Re: Bootstrapping Reality: The inconsistency of nothing

[Brent Meeker]

On 7/6/2018 8:38 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

From: *Brent Meeker* mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>


On 7/6/2018 4:54 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
I am not sure I understand the idea of being in the same world when 
space-like separated.


Who said anything like that? They end up in the same world when they 
meet. Or do you disagree with that as well?


Certainly the two people who meet are in the same quasi-classical 
world.  But when decoherence happened to the two people who were 
space-like separated wasn't that decoherence at Alice in general 
different from the decoherence at Bob?  From Zurek's quantum 
Darwinism view, at each end there will be a very large number of 
different states reached by decoherence (Zurek proposes to recover 
the Born rule as statistices over these) but the decoherence effects 
will spread at roughly the speed of light and eventually overlap.  
When they overlap they will in general be incompatible so the Alice 
and Bob corresponding to those, can never meet.  Only those, if there 
are any, which decohered compatibly AND have the contra-Bell 
correlations in their notebooks can meet. What happened to those that 
decohered incompatibly?...they are traced out to zero?


Decoherence is a local phenomenon, spreading at the speed of light or 
less. But that does not necessarily mean that the spacelike separated 
people are in different worlds. At any particular instant of GMT, you 
in California are spacelike separated from me in Australia. But that 
does not mean we are in different worlds, and does not prevent us from 
meeting at some time in the future. Consequently, when the decoherence 
from an event at Alice meets the decoherence from another event at 
Bob, they may or may not be in the same world. It is not the 
compatibility of the decoherence that is at issue, but the branches of 
the wave function on which the particular measurement results put them 
that can be incompatible. Separate decohered branches can never meet. 
It is not that they are traced out to zero -- it is that they are 
separate disjoint worlds.


There is an additional complication present in the measurements on EPR 
pairs. Given that Alice measured 'up', either 'up' or 'down' for Bob 
is compatible if the polarizers are aligned at some intermediate 
angle. So Alice _up and Bob_up can be in the same world. And Alice_up 
and Bob_down can be in the same world. But since Bob has split, these 
cannot be the same worlds overall. The crucial point for recovering 
the quantum correlations is the corresponding probabilities -- the 
probability for Bob to have recorded 'up' when Alice's lab book shows 
'up' is generally different from the probability that Bob's book shows 
'down' in this situation. For any particular trial, there is no way of 
knowing these probabilities, or of knowing which of the two Bob-worlds 
are compatible with the Alice-world. This only shows up in the 
expectation values over a large sequence of trials. It is explaining 
the origin of these probabilities that is the challenge for any 
proposed local account of the EPR correlations. And many-worlds 
signally fails to provide any such explanation. Many-worlders are 
content with waving their hands over multiple entanglements and 
incompatible worlds, but they never get down to the nitty-gritty of 
explaining the probabilities.


As I understand Zurek's quantum Darwinism there are many (e.g. ~10^30) 
quantum threads corresponding to each sequence of entries in Alice's 
notebooks.  A probable entry sequence has more threads and hence more 
measure than an improbable one.  So "Alice and her notebook reading 
u,u,d,u...d,u,d,d,d" is a classical thing that exists as many quantum 
threads that are classically indistinguishable and so constitute one 
FAPP classical world. Similarly for Bob.  So where the forward light 
cones of their last measurements overlap, most of these quantum threads 
must trace out to zero and leave only those whose measures satisfy both 
the Born rule and the correlations that violate Bell.  This "tracing 
out" is what adjusts the relative proportion of Alice/Bob pair meetings 
so that the proper statistics are realized.


Brent

--
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.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Bootstrapping Reality: The inconsistency of nothing

[Bruce Kellett]

From: *Brent Meeker* mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>


On 7/6/2018 4:54 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
I am not sure I understand the idea of being in the same world when 
space-like separated.


Who said anything like that? They end up in the same world when they 
meet. Or do you disagree with that as well?


Certainly the two people who meet are in the same quasi-classical 
world.  But when decoherence happened to the two people who were 
space-like separated wasn't that decoherence at Alice in general 
different from the decoherence at Bob?  From Zurek's quantum Darwinism 
view, at each end there will be a very large number of different 
states reached by decoherence (Zurek proposes to recover the Born rule 
as statistices over these) but the decoherence effects will spread at 
roughly the speed of light and eventually overlap.  When they overlap 
they will in general be incompatible so the Alice and Bob 
corresponding to those, can never meet.  Only those, if there are any, 
which decohered compatibly AND have the contra-Bell correlations in 
their notebooks can meet.  What happened to those that decohered 
incompatibly?...they are traced out to zero?


Decoherence is a local phenomenon, spreading at the speed of light or 
less. But that does not necessarily mean that the spacelike separated 
people are in different worlds. At any particular instant of GMT, you in 
California are spacelike separated from me in Australia. But that does 
not mean we are in different worlds, and does not prevent us from 
meeting at some time in the future. Consequently, when the decoherence 
from an event at Alice meets the decoherence from another event at Bob, 
they may or may not be in the same world. It is not the compatibility of 
the decoherence that is at issue, but the branches of the wave function 
on which the particular measurement results put them that can be 
incompatible. Separate decohered branches can never meet. It is not that 
they are traced out to zero -- it is that they are separate disjoint worlds.


There is an additional complication present in the measurements on EPR 
pairs. Given that Alice measured 'up', either 'up' or 'down' for Bob is 
compatible if the polarizers are aligned at some intermediate angle. So 
Alice _up and Bob_up can be in the same world. And Alice_up and Bob_down 
can be in the same world. But since Bob has split, these cannot be the 
same worlds overall. The crucial point for recovering the quantum 
correlations is the corresponding probabilities -- the probability for 
Bob to have recorded 'up' when Alice's lab book shows 'up' is generally 
different from the probability that Bob's book shows 'down' in this 
situation. For any particular trial, there is no way of knowing these 
probabilities, or of knowing which of the two Bob-worlds are compatible 
with the Alice-world. This only shows up in the expectation values over 
a large sequence of trials. It is explaining the origin of these 
probabilities that is the challenge for any proposed local account of 
the EPR correlations. And many-worlds signally fails to provide any such 
explanation. Many-worlders are content with waving their hands over 
multiple entanglements and incompatible worlds, but they never get down 
to the nitty-gritty of explaining the probabilities.


Bruce


--
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.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Bootstrapping Reality: The inconsistency of nothing

[Brent Meeker]

On 7/6/2018 4:54 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
I am not sure I understand the idea of being in the same world when 
space-like separated.


