual or real experiment that is performed according to the hypothesis that Bell used, i.e., hidden variables and statistical independence has a high chance to be bounded by 2 ”
I agree 100%, Bell’s hypothesis is incorrect.
Hi Bryan, thank you for your answer. However, I do not understand why you seem to make two contradictory statements.
You said: “They are 100% classical, they just define the limit of classical correlation and nothing else.”
That is correct, I agree 100% and I am sure Bell would have also agreed with you.
But then you said: I agree 100%, Bell’s hypothesis is incorrect.
This I do not understand. His two hypotheses, namely, hidden variables and statistical independence do lead to his inequality. In what sense are they incorrect?
I supposed that you are conflating the Bell inequality with the problem of quantum nonlocality. They are completely different things. I am not talking about quantum nonlocality.
Justo
Please make the distinction between BI and Bell’s theorem, there is then no contradiction.
When the Bell theorem(BT) is correctly interpreted as Bell intended and explained, the BT asserts it is not possible to complete QM with hidden variables to obtain a local theory. Of course, we must assume statistical independence.
Please notice that the BT does not prove quantum nonlocality and that Bell never said that it does.
Recently I tried to explain this to Robert Griffiths, but with little success. He responded to my comment repeating that the Bell inequality is a classical result, therefore, is not proof of quantum nonlocality as if he didn’t understand a word of what I explained in my comment.
In section IV I explained to him why and how Bell proved quantum nonlocality but he just preferred to ignore all that and repeated what he already said in his first paper.
John Stewart Bell never said that violation of his inequality proves that quantum mechanics is nonlocal just as he never used counterfactual reasoning. Unfortunately, neither his followers nor his detractors seem to understand a word of what he tried to explain.
To give you just an example. In 1972 de la Peña, Cetto and Brody wrote a paper saying that the Bell inequality requires several measurements on the same pair of particles, i.e., more than one measurement on a single particle. In 2019 after 47 years they basically repeated the same thing in their article https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-019-00313-8
I just wrote a response to that https://doi.org/10.1007/s40509-021-00265-7
Bell wrote an answer to de la Peña, Cetta and Brody himself. “Answer to my critics”.
If Bell did not prove non-locality. why did he say ” “If [a hidden-variable theory] is local it will not agree with quantum mechanics, and if it agrees with quantum mechanics it will not be local.”
If Bell did not push non-locality, then what does his theorem prove? …the existence of “EPR” channels supporting instantaneous collapse between light-cones?
Gimma a break!
It is clear that Bell was trapped in classical ideas. His Bertlmann sock proof forces polarizations to agree with the violation and he can only do this unphysical thing by introducing correlation between different socks. Yet there is almost universal acceptance of this absurd notion.
In summary: BI tell us ONLY there is more than reaches the eye; there is more than the polarized states we measure. Bell, however, insisted in washing socks.
Bryan, why don’t you read Bell, to find out what he believed? In one paper he gave a list of four possible reactions to his work which he thought were all logically admissible. He also agreed in private correspondence that those four were not the only ones. I think he very wisely kept an open mind.
Justo: I agree with Bob Griffiths. But I really have no reply for you and ask you to please wait for my paper. I want you to accept that I reject completely Bell’s Theorem for good reasons. So when you, and others, start to support Bell and make excuses, it falls on my deaf ears. All those arguments, philosophies and results have no credibility to me. Bell could NOT think beyond the classical. He was a Positivist.
Nonsense, Bryan! Bell had a refined intellect and an open mind. Bell did think beyond the classical. His theorem, together with experimental findings, tells me that we have to think beyond the classical. I believe that Bell would nowadays certainly agree. Somehow you don’t realise that you are chasing a Fata Morgana. I don’t know what you were consuming in India long ago but you saw a vision. You can’t see that it is vision of an impossible world. But OK, I am looking forward to your paper, and I do keep an open mind. In other words – I am prepared to revise my present “beliefs” if evidence compels me to.
Dear Bryan
You quote Bell saying: “If [a hidden-variable theory] is local it will not agree with quantum mechanics, and if it agrees with quantum mechanics it will not be local.”
Then you claim that he is claiming quantum nonlocality. Maybe it is only me ( I wonder, am I such a crackpot?) or perhaps I do not understand English (that is fair and already Richard suggested that). For me, it is very clear that he is talking about a hidden variables theory being nonlocal, not quantum mechanics.
It seems to me that you, as Griffiths in his response to my comment, insist on misinterpreting Bell in such a way that it would be easy to knock him down.
But to be fair, it is not only you but curiously his own follower who do the same.
I think I made my point and any further discussion would be useless.
Cheers
Well said, Justo! Bryan doesn’t understand Bell. I suspect it is because he thinks like a chemist, not like a mathematician. Obviously it can’t be because he’s not a native English speaker. Now, I think that Bryan plans to “expand” quantum mechanics. The problem is that if the expanded theory makes the same predictions (the negative cosine, binary outcomes…) then still Bell’s theorem will say that it can’t be local. Apparently Bryan does not understand that logic. Bell’s theorem is not “about” QM at all. It’s about theories which are local and realistic (and non-conspiratorial) in a particular sense.
Thank you, Richard. It is good that we Bell’s followers can agree this time.
I am preparing a trivial paper explaining quantum nonlocality and Bell’s theorem relation. It probably will be summarily rejected but at least will stay as a preprint.
Justo: To be clear, can I have your brief views on the following so I can better follow your arguments:
What is your interpretation of the violation of Bell’s Inequalities?
What is the cause of the violation?
What is the major consequence (only one please) of the violation?
Richard: You have said to me on multiple occasions, “Read Bell’s papers!” I would like to tell you that really mean, “Read Bell’s papers and agree with me!” The point is I do not agree with you nor Bell, no matter how much you or I read.
Bryan, my viewpoint (and I think Bell’s) is explained in my response to Griffiths’s paper https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.104.066201
In particular, why Bell claimed QM is nonlocal and its relation to his inequality is explained in section IV. The paper is also available at arXiv.
In the conclusion, you can find the lessons that the Bell inequality teaches us regarding the local or nonlocal character of quantum mechanics.
If you read the abstract of Griffiths’s response you will realize that Griffiths just ignored my whole comment and insisted on misinterpreting Bell so that he could have a silly argument to “knock him down”.
Justo, I do not want to read again your paper on BI. I have little interest in them and long ago put them aside, using them only as a tool. You mix up BI with his theorem, yet you say you do not. I sent you some questions, I really would like your succinct answers because that would help me understand your points of view. Please end me your answers, and do not answer with references. Your words please. That done, then we can talk more about BT and non-locality.
Yes, but he responded to many criticisms in the same paper. He just told to de la Peña that each particle is supposed to be measured once.
Bell did not just “tell de la Peña that each particle is supposed to be measured once”. He carefully explained that lambda is hypothesised to be real (but not necessarily local), and that A(a, lambda), A(a’, lambda) are just two different mathematical functions of the same variable lambda. For most people, and certainly people with some mathematical discipline, it would have been enough just to say that.
Unfortunately, many physicists are not able to make the distinction between mathematical models and physical reality. I think this is because they use mathematics all the time as a language to talk about what they see as reality. They don’t see the possibility of there existing mathematical worlds which do not necessarily have anything much to do with the real world.
In my opinion, it is perfectly reasonable use of English and it makes very good sense to call A(a, lambda) a counterfactual outcome of measurement. If Alice actually forgets to make her measurement at all, but lambda does exist, then A(a, lambda) still does exist mathematically or conceptually – as just some function of lambda – and it does stand for the outcome which Alice would have seen had she actually done her measurement with setting “a”, instead of, for instance, accidentally switching the measurement apparatus off. There is a lot of senseless discussion about Bell’s theorem due to the fact that people from different scientific worlds have slightly different associations with the same words. Add to this cultural differences when people are not reading and writing their native language. “Counterfactual reasoning” got a bad name in philosophy at some stage. But it came back to science in a big way with the success of Pearl’s popularising work on causality. Notions of causality require counterfactual reasoning. Personal morality, public law, upbringing of children, democracy .. all require that we behave as if free will exists and that we are allowed to argue with counterfactuals.
Perhaps it is just me, but I have sensed for some time now, in my readings, a growing discontent within physics as the old guard moves on. There is grudgingness mounting toward non-locality by the new blood, and it is timely, perhaps, to resolve the EPR paradox. I believe this discontent is motivated by the unphysical nature of non-locality which young scientists have doubts about, asking their mentors “how does it work?”, who expound their religion “That is quantum weirdness” accept it, it just is!”
I do have some misgivings about grad students in the final stages of their theses, suddenly finding they are based upon a fallacy, and cannot submit. I will be very happy, however, at the drying up of research funds into weirdness.
This week
It is now a week since Richard and I made the bet. I thought I would give some of my views and would be interested to hear Richard’s, and others.
I understand that people are skeptical, and I would like to release the paper now. I must follow the steps, so ask you to wait-a-bit. Thank you for your patience.
Judging
I am quite cavalier about the judging. I believe that the academic community will decide, and I hope even Richard voluntarily agrees he lost. I said he was the “Knight of Ni” and could “do his worst!”.
He did not agree with, or like, my prediction:
“Richard will read my paper, slap his gob, say “Holy shit!” and send me 5,000 euros.”
He says, “I doubt it!”
We will see. I don’t intend to lose. I am not using this as a publicity stunt, as someone proffered just to get attention, hey it is 5,000 Euros! and I do not want the humiliation of being found wrong, so the bet is sincere, I will pay if I lose.
