Bell’s theorem reveals that the entanglement-based correlations predicted by quantum mechanics are strikingly different from the sort of locally explicable correlations familiar in a classical context. — flannel jesus

I understand that phenomena at atomic and subatomic scales behave differently than those at human scale. It is common that phenomena at different scales behave differently. Superconductivity manifests at temperatures near absolute zero but is not seen at room temperature. Relativistic effects manifest at speeds near the speed of light but are not seen at slower speeds. What's the big deal?

The quote of mine is just rewording that, where I replace "local hidden variable theories" with the phrase "classical universe where those questions have singular, definite answers." Those phrases may not be perfectly interchangeable, but they are close to interchangeable. — flannel jesus

I don't see how the two phrases are interchangeable at all.

↪T Clark my mistake. Your post said some disagree, and then you brought up many worlds in a way that sounded like you think many worlds is an example of disagreement. — flannel jesus

to explain it to someone who rejected QM out of the gate, and didn't want to understand the maths and probabilities involved — flannel jesus

Are you talking about me again? If so, stop misrepresenting what I wrote.

They matter because they prove with reasonable certainty that we live in a world that does not match up with classical assumptions.

T Clark said many people disagree with that and he brought up "many earths", which I assume to be many worlds - please correct me if I'm wrong. Many worlds is quantum mechanics. Many worlds is NOT classical. Many worlds also believes in indeterminate answers to measurement questions prior to measurement. — flannel jesus

You keep misstating my position. It's frustrating. I never wrote and I don't believe that the subatomic world is describable in terms of classical physics. I said I don't see that quantum mechanics rules out realism. Quantum mechanical phenomena behave differently than classical phenomena, but that doesn't mean they're not real.

The inequalities in Bells Theorem are there to help us test if our universe is one where it's in fact true that we might live in a classical universe where those questions have singular, definite answers. — flannel jesus

In my understanding, this is not true. It is your interpretation, not mine and probably not Bell's. The inequalities are not "there to help us," they describe phenomena at very small scales.

Many worlds doesn't disagree with it at all. — flannel jesus

I didn't say that the two approaches disagreed, I said that one of the reasons many worlds is appealing is that some people see it as addressing the claim that quantum phenomena are "ontologically indeterminant."

I've covered one-third of the book. Harrowing indeed. But the storytelling is very inviting. It's hard to put it down. You should try it. — Hailey

I'll put it on my list, but I generally don't do well with harrowing.

This is a subject I'm really in interested in and, from what I've read, your posts are well written and interesting, but they're way too long. You're covering a lot here, enough for more than one discussion and way too much for just one. Enough for 10 discussions. The forum does not work well for manifestos. If you want things to work out, focusing on a relatively narrow subject is usually necessary.

You might be interested in Adam Becker's book "What is Real?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I noted on another thread, I did read Becker's book and enjoyed it. It was a bit too People Magazine for me - about biography, personality, and relationships rather than science. Becker was also too rah rah for non-Copenhagen interpretations for my taste - a bit smug and condescending. But the explanations of the different interpretations were clear and well thought through. I found that really helpful. I found one of the interpretations Becker described - spontaneous collapse - plausible and intriguing, although I still don't see how it can be distinguished from the others experimentally.

All in all, my understanding of the overall problem hasn't changed.

Quantum measurements are indeterminate prior to measurement, genuinely and actually indeterminate rather than just a question that we don't yet have the answer to. Ontologically indeterminate, if you will. Bells theorem settles that question pretty cleanly, which is why it's so valuable in the history of quantum mechanics. — flannel jesus

Except you'll find people who disagree with that. The whole many earth's interpretation was developed to address that issue. Reality is a metaphysical characteristic, not a scientific one.

Sure, I thought the article maybe did a good job at explaining that but perhaps it's not as explicit as it could be. I'm only a layman, but I do have what I consider to be a relatively compelling analogy, if you're interested. — flannel jesus

The article was fine. It did explain the Bell inequalities well. I also am very much a layman. Very, very much. That's why I have been struggling with the implications of QM once you get beyond the basic questions. Different expert sources give very different answers to the questions I am looking for answers to. Locality matters. It doesn't. Realism matters. It doesn't. All interpretations of QM are equivalent. They're not. Just because locality is violated, that doesn't mean that QM can be used to send information faster than the speed of light. It does.

if you've tried and struggled to understand it, I definitely recommend at least one go of the above article. It took some effort but it really clarified everything for me. — flannel jesus

Thanks. I took a look.