Who said anything like that? They end up in the same world when they 
meet. Or do you disagree with that as well?


Certainly the two people who meet are in the same quasi-classical 
world.  But when decoherence happened to the two people who were 
space-like separated wasn't that decoherence at Alice in general 
different from the decoherence at Bob?  From Zurek's quantum Darwinism 
view, at each end there will be a very large number of different states 
reached by decoherence (Zurek proposes to recover the Born rule as 
statistices over these) but the decoherence effects will spread at 
roughly the speed of light and eventually overlap. When they overlap 
they will in general be incompatible so the Alice and Bob corresponding 
to those, can never meet.  Only those, if there are any, which decohered 
compatibly AND have the contra-Bell correlations in their notebooks can 
meet.  What happened to those that decohered incompatibly?...they are 
traced out to zero?


Brent

--
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.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Bootstrapping Reality: The inconsistency of nothing

[Bruce Kellett]

From: *Bruno Marchal* mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>>


On 6 Jul 2018, at 14:18, Bruce Kellett > wrote:


From: *Bruno Marchal* mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>>
On 5 Jul 2018, at 17:20, Lawrence Crowell 
> wrote:


John Bell proved that any objective theory giving experimental 
predictions identical to those of quantum theory is necessarily 
nonlocal.


Assuming a unique reality. I prefer the term  “inseparable”, because 
“non-locality” is often interpreted the existence of FTL influence 
(even if they cannot be used to transmit information), but such FTL 
influence seems to me suspicious. Some might disagree, but I have 
not yet seen a proof that any FTL subsists when we abandon the 
collapse postulate. Bell assumes that experiments gives univocal 
results.


You might not have seen a proof that non-locality remains when we 
abandon the collapse postulate, but that does not mean that no such 
proof can be given.


Consider the following scenario. Alice and Bob are given a large 
number of entangled pairs, which they measure when they are at large 
spacelike separation. Each measurement is made at some angle, and 
gives a '1' for 'up' or 'passed', and '0' for the opposite result. 
Both record the sequence of such results that they obtain in their 
individual lab books, together with the corresponding polarizer 
orientations. Their lab books then contain a random sequence of say 
N, '1's and '0's. There are 2^N possible such sequences in the 
many-worlds case, but since each observer keeps the same lab book for 
the whole sequence, each series of measurements is necessarily made 
in the same one world.


I am not sure I understand the idea of being in the same world when 
space-like separated.


Who said anything like that? They end up in the same world when they 
meet. Or do you disagree with that as well?


Each time one of them makes a measurement, they are localising 
themselves in different worlds. The pair state only entails that their 
measurement will fit accordingly,


How? You are just assuming the non-local result that you are claiming is 
local. You are not consistent.


but Alice will meet the Bobs she is correlated with, and vice versa. 
It does not make sense to say that Alice will meet the original Bob, 
or something like that.


Who is the original Bob? You are starting to sound like John Clark in 
refusing to accept the consequences of duplication. In your duplication 
thought experiments (as in step 3 of the UDA) you talk about each 
duplicate keeping a diary and recording W or M as appropriate. After a 
long sequence of duplications, each resulting copy will have a diary 
with a long sequence of Ws and Ms at random. This is exactly what is 
happening with the lab books in my example above. One copy of Alice 
meets with one copy of Bob. But when they meet, they are in the same 
world, and their lab books record the experiences of that particular 
realization of the long chain of Alices and Bobs. You should remember 
that there are 2^N such chains of experiences, and after the 2^N runs of 
the experiment, when any Alice copy meets the corresponding Bob copy, 
the same argument holds-- they are in the same world, and their lab 
books record the sequence of results that the obtained in the world that 
they happen to inhabit.



Basically, this is because the worlds are disjoint, and the observers 
and/or lab books cannot move between worlds.


Any measurement entails new differentiation.



When Alice and Bob meet up at the end of the run of N trials,


Each of Alice and Bob will meet only the Bob and Alice prescribed by 
the result of their measurement. You need to look at the entire wave 
function.


Why? An Alice copy meets a Bob copy and they compare notes. Any time 
this happens the results in their lab books must confirm the quantum 
correlations. Or do you not agree with this? The trick is to understand 
how this happens. You are not giving an explanation -- you are relying 
on some unspecified magic!



they take their lab books with them. When they meet they are clearly 
in the same Everettian branch.


“They” is ambiguous here.


Think about it and the ambiguity will disappear. "They" are any of the 
2^N copies of Alice and Bob. (But the copies are, themselves correlated.)



And since their lab books cannot have jumped between branches, the 
sequence of results that they each bring must also have all been 
recorded in this same one branch. So when they come to use their data 
to calculate the correlations between the measurements on their 
individual particles of the entangled pairs, they are in exactly the 
same situation as they would be if they had assumed a collapse model 
from the outset.


It is like they find themselves in the relevant partition of the 
mutilverse, but as there has not been any collapse, nothing has needed 
to propagate after than light. The non-locality, or better inseparability,


You are 

Re: Bootstrapping Reality: The inconsistency of nothing

[Bruce Kellett]

From: *smitra* mailto:smi...@zonnet.nl>>


On 06-07-2018 14:18, Bruce Kellett wrote:

From: BRUNO MARCHAL mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>>


On 5 Jul 2018, at 17:20, Lawrence Crowell
mailto:goldenfieldquaterni...@gmail.com>> wrote:

John Bell proved that any objective theory giving experimental
predictions identical to those of quantum theory is
necessarily
nonlocal.


Assuming a unique reality. I prefer the term “inseparable”,
because “non-locality” is often interpreted the existence of FTL
influence (even if they cannot be used to transmit
information), but
such FTL influence seems to me suspicious. Some might
disagree, but
I have not yet seen a proof that any FTL subsists when we abandon
the collapse postulate. Bell assumes that experiments gives
univocal
results.


 You might not have seen a proof that non-locality remains when we
abandon the collapse postulate, but that does not mean that no such
proof can be given.

 Consider the following scenario. Alice and Bob are given a large
number of entangled pairs, which they measure when they are at large
spacelike separation. Each measurement is made at some angle, and
gives a '1' for 'up' or 'passed', and '0' for the opposite result.
Both record the sequence of such results that they obtain in their
individual lab books, together with the corresponding polarizer
orientations. Their lab books then contain a random sequence of say N,
'1's and '0's. There are 2^N possible such sequences in the
many-worlds case, but since each observer keeps the same lab book for
the whole sequence, each series of measurements is necessarily made in
the same one world. Basically, this is because the worlds are
disjoint, and the observers and/or lab books cannot move between
worlds.