Richard has said I am using “Tricks” in my work, but a magician is a trickster, deceptive and tries to fool people. I can assure you I have no intention of even trying to trick anyone or trying to fool these intelligent people. Honesty is my value.
Richard’s assessments are often based upon personal attacks, like my deficit he says is
“You don’t see reality. It’s because you didn’t get mathematical thinking drummed into your head at the stage of your intellectual development when you absorbed physical thinking. “
I agree that our formal training is different, and I am not a mathematician. I suggest, “vive la différence!” Our backgrounds mold us, and I do get the impression that Richard cannot see the beyond Bell’s Theorem. Blinkered eyes:
There lies beyond our normal ken,
Real things we are not suited.
With blinkered eyes we forge a view
That’s incomplete and muted.
You might not like my poems, but I do, they are emotional expressions, that’s all, but the answer is in “Beyond the Dawn”.
Wait-a-second
I asked Richard and others, why not wait-a-second, minute, month or bit, until my work is out. There have been two posts on FB, saying that I will lose; that my work should be rejected without review; and basically “what can a chemist know?”. Richard says it will be “like taking candy from a baby“, and suggests most anti-Bellists are chemists. A have a few cheers from my FB friends in support! Thanks!
My goal
My main goal is to eradicate forever the concept of non-local entanglement so that it is delegated to the Annals of Lost Causes. Whereas local realists have been denied the opportunity to speak and publish in the past, (it has been “no-go” for me at several meetings), in the future the missionaries of non-locality will be spurned, not us realists.
Also, I focus on non-locality in quantum info theory only, not other forms of non-locality, often held up as evidence. These are different and I do not reject all phenomena which suggest non-local influences.
Bell’s Inequalities
I really have very little interest in Bell’s Inequalities BI, only his theorem. For me, BI are a tool and nothing else, based upon some axioms. Long ago I went through the math, and I will let mathematicians argue the nuances, not me But I accept them, the experimental data, and that QM violates them. My work is NOT about BI, which simply defines the “invisible boundary”, David Wick talked about, and that separates the classical from the quantum.
Bell’s theorem is different, and it is easy to destroy, as I will in my paper.
Challenges
I do, as is clear from my earlier comments, challenge those who have perpetuated the concepts of non-locality, being notably Nicolas Gisin, Anton Zeilinger, along with those who believe in quantum teleportation, and legions of their students. Gisin is likely tired of hearing me quote him in about 2002 but it is worth repeating what he said to me because it sums up what I call the “Religion of Quantum Weirdness”,
“Ah, monsieur, we are in a realm of physics beyond human comprehension!”
I have not heard from those I challenged; they are silent.
If course telling people who have spent their careers working on bogus directions, supported only the folly of Bell’s theorem, to withdraw their papers is a bit draconian. It was, of course, to get their attention, which I think I got, and likely all their protégées (quaking in their boots) know now and that was my intention.
It is unlikely they will enter a bet with me, which shouts volumes. It underscores to me they doubt their own credibility, otherwise they would stand by their work and bet. Of course, their lack of response might also be that they view me as a quantum crackpot, the interloping chemist, and should be ignored.
I enjoyed David Wick’s The Invisible Boundary (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4612-4030-3
New Idea
Here are David Wick’s comments about the three stages of publishing new ideas:
1. You are wrong—reject
2. You are not wrong, but it is not important—reject
3. You are right, it is important, but we have known this all along—reject.
Scientia potentia est
I have a retrocausal model which does not require non-locality and bypasses Bell’s Theorem to give a correlation of 0.707 when detector angles are separated by 45 degrees. Entanglement is an essential part of my retrocausal model, but the two particles in a pair are not entangled at the time of measurement.
Retrocausality does not use non-locality and the world can be local, at least for a Bell experiment. Physical reality is redefined in my model so that positrons travel backwards in time … that takes some adjustment in one’s view of the world!
Austin Fearnley
Justo, I really like your paper https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.104.066201 ; that’s splendid bit of writing
Bryan: do please carefully read Justo’s paper. It explains why you are on a wild goose chase. You wrote to me:
“You have said to me on multiple occasions, “Read Bell’s papers!” I would like to tell you that really mean, “Read Bell’s papers and agree with me!” The point is I do not agree with you nor Bell, no matter how much you or I read.”
I don’t want you to read Bell’s papers and agree with what you think Bell or I are saying, because you don’t understand what Bell was saying, and you don’t understand what I say. I don’t want you to agree with what we are not saying! I want you to understand Bell’s logical reasoning. What conclusions you draw from that it up to you. Bell himself imagined that Niels Bohr would understand Bell perfectly and agree and say “yes, I told you so!” You have to take account of the entire (macroscopic, classical) experimental context. A Bell experiment is not local since the experimental context is not local. Questions of locality would, to Bohr, be meaningless. And Bell realism is not endorsed in the Copenhagen interpretation. Khrennikov has become an old school Bohr-follower. He agrees that Bell’s notion of local realism has been invalidated.
Richard, I do not see my answers listed. Please do not hold them up because it makes it difficult to answer. Please just stop moderating.
I’m not moderating anything
ok i see them now, thanks
Justo I would like to to answer these points in one nice line with no references or quotes from others, just your understanding. I have asked you twice before and you seem reluctant to answer:
What is your interpretation of the violation of Bell’s Inequalities?
What is the cause of the violation?
What is the major consequence (only one please) of the violation?
If you cannot answer, then you will understand, but I have no trouble to answer.
Richard, you too, please answer with one sentence for each.
1. Local realism is not true
2. Local realism is not true
3. The universe does not evolve according to deterministic laws
So now that we have established that you do not agree with locality, then you must believe in non-locality. Where does that notion come from in your mind? I am following your ideas and am interested in how we differ. It was in answer to my question “What is your interpretation of the violation of Bell’s Inequalities?” and so I assume the idea of non-locality comes from that. Please confirm how.
I don’t have an explanation of quantum non locality. We only have a description of it. I think that Feynman was right that one just has to get used to the mathematics.
Bryan
I did not ask to read my whole paper. Section IV answers your question in more detail and is only one page. But here are your answers:
1) The same as Bell’s: QM can not be embedded in a more complete local theory.
2) The same as 1), i.e., QM and (given the experimental violations) nature cannot be modeled by a local hidden variable theory that respects statistical independence.
3) The same as 1) and 2)
Yes, Bell believed that QM is nonlocal but he never said that his inequality showed that. If he did, I am very interested in knowing where he wrote that, so please tell me.
I forgot a very important detail. Most of Bell’s followers claim that the Bell inequality violations are proof of quantum nonlocality. But never said that and I agree with him.
“Quantum nonlocality” is commonly *defined* as: violation of Bell inequalities!
“Quantum nonlocality” is commonly *defined* as: violation of Bell inequalities!
Richard, you are right, however, until proven the contrary I will stand by Bell claiming that he never said that and that he would not agree with that definition.
Thank you. Helpful. I do want to split hairs about what Bell may have said or not. Reading his works in Speakable.. he clearly points out arguments against local realism based upon violations.
I am more interested in your comment, and thanks for it, “QM can not be embedded in a more complete local theory.” Can you explain your reasons behind that? I would suspect from your comment, therefore, QM must support some non-local connectivity, like the teleporting “EPR channels” to be complete. Can I assume you think that these EPR channels, or some other non-local event, are viable? Or are you saying that QM is good enough as it is, and since it cannot be completed locally, it must be complete as it stands? What are your views?
Ok, no explanation, no mechanism, no knowledge of how it happens, just accept quantum non-locality as God-given, or something some might believe in as “intelligent design” (ugh!) or other notions of revelation that have no place in physics??? You are advocating “quantum weirdness”? Just “believe” say you, “beyond understanding”. We have now underscored a significant difference between you and me–and the math is only as good as the assumptions.
-Dear Bryan you said: “I am more interested in your comment, and thanks for it, “QM can not be embedded in a more complete local theory.” Can you explain your reasons behind that?”
Yes, Bell inequality violations!. Of course, you can do it by violating statistical independence though.
Regarding the rest, there are precise reasons for believing in quantum nonlocality but they’re not BI violations.
The confusion arises because radical non-localists like Maudling, Federico Laudisa, Travis Norsen, and many other philosophers and physicists claim that BI violations are proofs of quantum nonlocality.
In 1964 Bell neither proved quantum nonlocality nor claimed having done so. Later in a paper in 1975 he did give a proof but again was not his inequality. His argument was the same Einstein gave already in 1927.
I give a precise argument of quantum nonlocality in section IV of my paper.
Quantum mechanics violates what Bell defined as “Local causality” and the violation has nothing to do with his inequality.
Do you want QM to be local? Then reject the local causality definition and stop the nonsense with the Bell inequality.
I forgot, you always have the option of superdeterminism then you wouldn’t have to reject local causality.
“Stop nonsense with BI” you say? Me? I keep saying I do not give a slap on the belly with a wet fish for BI. Please how can you arrive at that?
But you have answered my questions, thanks, so I conclude that you believe that Bell did not conclude non- locality, I don’t care. Irrevalent.
We have agreed it is generally believed that the violations are evidence for non-locality, and therefore, a la Bell’s theorem, it can only be supported by stuff like non- local EPR channels.
I am happy with that view because you have confirmed exactly what I said at the beginning of these exchanges, but you have not answered how non-localitiy is mediated because you do not know.
This is where you are dead wrong. You interpret the violations incorrectly, but you must wait for my paper.
