Re: determinism, Bohm, Bell

From: RP (no_mail_no_spam_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 03/23/05 

Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 23:49:43 -0600

Ron Baker, Pluralitas! wrote:

> I was just reading:
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/
>
> "
> The "problem" and "difficulty" to which Bell refers above is the conflict
> between the predictions of quantum theory and what can be inferred, call
> it C, from an assumption of locality in Bohm's version of the EPR
> argument, a conflict established by Bell's inequality. C happens to
> concern the existence of a certain kind of hidden variables, what
> might be called local hidden variables, but this fact is of little
> substantive importance. What is important is not so much the identity
> of C as the fact that C is incompatible with the predictions of quantum
> theory. The identity of C is, however, of great historical
> significance: It is responsible for the misconception that Bell proved
> that hidden variables are impossible, a belief until recently almost
> universally shared by physicists, as well as for the view, even now
> almost universally held, that what Bell's result does is to rule out
> local hidden variables, a view that is misleading.
>
> Here again is Bell, expressing the logic of his two-part demonstration
> of quantum nonlocality, the first part of which is Bohm's version of
> the EPR argument:
>
> Let me summarize once again the logic that leads to the impasse.
> The EPRB correlations are such that the result of the experiment
> on one side immediately foretells that on the other, whenever the
> analyzers happen to be parallel. If we do not accept the intervention
> on one side as a causal influence on the other, we seem obliged to
> admit that the results on both sides are determined in advance anyway,
> independently of the intervention on the other side, by signals from
> the source and by the local magnet setting. But this has implications
> for non-parallel settings which conflict with those of quantum
> mechanics. So we cannot dismiss intervention on one side as a causal
> influence on the other. (Bell 1987, p. 149)
> "
>
> It seems to say the Bell's inequality and Aspect's
> experiment more or less prove nonlocality but
> that it does not disprove hidden variables.
>
> Am I reading that right?
> Is the author correct?
>
> It seems Bell was a proponent of Bohm.
> It seems that Bohm said that a particle actually
> has a certain position and momentum even
> if it can not be determined with certainty.
>
> Is 'hidden determinism' viable?
> Is it true that we can't prove that the universe
> is not deterministic?
> Is it true that we can't disprove that there is
> a hidden mechanism that determines exactly,
> say, when a radioactive nucleus will decay?

Given that we can generate a decay event at will, seems that the
answer is obvious, eh? If that U-238 atom waits around for nature to
send a slow neutron its way, then there might seem to be a random
element involved, but then this is random only in the sense that it is
too complicated to calculate in advance. The event is however no more
random than the purposeful bombardment with neutrons in the controlled
fission reaction. Bell was either full of it, or his premises were
nonsense. I'm in favor of the latter. No experiment has ever proven
FTL communication, and the first one that does will immediately
invalidate SR, and causality. OTOH, without causality, there would be
no cause for inequality that Bell suggested, because given truly
random interchanges it would be impossible to express the argument in
mathematical terms. No algorithm can provide random output, which is
why the C64 random generator caught such hell from critics; it was
provably not-so-random.

Richard Perry

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