Quantum Weirdness

[DrChinese]

And more from the same page, the coloured cards example I mention....

Colored slips of paper, one red and one green, are placed in two opaque envelopes, which are then mailed to scientists in Atlanta and Boston. The scientist who opens the envelope in Atlanta and finds a red slip of paper can immediately infer, given the experimental protocol, the color of the slip of paper contained in the envelope in Boston, whether or not it has already been opened. There is nothing peculiar going on, and in particular there is no mysterious influence of one "measurement" on the other slip of paper. The quantum mechanical situation considered by EPR is more complicated than indicated by this example in that one has the possibility of measuring more than one property of system A and also considering more than one property of system B. However, when one does a proper analysis, the conclusion is just the same as in the "classical" case of the colored slips of paper.

See what I mean? Removing wave function collapse seems to have removed the idea that an entangled particle gains its properties only when it is measured and then instantaneously transmits it to its distant partner.

I've seen some criticism by some people online that Gell-Mann must not actually understand things like the EPR paradox if he is making the claim that it is no different from just ordinary classical experience, but I think it's perhaps almost certain that people are unaware of this important point about the properties being there in advance of measurement and then are wondering what the hell Gell-Mann is on about.

I agree with Soderquist. The problem is your analogy of the colored cards is not representative of the true quantum situation in EPR. A better analogy is 3 or more colored cards, say one green, red and blue.

You open your card and see a green, so you deduce the others - many miles away - are blue and red. OK so far? But then the person on the other end opens the envelope and fines a red and a green! Not what was expected!

The attributes observed do not exist independently of the observation. Counter-intuitive, but that is what the thread is about.

 

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Peter Soderqvist
Soderqvist1: I have both these books in my bookcase, and I am reading for the moment The Quark and the Jaguar, Part Two- Quantum Universe, page 176 Swedish translation! His Many History Interpretation is very interesting; I am just in the beginning of his exposition!

I'm surprised you have both. Omnes' book isn't so well known, I think. They are both in basic agreement on decoherent/consistent histories.

Gell-Mann also has the answer to Fermi's question why the Moon (or Mars in the book) is there even if you aren't looking at it.

Soderqvist1: Measured properties before measured?
I think you mean properties are there before measurement!
How is that reality compatible with violation of Bell's inequality theorem?

It's just my overly-complex use of language, but yes, that's right.

Decoherent histories violates Bell's inequalities, just as a quantum theory should do.

Soderqvist1: this is only two colors, Alain Aspect 1982 used "triplets of colors", triplets of angular momentum! A "two color" experiment is pointless since we already know the answer; we simply need triplets in the experiment!

I could be wrong but, as far as I know, three or more entangled particles just repeat the same basic idea that the two colour experiment illustrates.

 

[wipeout]

We seem to have some new participants in this thread who can at least persuade me that they know what they're talking about. Can I therefore repeat my request to have a look at a couple of pseud papers where QM is invoked as a mechanism of action for homoeopathy, and see if you can describe in a form comprehensible to the layman just why these authors are full of it? Dancing David already had a look, but the more the merrier, y'know.

Weingartner and Milgrom, respectively, endorse and talk approvingly of "weak quantum theory". This theory openly admits to throwing away Planck's constant and not even having anything like it.

That the authors of weak quantum theory take Planck's constant, one of the three fundamental universal constants of nature and something which appears in many, many of important equations of quantum mechanics and just throw it away like an empty beer can, and that Weingartner and Milgrom seem to think this is perfectly reasonable behaviour tells me that none of these people have the slightest clue what they are doing.

Therefore, Weingartner and Milgrom are full of it.

Not to mention that the weak quantum theory paper fits into just 23 pages not only this supposed theory but also stuff about nonlocality, entanglement, chaos theory, logic, entropy, Jung, Freud, relationships, consciousness and psychotherapy.

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0104109

That's not physics, that's a fruitcake recipe!

Would the "decoherent histories" approach nix their case if it was universally accepted? (What am I saying? They don't have a "case". They have demented fantasies. Maybe nothing will ever nix demented fantasies.) Still, it would be nice to be able to say something sensible if anyone ever calls me on my assertion that their maunderings are based on "a misunderstanding and misapplication of quantum theory".

