I just watched Lecture 1. Dirac’s final remarks are very pertinent to my own approach that retrocausality restores Einstein’s determinism, but at a price that violates normal ideas of cause and effect. In other words, God does not play dice with the universe because there are both past and future influences on actual events in the present. Yakir Aharonov has developed this idea in detail in his two vector weak measurement model.
Gödel's Ghost
"FWIW, we don’t need backward causality to establish a local, realistic model explaining the behavior of QM. See Disproof of Bell’s Theorem by Clifford Algebra Valued Local Variables for details, and Disproof of Bell’s Theorem: Reply to Critics for responses to several criticisms of the first paper.
A major lesson from QM (that doesn’t seem like it should need reinforcing, but manifestly does) is that getting the mathematical formalism, and its attendant philosophy, right is absolutely vital to making real progress. Christian’s replies to several of his critics are extremely embarrassing—to the critics, who, as far as I can tell, completely fail to understand Christian’s re-framing of Bell’s Theorem in terms of Clifford Algebras, which subsumes and extends the algebra relevant to Bell’s Theorem, integrating the anti-commutativity of multivector multiplication necessary for the algebra to agree with experiment while remaining locally realistic.
You lose the right to be surprised at the nonsense results you get in physics if you aren’t extraordinarily careful in your choice of mathematical formalisms. Using the wrong algebra, and accepting the claim that there is “real randomness” in the physical universe, have halted genuine progress in physics for over 70 years now. It’s well past time to accept the truth of EPR-Bohm and the Everett “interpretation” of QM, and leave the ridiculous-on-its-face Copenhagen interpretation behind us.
Then maybe we can consign point-set topology to the scrap heap, but one war at a time."
Jack Sarfatti
Frankly, I find Joy Christian’s argument completely unintelligible and I am not alone in this. One can always introduce mathematical fudge factors without any clear connection to actual experiments to argue against any well-established result. Joy’s introduction of Clifford algebras in the particular way he does it, is not a legitimate move in the quantum game in my opinion. It is basically a bigger more complex alternative theory with a steep learning curve and without any intuitive basis to my mind at least. Bell’s inequality concerns orthodox quantum theory with wave functions that are complex functions of real numbers. There are now many clever experiments in weak measurements using interferometers by Yakir Aharonov’s group whose simplest understanding is in terms of retrocausality. I will provide references another time. In the meantime you may find these of interest:
Back From the Future
A series of quantum experiments shows that measurements performed in the future can influence the present. Does that mean the universe has a destiny—and the laws of physics pull us inexorably toward our prewritten fate?
By Zeeya Merali|Thursday, August 26, 2010 http://discovermagazine.com/2010/apr/01-back-from-the-future
Of particular interest is:
10:30–11:30. Lev Vaidman (Tel Aviv). “Can future measurements affect the present?” [Videos: talk; discussion.]
You may also be amused by:
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” – Albert Einstein
“I am not getting anything out of the meeting. I am learning nothing. Because there are no experiments this field is not an active one, so few of the best men are doing work in it. The result is that there are hosts of dopes here and it is not good for my blood pressure: such inane things are said and seriously discussed that I get into arguments outside the formal sessions (say, at lunch) whenever any- one asks me a question or starts to tell me about his “work.” The “work” is always: (1) completely un-understandable, (2) vague and indefinite, (3) something correct that is obvious and self-evident, but worked out by a long and difficult analysis, and presented as an important discovery, or (4) a claim based on the stupidity of the author that some obvious and correct fact, accepted and checked for years, is, in fact, false (these are the worst: no argument will convince the idiot), (5) an attempt to do something probably impossible, but certainly of no utility, which, it is finally revealed at the end, fails, or (6) just plain wrong. There is a great deal of “activity in the field” these days, but this “activity” is mainly in showing that the previous “activity” of somebody else resulted in an error or in nothing useful or in something promising. It is like a lot of worms trying to get out of a bottle by crawling all over each other. It is not that the subject is hard; it is that the good men are occupied elsewhere. Remind me not to come to any more gravity conferences! ” Richard Feynman http://www.theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/pubs/preskill-1995-feynman.pdf
Gödel's Ghost
Jack Sarfatti:Those papers are not accepted as correct by the majority of mainstream physicists in the field. More on this another time.