For me now, I understand your position, so I have really nothing more to discuss with you until my paper is out. Your arguments are bogus.
P.S. I did look at your paper but you said section IV but all I have in that paper is 4, not IV. Do I have the right paper?
Bryan, I am not surprised that you consider my arguments as bogus, otherwise, you wouldn’t have anything against Bell.
P.S. The paper in arXiv is the same as the published one.
Hi everyone,
Maybe a thought that is worth emphasizing that was not mentioned: Bell’s setup essentially rules out local realism within QM. It doesn’t rule out local non-realism.
In this sense, I always find it more valuable to think of the two slit experiment (as opposed to Bell’s setup) where the slit through which the particle diffracts is left unrealized until interacting with the screen. It is *as though* the particle had communicated non-locally with itself at both slits. But this correspondence is confusing.
Indeed, a careful Alice-Bob experiment should eventually reveal that this communication is infinitely faster than the speed of light. But there is no communication, of course and that’s why, when looked through this lens, things look strange. But they aren’t.
Any probabilistic theory, whether quantum or classical, has the notion of a random variable, R, and its realization, r. Realizing a random variable necessarily involves sampling from the prob distribution. This process has no associated lag time (it is instantaneous).
Bryan: in your write up, it would be helpful to discuss non-realism and Young two-slit with supporting simulations. My two cents (and it is nice to reconnect with you!).
p.s. Two decades ago, exactly now, I was an undergrad in Bryan’s lab. Hi Bryan!
I am now prof in physics at ASU and work in what is essentially computational statistics (Bayesian nonparametrics applied to single molecule imaging problems).
Hi Steve–Great to hear from you and glad to read your views. Congrats on the prof job too!
I will not do the double slit experiment. Leave that for others. foundations of qm is not just philosophy but the philosophy is guided by the math and logic.
I disagree with most of what Richard says, which is why we have the bet. If you read the comments, they are all stuck in Bell’s Inequalities, and the interpretation that the violation is evidence for non-locality. It is not, but I am not rushing. I have little interest in BI, and, for that matter, Bell’s ideas. Richard believes violation means no local realism, I will prove him wrong.
I have 6 months to win, but Richard gives me up to 2 years!! He wants me to jump through his simulation hoops, but I just want to dismiss non-locality and move on to more interesting things.
But this is just talk, so you will have to wait-a-bit more before the paper is out. Happy to hear your comments!!
Bryan, violation of Bell inequalities is *evidence* for non-locality, but not proof. Moreover, whether or not it would be significant evidence depends on how you choose to define non-locality. I believe that such violation (in a rigorous experimental context) means “no local realism”. I understand the term “local realism” in the same way as Bell, Tsirelson, and many others understand it. Nobody can jump through my simulation hoops without moving them. When the paper is out, we will see which goal-posts you have moved.
Hi Bryan, I appreciate your sincerity in this. I am also very impressed by Richard’s research credentials (cf. Google scholar). I cannot claim to have exhaustively read the quantum foundation literature. Perused, at best.
What I can claim to understand, and what I am exposed to daily, is the profound misunderstanding of statistics by physicists (especially if they don’t do Monte Carlo).
The acceptance of non-locality and the rejection of non-realism directly stem from a misunderstanding of statistics. Non-locality is a profoundly aberrated viewpoint through which to understand the concept of statistical sampling of joint quantities (aka the de facto non-realism of quantum parlance).
Bell was a clear thinker but, at some point, analogies and connections to unphysical events (non-local communication) hurt. For the life of me, I can’t see what his inequalities contributed that was not already there in the Young double-slit for all to think about.
I will try to keep a low profile on this blog to minimize information flow … blockage between you and Richard.
Steve Presse
Can you explain what is local non-realism?
I ask you becouse I do not know and many nonlocalists stongly critcise it. I do not agree with them but still it is not clear to me. You do not need to explain, a reference is enough for me.
Hi Justo,
In physics quantum classes we don’t use words like “non-realism” or “non-locality”. When we write down a wave-fxn for a young two slit, or an entangled state, we have a r+ sign between both parts of the wave fxn. The + sign implies an OR statement. To say they both parts of the wave fxn communicate non-locally, in modern statistical parlance, would be an abuse of language.
When we then see a diffraction pattern on the screen, what we see are manifestations of the laws of probability. That is, the photon could have diffracted through one OR the other slit.
To address your question simply: if I briefly look for refs that discuss local non-realism, I also find an assortment of other words drawn from philosophy which normally hints at papers of questionable provenance.
I would think that, when probed, most physicists would agree with what I said above. Very few would use words like non-realist, non-local etc that is reserved for philosophers.
Steve, of course, if you believe quantum mechanics, you don’t use those words. But maybe quantum mechanics is wrong. Some physicists are trying to align quantum mechanics and relativity theory, in particular, develop a theory of quantum gravity. Many smart physicists believe that Bell’s theorem presents a serious obstacle to doing so. One or both theories will need serious modification before they can be fused. So are you saying that physicists who work on quantum gravity are just philosophers and nobody needs to take any notice of them?
Are you saying that Bryan’s project is just philosophy!?
Hi Richard,
to be clear, no one working in unifying gravity with the other forces captured by the standard model is questioning the probabilistic nature of quantum or born’s rule (aka sampling from a probability distribution when you have a probabilistic theory).
So the confusion on non-realism/non-locality has nothing to do with the standard model being incomplete.
Second, yes, I consider all research into foundations of qm philosophy. Sorry.
If I have a joint probability distribution over two correlated variables (say spins that have interacted in the past ) and I sample from this joint distribution, I obtain correlated spin states. Does that mean they were in communication as I sampled them? Obviously not.
Steve, you are wrong there! Very serious and renowned researchers are exploring superdeterminism and retrocausality. Some are exploring instantaneous action at a distance within a preferred reference frame. The mathematics of these approaches stands firm. These are options which fit the facts, though you may not find them attractive (I don’t, either). The standard model of quantum mechanics is incomplete in the sense that it does not explain, it only predicts. It is not a mechanistic theory. The origin of those probabilities is not explained. Sure, most physicists consider all this merely a conundrum for philosophers. Get on with doing their experiments, developing quantum technology, solving problems in quantum chemistry which will benefit the world. Seems you are a “shut up and calculate” guy.
Then you go on to show that you have not read Bell’s “Bertlmann’s socks” paper. Obviously, the correlation between those spins does not imply they were in communication while they were being measured. I don’t think so, either. I think you are missing the point entirely. In that sense, I think you are in the same boat as my good friend Bryan!
Richard, I don’t need to read every n^th variant of everything that was ever written by Pusey/‘t hooft/Hossenfelder/Omnes/Bell/Bohm/Joy Christian et al. to know that you, and others, are seeking a mechanistic/deterministic (ahem classical) substitute to QM. Do I?
How about just learning the implications of a probabilistic framework instead of always fighting it and dismissing those who learnt it as “shut up and calculate” types?
Steve, of course, everybody doesn’t have to read everything. I don’t read what all the clever people on your list say. I’m not interested in a lot of it. I only read what some of the really stupid people say because it is alarming that so many smart people don’t see how dumb it is. I have learnt the implications of a probabilistic framework. My work on quantum tomography is used by experimenters. I am not fighting it! What gave you that idea? Feynman recommended “shut up and calculate” in a very positive sense, because he recommended gaining deep insight and intuition into the mathematics of the framework which certainly appears to be correct. My guess is that it is relativity theory that is going to need modification and that physicists are going to have to face up to irreversibility and randomness as basic ingredients of the physical world. But quantum philosophy is just one of my hobbies. I also do statistics like you do and I use it to correct miscarriages of justice.
I am not seeking a mechanistic/deterministic (ahem classical) substitute to QM. I know that it is a waste of time, like you do.
I think that Bryan is pursuing a fata morgana. It seems that he also has no patience to find out what Bell actually did. Since I like him, I’d like to save him from wasting a lot of time and experiencing a lot of frustration.
Steve: You won’t get far with Richard if you disagree, and he will question your competence. We have been friends for 20 years, and it only bothers me to the extent he hurts others, including careers. But argue away, please, but note he will split hairs with you and try to obfuscate the issues rather than answer. I am trying, unsuccessfully, to keep out of the discussion before my paper appears.
But I must make it clear: my paper is NOT about Bell’s inequalities. The only part of Bell that is of concern to me is his theorem, and the interpretation that the violations are evidence for non-locality.
Bryan, you wrote: “It only bothers me to the extent he hurts others, including careers”. Could you be specific concerning whose careers I hurt? Some people hurt their own careers by publishing papers full of mathematical derivations which were *wrong*; for instance Han Geurdes, see https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.00223 . Some of such people made things even worse by publicly resorting to vulgar personal abuse. The fact that some such people are simply incompetent in mathematics can be in plain view, to any mathematician at least. Some people came to me to get my opinion on their purported counterexamples to Bell’s theorem. I gave them my opinion. I showed them where they were making mistakes in their proofs. I’m sorry if that hurts people’s feelings. I recall a dental surgeon originally from Croatia who rewrote all of mathematics (a whole book, hundreds of pages) in order to disprove Bell’s theorem. I could not agree with his theory. His book is incredible. He was so upset that he said that he hoped that I would die, and that he had better not be invited to my funeral, because if he came, it would be to spit in my grave. I had met him at a few conferences, he was very charming as long as you did not disagree with him. He approached me, because he passionately wanted to be recognised by people like me. Yes, I hurt his career in science.
