Re: FTL causality problems. I don't get it.

From: Edward Green (spamspamspam3_at_netzero.com)
Date: 10/18/04 

Date: 17 Oct 2004 18:46:01 -0700

sbharris@ix.netcom.com (Steve Harris sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com) wrote in message news:<79cf0a8.0410151353.71e15d41@posting.google.com>...
> zigoteau@yahoo.com (zigoteau) wrote in message news:<a836cacf.0410150048.600b952e@posting.google.com>...
>
> > Causality is violated in the results of the EPR experiment, although
> > not in a way that allows information to be sent at faster than the
> > speed of light.
>
>
> Comment:
>
> I propose we don't use the word "causality" here, inasmuch as the sort
> of "effects" you refer to as being "caused" by QM FTL processes are...
> well.... non-events. They don't become events, comparable to the way
> we usually use the word "event" in English, UNTIL they have been later
> deduced and recontructed, and the information has been registered
> somewhere that an "event" indeed occured. <...>

I think you slipped here, and began typing "event" when you meant to
type "effect". Anyway, I've read your articles here, and, surprise, I
have a comment. In fact, I have a cliche, which I will lay on you:

 "That only deepens the mystery".

Here's why I think my response is appropriate:

First of all, I think I understand very well the class of theories
ruled out by a violation of a Bell's inequality (if I ever learn
anything again in my life, I will develop some new rants for
sci.physics -- until that improbable event, I must recycle the old
ones, like a veritable Vertner Vergon). That class of theories speaks
to me very well as an embodiment of everything we might like to mean
by a classically flavored locally propagating theory.

Now, we have one of life's unexpected mathematical possibilities --
things which we in no way were even likely to forsee as _logical_
possibilities until the universe rudely thrust them before our noses:
the class of theories which are _not_ reducible to local propagation
of effect in the sense of the Bell-excluded class are _not_
coextensive with the class which would allow signaling between distant
points which must, in the contrary case, in some sense influence each
other!

In short, we have a concept splitting on "influence" -- a new middle
ground of things inexplicable under a complete isolation from the
opposite member of a pair, yet locally completely uninformative of the
state of that distant member. Attributing this behavior to the
universe titilates rather than narcotizes! It is a bizarre
paint-one's-whiskers-green state of affairs.

[To this stew I want to add another ingredient: I happen to be among
those not convinced by the current evidence that the universe indeed
works this way. It happens, dear SBH, that the di-monologue is
dominated by those who are indeed so convinced in a Bayesian sense, so
their conviction colors the very language: "loopholes" suggests a
legalistic pettifogging rather than intelligent reservation.
Nonetheless, my favorite loophole is one pejoratively described as
"new laws of physics", as in: given new laws of physics, current
observations are consistent with generation by a purely local theory
in the sense of Bell's inequalities. I.e., we have yet to see _raw_
violations of the inequalities, appearing in the unconditioned data.

This "new laws of phsyics" dismissal misses the point of the exercise:
the genius of Bell was to find a test which could rule out a broad
class of theories which might underpin quantum mechanics. The
motivation, I need hardly remind you, was to ask whether quantum
mechanics _an explicitly statistical theory_ could in fact be an
ensemble average over some (perjoratively labeled) hidden variables.
Now, since quantum mechanics _is_ the current deepset level of theory,
this would seem (to my admittedly simple mind) to indicate that any
possibly _more_ detailed theory must indeed represent "new laws of
physics"! To imply that it is unlikely such new laws of physics may
yet be discovered because keeping open the possibility of such
discovery would in fact require the possible discovery of new laws of
physics ... ?

I ask you, Steve, I ask you.]

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