"I know. So what?"
Jack Sarfatti
So, I don’t believe Joy’s argument is correct. That is also the consensus in the mainstream of the field. Joy would have to show how his new alternative theory explains for example the Vaidman experiment in the link I gave. Good theoretical physics is more than posing a mathematical model. One must show how key mathematical symbols in the model relate to observations – at least in principle. Furthermore, there is evidence from “brain presponse” experiments of real retro-causal influence that goes beyond even orthodox quantum theory, but that is a long story. In addition, there is way of understanding the cosmological dark energy accelerating our universe’s expansion rate as advanced back-from-the-future Hawking horizon black body radiation. In other words, the retrocausal view is very useful indeed in terms of actual observations.
Gödel's Ghost
Jack Sarfatti:Frankly, I find Joy Christian’s argument completely unintelligible and I am not alone in this. One can always introduce mathematical fudge factors without any clear connection to actual experiments to argue against any well-established result. Joy’s introduction of Clifford algebras in the particular way he does it, is not a legitimate move in the quantum game in my opinion. It is basically an alternative theory without any intuitive basis to my mind at least.
"Arguing from an “intuitive basis” in QM is what got us into the mess we’re in now. Specifically Bohr’s intuition, which was prejudiced in favor of his vacuous “complementarity principle,” as documented in The Infamous Boundary: Seven Decades of Controversy in Quantum Physics. Far from being a “mathematical fudge factor without any clear connection to actual experiments,” Christian’s locally realistic model completely agrees with experiment and is on firmer foundations than Bell’s traditional (scalar) algebra. I refer you to Response #4 of Disproof of Bell’s Theorem: Reply to Critics for details, including a list of the relevant algebraic identities used in Bell’s Theorem, and a detailed explanation as to why replacing a single identity with one from the Clifford Algebra Cl3,0 is necessary in order to avoid singularities—literally gimbal lock—in the scalar algebra. So, far from being an unintuitive fudge, the use of (one identity from) a Clifford Algebra results in an algebra which remains an associative division algebra over the reals, and in fact is relatively commonly known as the quaternionic algebra, an algebra well known to aerospace engineers, roboticists, and computer-game developers, all of whom work in contexts in which gimbal lock is a well-known—and rightly unacceptable—problem."
Jack Sarfatti: Bell’s inequality concerns orthodox quantum theory with wave functions that are complex functions of real numbers. There are now many clever experiments in weak measurements using interferometers by Yakir Aharonov’s group whose simplest understanding is in terms of retrocausality.
"I don’t have a problem with retrocausality, since no physical theory since Newton’s has posited time moving in only one direction, and in particular since Gödel proved that any universe satisfying Einstein’s field equations must include closed time-like curves (the so-called Gödel universes). My appeal here is merely to Occam’s razor: there’s no need to introduce retrocausality to make sense of Bell’s Theorem, because Bell’s Theorem is false—a byproduct of the bad mathematics that infected physics in the early 20th century, when Gibbs’ vector calculus overtook the earlier, better quaternion and, more generally, geometric-algebra-based approaches.
It’s worth adding that Christian is nevertheless only correcting an error of formalism. We already know why Bell’s Theorem doesn’t show what it purports to show, thanks to Does Quantum Nonlocality Exist? Bell’s Theorem and the Many-Worlds Interpretation. The “nonlocality” only arises if you assume the observer obeys classical mechanics, while the observed system obeys quantum mechanics. Only the kind of confusion that has gripped physics ever since Bohr convinced the physics community to stop doing science can come from this."
Jack Sarfatti
“Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein
“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” – Albert Einstein
Dear Ghost: If you think you understand Joy Christian’s theory, please explain it in as simple a way that you can without being simpler than is possible. To my mind, it seems a mathematical snow job. I find it completely unintelligible in terms of orthodox quantum theory of observable operators in Hilbert space. Thanks.