Well that about says it all, I can sort of rest my case after reading that. I won’t list the people, you know who I mean. Its not pointing out errors, its the way you do it that matters.
Bryan, that won’t do. Give us the names so I can defend myself. You are speaking in public and making a grave accusation. I need to be able to defend myself. (It may not be necessary).
By the way, when Bryan says “splitting hairs”, he is referring to occasions when I point out fatal errors in the heart of a long paper which leave the paper devoid of novel scientific content. That’s very upsetting for the authors. Papers which claim to disprove Bell’s theorem and which are wrong must be corrected or withdrawn. The same goes for papers which claim to prove the Riemann hypothesis. They must be thoroughly scrutinised and withdrawn if wrong. That’s just the normal process of science. You tell the world something which appears to be of fundamental importance. But you made some bad mistakes and you were wrong. You accept that, you apologise, and you withdraw the paper.
Hi Bryan, Richard,
To put an obvious name out there, I suppose Joy Christian comes to mind. It’s hard for me to take Joy’s thoughts on statistics/statisticians seriously 🙂
I don’t have anything to worry about regarding disagreeing with Richard. I have no stakes in this game and have long reconciled my thoughts to what some might call local non-realism (Ie, the boring, most common, take).
I’m sorry my thoughts have sidelined the scientific discussion.
I only wish I could understand the (misguided) obsession with “seeking a mechanism” underlying fundamental probability distributions.
In much of my work, filtering/marginalizing over/summing over realizations of random variables is part of life. It is to anyone doing serious statistics.
In doing so, we always implicitly say that it doesn’t matter to what value some latent variable was realized. We just sum over it. Indeed, this “non-realism” (if we want to call it that) is useful to me even in completely non-quantum applications.
Bottom line, non-realism is probably not only “true” but it is also useful.
Well said, Steve . I’m referring to your latest post, the one which starts with : “To put an obvious name out there, I suppose Joy Christian comes to mind. It’s hard for me to take Joy’s thoughts on statistics/statisticians seriously”.
My only stake in all this is the logic of anyone’s arguments.
Regarding JC: I think it’s hard to take any of Joy’s thoughts seriously. He might be right in his intuition that what we call quantum entanglement can be quite simply explained by the geometry of space-time, or just by the geometry of space, and maybe it shouldn’t be thought of as weird at all. I think that that might be right, and hence it’s a great pity that he sunk his own boats good and proper by not admitting simple errors, by making obscene personal comments about fellow scientists, and by lying about his academic CV.
In my humble opinion, Richard and Bryan are entering down a rabbit hole.
My guess is that in the end both will claim victory and a truce will be established.
I would bet for that if had I 5.000 euros to throw at a rabbit hole.
Although I am agnostic regarding quantum nonlocality, I stand by Bell because he is so trivially and almost universally misunderstood.
I think not, Justo! We are not betting on whether or not one of us can convince the other. Bryan is betting that he will convince the majority of his peers that, with a new publication, he will have made a brilliant contribution to science, shining an entirely new light on the EPR-Bell-spooky non-locality business. I am very confident he will not gain massive support for his (yet to be revealed) new ideas. The peers in question will be colleagues whom we both know to be scientists of both intelligence and integrity and with the necessary competence to read Bryan’s paper and read my forthcoming critique of it.
I predict: most of the panel will read my paper, smack their gobs, say “Holy shit!” and capitulate. The bet is serious, and I move as fast as I can, the ideas are simple, and the reason I expect people to accept it is because they are agnostic and uneasy with the status quo.
more like a wormhole than rabbit hole. Bell is not misunderstood. He could not imagine beyond the classical, so to me that makes him a Positivist, like Ernst Mach, and like Mach, Bell has held back the foundations of qm for 60 years with his theorem.
Bryan, your contempt towards Bell’s contribution reveals a very biased actitude. His inequality plays an important role in quantum information.
If Bell is not misunderstood, then who understands him correctly? Because there is no universal agreement. For instance:
1) People who believe in “classicality” are his worst enemies because he rules out non-conspiratorial local hidden variables (Joy Christian, de la Peña, Cetto, etc.). According to this group of people, the Bell theorem and his inequality are complete nonsense and worst than pseudoscience.
2) On the other hand, physicists like F. Werner and Stephen Boughn at least do not claim that his equality is meaningless, only that it cannot be interpreted as proof of quantum nonlocality. I suspect that this is the position of most physicists.
3) There are what I call radical nonlocalists. It includes a number of philosophers like Tim Maudlin and Federico Laudisa but there are also many physicists that think in this way.
4) We also have people like Griffiths who defend quantum locality like those in 2), but unlike them, think the inequality is nonsense.
Do you consider yourself in one of those categories? Just in case you want to give us a hint.
Bell could and did imagine beyond the classical. He could also think extremely sharply, and he could analyse the difference between the two worlds. Trouble is, many readers don’t have this ability. His work has advanced both QM itself and its foundations to an enormous degree.
I predict, once again, that non-locality and Bell’s theorem will be assigned to the Annals of Bad Ideas and Lost Causes. Please Richard, wait and see. And once again you question the mental capacity of your opponents, and praise those you agree with.
Bryan, I praise sharp and clear thinkers! And clean, elegant, *correct* mathematics. Bell himself veered to different conclusions at different stages of his life. I don’t know what he would think today. And yes, I am waiting in order to see what you will come up with and I will give it my careful and unbiased attention, and give you my honest opinion. I have an open mind concerning quantum foundations. Often I veer towards different opinions at different times on the same day.
Great! All I want from you and panel is honesty.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” This principle was famously laid out by German theoretical physicist Max Planck in 1950 and it turns out that he was right.
The case of the Bell theorem is not so much about a new scientific truth. It is rather about trivial but persistent misunderstandings. Unfortunately, Max Planck’s maxim equally applies.
Good luck with the bet and let us wait and see who finally sees the light.
Hope everyone is ok. It occurred to me that Gisin and others did not reply. Do I take this to mean that Gisin will not put up 5,000 euros to support his work? Likely the truth is he has dismissed me as a nut, but either way, I challenge him to reply here and respond to the bet. Professor Gisin could always teleport the money to me when I win!!
Bryan, I expect you’re right in your guess about Gisin. Write your paper! If it’s as great as you bet it is, you’ll hear from Gisin soon enough after it comes out.
The paper is written. I am moving along. Gisin may refuse to bet for whatever reason, but it tells everyone that he will not stand behind his work. He could disdainfully bet me with a pledge to take my money and give it to a worthy charity. But I believe he fears I would win, eradicate non-locality, and down comes a house of cards! That is the real reason he will not bet in my view.
How about this, rather than a bet (my goal is not his money but his research): Gisin tells us in the most concise nutshell the fundamental reason why I will lose. I guess that means why he believes in non-locality. I think everyone would be pleased to hear that statement. How about that Nicolas?
It is interesting that for so long we have been exposed to (me suffer through ) lots of media on “teleporting” photons from one hand to the other; wowing the public with amazing feat of “beam me up Scotty”, talks etc.; and other hype created by “EPR” channels. But when someone gets a “good?” idea, (me) even though not fully developed at first, the papers are rejected with no objective comments e.g. “The paper is against the current views”, ” The author does not understand Bell’s work” are two rejections 12 years ago, so I stopped trying to publish, not worth the angst, and hey, I had tenure, so I did not feel pressured to publish, and theoretician so not need much research funds.
There is a reason for this: the field of quantum mechanics has changed, as Andrei Khrennikov said to me in 2009 when you, Richard my friend, rejected my paper, that the problem was that I was doing “quantum mechanics” and others were doing “quantum business!” I agree, but what a waste of research funds!! So I read, listened and tried to get my ideas to work. I did not publish because I did not have it straight: I must have no loose ends for the Gill’s to jump on.
Part of the reason I see the non-local work as a house of cards, is the non-local people circle their wagons rather than listen to alternate suggestions: Christian, Geurdes, Hess, me…are all attacked personally if we decent, and if you do not think me right, how about the site run by a bunch of disillusioned and unemployed perennial post-docs who pilloried Christian and still do
https://www.science20.com/alpha_meme/quantum_crackpot_randi_challenge_help_perimeter_physicist_joy_christian_collect_nobel_prize-79614
This site is in my view the very worst side of physics, immoral, denigrating and extremely closed minded. Its raison d’etre is a personal attack on Joy, and when I made a comment in support of Joy I was discredited as a chemist and they edited my posts to make me look stupid! Best is to allowed them to drift from one post doc to another, but we should be aware that Physics gets personal when attacked.
We see all this in the press, but when the tables turn, and I challenge them, the gurus are silent and will not stand behind their work. Silence speaks volumes.
Some things are not “…beyond human comprehension.” rather they are “…beyond human perception.”
Hess attacked me personally, after I tried to explain his mistakes to him. I went on to publish papers showing where he (actually, his collaborator the mathematician Walter Philip) had made mathematical errors in his published papers.
Christian attacked me personally, after I tried to explain his first mistakes to him and posted a short rebuttal of his argument on arXiv. I later published papers showing where he had made further mathematical errors in his later published papers. I wrote them at the invitation of the journal editors who had published his papers.
I’m not aware of attacking Han Geurdes personally. Patiently, and many times, I personally explained the mistakes he was making, in a series of attempts. (He came to me asking me for my advice!). I published a paper, at the invitation of the editor, showing where he had made mathematical errors in one of his published papers.
I’m not aware of attacking you personally.