I'm not really confused about the mechanics of tests of the Bell inequality. If you do this and this, then this happens. Relatively straightforward. The implications of those results are a bit harder to get a grip on - What do they say about realism and locality? Where this all started for me was with the question whether or not the results of Bell inequality experiments have any implications for determining which interpretation of quantum mechanics is the correct one. As far as I can see, the results have nothing definitive to say about QM interpretations.

That leaves me where I started - if the different interpretations give the same results, they are equivalent. Any differences between them are metaphysics, not science. That will remain the case until someone can figure out how to test for differences between the interpretations. I predict, on the basis of my limited understanding, that it will not be possible.

I find this kind of discussion of morality frustrating. I don't think it gets to the heart of how morality works for normal people in their everyday lives and I don't find it's arguments convincing. You and I are not going to come to any agreement. We've already started repeating our arguments and not saying anything new, so I vote we leave it there.

We have definitely gotten to the end of my competence and then gone on few extra lengths. I have some more reading and thinking to do. This was a useful conversation for me.

I still don't know what his idea of culpability means in this context. People aren't to blame for getting pregnant, they are responsible for their actions and their consequences.

Clearly you and I aren't going to come to any agreement on this when you don't even recognize that you are making a judgment that the fetus' interests are more important than the woman's.

Regardless of the morals of the situation, making abortion illegal causes some women to put themselves at risk. This means that their family, friends, workmates, and society in general, are paying a price because the law exists. — Agree-to-Disagree

I think you are looking at this from a different perspective than I am. I'm pretty tightly focused on responding to the points that @Bob Ross made.

I think it works like this: Alice is on earth and Bob on a spaceship near Arcturus about 37 light years' distant, monitoring his particle detector. Its bell rings and Bob sees that it registers "up." What information does that convey to him? Ans. none. — tim wood

Let's take a classical situation. Alice takes a black and a white bead and puts each in a separate opaque box without looking at them. She sends one box in a rocket 37 light years away and keeps the other in a desk drawer. Bob gets the box 50 or so years later, opens it, sees a white bead, and knows that Alice has a black bead. How is that different from the situation you describe?

I already noted that I am saying that it should be translated into law. So simply substitute “absolute legal principle” for “absolute moral principle”. — Bob Ross

And, as I wrote, I disagree with that too.

In what you quoted of me, I never said nor does it imply that the life and well-being of the fetus is more important than the pregnant woman. What I said in that quote is that culpability, as a principle, by my lights, implies that in the situation of consensual sex the woman’s health now is less priority than the fetus (because she is cuplable for that person’s condition): this is not the same thing as claiming that the fetus’ life is more important than the woman—for one is an absolute judgment about one trumping the other, and the other is constrained to a particular context. — Bob Ross

As I noted, there are many things I am responsible for that I might not be able to meet others expectations for. If I make a commitment to be someplace but then get sick, it is reasonable for me to cancel the commitment based on the judgment that my health is more important than being where I am expected to be. The situation you describe is analogous. If I am responsible for a pregnancy and you decide I have to go through with it even if it risks my health, you are deciding that the fetus' life is more important than my health. So, when you write "I never said nor does it imply that the life and well-being of the fetus is more important than the pregnant woman," you're wrong.