 When Alice and Bob meet up at the end of the run of N trials, they
take their lab books with them. When they meet they are clearly in the
same Everettian branch. And since their lab books cannot have jumped
between branches, the sequence of results that they each bring must
also have all been recorded in this same one branch. So when they come
to use their data to calculate the correlations between the
measurements on their individual particles of the entangled pairs,
they are in exactly the same situation as they would be if they had
assumed a collapse model from the outset. The correlations they
observe are necessarily single-world correlations. So the conditions
of Bell's theorem are exactly satisfied, and since the correlations
violate the Bell inequalities, their experiment has demonstrated the
impossibility of a local hidden variable account. They have
demonstrated that the quantum correlations require non-locality, even
with Everett's many-worlds, just as Bell proved.

 And all this happens whether they assume many-worlds or a collapse
model.

 Bruce


Alice's lab book is not located in a single branch of Bob's lab book 
and vice versa.


It is when they meet. Unless you want to pretend that when two people 
meet they are not in the same world!


If you consider the entire wavefunction of Alice's sector, including 
her lab book and Bob's sector and his lab book, then this is a 
complicated entangled wavefunction. If you trace out the environments 
on both sides and only consider the contents of the lab books, you're 
left with correlated lab books where each entry of one lab book is 
correlated with the corresponding entry of the other lab book.


Maybe that is the point. How did the lab book entries come to be 
correlated? You are offering word salad -- not an explanation of the 
correlations.


Bell's theorem in general without assuming many or single words, 
doesn't directly imply nonlocality,  the way the correlations depend 
on the relative polarizer orientation shows that there are no local 
hidden variables that would have specified the outcome of the 
measurements. That leaves us with two options. Either there exists 
nonlocal hidden variables, or there are no hidden variables at all. 
What matters is that before any measurement where there are multiple 
possible outcomes (whether or not that involves entangled pairs where 
someone else is measuring the other component), the information about 
the result of the outcome is not already present locally.


So what? What is the point you are trying to make? I agree that Bell 
showed that if there are hidden variables (QM is not complete as it 
stands) then they must be non-local.  If there are no hidden variables, 
that does not remove the non-locality. The non-separable quantum state 
is still intrinsically non-local.


So, when Alice measures her spin, she gains one bit on information and 
that bit of information was not present in her local environment. In 

Re: Radioactive Decay States

[agrayson2000]

On Friday, July 6, 2018 at 1:22:03 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 7/6/2018 11:44 AM, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 5:14:34 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 
>>
>>
>>
>> On 7/5/2018 3:55 PM, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 2:03:46 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 7/5/2018 11:27 AM, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, July 4, 2018 at 10:57:06 AM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 



 On 7/4/2018 1:57 AM, 'scerir' via Everything List wrote:


 *No. I am asserting that the INTERPRETATION of the superposition of 
 states is wrong. Although I have asked several times, no one here seems 
 able to offer a plausible justification for interpreting that a system in 
 a 
 superposition of states, is physically in all states of the superposition 
 SIMULTANEOUSLY before the system is measured. If we go back to those 
 little 
 pointing things, you will see there exists an infinite uncountable set of 
 basis vectors for any vector in that linear vector space. For quantum 
 systems, there is no unique basis, and in many cases also infinitely many 
 bases, So IMO, the interpretation is not justified. AG* 

 ***SIMULTANEOUSLY*** was used by EPR in their paper, but that did not 
 have much meaning (operationally, physically).

 Can we say that the observable, in a superposition state, has a 
 ***DEFINITE*** value between two measurements?

 No - in general - we cannot say that.


 It's in some definite state.  But it may be a state for which we have 
 no measurement operator or don't intend to measure; so we say it is in a 
 superposition, meaning a superposition of the eigenstates we're going to 
 measure.  So it does not have one of the eigenvalues of our measurement.

 Brent

>>>
>>> *So for the radioactive source, the superposed state, Decayed + 
>>> Undecayed, does NOT imply the system is in both states simultaneously? *
>>>
>>>
>>> No, it is in a state that consists of Decayed+Undecayed.  So in a sense 
>>> it is in both simulatnaeously.  If you are sailing a heading of 45deg you 
>>> are on a definite heading.  But you are simultaneously traveling North and 
>>> East.  And if someone was watching you with a radar that could only output 
>>> "moving north" or "moving east" it would oscillate between the two and you 
>>> might call that a superposition of north and east motion.
>>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>
>> *I see. But as I have pointed out, there are uncountably many sets of 
>> basis vectors that result in the same vector along the 45 deg direction. 
>> Thus, it makes no sense to single out a particular basis and claim it is 
>> simultaneously in both. *
>>
>>
>> That's where you're wrong.  It makes perfect sense if that's the only 
>> basis you can measure in.  That's why I gave the hypothetical example of a 
>> radar that could only report motion as northward or eastward.  In some 
>> cases, like decayed our not-decayed, we don't have instruments to measure 
>> the superposition state.  In other cases like sliver atom spin we can 
>> measure up/down or left/right or along any other axis.
>>
>> *ISTM, this is the cause of many of the apparent paradoxes in QM such as 
>> Schroedinger's cat, or a radioactive source which is decayed and undecayed 
>> simultaneously. I have no objection using such a state to do a calculation, 
>> but I think it's an error to further interpret a superposition in terms of 
>> simultaneity of component states. What say you? AG*
>>
>>
>> I say use what's convenient for calculation.  Don't imagine your 
>> calculation is the reality.
>>
>
>
> *But the consensus, perhaps unstated or subliminally, is that the 
> superposition is imagined as reality, which leads to cats and radioactive 
> sources being (respectively) alive and dead, and decayed and undecayed, 
> simultaneously. Isn't this what Schroedinger was arguing against? I have 
> rarely, if ever, seen it argued NOT to interpret a superposition as reality 
> as a proposed solution to these apparent paradoxes. AG *
>
>
> You just go around and around.  You never put together the explanations 
> you get.  Decoherence shows that, in the presence of an environment, the 
> wave function FAPP collapses into orthogonal quasi-classical states in 
> fractions of a nano-second.  That's why the Schroedinger cat story doesn't 
> show what Schroedinger thought it did.  BUT there are experiments, like 
> silver atoms thru and SG in which superpositions of left+right persist, 
> they are up polarizations for example; and we know they exist because we 
> can prepare up states and then measure them left/right or measure them 
> up/down.  The latter, up/down measurement, would always yield "up" showing 
> they were in an up eigenstate, even though they were also in a left+right 
> superposition.  But there are other cases where we can't measure 

Re: Bootstrapping Reality: The inconsistency of nothing

[Brent Meeker]

On 7/6/2018 6:51 AM, smitra wrote:

On 06-07-2018 14:18, Bruce Kellett wrote:

From: BRUNO MARCHAL 


On 5 Jul 2018, at 17:20, Lawrence Crowell
 wrote:


John Bell proved that any objective theory giving experimental
predictions identical to those of quantum theory is necessarily
nonlocal.