Rolfe.

I agree that they obviously don't have a case. That they like ideas like nonlocality and information transferral by entanglement means decoherent histories is obviously bad news for them.

A lot of people love quantum mechanics because of the alleged weirdness and won't be giving up certain interpretations they like anytime soon, I think, though.

 

[wipeout]

I agree with Soderquist. The problem is your analogy of the colored cards is not representative of the true quantum situation in EPR. A better analogy is 3 or more colored cards, say one green, red and blue.

You open your card and see a green, so you deduce the others - many miles away - are blue and red. OK so far? But then the person on the other end opens the envelope and fines a red and a green! Not what was expected!

The attributes observed do not exist independently of the observation. Counter-intuitive, but that is what the thread is about.

I find it difficult to believe Robert Griffiths is wrong on this, as the two cards example is his.

There's the Nobel Prize for physics. And there's the Fields Medal for mathematics. Well, in the middle, is the Dannie Heinemann prize for mathematical physics. It has a fair bit of prestige as well.

Only the very best win it and it's rarely given to more than one person in any year. A selection of the winners includes people like Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose, Steven Weinberg, Murray Gell-Mann, Ed Witten and a certain John S. Bell.

Robert Griffiths won the award in 1984 and has spent the last two decades studying and publishing work on quantum mechanics and its supposed paradoxes.

That's a few on the many reasons why I find it hard to believe he is wrong on this issue.

 

[Rolfe]

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0104109

That's not physics, that's a fruitcake recipe!

I just choked on my afternoon tea!

Thanks to both wipeout and Dancing David. Quantum mechanics isn't my thing (clinical biochemistry is my thing, so you can probably see where I'm coming from when homoeopathy sends me ape), but I think you've given me enough buzz-words and enough context to be able to say something which my listeners won't be able to contradict if I have to defend my position. They won't understand either, but that won't matter because they don't understand Weingärtner or Milgrom's stuff.

Nevertheless, any further contributions always welcome.

The Milgrom paper I linked to was the first of three. Anyone with masochistic tendencies can look at the other two parts - they get progressively madder, as far as I can tell.

Part the second
Part the third

The daddy of them all (and the only one I really understand because the QM part is only a small section), is Magic of signs, by Harald Walach. Yes, it really is magic! Several other authors do much the same thing - oh dear, the blind clinical trials show no effect, although we know the method works one-to-one in the clinic! So it must be an effect of the mind or the intent of the practitioner, let's call it quantum! (no, just call it magic and be done with it). Are Thoresen is rather a good example in that he extends this all-purpose excuse to acupuncture as well.

Thanks for all your help.

Rolfe.

 

[wipeout]

I've had a skim of these other homeopathy meets quantum mechanics papers. No comment.

If you want some good sense about quantum theory (or just some excellent buzzwords), I'd recommend Murray Gell-Mann's The Quark and the Jaguar.

It has some good stuff about decoherence and the reason why quantum effects don't exist on human scales. Decoherence is the answer to Schroedinger's cat troubles and one of the many reasons why these homeopathy guys are wrong.

But, as we know, it really all comes down to the fact that simple and clear experiments show things like immunization and antibiotics work and homeopathy doesn't. No need for these guys to mangle quantum theory.

 

[Rolfe]

But, as we know, it really all comes down to the fact that simple and clear experiments show things like immunization and antibiotics work and homeopathy doesn't. No need for these guys to mangle quantum theory.

Thanks again. Comment all you want to, please, but I can understand why it might be fruitless to try!

"These guys" are getting desperate, that's what. The more properly controlled trials are done and the more closely people critique some of the earlier stuff, the more obvious it is that the results tend to null-effect as quality of study increases. So what can they do to fend off the critics and preserve their remarkably lucrative trade for a while longer? Quantum theory seems like a godsend to them.

I've been involved in a very convoluted public argument with a bunch of these guys, and it just gets crazier and crazier. When you explain carefully why it doesn't work and how we know it doesn't work, you get comments like the following....

