What's missing from Deutsch's scheme is signal nonlocality that violates orthodox quantum physics. Elitzur has shown that this also leads to a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but that is exactly what Danny Sheehan alleged at the other AAAS meeting at USD in June 2011. It may be the Eddington was wrong.
Elitzur wrote
"During the years, the imperative to preserve this unique law has proved fruitful in a wide range of issues, from black-hole physics [21 to CPT-invariance1.Recently, Vaientini [4] has raised the interesting question concerning a possible relation between thetionale for the relativistic prohibition against the three fundamental “impossibility principles”,
(i) the absence of instantaneous signals,
(ii) the uncertainty principle
(iii) the statistical law of entropy increase"
Physics Letters A 167 (1992) 335-340 PHYSICS LETTERS A
North-Holland
Locality and indeterminism preserve the second law
Avshalom C. Elitzur
Department of Chemical Physics, The Weizmann Institute of Science, 76 100 Rehovot, Israel
Received 4 October 1991; revised manuscript received 2 June 1992; accepted for publication 4 June 1992
Communicated by J.P. Vigier
In any case it seems that signal nonlocality (e.g. Antony Valentini's version) and violation of the Second Law must hang together. ;-)
(15) The Second Law of Thermodynamics: Status and Challenges. Organizer: Daniel P. Sheehan (Department of Physics, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA;
Sponsored by the Pacific Division section on Physics and Materials Science.
Currently scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, 14 and 15 June.
The second law of thermodynamics is considered one of the central principles of science, engineering and technology. Since its discovery 185 years ago, no counter-example has been recognized by the scientific community, and its status is generally considered absolute. During the last two decades, however, it has come under unprecedented scrutiny by research groups worldwide, as evidenced by the more than two dozen distinct challenges advanced against it in over 60 articles. Several of these challenges have moved into laboratory testing.
In this symposium, the current experimental and theoretical status of second law will be examined. Topics will include nonequilibrium systems, Maxwell’s demon, decoherence, the thermodynamic arrow of time. Emphasis will be given to current and proposed experiments addressing questions of second law universality. It is hoped this meeting will generate new theoretical models by which emerging experimental results can be understood, and stimulate new experiments and collaborations by which the underlying physics of the second law may be more fully exposed.
(16) Quantum Retrocausation: Theory and Experiment. Organizer: Daniel P. Sheehan (Department of Physics, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA;
Sponsored by the Pacific Division section on Physics and Materials Science.
Currently scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, 13 and 14 June.
Causation – the notion that earlier events affect later ones but not vice versa – undergirds our experience of reality and physical law. Although it predicated on the forward unidirectionality of time, in fact, most physical laws are time symmetric; that is, they formally and equally admit both time-forward and time-reverse solutions. Time-reverse solutions would allow the future to influence the past, i.e., reverse (or retro-) causation. Why time-forward solutions are preferentially observed in nature remains an unresolved problem in physics.
Laboratory evidence for reverse causation is intriguing but scarce; meanwhile, theoretical models for these results have not yet made deep enough connections with mainstream physics. Even the most basic physical constraints – e.g., whether reverse causation is best explained by energy transfers or simply by correlations without information exchange – remain open questions.
This symposium will explore recent experiments, theory, and philosophical issues connected with retrocausation. In particular, it is hoped that this meeting will help generate comprehensive theoretical models by which experimental results can be understood, and stimulate new experiments and collaborations by which the underlying physics may be more clearly exposed.
http://associations.sou.edu/aaaspd/2011SANDIEGO/Symposia11.html#15
On Jul 31, 2011, at 4:26 AM, Gary S. Bekkum wrote:
"According to David Deutsch, it is our ability to explain things. We do not yet understand how to design this ability to explain things, otherwise we would be able to create computers that are intelligent, though David Deutsch has no doubt that one day we will. "
A review:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/cr/0670022756/n=1/s=rd/f=/ref=aw_cr_i_1?qid=1312111063&sr=8-1