Assuming a unique reality. I prefer the term “inseparable”,
because “non-locality” is often interpreted the existence of FTL
influence (even if they cannot be used to transmit information), but
such FTL influence seems to me suspicious. Some might disagree, but
I have not yet seen a proof that any FTL subsists when we abandon
the collapse postulate. Bell assumes that experiments gives univocal
results.


 You might not have seen a proof that non-locality remains when we
abandon the collapse postulate, but that does not mean that no such
proof can be given.

 Consider the following scenario. Alice and Bob are given a large
number of entangled pairs, which they measure when they are at large
spacelike separation. Each measurement is made at some angle, and
gives a '1' for 'up' or 'passed', and '0' for the opposite result.
Both record the sequence of such results that they obtain in their
individual lab books, together with the corresponding polarizer
orientations. Their lab books then contain a random sequence of say N,
'1's and '0's. There are 2^N possible such sequences in the
many-worlds case, but since each observer keeps the same lab book for
the whole sequence, each series of measurements is necessarily made in
the same one world. Basically, this is because the worlds are
disjoint, and the observers and/or lab books cannot move between
worlds.

 When Alice and Bob meet up at the end of the run of N trials, they
take their lab books with them. When they meet they are clearly in the
same Everettian branch. And since their lab books cannot have jumped
between branches, the sequence of results that they each bring must
also have all been recorded in this same one branch. So when they come
to use their data to calculate the correlations between the
measurements on their individual particles of the entangled pairs,
they are in exactly the same situation as they would be if they had
assumed a collapse model from the outset. The correlations they
observe are necessarily single-world correlations. So the conditions
of Bell's theorem are exactly satisfied, and since the correlations
violate the Bell inequalities, their experiment has demonstrated the
impossibility of a local hidden variable account. They have
demonstrated that the quantum correlations require non-locality, even
with Everett's many-worlds, just as Bell proved.

 And all this happens whether they assume many-worlds or a collapse
model.

 Bruce



Alice's lab book is not located in a single branch of Bob's lab book 
and vice versa. If you consider the entire wavefunction of Alice's 
sector, including her lab book and Bob's sector and his lab book, then 
this is a complicated entangled wavefunction. If you trace out the 
environments on both sides and only consider the contents of the lab 
books, you're left with correlated lab books where each entry of one 
lab book is correlated with the corresponding entry of the other lab 
book.


And is that not exactly like collapse eliminating all the branches which 
get traced out to zero (FAPP).





Bell's theorem in general without assuming many or single words, 
doesn't directly imply nonlocality,  the way the correlations depend 
on the relative polarizer orientation shows that there are no local 
hidden variables that would have specified the outcome of the 
measurements. That leaves us with two options. Either there exists 
nonlocal hidden variables, or there are no hidden variables at all. 
What matters is that before any measurement where there are multiple 
possible outcomes (whether or not that involves entangled pairs where 
someone else is measuring the other component), the information about 
the result of the outcome is not already present locally.


That last sentence seemed like a trivial statement that the theory is 
probabilistic until you added the word "locally".  Are you implying that 
the information did exist "globally"?




So, when Alice measures her spin, she gains one bit on information and 
that bit of information was not present in her local environment.
In case of entangled pairs that information would have been present at 
a spacelike separation, but only if one assumes a single world 
interpretation. 


I think this is misleading though.  It implies that in a mulitiple-world 
interpretation there is no information in correlations.  But that is 
only the case if the world's in which Bell's theorem is true also 
exist.  The fact that some lab book correlations don't exist constitutes 
non-local information.


Brent

The thought experiment with lab books doesn't change this conclusion 
because the lab books end up in an entangled superposition with each 
other, as well as with the local 

Re: Radioactive Decay States

[Brent Meeker]

On 7/6/2018 11:44 AM, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote:



On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 5:14:34 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:



On 7/5/2018 3:55 PM, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:



On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 2:03:46 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:



On 7/5/2018 11:27 AM, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:



On Wednesday, July 4, 2018 at 10:57:06 AM UTC-6, Brent wrote:



On 7/4/2018 1:57 AM, 'scerir' via Everything List wrote:


*No. I am asserting that the INTERPRETATION of the
superposition of states is wrong. Although I have
asked several times, no one here seems able to offer a
plausible justification for interpreting that a system
in a superposition of states, is physically in all
states of the superposition SIMULTANEOUSLY before the
system is measured. If we go back to those little
pointing things, you will see there exists an infinite
uncountable set of basis vectors for any vector in
that linear vector space. For quantum systems, there
is no unique basis, and in many cases also infinitely
many bases, So IMO, the interpretation is not
justified. AG*


***SIMULTANEOUSLY*** was used by EPR in their paper,
but that did not have much meaning (operationally,
physically).

Can we say that the observable, in a superposition
state, has a ***DEFINITE*** value between two measurements?

No - in general - we cannot say that.



It's in some definite state.  But it may be a state for
which we have no measurement operator or don't intend to
measure; so we say it is in a superposition, meaning a
superposition of the eigenstates we're going to
measure.  So it does not have one of the eigenvalues of
our measurement.

Brent

*
*
*So for the radioactive source, the superposed state,
Decayed + Undecayed, does NOT imply the system is in both
states simultaneously? *


No, it is in a state that consists of Decayed+Undecayed.  So
in a sense it is in both simulatnaeously.  If you are sailing
a heading of 45deg you are on a definite heading.  But you
are simultaneously traveling North and East.  And if someone
was watching you with a radar that could only output "moving
north" or "moving east" it would oscillate between the two
and you might call that a superposition of north and east motion.