My motivation in all those cases was to help these people. And to help science, and to help the community. I would have expected reluctant thanks, some expression of embarrassment; and I would have loved to continue by collaborating with them on working out their ideas better.
Now one thing I might well do, which people like you might well object to, is that I ponder, in public, how it could be that highly educated and intelligent people like you or Han Geurdes or Joy Christian or Karl Hess could possibly not see those errors themselves. Yes, I know, people don’t like that. But I think it is legitimate to wonder how it could be that respected scientists and decent people can fail to see basic errors in their logic. Similarly, if they do a lot of complicated mathematics and make mistakes in it, they may be angry with themselves for their mistakes, but surely they should not be angry with people who went to the trouble to check the details of their work and pointed out to them where they were slipping up.
As a teacher, it is not enough just to tell a student that they made a mistake. You have to explain to them what their mistake was. In order to communicate with your student, you have to understand their way of thinking. You would be amazed how many well-educated STEM people do not have any feeling for basic logic. That’s one thing I think I am good at: I have a deep feeling for basic logic, and I am not a bad teacher, either.
You are angry at Sasha Vongehr’s quantum Randi challenge but you don’t understand it. He’s intelligent and kind. His idea in that blog post and in several publications is a very good one.
You are angry at the ridicule which Joy Christian has suffered but I doubt you have studied his papers and tried to understand his ideas. I can tell you that he is moreover a liar and a thief. He lies about his academic CV to journal editors and on academic social media. He plagiarized computer programs written by me. Not only that, but he also publicly makes the most vulgar personal comments about fellow scientists and later denies that he was the one who made those posts. Yes, he is a bit pathetic, and I am sorry for him. I think you should study his work and his behaviour in more detail, before accusing me and respected colleagues of having behaved improperly to him.
If people like you can’t spot the errors in Christian’s publications, then I can only say – what is the world coming to!
Regarding Gisin and others: I suggest you send them your paper and ask them for their comments if you have a finished draft which you are more or less happy with. You should also send it to me. I’m quite prepared to have my mind changed concerning Bell’s theorem. I’m retired and have lots of wonderful hobbies and good friends, I’m proud of a number of my past achievements, but what I did in quantum information came very easily to me. I had some luck in connecting things which people hadn’t connected before.
Thanks for that. The literature on your exchanges is there for people to decide, but you continually think of me as a quantum chemist, and put me down as a crackpot, and say I do not have the faculties to understand Bell. I would prefer an objective reason or two. I have found steps in Joy’s work that I do not believe, but I do not berate him as incompetent because of this.
But I am very curious about your pondering regarding me because my stand is I cannot accept non-local entanglement so there must be a rational explanation. What, please, in my case do your ponderings reveal about your view of my failings in this area? What I am missing? I am not convinced by Bell’s theorem, where are my failings?
You say we should be thankful to have errors pointed out. Indeed I am, if errors there be, but so far there are none that convince me. So I stood by my intuition. But will you, Gisin and others thank me when non-locality is repudiated??
I ponder too, I’ll post my poem!!
Bryan, you want an objective reason for saying that you do not have the faculties to understand Bell. Well, you just gave it to me. You can’t see that Joy’s work is blemished by schoolboy errors in elementary logic, calculus, and algebra. You can’t see that his mathematical counterexamples to the mathematical core of Bell’s work are plain wrong. This means that you lack some core STEM competencies, which I find a bit disturbing, for someone who has done so much good work and contributed so much in physical chemistry.
The *only* content of Christian’s papers is that he has a dream that those quantum correlations thought to be a characteristic of entanglement have a simple geometric explanation and that there is nothing spooky or mysterious or non-local about them. It seems that you have a similar dream.
Give us a preview of your paper! I am happy to give it a careful reading and privately give you my honest opinion.
To know it’s real
By
Bryan Sanctuary
December 13, 2021
Within the bounds set by science,
I gaze with growing wonder
At what’s revealed and finally comes,
From many years of ponder.
And ponder, yes, it can’t be helped,
For the rewards are far and wide
Of grasping Nature’s reality,
I never can subside.
And some they mock, and make a joke
As in my folly I fail
In seeking truth, they cry to me,
“There is no Holy Grail!”
Yet in my soul, within my ken,
Ideas take shape and form
That deeply are a part of me
I can rely on none.
Perhaps I listen, sometimes I talk,
And well I take the view
I’d give up all, if proven wrong,
I need a cogent cue.
And through the folly, the dead-end roads,
I trust despite the tempts,
It must emerge, present itself
And then our culture rends.
Within the limits of my id,
I maze with growing awe
At finding what’s within my bounds
What’s truly real for all.
I do not think that Joy’s GA ideas are wrong, just he has not seen though it yet. I congratulate his efforts into something different that we should listen to, not dismiss out of hand. So you say I lack some core STEM competencies, and likely true, but I really think my background of quantum stat mech, my mentors, and spin theory, not to mention me viewing stuff more as a chemist, has helped me. Math is only a tool to me. I do not claim to be a mathematician nor engineer.
Actually, I understand Joy’s ideas a lot better than I understand yours. You tend to obfuscate with verbiage and irrelevant points. I cannot read papers any more that start off claiming to use non-locality–because I know the paper is wrong and so I just read the abstract and move on.
So you have decided that I do not have the competence to resolve the EPR paradox and repudiate non-locality? We will find out soon.
Maybe you can answer my question to Gisin: a nutshell fundamental reason that convinces you that Nature is non-local.
I really would like to release the paper now, but I must follow the rules.
Bryan, you are not good at reading what I wrote. I do not dismiss the idea of using GA to better understand QM. Better people than I in physics and GA have already contributed great things in that direction, in particular Doran and Lasenby. Do you know their work? Christian ignores it. I do not dismiss Christian’s efforts out of hand. I have studied his work very carefully, and I have told you that there is nothing there, nothing there at all. You cannot understand Joy’s ideas because there is nothing to understand. This informs me that you likely do not have the competence to achieve a great breakthrough in resolving the EPR paradox and repudiating non-locality. You simply do not understand what you are up against. I cannot answer your question to Gisin. Nature is what it is. The very best experiments tell us that we cannot understand phenomena associated with quantum entanglement in a classical mechanistic way without violating locality. Feynman understood this too, long ago, long before Bell’s work came out. He explained perfectly clearly that Bell’s work did not tell us anything about the physical world which we didn’t already know (at least, if we actually understood what quantum mechanics actually says).
Let us not discuss Joy any more–we both agree he has not solved the EPR paradox and he has not disproven Bell to either our satisfaction. But I applaud his efforts. I of course know of the GA work of Doran and Lasenby. I have their book and I have communicated with Doran.
The experiments, violation of BI, are interpreted as evidence for non-locality. I say it has nothing to do with that. They are interpreted by Bell’s theorem which makes no physical or rational sense to me.
There is also little agreement on his theorem, each person has a nuance of how the other misses the point–like Justo. In short there is little agreement as to what is going on and the foundations are a mess. I hope to clarify these things.
So let us wait–
You mean, there is little agreement on what the physical significance of “Bell’s theorem” is. You don’t seem to see that there is a true mathematical theorem there. In other words, a tautology. If you don’t even realize what that tautology is, you have no idea what you are up against. All I can say is, dream on! The difference between us is that you don’t care about mathematics and I do care about mathematics. I don’t claim to be able to make any real contributions to physics. I never did claim that, and I never did do that. I do think that I did make some nice contributions to mathematics and that I was involved in some important applications of mathematics. Like: contributing to the reversal of some miscarriages of justice.
Richard
I agree the Bell theorem is a trivial mathematical result. However, that does not mean that its physical interpretation cannot be controversial.
My claim is that misinterpretation of its physical meaning and implications are widespread, and Bell’s views are also misinterpreted.
Some people stubbornly insist on misinterpreting him in order to make his arguments appear silly and easy to debunk. The proof is the response of Griffiths to my comment.
Richard, agreed, there is little agreement on what his theorem means, and thanks Justo, you agree with that too. I say it is confused in part because of the philosophical (unphysical) mess Bell’s theorem leaves. His conclusions have wide interpretations.
Bell was clear enough about the confusion, he offered 4 interpretations of his theorem, page 154, so which is it? None I say.
The proof of his theorem is Bertlmann’s sock-wash. It is logic, based upon the existence of socks. I disagree with the assumptions, so no tautology in my mind.
Which assumptions do you not agree with? You disagree with the existence of the socks? You disagree with the existence of the colour of the sock on the foot you can’t see? Fair enough. Niels Bohr and Richard Feynman would both agree.
I disagree that the socks have a colour all the time. His random variables are always just +/-1.
Hi Bryan, if I can suggest one thing: it may be more helpful to request of Gisin his raw data and re-analyze it under your proposed framework. It would be better than sending him bets (which is a very strange way of doing science). Also, make your analysis code freely available for all to judge. It’s the only way to move science forward.
Bryan, so you are against realism. You are with Bohr and with Feynman. Against Einstein.
It’s a logically consistent point of view. Because the socks don’t have a colour when we are not looking at them we cannot apply usual concepts of locality and causality to them. There is simply nothing to talk about. Bell himself said that this was an admissible point of view. It’s not a new idea. It’s as old as QM.
Hi Steve I have never had problems with the experimental data, clicks are clicks, I believe them. It is the interpretation of the data that is of concern. My position is that there is no such thing as non-local entanglement; no quantum channels. This is about the complete repudiation of any use of the ideas of Bell’s Theorem, and the consequences. Between me and those who try to exploit non-locality, there is no common ground. Our views are totally different: I am a local realist.