PS: For example, your writing:
“and a detailed explanation as to why replacing a single identity with one from the Clifford Algebra Cl3,0 is necessary in order to avoid singularities—literally gimbal lock—in the scalar algebra. So, far from being an unintuitive fudge, the use of (one identity from) a Clifford Algebra results in an algebra which remains an associative division algebra over the reals, and in fact is relatively commonly known as the quaternionic algebra, an algebra well known to aerospace engineers, roboticists, and computer-game developers, all of whom work in contexts in which gimbal lock is a well-known—and rightly unacceptable—problem.”
I see no connection of the above pure mathematics to quantum theory as normally understood by physicsts working in the field. BTW I prefer Bohm’s pilot wave theory to Bohr’s.
Pauli spin matrices, angular momentum operators, Dirac gamma matrices can, I agree, be understood in terms of Clifford algebras. However, they correspond to Hermitian operators on a Hilbert quantum information space. They also correspond elements of a Lie algebra of the Poincare symmetry group.
Does Quantum Nonlocality Exist? Bell’s Theorem and the Many-Worlds Interpretation
Frank J. Tipler
(Submitted on 30 Mar 2000)
“Quantum nonlocality may be an artifact of the assumption that observers obey the laws of classical mechanics, while observed systems obey quantum mechanics. I show that, at least in the case of Bell’s Theorem, locality is restored if observed and observer are both assumed to obey quantum mechanics, as in the Many-Worlds Interpretation. Using the MWI, I shall show that the apparently “non-local” expectation value for the product of the spins of two widely separated particles — the “quantum” part of Bell’s Theorem — is really due to a series of three purely local measurements. Thus, experiments confirming “nonlocality” are actually confirming the MWI.”
This is also essentially Murray Gell-Mann’s position in Ch 11 of “The Quark and The Jaguar.” There are several recent papers showing why this position also has serious problems of interpretation. I will try to find them and post them in the not too distant future. Henry Stapp’s phrasing of the implication of Bell’s theorem includes this option in terms of counter-factual definiteness (CFD).
e.g. http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/purported.pdf Here Stapp has a post-quantum theory of retro-causation.
As I said, I favor Bohm’s pilot wave theory with a purely quantum-informational quantum potential Q acting on actual particles and classical boson fields in spacetime. Here everything is quantum mechanical and Q acts nonlocally when entanglement is present. Tipler’s argument does not apply in the Bohm interpretation.
If we restrict the discussion to orthodox quantum theory what you choose to believe is subjective – a matter of taste. There are several paradigms that can equally explain the results of scattering experiments – a space of degenerate equivalent interpretations of a limited set of experiments. However, there is controversial evidence of real retrocausation in our minds, which is a new regime of phenomena. This involves what Antony Valentini calls “signal nonlocality” beyond the orthodox quantum theory.
“It is argued that immense physical resources – for nonlocal communication, espionage, and exponentially-fast computation – are hidden from us by quantum noise, and that this noise is not fundamental but merely a property of an equilibrium state in which the universe happens to be at the present time. It is suggested that ‘non-quantum’ or nonequilibrium matter might exist today in the form of relic particles from the early universe. We describe how such matter could be detected and put to practical use. Nonequilibrium matter could be used to send instantaneous signals, to violate the uncertainty principle, to distinguish non-orthogonal quantum states without disturbing them, to eavesdrop on quantum key distribution, and to outpace quantum computation (solving NP-complete problems in polynomial time).” http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0203049
Gödel's Ghost
Jack Sarfatti: If you think you understand Joy Christian’s theory, please explain it in as simple a way that you can without being simpler than is possible. To my mind, it seems a mathematical snow job.