So you have a mathematical expression of a limit, and a mathematical description that accurately predicts the actual outcomes, and they're inconsistent with each other. And alas, there's no more than that to it. — tim wood

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I read the SA article and a book called "What is Real" by Adam Becker recommended to me by @Count Timothy von Icarus. I think you've laid it out correctly in your OP. After struggling with reading the argument, one section of text allowed me to simplify things without necessarily understanding the details:

The Bell inequality constitutes an explicit prediction of the outcome of an experiment. The rules of quantum mechanics can be employed to predict the results of the same experiment. I shall not give the details of how the prediction is derived from the mathematical formalism of the quantum theory; it can be stated, however, that the procedure is completely explicit and is objective in the sense that anyone applying the rules correctly will get the same result. Surprisingly, the predictions of quantum mechanics differ from those of the local realistic theories. In particular, quantum mechanics predicts that for some choices of the axes A, B and C the Bell inequality is violated, so that there are more A+ B+ pairs of protons than there are A+C+ and B+ C+ pairs combined. Thus local realistic theories and quantum mechanics are in direct conflict. — Scientific American

Here's my simplified understanding:

• The Bell inequalities are calculated based on standard classical probability theory
• Their applicability is based on three assumptions - 1) the phenomena in question actually exist 2) induction works and 3) locality - i.e. things can only effect other things at the speed of light.
• You can use quantum mechanics to calculate the probabilities and you get different answers than classical probability theory.
• Experiments show that the quantum probabilities are correct.
• Therefore, looks like locality loses.

And certainly not like the spin of a billiard ball or a basketball. My own opinion is that both spin and entanglement are defined as a kind of behavior of particles. I.e., if they behave that way, then they have spin and are entangled, and if they have spin and are entangled then they behave that way. I am unaware of anything more substantive than that, though I'm sure more is said. — tim wood

I think there's more to it than that. In my, limited, understanding, when they're figuring out the total angular momentum of a hydrogen atom, they add the spin angular momentum of the electron with it's orbital angular momentum. So saying that spin is "not really" angular momentum misses something.

the popular explanations of things just seem always to leave out some critical step or detail. — tim wood

Yes, popular explanations seem to get lost in the ooh, ahh of the phenomena. I have often found that going back to original sources can give insights, even if you can't follow the whole argument. I'm going to take a look at Bell's original paper and see what I find. That may take a while.

The speed of light as speed limit is what is sacrificed, but with an interesting qualification: that the particles “communicate” instantaneously, but that no message can be sent using entanglement. — tim wood

This confuses me. What does it mean that communication takes place instantaneously but no information can be transmitted? I would have thought that "communication" means the transfer of information. I have to do more reading.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese — Hailey

I looked it up. Sounds like it might be a bit harrowing. Let us know.

#1 is false as an absolute moral principle, and true if relative to various factors in the circumstance. — Bob Ross

In my first post I made it clear that your "absolute moral principle" is not relevant as far as I'm concerned. What is relevant is your willingness to apply that principle as the basis of laws to restrict women's ability to have abortions.

#2 is an incorrect formulation of my position: I never said that the well-being of the fetus is more important than the pregnant woman’s. In fact, I sided with pro-choice in the matter of rape (for reasons already expounded in the OP). — Bob Ross

In the OP, you wrote:

a woman who consensually has sex is culpable (along with the man, of course) for the condition of the new life (in the event that she becomes pregnant). Amending the situation entails, by my lights, that what is the most feasible and reasonable means of amending the situation (viz., protecting and saving the life in this case) must be taken. This means that one cannot abort in this situation, as that is the antithesis of amending the situation of the condition of that new life. — Bob Ross

Where does this "culpability" idea come from. The right word is "responsibility." If I am responsible for fulfilling some obligation but can't because of risk to my health, I am making the decision that my health is more important than the obligation. Your position that women whose lives are at risk from their pregnancy should not be able to have abortion is a claim that the health of the women is less important than the life of the fetus.

And that's the bottom line. Your whole argument rests on the claim that the life of the fetus is more important than the women's life, health, and personal autonomy. I don't agree with that claim.

Just on a basic level, laws against public defecation or laws against exhibitionist public sexual acts are, by definition, restrictions on that sort of thing. But I think they're plenty supportable. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's a silly example. [irony]I have no problem with restrictions on abortion requiring them to be done indoors. [/irony] If someone told you you can't defecate or have sex at all, you'd be upset.

woman...that is some advanced scientific lexicon — Merkwurdichliebe

You're lucky to have me here to keep you up to date on all the most advanced medical findings.