Richard started the bet, so we must ask him if it is a strange way to do science. Also that Crackpot challenge I mentioned (is that the way to do science?) I took Richard up. So I invited others to join. I joined because I know I will win, but more importantly to get some interest in the foundations of QM.
I have nothing to hide, but now it is premature to release anything.
Bryan, *you* started *your* bet. I have several times published a *challenge*. My challenges have been to disprove a true mathematical theorem in probability theory by publishing a Monte Carlo computer simulation model which attains a result which should be impossible. It’s a “quantum Randi” challenge and its purpose is pedagogical. You need to read Vongehr’s published (“Foundations of Physics”) paper on the quantum Randi challenge. Steve Gull, well known astrophysicist, and GA expert, also used this challenge: Ed Jaynes thought Bell was wrong and didn’t believe Bell’s theorem. Gull’s challenge forced him to rethink. He was flummoxed. My challenge separates scientists from crackpots. Scientists realise they cannot win the challenge. Crackpots keep on trying and keep on failing, and do not learn from their failures.
Bryan, it’s important to know how you get from clicks to verifying your framework. There are intermediate steps and I the community wi insist on verifying those. As for being a local realist, if socks don’t have a color, then you are not a realist? Fyi, as I mentioned in an earlier post pertaining to latent variable marginalization, if realism turns out to be true, then I will be very sad and I will still need to avoid it in most of my calculations.
*there are intermediate steps and the community will
For example, how many Photons hit a pixel at any given time. No clue. So we we need to marginalize over this variable to relate camera ADU’s to properties of the molecule emitting light.
Steve, so you are a realist, you think that there are *things* called photons!
Hi Richard, I assume you are kidding…
I assume that I don’t know the number of “electromagnetic force carrying particles” striking the detector and I need to marginalize over these.
Steve: no, I am not kidding! You really need to read Bell’s “Bertlmann’s socks” carefully.
If you think there are “photons”, how do you think that they go through two slits at the same time in the two slit experiment? As Feynman said, that experiment says it all.
Of course, physicists talk about photons all the time and even come up with numbers of photons. Really they mean “amount of energy”.
I’m very confused Richard. Using the word photon doesn’t imply a particle. They are well defined concepts within QED, i.e, quantized fields. No need to read Bertlmann’s socks, or Bell, or anyone to understand basic Quantum (which is what this whole thread is about).
I know. The whole EPR and Bell story is about whether there could be a classical explanation behind the usual predictions of QM, QED etc. But if you are perfectly happy with normal quantum theory, then you’re not interested in it, and you obviously are not interested in what Bryan is doing nor in what I am doing.
What do you mean by “understand” quantum? You can get very familiar with the mathematics and indeed you can become very skilled and creative with it. Nothing wrong with that. If, however, you are interested in quantum gravity you do have some problems, and they are connected to Bell’s theorem. By the way, I do not understand what Bryan is trying to do, and I’m pretty sure that he is chasing after a Fata Morgana. Oh, well. He seems to have written his paper, so now we just have to wait for it to appear in Nature and observe whether it is acclaimed as a great breakthrough. That’s what our bet is about.
Sorry I used the word “electromagnetic force carrying particles” for photons. Clearly they are quantized EM fields. They are non-realist and local (at least to anyone who has understood Copenhagen and uses it in their daily lives).
It never fails to surprise me how much useless baggage Bell has added to what should be clear from the Young two slit.
Steve, that’s exactly what Feynman said
I have no clue what Feynman says because I don’t read popular literature.
There’s a lovely Youtube video of Feynman lecturing to students and answering questions. Obviously, no one who is happy with mainstream physics needs to watch it, because Feynman’s opinions became the mainstream opinion and everyone who was educated later has had Feynman’s thinking instilled in them by their teachers, who got it from Feynman.
To be clear, I don’t understand what Bryan is doing. I also totally disagree that anyone working quantum gravity disagrees with the postulates of QM. Those are simply not the focus points of research in quantum gravity. Zwiebach’s string theory book should clarify that.
By “understand” QM, I genuinely mean understand the concept of a probabilistic theory and the theory of sampling that must come along with it.
It is beyond stupid to keep repeating things like “no one understands QM, we just get used to the math”. If that’s true, then logically, no one understand classical mechanics which follows from Heisenberg’s equations of motions.
I didn’t say that people working in quantum gravity disagree with the postulates of QM. Most don’t. But some do see problems there. Depends who you talk to. It’s not my field.
What Feynman said was not stupid. You have wisely decided not to worry about things which are not a problem for you. You follow Feynman’s recommendations.
I’m a statististician and a probabilist, I build probabilistic theories all the time.
Hi everyone
In my opinion people who understand the problems with QM (locality, weirdness, etc.) also understand what Bell did. It is very simple indeed. What Bell did is so simple and clear that is almost popular science.
Dimissing QM foundatinal problems as mere nonrealism is very naive. That is the reason why serious scientits are taking superdeterminism seriously. At least I would have to think twice before considering physicists like Gerard t’ Hooft as crackpots realists.
Interesting exchanges. You see Steve how hard it is to discuss with Richard.
By the way, I am colour blind!!
I thought about what Steve said about the bet. I agree with him. Such a bet would not have occurred to me without Richard’s challenge. I never took his bait because he simply set up rules that follow Bertlmann’s socks, and for those non-locality is required.
Why did Richard set up the bet? He thought no one would ever prove Nature is local, that no one would bet. He believes Bell’s Theorem.
But I am always open to a change in rules. If Richard wants to change the challenge to a bottle of scotch, I’m game. If you want to double the bet to 10,000 euros, I’m game. If he wants to back out now, that’s ok too. It is up to him. Please let me know.
You wonder why I am so forceful. It is because non-locality is absurd and I want to banish it. Consider this history:
Chris Fuchs denied me giving a talk at a meeting because I am a “local realist and incredible. No one wants to hear what you say.”
I had to suffer through nonsense at the same meeting: Gisin gave a talk in which he said that the connection between Alice and Bob occurred 10 billion times faster than the speed of light. He concluded, on a play of EPR, that “Relativity was incomplete!” And this got published!!!
I was at the meeting when Gisin got this Bell prize. When my talk came up in the same session, he walked out.
In 2009 Richard rejected my Växjö paper because I do not understand Bell’s work
In 2009 I was blacklisted from the arXiv because I challenged the religious concept of “quantum weirdness.”
Any subsequent papers were rejected: comments like “This paper goes against everything we believe about QM – reject.”
“The author uses the Levi-Civita tensor as antisymmetric, but it is not in this case!!!!!!,–reject
So I gave up until I had the answer–now
In short, my response to the Quantum Information people is they should have listened and not been so arrogant. They should have realized that building a theory on something that is “beyond human comprehension” is tenuous at best. They should not have put so much hype into absurdities that went mainline and appealed to the lay pop physics culture. They should have thought of other possibilities, but they build a huge discipline that drain resources and did not think their house of cards will collapse. And the bigger they come, the harder they fall.
But I must also admit that my expression of my ideas was not good until I studied QFT. I waffled around trying to get things clear and asked a lot of dumb questions. But I am stubborn. I could not accept non-local absurdity, so I sought a rational explanation and found that it is not beyond human comprehension. I would have given up if a convincing argument was given, it never was.
Richard, let me know about the bet rules etc. For my part, I have said enough. My position is clear–remove non-local entanglement from physics, understand the foundations of Nature from spin to wormholes.
I think I will wait to see how things move along on the publishing side and just follow what is being said here if anything.
Anon
“Why did Richard set up the bet? He thought no one would ever prove Nature is local, that no one would bet. He believes Bell’s Theorem.”
No, Bryan. I set up a challenge because I know that no one will ever disprove the mathematical theorem that Bell essentially proved. Whether Nature is local is a complex question to which I certainly don’t have an answer. If there is an answer, it depends on what you mean by a whole list of concepts, starting of course with “real” and “local”. (Incidentally: Luigi Accardi, Joy Christian, Fred Diether, and Han Geurdes did all think they could win the Bell challenge).
Bryan, you set up a bet, and it was a bet about your ability to revolutionize physics. I accepted your bet. We will see this year who wins.
“You see Steve how hard it is to discuss with Richard.”
You see how hard it is to discuss with someone who never reads what you actually say but is stuck with pre-conceived ideas (which are wrong) about what they think I am saying.
“In 2009 Richard rejected my Växjö paper because I do not understand Bell’s work”.
Bryan, tell me in what sense did I reject your paper? In personal communication, or as a referee of a journal? I believe it is true that you do not understand Bell’s work, and I can show you plenty of evidence for that in your own writings. In my opinion, your 2009 paper was and still is unpublishable because the mathematics in it is wrong. It does not deliver the goods. You make claims about your results that are not supported by what is actually done in the paper. I am sure that I have told you this, but it seems you did not believe it or did not understand me. You appeared to be claiming to have a counter-example to Bell’s mathematical results, and as you should know, that is one thing you certainly never will be able to do.
The funny thing is that you don’t like my Bell challenge because it is based on Bertlmann’s socks. Yet, the 2015 experiments were based on the Bertlmann’s socks experimental protocol. If you come up with a new theory, it has got to explain the results of those experiments, too. It appears that you have a deep religious belief in locality which prevents you from even studying the simple mathematics of Bell’s theorem and my later *strengthening* or *refining* of Bell’s theorem. I strengthened the assumptions and got stronger conclusions out of it. The strengthening of the assumptions did not restrict the application of my theorem, since every experimenter can *impose* the assumption of randomization of setting choices. This is called “evidence-based physics”. Thank heavens, we nowadays have evidence-based medicine.