"I referred to Christian’s Response #4 precisely because it’s as simple as possible, consisting of replacing a single identity in scalar algebra to get quaternionic algebra, probably the simplest, best-understood of the Clifford algebras. This might seem like a “mathematical snow job” if not for the explicit treatment of the fact that the scalar algebra—and remember, Bell’s Theorem rests on this—doesn’t even support 3D rotation correctly—again, as understood perfectly well by aerospace engineers, roboticists, computer game developers, and anyone else concerned with rotation in 3D (or more). In other words, Bell’s Theorem—because of scalar algebra—explicitly (identity 19, in Christian’s Response #4) assumes that multiplication is commutative—as it is for scalars. But this is not the appropriate model to apply to rotations in 3D, because there are values for which the calculation is undefined (that’s what “singularity” means; in a good math/logic/physics/computer-science thesaurus we’d also find “divergence” and/or “crash,” literally as in “the software crashes when it tries to do the computation”—think division by zero) and because rotation is manifestly not commutative, as Christian reminds us with his “rotate a book” example. So Christian correctly changes that identity, and only that identity, to correctly account for multiplication in the algebra to be non-commutative—as you obviously know it also is in matrix algebra. More, he ensures that the resulting algebra is one of the only two remaining associative division algebras over the reals—in other words, he takes a “first, do no harm” stance.
So the result is physically realistic—not “pure math” at all—precisely because it does correctly model rotation in 3D. It then serves as a locally realistic model for the calculations that Bell’s Theorem, in a stunning piece of ontological overreach, claim are a priori universally impossible."
I see no connection of the above pure mathematics to quantum theory as normally understood by physicsts working in the field.
"So what?
I’m not saying that to be cheeky. I’m observing that you’re making a naked appeal to authority in what is supposed to be a scientific discussion. It carries literally no weight. Christian has the advantage of making explicit the algebraic identities Bell’s Theorem uses; his extremely conservative replacement of one of those identities on clear, obvious grounds of physical reality (does the algebra accurately model 3D rotation or not?) while maintaining the algebra’s properties as an associative division algebra; the result is a model that is successfully locally realistic, in contradiction to Bell’s Theorem. Rejecting this is rather obviously philosophy rather than science."
Tipler’s argument does not apply in the Bohm interpretation.
"I think you might be surprised.
I look forward to further material on problems with Dr. Gell-Mann’s understanding of the Everett “interpretation,” which he does indeed share with Dr. Tipler. Regarding that, let me highly recommend David Wallace’s recent The Emergent Multiverse: Quantum Theory According to the Everett Interpretation. As you may surmise, I accept the Everett “interpretation” (like Dr. Tipler, I put “interpretation” in quotes because it’s not “an interpretation,” in a sense Wallace makes precise in his book). I particularly think you’ll appreciate the “surprised” link above, given your interest in the relationship between information theory (which I would reframe, in this context especially, as algorithmic information theory) and the quantum mechanics.
In the end, I accept the naked results of experiment, minus philosophers attempting to impose their philosophies upon them. This means I accept the conclusion that observers, too, are quantum-mechanical systems, as there is no experiment suggesting otherwise—on the contrary, the meaning of many experiments becomes clear upon accepting this. This means that the Everett “interpretation” is correct. That has interesting philosophical implications, to be sure—but those implications are strictly subsequent, rather than antecedent, to Everett, and philosophical conclusions that contradict them, including various “paradoxes” arising from other actualinterpretations, are to be jettisoned wholesale."
Jack Sarfatti
Ghost wrote:
“My appeal here is merely to Occam’s razor: there’s no need to introduce retrocausality to make sense of Bell’s Theorem, because Bell’s Theorem is false—a byproduct of the bad mathematics that infected physics in the early 20th century, when Gibbs’ vector calculus overtook the earlier, better quaternion and, more generally, geometric-algebra-based approaches. It’s worth adding that Christian is nevertheless only correcting an error of formalism.”
The great majority of physicists active in quantum theory foundations will say that your above position is false. They do not accept Joy Christian’s argument.
