On Jan 18, 2016, at 2:26 AM, Brian Josephson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.> wrote:


On 17 Jan 2016, at 23:01, Jack Sarfatti <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.> wrote:

As I said TI works fine as an EFFECTIVE DESCRIPTION (e.g. epicycles for pre-Newtonian astronomy) for orthodox quantum matter that excludes the essential part of living matter.

No one is disputing that TI can explain a subset of strong measurements in limited situations in which orthodox quantum theory is a good approximation. This is analogous to experiments in which special relativity is a good approximation and general relativity is not needed.

However, TI, Copenhagen, Many Worlds are all SUPERFICIAL INFORMAL MODELS of objective retro-causal post-quantum reality that exclude new phenomena and deeper understanding of what the universe is really like. If you are content to stay inside Plato’s Cave and mistake the shadows on the wall for reality, who am I to try to wean you from your delusional fantasies? ;-)

But life is all about effective transactions, isn’t it?  These are what makes it work.

Only if you look at it superficially. Not if you look more deeply.

TI assumes, as John Cramer admits, that only the quantum wave is real. There are no classical “b-bs” (his term) as in the Bohm ontology (1952 version).

It is now obvious from Sutherland’s recent work, which most of you clearly have not adequately yet understood, hence this debate, that the reason TI works in its limited domain is the vanishing of the action-reaction term in his retrocausal (Aharonov) Lagrangian coupling the wave with the particle in the simplest situation. This vanishing action-reaction term is identical with de Broglie’s original guidance constraint

e.g. v = (h/m)GradS

in the simplest problem of NR particle QM.

The above equation means that when the action-reaction is zero, then the b-bs paths coincide with the wave streamline gradients, hence on can pretend there are no b-b paths. That coincidence, that accidental degeneracy, will disappear in the post-quantum regime of open systems corresponding to Valentini’s “sub-quantum non-equilibrium."

Now both John and Ruth have given specious faulty logic arguments that Aharonov’s weak measurements do not show “b-bs” trajectories - tell that to Aephraim Steinberg.

Of course, if you wash out the final information revealing the b-b paths you regain orthodox quantum statistical predictions. From that you cannot correctly infer that there are no trajectories in between the initial and final strong measurements.

That these trajectories are at the moment not of great precision in real experiments is hardly relevant to the principle.

R. I. Sutherland’s papers explain these points with clarity and I suggest you all give them serious study.


In fact we can understand why retrocausality appears to work in these terms.  If people agree to meet at a certain place at a certain time, their subsequent behaviour in relation to that meeting may be said to be caused by the future event, but there is no actual causation.

This is a false argument in my opinion which cannot explain the violation of Bell’s inequality for example. Again, Sutherland explains this point vividly.

That future meeting is itself caused in part by the transactions that the party made previously.  Retrocausation may, like epicycles, give the right answer but (to borrow for now a type of phraseology favoured by Jack) ‘purely and simply nonsense’: what is real is the transactions.

Also Brian you have confused two different problems, so has Cramer and Kastner.

The TI transaction is roughly speaking concerned with the Feynman diagram

>——<

i.e. two electrons exchange a photon - that is the simplest transaction


However, the relevant problem is the more primitive Feynman diagram (to zero order in perturbation theory sense) the single electron propagation line | i.e. electron moves from  <x|i>  to <x’|f>. 


Brian

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Brian D. Josephson
Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Cambridge
Director, Mind–Matter Unification Project
Cavendish Laboratory, JJ Thomson Ave, Cambridge CB3 0HE, UK
WWW: http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10
Tel. +44(0)1223 337260/337254