On Thu, Aug 31, 2023 at 6:29 PM Bruce Kellett <bhkellet...@gmail.com> wrote:
*> OK. So spell out your non-realist, but local, many worlds account of the > violations of the Bell inequalities. It seems that you want it both ways -- > Bell's theorem says that MWI must be non-local, but you claim that it is > local? "Realism" has nothing to do with it.* "Realism" has* EVERYTHING* to do with it, and I spelled out exactly why in a post on May 4 2022 when somebody said they wanted to hear all the gory details and this is what I said: == " If you want all the details this is going to be a long post, you asked for it. First I'm gonna have to show that any theory (except for superdeterminism which is idiotic) that is deterministic, local and realistic cannot possibly explain the violation of Bell's Inequality that we see in our experiments, and then show why *a theory like Many Worlds which is deterministic and local but NOT realistic can.* The hidden variable concept was Einstein's idea, he thought there was a local reason all events happened, even quantum mechanical events, but we just can't see what they are. It was a reasonable guess at the time but today experiments have shown that Einstein was wrong, to do that I'm gonna illustrate some of the details of Bell's inequality with an example. When a photon of undetermined polarization hits a polarizing filter there is a 50% chance it will make it through. For many years physicists like Einstein who disliked the idea that God played dice with the universe figured there must be a hidden variable inside the photon that told it what to do. By "hidden variable" they meant something different about that particular photon that we just don't know about. They meant something equivalent to a look-up table inside the photon that for one reason or another we are unable to access but the photon can when it wants to know if it should go through a filter or be stopped by one. We now understand that is impossible. In 1964 (but not published until 1967) John Bell showed that correlations that work by hidden variables must be less than or equal to a certain value, this is called Bell's inequality. In experiment it was found that some correlations are actually greater than that value. Quantum Mechanics can explain this, classical physics or even classical logic can not. Even if Quantum Mechanics is someday proven to be untrue Bell's argument is still valid, in fact his original paper had no Quantum Mechanics in it and can be derived with high school algebra; his point was that any successful theory about how the world works must explain why his inequality is violated, and today we know for a fact from experiments that it is indeed violated. Nature just refuses to be sensible and doesn't work the way you'd think it should. I have a black box, it has a red light and a blue light on it, it also has a rotary switch with 6 connections at the 12,2,4,6,8 and 10 o'clock positions. The red and blue light blink in a manner that passes all known tests for being completely random, this is true regardless of what position the rotary switch is in. Such a box could be made and still be completely deterministic by just pre-computing 6 different random sequences and recording them as a look-up table in the box. Now the box would know which light to flash. I have another black box. When both boxes have the same setting on their rotary switch they both produce the same random sequence of light flashes. This would also be easy to reproduce in a classical physics world, just record the same 6 random sequences in both boxes. The set of boxes has another property, if the switches on the 2 boxes are set to opposite positions, 12 and 6 o'clock for example, there is a total negative correlation; when one flashes red the other box flashes blue and when one box flashes blue the other flashes red. This just makes it all the easier to make the boxes because now you only need to pre-calculate 3 random sequences, then just change every 1 to 0 and every 0 to 1 to get the other 3 sequences and record all 6 in both boxes. The boxes have one more feature that makes things very interesting, if the rotary switch on a box is one notch different from the setting on the other box then the sequence of light flashes will on average be different 1 time in 4. How on Earth could I make the boxes behave like that? Well, I could change on average one entry in 4 of the 12 o'clock look-up table (hidden variable) sequence and make that the 2 o'clock table. Then change 1 in 4 of the 2 o'clock and make that the 4 o'clock, and change 1 in 4 of the 4 o'clock and make that the 6 o'clock. So now the light flashes on the box set at 2 o'clock is different from the box set at 12 o'clock on average by 1 flash in 4. The box set at 4 o'clock differs from the one set at 12 by 2 flashes in 4, and the one set at 6 differs from the one set at 12 by 3 flashes in 4. BUT I said before that boxes with opposite settings should have a 100% anti-correlation, the flashes on the box set at 12 o'clock should differ from the box set at 6 o'clock by 4 flashes in 4 NOT 3 flashes in 4. Thus *if the boxes work by hidden variables then when one is set to 12 o'clock and the other to 2 there MUST be a 2/3 correlation, at 4 a 1/3 correlation, and of course at 6 no correlation at all. A correlation greater than 2/3, such as 3/4, for adjacent settings produces paradoxes, at least it would if you expected everything to work mechanistically because of some local hidden variable involved.