It is, of course, precisely because "O" level chemistry cannot explain homoeopathy that researchers are investigating other areas of science in attempts to understand this intriguing phenomenon. L. R. Milgrom (of the Department of Chemistry at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine), for instance, proposes a non-local metaphor for homoeopathy, based on quantum physics, in which the potentised medicine, the patient and the practitioner are seen as forming "a non-local therapeutically entangled triad, qualitatively described in terms of the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics".

This is the sort of research which may well help us to understand what might otherwise be deemed "magic". Significantly, this research is performed in an attempt to understand why homoeopathy works in the clinical situation, not whether it works.

(Sorry if I already said this, but it's worth a repeat.)

I have no realistic hope of making the author of that nonsense stop and consider that he might be mistaken. However, one does need to have some vague idea what it's all about in order to put forward the point that "this isn't science it's a fruitcake recipe" (thanks for that one! ) to one's uncommitted but not necessarily well-informed colleagues.

Thanks again.

Rolfe.

 

[Peter Soderqvist]

The Quantum Eraser!

TO WIPEOUT

I will read first what Murray Gell-Mann has said before further utterance!
But as far as I can see in the book, what properties a quantum object has at the level of Plank's constant is indeterminate until the object is correlated with the semi-classical world, and so has leaved a trivial trace there, and so decoherence is manifest historic reality! But is seems that a third polarizing filter between the screen with two slits, and the last screen can erase the manifest history about which hole the polarized photon has traveled through, and so restore the indeterminate polarization with interference pattern, just as it was before the first polarization filter was there!

John Gribbin describes the experiment in the beginning!
http://www.biols.susx.ac.uk/home/John_Gribbin/quantum.htm

According to the Super String expert Brain Greene (1999), experiments has also been made with an electron in a box, in order to pin down its position, and momentum, but the electron begin to bouncing like crazy when the space decreases, it behaves precisely as it suffer from claustrophobia, that is what we should suspect if Heisenberg 's uncertainty principle is intrinsic in the quantum world! Here is a short excerpt about it, from Brain Greene's The Elegant Universe (1999), Chap 4: Microscopic Weirdness! http://www.mcgoodwin.net/pages/elegantuniverse.html

Endnote, you shouldn't be surprised that I have Omnes' book, Quantum Philosophy in my bookcase, because I have approximately 250 books there!

 

[Peter Soderqvist]

Btw, The Copenhagen Interpretation has also struck a setback according to John Gribbin 's book, Schrodinger 's Kittens (1994), because experiment has been made at the university of Calcutta in India, which has shown that a photon has appeared, or is manifested both as particle and as a wave in the same unit of time, in direct violation of Bohr's Complementary Principle, but it still doesn't violate Consciousness as the collapser of wave function according to Gribbin, though, he is an adhere to Cramer's Transactional Interpretation! Btw, what interpretation has the Many History Camp made about this manifested wave-particle duality?

 

[DrChinese]

I find it difficult to believe Robert Griffiths is wrong on this, as the two cards example is his.

There's the Nobel Prize for physics. And there's the Fields Medal for mathematics. Well, in the middle, is the Dannie Heinemann prize for mathematical physics. It has a fair bit of prestige as well.

Only the very best win it and it's rarely given to more than one person in any year. A selection of the winners includes people like Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose, Steven Weinberg, Murray Gell-Mann, Ed Witten and a certain John S. Bell.

Robert Griffiths won the award in 1984 and has spent the last two decades studying and publishing work on quantum mechanics and its supposed paradoxes.

That's a few on the many reasons why I find it hard to believe he is wrong on this issue.

No offense to Griffiths. This is not the central question. The EPR-Bell-Aspect trio specifically attack the idea that quantum attributes exist independently of their observation, and the answer is that they do not. The card analogy is merely an example. The 2 card example is a basic description of the observation process in a simple (and somewhat classical) form. Bell re-cast the experiment into a true quantum version, involving 3 pairs of hypothetical observables which supposed yield 8 (2^3) permutations of their outcome. It has been soundly demonstrated that these 8 permutations do not exist as they would if the world operated in a classical manner.