Occam’s razor is also vague. When I look at the experiments the simplest explanation to my mind is retro-causality in the sense of John Cramer’s “transactional interpretation” and Yakir Aharonov’s two state vector interpretation in the new regime of weak measurements. BTW, Bell’s argument is only for Von Neumann strong measurements. You might also take a look at the GHZ paper.
“GHZ experiments are a class of physics experiments that may be used to generate starkly contrasting predictions from local hidden variable theory and quantum mechanical theory, and permit immediate comparison with actual experimental results. A GHZ experiment is similar to a test of Bell’s inequality, except using three or more entangled particles, rather than two. With specific settings of GHZ experiments, it is possible to demonstrate absolute contradictions between the predictions of local hidden variable theory and those of quantum mechanics, whereas tests of Bell’s inequality only demonstrate contradictions of a statistical nature. The results of actual GHZ experiments agree with the predictions of quantum mechanics.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GHZ_experiment
Gödel's Ghost
"Incidentally, you may enjoy this review of Wallace by Lev Vaidman. :-)"
Gödel's Ghost
Jack Sarfatti: The great majority of physicists active in quantum theory foundations will say that your above position is false. They do not accept Joy Christian’s argument.
"Again: so what?"
Jack Sarfatti: Occam’s razor is also vague.
"Strictly speaking, it isn’t, but deriving conclusions from the observation is admittedly challenging."
Jack Sarfatti
On Joy Christian’s response #4. At the moment I find it to be unintelligible. What he says about the “gimbal lock” looks interesting, but I do not see how it invalidates Bell’s argument. Joy would really need to start from the beginning with a reformulation of quantum theory in order to get most quantum physicists to pay attention to his papers. He would also have to explain the GHZ non-statistical argument that is stronger than Bell’s statistical argument. Furthermore, he would have to address the next step beyond to post-quantum theories such as Henry Stapp’s and Antony Valentini’s for which there is evidence – controversial to be sure.
As far as many-worlds theory is concerned, like Mach’s Principle it is very vague subject to several variations none of which are free of serious problems on a par with the objections to nonlocality.
PS here is a relevant discussion FYI https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-many-worlds-interpretation-explain-away-nonlocality
Note also:
“Weinberg’s Nonlinear Quantum Mechanics and the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox
Joseph Polchinski
Theory Group, Department of Physics, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712and Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106
(Received 18 June 1990)
I show that Weinberg’s nonlinear quantum mechanics leads either to communication via Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations, or to communication between branches of the wave function.
PACS numbers: 03.65.Bz
Weinberg ‘ has proposed a formalism for testing nonlinear
extensions of quantum mechanics. In this framework,
there are nonlinear observables in addition to the
usual linear ones. Heuristically, the greater number of
observables suggests that there is more information in
the wave function than in the usual linear theory. This
in turn raises the possibility that the fictitious violation of
locality that occurs in the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen
(EPR) experiment in linear quantum mechanics might
become a real violation in the nonlinear theory. That is,
the EPR apparatus might be used to send instantaneous
signals.
In this Letter I determine the constraints imposed
upon observables by the requirement that transmission
not occur in the EPR experiment. This leads to a
different treatment of separated systems than that originally
proposed by Weinberg. I find that forbidding EPR
communication in nonlinear quantum mechanics necessarily
leads to another sort of unusual communication:
that between diff’erent branches of the wave function.
Oisin and Czachor have also discussed EPR communication
in nonlinear quantum mechanics; their results
are discussed at the end of the paper.”