* *Does this mean it's impossible to make two boxes that have those specifications? Nope,* but it does mean hidden variables can not be involved and that means something very weird is going on. Actually it would be quite easy to make a couple of boxes that behave like that, it's just not easy to understand how that could be. Photons behave in just this spooky manner, so to make the boxes all you need it 4 things: 1) *A glorified light bulb*, something that will make two photons of unspecified but identical polarizations moving in opposite directions so you can send one to each box. An excited calcium atom would do the trick, or you could turn a green photon into two identical lower energy red photons with a crystal of potassium dihydrogen phosphate. 2) *A light detector sensitive enough to observe just one photon*. Incidentally the human eye is not quite good enough to do that but frogs can, for frogs when light gets very weak it must stop getting dimmer and appear to flash instead. 3) *A polarizing filter,* we've had these for well over a century. 4) Some gears and pulleys so that each time the rotary switch is advanced one position the filter is advanced by 30 degrees. This is because* it's been known for many years that the amount of light polarized at 0 degrees that will make it through a polarizing filter set at X is [COS (x)]^2; and if X = 30 DEGREES (π/6 radians) *then the value is .75; if the light is so dim that only one photon is sent at a time then that translates to the probability that any individual photon will make it through the filter is 75%. The bottom line of all this is that there can not be something special about a specific photon, some internal difference, some hidden local variable that determines if it makes it through a filter or not. *Thus if we ignore a superdeterministic conspiracy, as we should, then at least one of two things MUST be true:* 1) *The universe is not realistic*, that is, things do NOT exist in one and only one state both before and after they are observed. In the case of Many Worlds it means the very look up table as described in the above cannot be printed in indelible ink but, because Many Worlds assumes that Schrodinger's Equation means what it says, the look up table itself not only can but must exist in many different versions both before and after a measurement is made. 2) *The universe is non-local*, that is, everything influences everything else and does so without regard for the distances involved or amount of time involved or even if the events happen in the past or the future; the future could influence the past. But *because Many Worlds is non-realistic, and thus doesn't have a static lookup table, it has no need to resort to any of these non-local influences to explain experimental results."* *==* Back in 2022 in response to my post in the above you complained that it was too long and detailed even though previously you had complained that my explanation was too short and lacked detail. And I have no doubt that today you will complain that my explanation was still too long and detailed. And then, ignoring the fact that Many Worlds does *NOT* say everything happens it says everything *PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE * happens, you complained that in my example I failed to include instances where 2 polarizers oriented oriented in opposite directions produced up-up and down-down, and this is what I said: == "*NO, up-up and down-down is never allowed!* If I set my polarizer in the "up" alignment (and I am free to pick any direction I like and call it "up") and a undetermined photon makes it through then then I know with 100% certainty that my photon is now polarized "up", and I know for a fact that if you set your polarizer to the corresponding "down" position then there is a 100% chance the brother photon that is entangled with mine will make it through your polarizer and a 0% probability it will not. *Set the polarizers to any angle you like but you will NEVER ever ever see up-up or down-down. * If instead of orienting your filter in the "down" position you only misaligned it from mine by 30° then is a 75% chance the photon will make it through your polarizer, if it does then you know with certainty that your photon is now, not in the "up" direction, but in a direction 30° from "up". And you know one other thing, you know that your photon and mine are no longer entangled because *misaligned polarizers destroy entanglement.* By the way, I use quotation marks because "up" and "down" are completely arbitrary directions, as long as consistency is maintained between what is called "up" and "down" any direction can be chosen" == If you have complaints about anything I've said in the above, which I'm sure you will, feel free to say so, but please don't complain that my explanations are too short and lack detail, and then complain that they're too long and have too much detail. John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> 2md -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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