Brent


*I see. But as I have pointed out, there are uncountably many
sets of basis vectors that result in the same vector along the 45
deg direction. Thus, it makes no sense to single out a particular
basis and claim it is _simultaneously_ in both. *


That's where you're wrong.  It makes perfect sense if that's the
only basis you can measure in.  That's why I gave the hypothetical
example of a radar that could only report motion as northward or
eastward.  In some cases, like decayed our not-decayed, we don't
have instruments to measure the superposition state.  In other
cases like sliver atom spin we can measure up/down or left/right
or along any other axis.


*ISTM, this is the cause of many of the apparent paradoxes in QM
such as Schroedinger's cat, or a radioactive source which is
decayed and undecayed simultaneously. I have no objection using
such a state to do a calculation, but I think it's an error to
further interpret a superposition in terms of simultaneity of
component states. What say you? AG*


I say use what's convenient for calculation.  Don't imagine your
calculation is the reality.


*But the consensus, perhaps unstated or subliminally, is that the 
superposition is imagined as reality, which leads to cats and 
radioactive sources being (respectively) alive and dead, and decayed 
and undecayed, simultaneously. Isn't this what Schroedinger was 
arguing against? I have rarely, if ever, seen it argued NOT to 
interpret a superposition as reality as a proposed solution to these 
apparent paradoxes. AG

*


You just go around and around.  You never put together the explanations 
you get.  Decoherence shows that, in the presence of an environment, the 
wave function FAPP collapses into orthogonal quasi-classical states in 
fractions of a nano-second.  That's why the Schroedinger cat story 
doesn't show what Schroedinger thought it did.  BUT there are 
experiments, like silver atoms thru and SG in which superpositions of 
left+right persist, they are up polarizations for example; and we know 
they exist because we can prepare up states and then measure them 
left/right or measure them up/down.  The latter, up/down measurement, 
would always yield "up" showing they were in an up eigenstate, even 
though they were also in a 

Re: Bootstrapping Reality: The inconsistency of nothing

[Brent Meeker]

On 7/6/2018 9:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
It is like they find themselves in the relevant partition of the 
mutilverse, but as there has not been any collapse, nothing has needed 
to propagate after than light. The non-locality, or better 
inseparability, just assures that whatever differentiation will occur 
locally, they will have the correlated spin, but at no point are we 
assured that Alice meet something like the original Bob. The 
differentiation of the universe develops locally.


No, it differentiates in a coordinated, space-like way, keeping */that 
Alice /*with /*that Bob*/ so that only the correctly correlated Alice 
and Bob can meet, i.e. be in the same world at the same time and place.


Once Alice and Bob are space-light separated, they will never meet 
again after they made local measurement. 


But they do meet again.  Only events are space-like separated. People 
have persistent world-lines which are both space-like  and time-like 
depending on the events chosen.  But "meeting", being at the same 
events, is invariant.


Each will meet only the corresponding (correlated) person, but there 
is no reason we can identify them in any single word.


You can identify whomever meets as being in a single world.  That's the 
point of Bruce's exposition.


Brent

--
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.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Radioactive Decay States

[agrayson2000]

On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 5:14:34 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 7/5/2018 3:55 PM, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 2:03:46 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 
>>
>>
>>
>> On 7/5/2018 11:27 AM, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, July 4, 2018 at 10:57:06 AM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 7/4/2018 1:57 AM, 'scerir' via Everything List wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> *No. I am asserting that the INTERPRETATION of the superposition of 
>>> states is wrong. Although I have asked several times, no one here seems 
>>> able to offer a plausible justification for interpreting that a system in a 
>>> superposition of states, is physically in all states of the superposition 
>>> SIMULTANEOUSLY before the system is measured. If we go back to those little 
>>> pointing things, you will see there exists an infinite uncountable set of 
>>> basis vectors for any vector in that linear vector space. For quantum 
>>> systems, there is no unique basis, and in many cases also infinitely many 
>>> bases, So IMO, the interpretation is not justified. AG* 
>>>
>>> ***SIMULTANEOUSLY*** was used by EPR in their paper, but that did not 
>>> have much meaning (operationally, physically).
>>>
>>> Can we say that the observable, in a superposition state, has a 
>>> ***DEFINITE*** value between two measurements?
>>>
>>> No - in general - we cannot say that.
>>>
>>>
>>> It's in some definite state.  But it may be a state for which we have no 
>>> measurement operator or don't intend to measure; so we say it is in a 
>>> superposition, meaning a superposition of the eigenstates we're going to 
>>> measure.  So it does not have one of the eigenvalues of our measurement.
>>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>
>> *So for the radioactive source, the superposed state, Decayed + 
>> Undecayed, does NOT imply the system is in both states simultaneously? *
>>
>>
>> No, it is in a state that consists of Decayed+Undecayed.  So in a sense 
>> it is in both simulatnaeously.  If you are sailing a heading of 45deg you 
>> are on a definite heading.  But you are simultaneously traveling North and 
>> East.  And if someone was watching you with a radar that could only output 
>> "moving north" or "moving east" it would oscillate between the two and you 
>> might call that a superposition of north and east motion.
>>
>> Brent
>>
>
> *I see. But as I have pointed out, there are uncountably many sets of 
> basis vectors that result in the same vector along the 45 deg direction. 
> Thus, it makes no sense to single out a particular basis and claim it is 
> simultaneously in both. *
>
>
> That's where you're wrong.  It makes perfect sense if that's the only 
> basis you can measure in.  That's why I gave the hypothetical example of a 
> radar that could only report motion as northward or eastward.  In some 
> cases, like decayed our not-decayed, we don't have instruments to measure 
> the superposition state.  In other cases like sliver atom spin we can 
> measure up/down or left/right or along any other axis.
>
> *ISTM, this is the cause of many of the apparent paradoxes in QM such as 
> Schroedinger's cat, or a radioactive source which is decayed and undecayed 
> simultaneously. I have no objection using such a state to do a calculation, 
> but I think it's an error to further interpret a superposition in terms of 
> simultaneity of component states. What say you? AG*
>
>
> I say use what's convenient for calculation.  Don't imagine your 
> calculation is the reality.
>

*But the consensus, perhaps unstated or subliminally, is that the 
superposition is imagined as reality, which leads to cats and radioactive 
sources being (respectively) alive and dead, and decayed and undecayed, 
simultaneously. Isn't this what Schroedinger was arguing against? I have 
rarely, if ever, seen it argued NOT to interpret a superposition as reality 
as a proposed solution to these apparent paradoxes. AG *