Jack Sarfatti
Joy Christian is no fool of course. I will give The Devil his due at a later time I hope. ;-) Meantime, I gather dimly through the looking glass darkly that Joy seems to think that Bell’s error is in using a “scalar algebra” rather than a non-commutative quaternion algebra for the “local beables.” Allegedly, making the quaternionic substitution at the level of the hidden variable “local beables” reproduces the statistical predictions of orthodox QM for the bi-partite entanglement case of the Clauser to Aspect experiments. Joy claims he has proved that this quaternionic move in the game means local causality. This is far from obvious to me at present and I need to study his “proof” of this. I do not yet grok the relevance of his “gimbal lock” objection because he says it only happens when two of the rotation axes coincide if I understand him? However, in doing orthodox quantum theory with the Pauli spin matrices and the orbital angular momentum and boost matrices for the Poincare Lie algebra of Hermitian observables – we always have three orthogonal axes for spatial rotations. Presumably, this constraint can also be used at the level of the local beables? Be that as it may, suppose, for the sake of argument, that Christian’s argument is accepted, then how does he explain the GHZ argument? I think, that these arguments cannot really be settled so long as orthodox quantum theory is considered the complete final description of physical reality – in the sense that Gerard ‘t Hooft and Lenny Susskind mean it for example. That is, according to them all objects, even huge black holes, can be quantum entangled and basically described by a unitary giant S-Matrix that conserves probabilities at the fundamental level. This is, in contrast, to attempts to make a nonlinear, non-unitary post-quantum theory in which entanglement is not only a resource for quantum computation, but is also a stand-alone command-control-communication channel C^4 not needing a classical signal key to unlock the messages encoded in the global entanglement web of spatially and temporally separated parts of the whole.
Getting back to orthodox quantum theory in the case of weak measurements with post-selection as in the experiment described in Vaidman’s video that I posted earlier, the retrocausal explanation is, in my opinion, the simplest most satisfactory, most efficient in terms of perhaps algorithmic complexity, explanation. Alternative explanations, I suspect, require much more mathematical infrastructure as well as more Rube Goldberg heuristic contortions of informal argument. Again, keep it as simple as possible, without making it simpler than is possible – Einstein’s Rule. On the other hand, if post-quantum phenomena are a fact, and I think they are, indeed if all living matter is intrinsically post-quantum then retrocausality, in the strongest sense, will be established as the only sensible way of understanding the world. Of course, I do not expect most readers to accept this world view as yet.
“The future, and the future alone, is the home of explanation.” Henry Dwight Sedgwick, 1908
I just noticed that you claim Christian explains GHZ
“An elementary topological error in Bell’s representation of the EPR elements of reality is identified. Once recognized, it leads to a topologically correct local-realistic framework that provides exact, deterministic, and local underpinning of at least the Bell, GHZ-3, GHZ-4, and Hardy states. The correlations exhibited by these states are shown to be exactly the classical correlations among the points of a 3 or 7-sphere, both of which are closed under multiplication, and hence preserve the locality condition of Bell. The alleged non-localities of these states are thus shown to result from misidentified topologies of the EPR elements of reality. When topologies are correctly identified, local-realistic completion of any arbitrary entangled state is always guaranteed in our framework. This vindicates EPR, and entails that quantum entanglement is best understood as an illusion.” wrote Godel's Ghost - Alas Poor Ghost! ;-)
I don’t understand what you mean by “illusion” here since entanglement in e.g. quantum teleportation, dense coding, models of quantum computing, signal analysis … is proving to be a “persistent illusion.” But again, the real proof in the pudding must be in the post-quantum realm beyond the no-signaling “theorems” of orthodox quantum theory with its linearity and unitarity conservation of probabilities. I mean all biological phenomena as well as the origin of the dark energy of our accelerating universe.
PS I also do not understand what you mean by “This vindicates EPR”? The original EPR paper of 1935 only dealt with [P,Q] = ih not with [Jx,Jy] ~ Jz entanglements. The latter were introduced in early 1950s by David Bohm. Therefore, I do not see how the topology of the gimbal lock, the Euler angles, non-orthogonal rotation axes limiting to a singularity etc. plays any role in the original historical context of the 1935 paper. In that paper, EPR showed that local P, Q beables “elements of reality” lead to a violation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle &P&Q ~ h unless there is a “spooky telepathic action at a distance” – this can be understood most directly in terms of the retro-causal “Feynman zig-zag” introduced by O. Costa-de Beauregard I think as early as the late 1940s? It is now part of John Cramer’s and Yakir Aharonov’s pictures.