Some of the points that I have listed go beyond the issue of whether people should be allowed to have control over their own bodies. They show what the possible consequences are of preventing women from getting abortions. Does "society" want to pay that price? — Agree-to-Disagree

You're right, I oversimplified.

abortion campaigners were primarily successful because they tapped into public fears (and therefore politicians’ concerns) that women were dying from backstreet abortions. — care.org.uk

I don't find this a particularly compelling argument. If we agree that it's morally correct to prevent women from having abortions, which of course I don't, then the fact that they're putting themselves at risk is their responsibility, not ours.

medical science is trying to reduce discrimination against men by allowing them to have a womb transplant. — Agree-to-Disagree

There's a technical term for men who can give birth. They call them "women."

There are a number of other issues which also complicate abortion: — Agree-to-Disagree

Sure, but I think those can be boiled down to two major issues 1) People should be allowed to have control over their own bodies 2) Based on @Bob Ross's judgment, which I don't share, the life and well-being of the fetus are more important than the pregnant woman's.

I seem to recall reading a biological snippet about C S Peirce who was very much a working scientist - spent years doing hydrological measurement. He said something similar. Very disdainful of armchair experts. — Wayfarer

If you read "Origin of Species," you see that Darwin starts out with building blocks - daily observations over many years - and then builds the wall of natural selection from that. Focus on the details before you try to systematize. That's the major thing I learned from reading Stephen Jay Gould. He took that up in his work both implicitly and explicitly. Implicitly, that's how he wrote. Explicitly, he talked about writing always from the specific to the general.

What are your thoughts? — elucid

Objects that touch don't occupy the same space, they occupy spaces immediately next to each other with no space between them. If you want to go on from there and talk about how the atoms in one object interact with those in the other you can, but you don't have to.

Beware of unearned wisdom — Bret Bernhoft

You haven't really defined what you mean by wisdom. That's fine, then I won't have to either.

Wisdom takes time. You have to marinate in the world, bash your head into walls until you finally realize how to stop. Unearned wisdom isn't wisdom at all.

Wisdom is not the same as knowledge. As an engineer I am willing to go so far as to say beware of unearned knowledge. Data becomes information becomes knowledge. The only way for that to happen is through manipulation - tabulation, statistics, visualization, modeling, fiddling, analyzing, running sensitivity analyses. Doing it once, doing twice, and then doing it again. Developing a conceptual model. Whether or not you can afford to do all that depends on what you're doing, what your budget is. Likely you'll have to cut corners. That's where experience comes in - learning where you can cut corners and where you need to focus you attention. Quality assurance.

What are your guys’ thoughts? — Bob Ross

I'm not convinced by your arguments, but for me that's beside the point. Do you think your moral judgments should be used as the basis for laws restricting access to abortion? If not, no need to argue further. If so, then we are in strong disagreement.

Some additional thoughts. I think abortion is really terrible method of birth control and should be avoided if possible. It's a bad thing. Good access to sex education, birth control, and support for pregnant mothers and families should be the first line of action. Anyone who wants to restrict abortion and birth control should be sent to live in Alabama.

"More and Different" by P.W. Anderson. This is a book by the guy who wrote the article "More is Different," which I've talked about many times here on the forum. That was written in 1972 and the book was written about 10 years ago, so I was hoping to see how his thinking has developed since the 70s. Unfortunately, there is very little about reductionism and emergence and much more about his life's work in condensed matter physics, i.e. superconductivity.

Those sections of the book are mostly history - "I remember this guy doing this while I was a Bell Labs. I didn't like this guy because he was a jerk." I'm reading a very similar book right now too - "What is Real" by Adam Becker. Most of the writing is about how Bohr and his Copenhagen squeezed out Bohm and Everett and their non-standard views on quantum mechanics. It's also similar to Heisenberg's autobiography "Physics and Beyond." Again, lots of he said this, he did that. Some getting the last word in old grudges.

I guess I'm tired of it. I want to hear about the science, not the personalities. To be fair, all the books are well written and interesting, just not enough science. I'll put in a plug for my favorite scientific biography - "Subtle is the Lord" by Pais about Einstein. It has a lot of the personal and social history too, but it's kept in separate sections. The technical sections are all science and they are hard. You have to work at them. Very well written by someone who knew Einstein in the early 50s at Princeton when he, Pais, was a young man.