>
> Brent
>
>
>> *Same for cat, Alive + Dead? Same for ( (Undecayed, Alive)  + (Decayed, 
>> Dead) ) for Schroedinger's composite system? If that's the case, why would 
>> anyone think these states are in any way paradoxical or contradictory? AG*
>> -- 
>> 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-li...@googlegroups.com.
>> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>
>>
>> -- 
> 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-li...@googlegroups.com .
> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com 
> .
> Visit this group at 

Re: Bootstrapping Reality: The inconsistency of nothing

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 6 Jul 2018, at 14:18, Bruce Kellett  wrote:
> 
> From: Bruno Marchal mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>>
>> On 5 Jul 2018, at 17:20, Lawrence Crowell > > wrote:
>> 
>>> John Bell proved that any objective theory giving experimental predictions 
>>> identical to those of quantum theory is necessarily nonlocal.
>> 
>> Assuming a unique reality. I prefer the term  “inseparable”, because 
>> “non-locality” is often interpreted the existence of FTL influence (even if 
>> they cannot be used to transmit information), but such FTL influence seems 
>> to me suspicious. Some might disagree, but I have not yet seen a proof that 
>> any FTL subsists when we abandon the collapse postulate. Bell assumes that 
>> experiments gives univocal results.
> 
> You might not have seen a proof that non-locality remains when we abandon the 
> collapse postulate, but that does not mean that no such proof can be given.
> 
> Consider the following scenario. Alice and Bob are given a large number of 
> entangled pairs, which they measure when they are at large spacelike 
> separation. Each measurement is made at some angle, and gives a '1' for 'up' 
> or 'passed', and '0' for the opposite result. Both record the sequence of 
> such results that they obtain in their individual lab books, together with 
> the corresponding polarizer orientations. Their lab books then contain a 
> random sequence of say N, '1's and '0's. There are 2^N possible such 
> sequences in the many-worlds case, but since each observer keeps the same lab 
> book for the whole sequence, each series of measurements is necessarily made 
> in the same one world.

I am not sure I understand the idea of being in the same world when space-like 
separated. Each time one of them makes a measurement, they are localising 
themselves in different worlds. The pair state only entails that their 
measurement will fit accordingly, but Alice will meet the Bobs she is 
correlated with, and vice versa. It does not make sense to say that Alice will 
meet the original Bob, or something like that.



> Basically, this is because the worlds are disjoint, and the observers and/or 
> lab books cannot move between worlds.

Any measurement entails new differentiation. 


> 
> When Alice and Bob meet up at the end of the run of N trials,

Each of Alice and Bob will meet only the Bob and Alice prescribed by the result 
of their measurement. You need to look at the entire wave function.




> they take their lab books with them. When they meet they are clearly in the 
> same Everettian branch.

“They” is ambiguous here. 




> And since their lab books cannot have jumped between branches, the sequence 
> of results that they each bring must also have all been recorded in this same 
> one branch. So when they come to use their data to calculate the correlations 
> between the measurements on their individual particles of the entangled 
> pairs, they are in exactly the same situation as they would be if they had 
> assumed a collapse model from the outset.

It is like they find themselves in the relevant partition of the mutilverse, 
but as there has not been any collapse, nothing has needed to propagate after 
than light. The non-locality, or better inseparability, just assures that 
whatever differentiation will occur locally, they will have the correlated 
spin, but at no point are we assured that Alice meet something like the 
original Bob. The differentiation of the universe develops locally. Once Alice 
and Bob are space-light separated, they will never meet again after they made 
local measurement. Each will meet only the corresponding (correlated) person, 
but there is no reason we can identify them in any single word.




> The correlations they observe are necessarily single-world correlations.

That comes true after their measurement. But the world have differentiated 
before.




> So the conditions of Bell's theorem are exactly satisfied,

I don’t think so. All outcomes are realised (assuming the singlet state, and 
measurement in any direction). Each Bob and Alice have localised themselves in 
the corresponding branches, and will met only their corresponding partners, due 
to the local further separation obtained by their local measurement. That is 
inseparability. It does not require simultaneous action at a distance.




> and since the correlations violate the Bell inequalities, their experiment 
> has demonstrated the impossibility of a local hidden variable account.

I agree with this. That is indeed why a world or an entire history is more  
like a global “hidden variable”, making sense of those correlation in a local 
way, with differentiation occurring locally, but always ensuing the existence 
of the correlation.




> They have demonstrated that the quantum correlations require non-locality, 
> even with Everett's many-worlds, just as Bell proved.

I can be OK with this conclusion, unless you imply that in Everett there is 
still 

Re: Bootstrapping Reality: The inconsistency of nothing

[smitra]

On 06-07-2018 14:18, Bruce Kellett wrote:

From: BRUNO MARCHAL 


On 5 Jul 2018, at 17:20, Lawrence Crowell
 wrote:


John Bell proved that any objective theory giving experimental
predictions identical to those of quantum theory is necessarily
nonlocal.


Assuming a unique reality. I prefer the term “inseparable”,
because “non-locality” is often interpreted the existence of FTL
influence (even if they cannot be used to transmit information), but
such FTL influence seems to me suspicious. Some might disagree, but
I have not yet seen a proof that any FTL subsists when we abandon
the collapse postulate. Bell assumes that experiments gives univocal
results.


 You might not have seen a proof that non-locality remains when we
abandon the collapse postulate, but that does not mean that no such
proof can be given.

 Consider the following scenario. Alice and Bob are given a large
number of entangled pairs, which they measure when they are at large
spacelike separation. Each measurement is made at some angle, and
gives a '1' for 'up' or 'passed', and '0' for the opposite result.
Both record the sequence of such results that they obtain in their
individual lab books, together with the corresponding polarizer
orientations. Their lab books then contain a random sequence of say N,
'1's and '0's. There are 2^N possible such sequences in the
many-worlds case, but since each observer keeps the same lab book for
the whole sequence, each series of measurements is necessarily made in
the same one world. Basically, this is because the worlds are
disjoint, and the observers and/or lab books cannot move between
worlds.

 When Alice and Bob meet up at the end of the run of N trials, they
take their lab books with them. When they meet they are clearly in the
same Everettian branch. And since their lab books cannot have jumped
between branches, the sequence of results that they each bring must
also have all been recorded in this same one branch. So when they come
to use their data to calculate the correlations between the
measurements on their individual particles of the entangled pairs,
they are in exactly the same situation as they would be if they had
assumed a collapse model from the outset. The correlations they
observe are necessarily single-world correlations. So the conditions
of Bell's theorem are exactly satisfied, and since the correlations
violate the Bell inequalities, their experiment has demonstrated the
impossibility of a local hidden variable account. They have
demonstrated that the quantum correlations require non-locality, even
with Everett's many-worlds, just as Bell proved.