I am quite sure he is familiar with Bell's work as it is quite accessible even to amateurs like myself, but the 2 card example given is not an accurate description of quantum weirdness. That is why the act of observation seems to be metaphysical to you, when it is actually a very real symptom of a very strange universe.

 

[Rolfe]

Oh, I'm SLOW!

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0104109

That's not physics, that's a fruitcake recipe!

Come in, come in, Wipeout and Dancing David and anyone else with an opinion on this.

Sorry it took me so long, but I just noticed the name of the third author on that paper Wipeout linked to. Harald Walach! He of "Magic of Signs, a non-local metaphor for homoeopathy"! So he's been behind this woo-woo from the start? He, the most demented homoeopath of the lot?

The "Magic of Signs" paper is so off-the-wall I actually accepted a dare to email him and ask if it was a deliberate spoof. My email was polite, but left it in no doubt which side I was on. He replied to me that it was deadly serious, cutting-edge science, and by the way I attach pdfs of the proofs of two more papers I have which are just about to be published on the same subject. I thanked him politely.

Well, it appears that a few weeks later one of the papers was published. The first I heard of it was when people started sending me links to the Guardian's Bad Science column which prominently featured Dr. Walach and his latest outpouring of lunacy.

Look, is it really the case that "weak quantum theory" is entirely devised and promoted by homoeopaths in order to find some way of legitimising their magic by calling it "quantum"? I really, really want to know the physicists' angle on this one.

Rolfe.

 

[DrChinese]

...

Robert Griffiths won the award in 1984 and has spent the last two decades studying and publishing work on quantum mechanics and its supposed paradoxes.

That's a few on the many reasons why I find it hard to believe he is wrong on this issue.

I looked up a little on Griffiths and indeed he has written extensively on quantum "weirdness". He is pushing an alternative explanation of some of these situations under an umbrella he calls the "Consistent Histories" interpretation. As best as I can tell, it does not involve any new experimental predictions different than the standard interpretation.

At any rate, Bell's work still stands and the results are real. You can pick any of several explanations which will "explain" these results. In my opinion, every explanation is more or less equally weird anyway.

 

[wipeout]

Comment all you want to, please, but I can understand why it might be fruitless to try!

As ever, we're talking of people who have dismissed a simple experiment (that they don't like the result of) to replace it with "it looks a bit like quantum theory". Why won't they surrender to sanity? Insanity can't be that much fun, surely.

I've been involved in a very convoluted public argument with a bunch of these guys, and it just gets crazier and crazier. When you explain carefully why it doesn't work and how we know it doesn't work, you get comments like the following....

Yeah, I read much of that public argument. It's amazing to wonder how some people get through life. But then, you even get someone like Brian Josephson, who did some work in quantum world that won him the Nobel Prize in physics before he became a "homeopathetic" person.

However, one does need to have some vague idea what it's all about in order to put forward the point that "this isn't science it's a fruitcake recipe" (thanks for that one! ) to one's uncommitted but not necessarily well-informed colleagues.

I went and had another look at the speculation by Milgrom (don't know about the others, I didn't read every word) that the practioner, patient, "remedy" and the patient's owner (in the case with vets) somehow get their minds (obviously excluding the "remedy") magically linked together "a bit like quantum theory". Aaaah...

 

[wipeout]

Re: The Quantum Eraser!

I will read first what Murray Gell-Mann has said before further utterance!

I need to do a lot more reading myself on this subject in a lot more books and papers by various people.

I posted in this thread as I thought I'd point out this apparently weirdness-avoiding consistent/decoherent histories approach to show it's maybe not true that the weirdness is necessary, and also in case people might like to read up on it.

Thanks for both links. I hadn't read of this particular version of the two-slit experiment before, and I'm not sure that I'd read about confining the electron uncertainty experiment either.

Endnote, you shouldn't be surprised that I have Omnes' book, Quantum Philosophy in my bookcase, because I have approximately 250 books there!

This explains much.

I can't say any more in response to anyone tonight as I've run out of time...

 

[wipeout]

Btw, what interpretation has the Many History Camp made about this manifested wave-particle duality?