In a society where govenments try to tell you what is true and raise you into believing what you believe — Hailey

I don't think it's the government. We are much more socialized by our families, communities, schools, jobs, TV, the internet. Socialization is not a bad thing in and of itself. We're social beings and we have to learn how to live with others in the society we grow up in. These days, if I had to point to a villain it would be to the corporatization and financialization of our economy.

That being said, there is a voice inside you, all of us, that tells us what to do, how to live. This is nothing mystical or magical, it's just you. I could give a philosophical or psychological name to that, but it's called different things by different traditions. It takes practice to learn how to hear that voice. It's true, as you note, that it can be drowned out by the noise from outside influences.

Welcome to the forum.

Hey Tim. It's good to hear from you. I've tried to figure out Bell's Theorem before with little success. I read your post and was still lost. I downloaded the Scientific American article to read.

The one thing that is really shocking is remembering that SA used to be a serious science magazine before it tried to make itself into another Discover or Popular Science. Not that that there's anything wrong with them, but SA used to be hard to read.

1) the expertise, the craft that goes into the artwork is lost in the AI generation. — NotAristotle

That was one of the things I was thinking about. We've had discussions on the forum before about whether or not technique and skill are necessary for something to be art, or at least good art. Is what Midjourney is doing any different than paint-by-numbers?

2) relatedly, the production of the art is devalued; the AI creates the illusion of creativity, when really it's just outputting pre-programmed inputs, but it's not really producing anything, it's dead; the producers of the art are taken for granted in the AI "generation" of the art; if there is no Van Gogh, there simply is no art. — NotAristotle

Yes. As I noted, the thing that bothers me most is that the users somehow feel like they've accomplished something. Like they should get credit for what's been produced, even though there's nothing of them in it.

This seems like a good place to mention this. In addition to what I've seen of Chat GPT, I've also been paying attention to Midjourney, which is a graphic generation AI site. It lets you describe a graphic - content, style, mood, and other specific characteristics, e.g. Sailor Moon riding on a surfboard on the moon as painted by Van Gogh. It then generates an illustration. It's pretty impressive. Here's a link to the gallery page:

https://www.midjourney.com/showcase/recent/

I haven't used it, just looked at what others have generated. It's funny, if your input is vague, the AI might fill in the blanks in surprising ways. [irony] I was surprised to see [/irony] there are a lot of images of attractive women dressed provocatively, but tastefully. No porn, although what other purpose could there really be for a program like that? Note that if you run your cursor over a drawing, it will show you the directions input by the user to generate it.

The one thing I noticed from both Chat GPT and Midjourney is the hollowness of what is produced. Actually, maybe that's not fair. It's not that the drawings are hollow necessarily but more that the pride the users seem to take in their productions feels hollow. You see that even more on the Midjourney page on Reddit (r/midjourney). There's a lot of "Look what I made!" where they didn't really make anything at all. There's a lot of Batman as a caveman, cute alien cats, and cars made out of pasta.

It makes me think about what we've actually gotten with these technologies. Will they devalue all human artistic effort? I guess there are a lot of writers, artists, and graphic designers worrying about that right now. If you see art, as I do, as a way of presenting a personal experience so that other people can share in it with you, what do you get when there is no personal experience involved with what is produced? I see this question as being even more pertinent as the technology matures and the productions get better.

Here is an excerpt on dependence: — Leontiskos

Yes, I see your point.

As with a lot of jargon, philosophical or otherwise, is "supervenience" really needed? What's wrong with "dependence?" I'm not saying there's no need for technical language at all, but when I was an engineer, I had to write for a technical audience but also be understandable by non-technical readers.

problem of consciousness' relation to QM — Moliere

I don't think quantum mechanics has any special understanding to add to the study of consciousness beyond it's role as the substrate for all physical phenomena.

That's a great mugshot. I'm going to remember it in case I'm arrested.

I'm reading "What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics." Don't blame me, @Count Timothy von Icarus is making me read it.