 And all this happens whether they assume many-worlds or a collapse
model.

 Bruce



Alice's lab book is not located in a single branch of Bob's lab book and 
vice versa. If you consider the entire wavefunction of Alice's sector, 
including her lab book and Bob's sector and his lab book, then this is a 
complicated entangled wavefunction. If you trace out the environments on 
both sides and only consider the contents of the lab books, you're left 
with correlated lab books where each entry of one lab book is correlated 
with the corresponding entry of the other lab book.



Bell's theorem in general without assuming many or single words, doesn't 
directly imply nonlocality,  the way the correlations depend on the 
relative polarizer orientation shows that there are no local hidden 
variables that would have specified the outcome of the measurements. 
That leaves us with two options. Either there exists nonlocal hidden 
variables, or there are no hidden variables at all. What matters is that 
before any measurement where there are multiple possible outcomes 
(whether or not that involves entangled pairs where someone else is 
measuring the other component), the information about the result of the 
outcome is not already present locally.


So, when Alice measures her spin, she gains one bit on information and 
that bit of information was not present in her local environment. In 
case of entangled pairs that information would have been present at a 
spacelike separation, but only if one assumes a single world 
interpretation. The thought experiment with lab books doesn't change 
this conclusion because the lab books end up in an entangled 
superposition with each other, as well as with the local environments.


Saibal

--
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.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Bootstrapping Reality: The inconsistency of nothing

[Bruce Kellett]

From: *Bruno Marchal* mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>>
On 5 Jul 2018, at 17:20, Lawrence Crowell 
> wrote:


John Bell proved that any objective theory giving experimental 
predictions identical to those of quantum theory is necessarily 
nonlocal.


Assuming a unique reality. I prefer the term  “inseparable”, because 
“non-locality” is often interpreted the existence of FTL influence 
(even if they cannot be used to transmit information), but such FTL 
influence seems to me suspicious. Some might disagree, but I have not 
yet seen a proof that any FTL subsists when we abandon the collapse 
postulate. Bell assumes that experiments gives univocal results.


You might not have seen a proof that non-locality remains when we 
abandon the collapse postulate, but that does not mean that no such 
proof can be given.


Consider the following scenario. Alice and Bob are given a large number 
of entangled pairs, which they measure when they are at large spacelike 
separation. Each measurement is made at some angle, and gives a '1' for 
'up' or 'passed', and '0' for the opposite result. Both record the 
sequence of such results that they obtain in their individual lab books, 
together with the corresponding polarizer orientations. Their lab books 
then contain a random sequence of say N, '1's and '0's. There are 2^N 
possible such sequences in the many-worlds case, but since each observer 
keeps the same lab book for the whole sequence, each series of 
measurements is necessarily made in the same one world. Basically, this 
is because the worlds are disjoint, and the observers and/or lab books 
cannot move between worlds.


When Alice and Bob meet up at the end of the run of N trials, they take 
their lab books with them. When they meet they are clearly in the same 
Everettian branch. And since their lab books cannot have jumped between 
branches, the sequence of results that they each bring must also have 
all been recorded in this same one branch. So when they come to use 
their data to calculate the correlations between the measurements on 
their individual particles of the entangled pairs, they are in exactly 
the same situation as they would be if they had assumed a collapse model 
from the outset. The correlations they observe are necessarily 
single-world correlations. So the conditions of Bell's theorem are 
exactly satisfied, and since the correlations violate the Bell 
inequalities, their experiment has demonstrated the impossibility of a 
local hidden variable account. They have demonstrated that the quantum 
correlations require non-locality, even with Everett's many-worlds, just 
as Bell proved.


And all this happens whether they assume many-worlds or a collapse model.

Bruce

--
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.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Bootstrapping Reality: The inconsistency of nothing

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 5 Jul 2018, at 17:20, Lawrence Crowell  
> wrote:
> 
> On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 3:09:47 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 3 Jul 2018, at 15:09, Lawrence Crowell > > wrote:
>> 
>> These ideas about algorithms that can detect nonsense seem to run afoul of 
>> Turing's proof there is no universal TM that can determine if all TMs can 
>> halt or not. This is a form of the Berry paradox and similar "unnameable 
>> number" results similar to Cantor diagonalization. Such a thing really does 
>> not exist.
> 
> 
> Indeed. But I do not see the relevance here. It means only that we cannot 
> recognise a program from its behaviour in general, still less from its code. 
> But everyone knows who he is locally, and that is only what we need to get 
> the first person duplication when done (by definition/assumption) at the 
> right level. That explains the “many-world” internal interpretation in 
> arithmetic or Turing equivalent. 
> 
> Bruno
> 
> This was in response to something Clark wrote. 

OK. 



> 
> When it comes to interpretations I think Wittgenstein is advised with a 
> paraphrased quote that which we can't speak we pass over in silence.

Yes. But Wittgenstein’s remark was self-defeating, and invite the question 
“what are you talking about?”. Lol.
I made a comparative study of Wittgenstein, Lao-Ze and the Universal Machine in 
the long version of my thesis. What Wittgenstein missed is that the machine are 
aware of their incompleteness, conditionalized on their consistency.






> I think it best to think according to quantum spectra with some "Gödel 
> numbering" between quantum numbers and solutions to Diophantine equations. 
> John Bell proved that any objective theory giving experimental predictions 
> identical to those of quantum theory is necessarily nonlocal.

Assuming a unique reality. I prefer the term  “inseparable”, because 
“non-locality” is often interpreted the existence of FTL influence (even if 
they cannot be used to transmit information), but such FTL influence seems to 
me suspicious. Some might disagree, but I have not yet seen a proof that any 
FTL subsists when we abandon the collapse postulate. Bell assumes that 
experiments gives univocal results.




> Complete nonlocality would eventually encompass everything in the universe, 
> including ourselves, giving rise to bizarre self-referential logical truths.

If mechanism is true, the Universe if the mind of the universal machine, and 
the observable part of it is a sort of projective limit internal to arithmetic. 
Note this is close to Wittgenstein statement that the objective is the border 
of the subjective.




> The latter are not usually considered to be in the realm of physics. 
> Experimental outcomes are never considered with respect to such 
> self-referential loops.