Ok, glad you do not want to back out of the bet. Do not say I did not give you a chance. I am not going to respond to your comments.
In my opinion, retrocausality is a better candidate than superdeterminism with respect to Bell experiment results. My own model is retrocausal.
Interesingly, t’Hooft has a sign flip for space in the far distance (after traveling through a BH). Similarly Joy Christian has spatial reversals and/or sign changes occurring within his S^3 models.
I do not have much interest in Bell’s Theorem in QM, but Richard applies it to non-QM cases and in non-QM cases I completely agree with Richard that Bell’s Theorem holds.
Also, I have never managed to beat Bell’s Theorem in simulated Bell QM experiments. I first started performing simulations over ten years ago while trying to help Fred Dieter’s first attempts to simulate Joy’s model on a computer.
My interest in Standard Model particles led me to use Feynmann diagrams where antiparticles were represented as travelling backwards in time. My retrocausal model followed directly from that. Energy considerations are used to dismiss the notion of positrons travelling in reverse time, but I have an argument against that.
And Bell’s Theorem in QM? Well, in a retrocausal model, The physical experiment does not conform to the Bell’s Theorem requirement that pairs of entangled particles are measured. So Bell’s Theorem is inappropriate to a retrocausal model as the antiparticle is measured when it is not entangled.
I think this idea is related to the ideas which Bryan Sanctuary has had about giving each particle two spins, and maybe connected to a simulation approach of Fred Diether. By the way, it is not difficult to get exactly half of the negative cosine (the EPR-B correlation curve) by a local realistic model. So if you double the number of observations but don’t double the denominator “1 / N” in your sample averages you get exactly the negative cosine.
I do not really understand Fred’s recent approach where he had two lists of measurement observations for each of Alice and Bob.
Also, I am not sure about halving the value of N to get the negative cosine curve.
I can see that if you divide the 0.5 correlation by sqrt(1/2) rather than by 1/2 then you get 0.707.
Colour of socks. The +1/-1 are clicks or measurement observations and not colours of socks nor analagous to them. My particle model can, for a single particle with a single detector setting, give rise to +1 or -1 measurements depending on the time at which the measurement is made.
Austin Fearnley
Austin, what Fred does is to artificially double his sample. Each pair of particles is replaced by 2 pairs. Becomes 2 N. Bryan seemed 10 years ago to be doing something like that. Then Fred computed the correlation as sum_1^{2 N} product of measurement outcomes, divided by N. He artificially inflates his correlation by a factor 2.
Luigi Accardi had another trick: He first used the detection loophole to generate a negative cosine with amplitude 1 divided by sqrt 2 for the original outcomes (+/-1 valued). That’s the best you can get. So by letting Alice’s outcomes instead take values +/- sqrt 2, he got the full amplitude.
He claimed he was following standard physics methodology in scattering experiments, you had to correct for the cross section, or something?
We have abandoned that approach. You are way behind the times.
https://sciphysicsfoundations.com/viewtopic.php?p=678#p678
.
I hope you will get your approach published, Fred
I have been re-reading some of Bryan’s past papers to try to figure out what he might be trying to do. A number of times, he seems to be predicting that EPR-B type experiments will only produce the correlation function: minus one half cos(alpha – beta). The initially entangled pairs of particles become disentangled on measurement. In fact, there is a local realist model which gives – 0.7071 cos(alpha – beta). That number 0.7071… is actually 1/sqrt 2. See my https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.00719 – I must finish that paper and submit it. In other papers, he proposes extending quantum information theory by allowing non-Hermitian states. It seems that so far he did not work out this proposal in detail for the EPR-B experiment, nor as a general theory either.
This is exactly why I mentioned we need to see the raw data processed and the code that goes along with it. Without a clear understanding of the data post-processing, then factors of 2 or \sqrt{2} can appear and disappear.
Richard, N versus 2N.
I simulated Fred’s recent model and only found the classical correlation. But I only used real numbers, rather than quaternions, and I only used Joy’s equations for the model which meant I completely ignored Fred’s computer program code. Fred did write that Joy’s equations were incomplete at that time. I used N rather than 2N as the correlation was calculated on N measurements for Alice and N for Bob. Just as in a normal correlation calculation. Using Joy’s equations meant that one did not need to have two lists for Alice, nor for Bob. Anyway, I stopped following that discussion closely after I could not exceed the classical correlation with Joy’s equations.
Looked at your linked paper. May comment later. (Typo on page 7. ‘Quiet’ should be ‘quite’.)
Austin Fearnley
I am eagerly awaiting Bryan’s new theory. I gave up on Fred. He won’t accept reality. I need something new to simulate. Bryan”s theory sounds like a good project.
John Reed
Thanks for that, I do not think you will be disappointed.
By way of introduction, I’m a retired physicist. I worked in industry programming image and mapping software for geophysical subsurface exploration. I have a PhD. in physics, quantum theory. I became interested in what Joy Christian was doing with geometric algebra and its relation to quantum theory. Sorry to say I was disappointed in the way it turned out. Joy and his partner, Fred have worked for many years on some things that, in the end turned out to be incorrect. That was a dead end road. I’m still not satisfied with the present interpretations of quantum theory. Every interpretation has its problems. i’m always open to new ideas in this field. I will give your theory a complete and honest investigation. I use Mathematica for programming and have quite a bit of experience with using it.
I look forward to seeing your ideas.
John
Interesting discussion…
Bryan, if you would like some objective feedback on your model, let me know. I will try to be as neutral as possible – I very much hope you will win, but I worry that it is not possible, so at least I could try to identify what criticism you might face… (I would tell you that in private of course).
Good luck!
Chantal
Nature Physics rejected my paper without peer review:
http://blog.mchmultimedia.com/2022/02/28/nature-physics-rejected-my-paper/
I haven’t seen your paper so I can’t judge. I suggest you post it somewhere, anywhere. Then you will hear my opinion. There are lots of other people who think Bell was wrong. Maybe they will adopt your ideas.
Alternatively, rise to my “Big Bell challenge”. Bell’s theorem says you can’t. You say Bell’s theorem is wrong. Well: prove that it is wrong, by exhibiting irrefutable “signatures of quantum non-locality” on a classical computer network of classical computers. Such a physical and reproducible counter-example, hard physical proof, trumps any establishment conspiracy. Prove that “Nature” was wrong in the full view of the world community of fellow scientists. Force “Nature” editors to take you seriously. Do that which everyone thinks is impossible, and which everyone can check at home.
I am almost certain that you finally will be able to publish to paper but it does not have to be in “Nature”. You should try other journals. Even journals on the philosophy of science can accept works on nonlocality
I am moving on of course. Thanks for you comment.
Try “Royal Society open science”, or “IEEE Access”. The editor in chief is sympathetic to your program. Lots of journals publish anti-Bell stuff, especially the rapid-publication open-science journals which want debate and controversy. But first of all: put pre-publications online. Then people like me can advertise them. Lots of people want to believe what you say.
Murphy’s Law: just when I need it, my site slowed down. I have asked my ISP to fix it. Sorry.
Site is faster now, and hope it is ok, Sorry.
So why don’t you post your paper on your blog? Or email it to some people who could support you in getting the initial Nature Science rejection overturned? Statistically, Nature’s decision is justified. Extraordinary claims require extraordinarily strong evidence.
Why not use one of the new PPPR platforms? (PPPR = post publication peer review). For instance, https://f1000research.com/
I put up the abstract of my paper and a short summary. I am waiting for arXiv to allow me to post, and as soon as they do, I will post the full paper.
http://blog.mchmultimedia.com/2022/03/02/spin-in-free-flight/
Did arXiv reject the paper?
Bryan asked arXiv to ask me to approve his posting his paper to arXiv/quant-ph. I could not do that because he would not let me see it in advance, so I couldn’t judge whether or not it was appropriate for quant-ph. I have difficulties getting papers onto arXiv, I think I am blacklisted because of Joy Christian who I believe has friends there. I don’t want to lose my arXiv privileges. It did seem to me that Bryan’s paper anyway would belong better on Physics-General since Bryan apparently disagrees with the standard quantum information framework which is accepted by all those who use quant-ph.
The correct procedure is: first Bryan gets his work accepted by a majority of our peers. He has plenty of means of publishing it. Of course, the establishment journals won’t even consider it. That’s already happened. He has to change his tactics. Publish it, gain support from leaders of the field (via getting support from their ambitious students, who will be the first to realise that they have to change sides). Then, most papers of which preprints are posted on quant-ph will get withdrawn, and quant-ph will be cancelled as a special topic on arXiv. Well: it will stay there, for the historical record, but nobody will post papers there anymore, since their foundational assumptions have been overthrown and everybody who is anybody agrees that that is the case.
Several people tried to endorse me but were rejected. I submitted the papers to a journal, so am now waiting. I do want it up ASAP
I have a question about correlation. In the CHSH there are four correlations. Each correlation is calculated as E(a,b)= (N++(ab) – N–(ab))/(N+ +(ab) +N–(ab)) and added. Consider two only. Do you write E(a,b)+E(a’,b’) or write it as [(N++(ab) + N++(a’b’)) – (N++(ab) + N++(a’b’)]/([(N++(ab) + N++(a’b’)) +(N++(ab) + N++(a’b’)]?