Just the usual wave packet idea, I think. Have a look at Chapter 2 of Griffiths' textbook, Wave Functions, and the part "Physical Interpretation of the Wave Function" if you want to read about it:

http://quantum.phys.cmu.edu/CQT/index.html

 

[wipeout]

Re: Oh, I'm SLOW!

Sorry it took me so long, but I just noticed the name of the third author on that paper Wipeout linked to. Harald Walach! He of "Magic of Signs, a non-local metaphor for homoeopathy"! So he's been behind this woo-woo from the start? He, the most demented homoeopath of the lot?

Ah, I should have noticed Walach again since I was the one who went and found the weak quantum theory paper. Oops. Also, I saw the Guardian article as well when I did a Google search about weak quantum theory.

Look, is it really the case that "weak quantum theory" is entirely devised and promoted by homoeopaths in order to find some way of legitimising their magic by calling it "quantum"? I really, really want to know the physicists' angle on this one.

I'm far from being a physicist but I think that's sounds good to me, just maybe adding that they were on about psychotherapy in the original weak quantum theory paper.

Guess it's all-purpose.

 

[wipeout]

DrChinese,

I believe it was that both hidden variables against quantum theory and also seperability of particle properties that were shown to be false by the Aspect experiment.

I don't believe that decoherent/consistent histories is saying the world is in any way classical, only that the result is like it was.

As far as I know, the act of observation has problems with cosmology as there is nothing to observe the universes wavefunction of Stephen Hawking and Jim Hartle. It's no coincidence that Hartle has been one of the four main people involved in the development of a version of quantum theory that removes this problem.

How it gets there involves decoherence and a many-worlds'-like "many-histories" view of particles that sounds a bit like Richard Feynman's sum-over-histories version. I clearly have no idea how it all works yet or I'd obviously be giving a better explanation.

At any rate, Bell's work still stands and the results are real. You can pick any of several explanations which will "explain" these results. In my opinion, every explanation is more or less equally weird anyway.

I'm still going to try and find the least weird one, even if they all come up with the same practical result anyway.

I just don't like paradoxes much.

 

[Rolfe]

Re: Re: Oh, I'm SLOW!

.... they were on about psychotherapy in the original weak quantum theory paper.

Guess it's all-purpose.

Yes, I sort of gathered. I've downloaded the pdf, I'll read it soon, real soon.... honest. Hey, you've tried to read this stuff too. You know it's probably the best remedy for insomnia since halothane.

Hey, homoeopathy produces genuinely effective treatment at last!

Rolfe.

 

[TillEulenspiegel]

To muddy the waters even further search out some papers on Quantum encryptation. The theory stands firmly on the principle that if an encrypted communication is intercepted and observed that the information will change. So the sender and the recipient will know that the message is not only garbled but compromised. The causality on the macro scale is the observation, the causality however on the QM level is less sure. So crack those Black Majik books =)

 

[Rolfe]

Not to mention that the weak quantum theory paper fits into just 23 pages not only this supposed theory but also stuff about nonlocality, entanglement, chaos theory, logic, entropy, Jung, Freud, relationships, consciousness and psychotherapy.

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0104109

That's not physics, that's a fruitcake recipe!

"The mills of Rolfe grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small."

<CENTER>Weak Quantum Theory:
Complementarity and Entanglement
in Physics and Beyond

Harald Atmanspacher
Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene
Wilhelmstr. 3a, D-79098 Freiburg;
Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik
D-85740 Garching

Hartmann Römer
Institut für Physik, Universität Freiburg
Hermann-Herder-Str. 3, D-79104 Freiburg

Harald Walach
Institut für Umweltmedizin und Krankenhaushygiene,
Universitätsklinikum Freiburg
Hugstetterstr. 55, D-79106 Freiburg</CENTER>

OK, Walach we know, the nuttiest fruitcake in the homoeopathic repertory. Römer, a physicist?? But the one which creeps me out the most is Atmanspacher, particularly his address (the second one - and as to how he manages to combine psychology and "psychohygiene" - what??! - with extraterrestrial physics, I don't even want to go there). This was the paper that Wipeout said dispensed with Planck's constant, right?

OK, I know, but this is on-topic as far as the original intent of the thread is concerned.

Rolfe.