It appears with Galilee, Einstein, Everett. Mechanism pushes this to its 
logical limit.




> However, this is because as with ψ-epistemic interpretations the quantum and 
> classical worlds are considered distinct. Heisenberg however showed there is 
> a problem with understanding the cut between the two. This leads to 
> Schödinger's cat problem. MWI is ψ-ontic, and in effect invokes nonlocal 
> variables that are the other worlds. Nonlocality in ψ-ontic interpretations 
> are instead of being a formal feature of QM as described topologically by 
> quotient groups and spaces is rather laden down with hidden variables. These 
> problems may be due to the fact we avoid looking at nonlocality in its 
> complete glory, and that the measurement problem and related issues of 
> quantum-classical dichotomy may be due to the fact an observer is really just 
> a part of a quantum system observing itself.

The quantum itself is due to the arithmetical reality observing itself. With p 
being a sigma-1 sentences, incompleteness imposes the following variants:

p truth
[]p   belief
[]p & p  knowledge
[]p & <>t  observable.   (And it explains the quantum formally and intuitively 
with the many-histories).
[]p & <>t & p sensitive

The whole physicalness comes from the universal machine observable mode. The 
“<>t” assures it makes probabilistic sense. It avoids the cul-de-sac world 
where probabilities makes no sense (intuitively and formally).



> 
> The Davis, Matiyasevich, Putnam, Robinson (DMPR) theorem proves that the 
> solutions for any general element of a Diophantine set is Turing halting, but 
> that any other element may not be. This means the solutions to Diophantine 
> equations are recursively enumerable, and there is a Gödel theorem aspect to 
> this.

Recursively enumerable, and creative, in Elis Post sense. All programs, 
including all quantum computer, can be simulated exactly (emulated) by one 
degree 4 Diophantine equation. 




> Now if we have some scheme for Gödel numbering quantum eigenvalues gn(λ) → 
> P(a, x_1, x_2, ..., x_n), for λ an eigenvalue with a code mapped to the 
> solution of a Diophantine equation. 
> 
> The 

Re: Do we live within a Diophantine equation?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 5 Jul 2018, at 17:19, John Clark  wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jul 5, 2018 at 4:55 AM, Bruno Marchal  > wrote:
> 
>> ​>>​>>​​​Nobody has ever seen a demonstration of a non-physical calculation 
>> in a book and nobody ever will.
>> 
>> ​>​>>​ ​That contradicts all publication in the field.
>> 
>> ​>>​Maybe that's true if your field is flying saucer men in Roswell New 
>> Mexico or other varieties of junk science, but show me one citation from the 
>> journal Nature or Science or Physical Review Letters or The Journal of 
>> Applied Physics demonstrating a non-physical calculation. Just one will do.
> 
> ​>​You need to consult papers in mathematical logic journal. Obviously if 
> “scientific” means physics, you will not find the papers I am mentioning,
> So you now admit that the experts who specialize in the study of physical 
> phenomena have, just as I said, "never seen a demonstration of a non-physical 
> calculation “ .
> 

Yes. Computability is born in mathematical logic, not in physics. Physical 
computer came later, and just show that the physical reality is 
Turing-complete. It only means that the physical reality can implement a 
universal Turing machine. Before that, it was shown that the arithmetical 
reality implement it too. But the physicists have all seen in the mathematical 
logic journal that the notion of computation is not a physical notion, as 
opposed of course to the notion of physical implementation of a computation.





> And that dear Bruno flatly contradicts your statement "That contradicts all 
> publication in the field “
> 
I don’t see it.




> , the truth of the matter is it does NOT contradict ANY of the publications 
> in the field of physical phenomena, except perhaps for the Roswell Flying 
> Saucer Journal. 
> 
> 


?







> ​>​You would say that group theory assumes the existence of chalk and 
> blackboard.
>  
> ​
> Group theory can't assume anything but group theorists can, and yes they 
> assume the existence of chalk and blackboard that's why they use them, I 
> would not be surprised if you use them too from time to time.


But that assumption is not part of the definition of group, like the notion of 
computation has nothing to do a priori with physics, even if you postulate 
physicalism. It is simply an easy verifiable fact.





>  
> ​>​I am not saying that a human does not need some energy to study 
> mathematics.
> 
> But why? If energy comes from pure numbers then why do experts in pure 
> numbers need energy even when they study pure numbers?
> 
> 


Because experts are physical being. With mechanism, they emerge in arithmetic 
or equivalent, though.





> 
> ​>​ in this case I am alluding to an infinity of “correct” one.
> 
>   ​ The ways numbers can be manipulated is infinite but only one of those 
> ways is compatible with physical reality

?




> and we call that way arithmetic; it is the only way that is correct,


That is utterly ridiculous, and circular. Physicists assume arithmetic to make 
sense of the observations.




> and unlike you I don't feel the need to use any apologetic quotation marks. 
> ​
> ​>>​Your fundamental blunder is you've forgotten what a function is, you've 
> forgotten what your high school algebra teacher said on the very first day of 
> class, he said a function is a machine,
> 
> 
> ​>​I am not that old. The machines are enumerable, but the functions are not.
> 
> ​A function can't exist unless a person or a machine is thinking about it,


Because you assume a primary physical reality. But that is not a valid way to 
proceed when we do metaphysics with the scientific method. You give the answer 
before the question. Anyway, this has been refuted.




> so the number of existing functions is not only enumerable it is finite, 
> assuming by "existence" we mean there is a difference between "X " and "not 
> X”. 


?



>  
> ​>​ like there are much more truth than proofs.
> 
> And there are more incorrect proofs than correct ones, infinitely more in 
> fact.


I guess you mean invalid. But that is false. It enumerable for both valid and 
non valid proofs.




> 
> 
> ​>>​A function is instructions written in a very compact form
> 
> ​>​No. That is a program, or machine. Most functions cannot be so compactly 
> represented.
> 
> ​If you don't have a notation that allows you to represent a function in a 
> finite number of symbols then neither a person nor a machine can think about 
> it then it does not exist except in Plato's heaven, and there is no 
> detectable difference between Plato's heaven existing and Plato's heaven not 
> existing so, just like the luminiferous aether of old, it is useless 
> metaphysical baggage.  


This is your opinion. But it contradicts your belief in computationalism as I 
have shown. We know how you stop at a crucial but very easy step.





> 
> ​> ​By itself, nothing can do anything.
> 
> ​Matter doesn't need anything to do stuff except the laws of physics, but