Correlation is linear and additive I beleive
I think this may help https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_test
Dear Bryan
You wrote “I have a question about correlation. In the CHSH there are four correlations. Each correlation is calculated as E(a,b)= (N++(ab) – N–(ab))/(N+ +(ab) +N–(ab)) and added. Consider two only. Do you write E(a,b)+E(a’,b’) or write it as [(N++(ab) + N++(a’b’)) – (N++(ab) + N++(a’b’)]/([(N++(ab) + N++(a’b’)) +(N++(ab) + N++(a’b’)]? Correlation is linear and additive I believe.”
Correlation is not linear and additive. Expectation value is linear and additive. Correlation (for physicists) is expectation of product. It is bilinear.
Your expression for the correlation is wrong. It should be
[#(++) + #(- -) – #(+ -) – #(- +)] / [#(++) + #(- -) + #(+ -) + #(- +)]
In CHSH you add three correlations and subtract the fourth.
No simplification is possible.
Alternatively you do a martingale test based on the “Bell game”. Settings are coded ‘1”, “2”; outcomes are +/-1. If the settings were completely random then the four denominators in the four correlations are roughly the same. I proposed back in 2001 adding three of the numerators and subtracting the fourth. This can be expressed in terms of number of wins. A trial results in “win” if neither setting is “2” and the outcomes are equal or both settings are “2” and the outcomes are opposite. Otherwise it results in “lose”. Under local realism the chance of “win” cannot exceed 3/4. Under QM it can equal 85%.
The 2015 loophole free tests used my martingale test and cited my works on it.
Richard
My 2001 paper is on arXiv, https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0110137
Accardi contra Bell (cum mundi): The Impossible Coupling
Richard D. Gill
An experimentally observed violation of Bell’s inequality is supposed to show the failure of local realism to deal with quantum reality. However, finite statistics and the time sequential nature of real experiments still allow a loophole for local realism, known as the memory loophole. We show that the randomized design of the Aspect experiment closes this loophole. Our main tool is van de Geer’s (2000) supermartingale version of the classical Bernstein (1924) inequality guaranteeing, at the root n scale, a not-heavier-than-Gaussian tail of the distribution of a sum of bounded supermartingale differences. The results are used to specify a protocol for a public bet between the author and L. Accardi, who in recent papers (Accardi and Regoli, 2000a,b, 2001; Accardi, Imafuku and Regoli, 2002) has claimed to have produced a suite of computer programmes, to be run on a network of computers, which will simulate a violation of Bell’s inequalites. At a sample size of thirty thousand, both error probabilities are guaranteed smaller than one in a million, provided we adhere to the sequential randomized design. The results also show that Hess and Philipp’s (2001a,b) recent claims are mistaken that Bell’s theorem fails because of time phenomena supposedly neglected by Bell.
It got published two years later in a “Festschrift” on a colleague’s retirement. The result was later improved by myself in several directions, and later still by the group in Delft who came up with a fantastic simplification by switching from the classical CHSH statistic “S” to the Bell game statistic “number of wins in the Bell game”. Instead of doing a lot of work to show that those pesky denominators are with large probability very close to N / 4 if N is large, just drop them altogether!
PS My 2001 paper is on arXiv, https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0110137
Accardi contra Bell (cum mundi): The Impossible Coupling
Richard D. Gill
An experimentally observed violation of Bell’s inequality is supposed to show the failure of local realism to deal with quantum reality. However, finite statistics and the time sequential nature of real experiments still allow a loophole for local realism, known as the memory loophole. We show that the randomized design of the Aspect experiment closes this loophole. Our main tool is van de Geer’s (2000) supermartingale version of the classical Bernstein (1924) inequality guaranteeing, at the root n scale, a not-heavier-than-Gaussian tail of the distribution of a sum of bounded supermartingale differences. The results are used to specify a protocol for a public bet between the author and L. Accardi, who in recent papers (Accardi and Regoli, 2000a,b, 2001; Accardi, Imafuku and Regoli, 2002) has claimed to have produced a suite of computer programmes, to be run on a network of computers, which will simulate a violation of Bell’s inequalites. At a sample size of thirty thousand, both error probabilities are guaranteed smaller than one in a million, provided we adhere to the sequential randomized design. The results also show that Hess and Philipp’s (2001a,b) recent claims are mistaken that Bell’s theorem fails because of time phenomena supposedly neglected by Bell.
It got published two years later in a “Festschrift” on a colleague’s retirement. The result was later improved by myself in several directions, and later still by the group in Delft who came up with a fantastic simplification by switching from the classical CHSH statistic “S” to the Bell game statistic “number of wins in the Bell game”. Instead of doing a lot of work to show that those pesky denominators are with large probability very close to N / 4 if N is large, just drop them altogether!
Hello all and Happy Holidays. Richard and Jan-Åke refused to accept my idea of hyper-helicity without a statistical simulation to prove it. Well here it is and guess what, Nature has CHSH = 3 and QM has CHSH =2.707. QM is incomplete as EPR said:
http://blog.mchmultimedia.com/2022/12/22/simulated-epr-correlations-with-chsh-3/
Comments welcome!!
Happy Holidays to you too. It is well known that a local hidden variable can violate the Bell inequality. That does not disprove Bell’s theorem.
To disprove Bell theorem you have to do that without violating statistical independence.
No statistical dependence, no broken loopholes, no entanglement, all rules followed. So Bell’s theorem is disproven.
I haven’t seen a paper yet, but I have the impression that you break the rule “outcomes equal +/-1”. So your work is not about Bell’s theorem and has no relevance to the experiments which led to the 2022 Nobel prize. If I’m right in my surmise, then I can tell you that what you did has been done many times before. Experimenters in Leiden even did an experiment observing the same S = 3.1… as predicted by their own theory.
I think that Bryan “disproves” Bell’s theorem by removing the restriction that the outcomes take values +/-1. Lots of people did that before!
Link to a paper seems to be missing.
It is 2 a.m. and I will fix it tomorrow. Sorry about that. I checked it earlier and it was ok. Anon.
Hi Richard (every time I reply I must put in my name and email etc, what am I doing wrong?)
I checked the links and they all work from my end. I took the opportunity to upload the latest version that just improves the figures and a few typos. Let me know if you still have problems.
Bryan, good, there is now a link to a file on Dropbox. So each pair of particles generates 4 clicks? Each particle has two spin-like quantum properties and you are detecting both, at both ends of the experiment?
NO!!!! One click per particle. No loopholes. No statistical dependence between pairs. It follows all the rules.
Two clicks per particle. Addition of correlations. You did break the rules.
Richard please read the code and then you will stop talking nonsense. There is only one click per particle as I am sure Pierre and Chantal will confirm. I take the sum of correlations, and you want to take the average. So let us move on from that because that is not going to get you anywhere.
PS I have no idea why you, Bryan, need to sign in again every time. I’m no WP expert.
Bryan’s experiment consists of two correlated Bell experiments in parallel. Each of them admits a local hidden variables description. Thus, for each separately, “S”cannot exceed 2. When one adds the correlations for the two sub-experiments, “S” cannot exceed 4. The theory and simulation is in full agreement with Bell’s theorem. The experiment described in the theory (a Bell experiment with quaternary outcomes) has never been done. The results have no bearing on the interpretation of actual Bell experiments.
I agree. The other way to see it is that Bryan miscalculates the correlations. The number experiments is devided by two whence his correlation is multiplied by 2.
He divides the sum of the results in two groups, say A and B. If the total number of experiments is N, then the correlation should be: (A+B)/N—-(1)
However, Bryan seems to do a different thing, he does
A/(N/2) + B/(N/2) = 2 (A+B)/N—–(2)
So (2) is duplicated with respect to the experimental correlation.
Bryan thinks that “S” is a measure of correlation between the two particles. But it is no such thing. “S = c” is the equation of a hyperplane in the 16-dimensional space of experimental probabilities (p(x, y | a, b) : x, y = +/-1, a, b = 1,2). The hyperplane with c = 2 is a supporting hyperplane to the set of “behaviours” possible under LHV.
To resolve the Gibbs paradox in statistical mechanics, we need an N!
Why?
Particle positions are positionally entangled (ie, particles are indistinguishable). That is, 2 particles can be in state |x, x’> (with particle 1 in position x and particle 2 in position x’) or state |x’, x>. As such the state of the indistinguishable particles is the sum of both options: |x,x’>+|x’,x>.
In the case of 3 particles, the entangled state with simply be the sum of the three positional permutations.
What kind of property would Bryan need to accommodate entangled continuum states?
The point is that entangled states reflect correlated properties between particles that could be (hence the “+” sign OR statement) in any of the product states summed.
Knowing one particle’s properties instantaneously given knowledge of another *can be* interpreted as non-local. But it is a gross misuse of language for anyone who understands the statistics of sampling from joint distributions.
So there is NOTHING to “fix” because QM is fine & non-locality is hype. We just need to understand how probabilities and sampling of non-independent random variables works.
My 2 cents.
Steve, it is not so simple. Take a look at https://algassert.com/quantum/2015/10/11/Bell-Tests-vs-No-Communication.html . QM can do things that classical physics can’t do, and they are connected to improved coordination at a distance without communication, and connected to absolute randomness. I agree there is nothing to “fix”. QM is fine but counter-intuitive. We just have to get accustomed to the math. Bryan wants to find something “behind it” of a classical nature. His quest is noble, but doomed to failure. He doesn’t realise this because he takes no notice of the math. Even though Bell’s math is incredibly simple. (I suppose he doesn’t bother with it because it’s so simple. He doesn’t see the implications).