The Perfect First Question. by T H Ray

Hi James,

"Are you equating 'not hidden at all' with 'not different, to our measurement and preceptions'?"

Sure I am. The case is the same with Einstein's abandonment of the ether. If we find that electromagnetic waves propagate in a vacuum, the ether is superfluous to our physics, even if it exists in some sense. After all, ether may be necessary to explain some yet unknown physical phenonomenon.

Similarly, an experimental record of measurement events in 4 dimensions -- such as the quantum correlations in Joy's framework -- that are explained by an 8 dimension topological structure (and cannot be explained otherwise) contribute to our understanding physics in a rational model, without superfluous or mystical assumptions. Because Joy's model is mathematically complete, it begs the topology in which the mathematics corresponds to physical predictions 1 to 1. (As EPR-Bell requires for non-probabilistic explanation of reality.)

Tom

Joy is absolutely correct that compactification imposes an artificial structure on the space. He is also right that the idea is driven by the history of Kaluza-Klein theory -- there never was a *physical* reason to believe that the 5th dimension of K-K is smaller than a measurable quantity of spacetime; the explanation was given to reconcile the mathematics of Minkowski space in a metric tensor 4-dimension model with the fact that the 5th dimension added to the tensor accounts for the propagation of electromagnetic waves in the Minkowski spacetime field, even though we don't actually have the means to physically measure the relation between wave propagation and the propagation of the gravity field that Minkowski space and Riemannian geometry describe. Both of these wave functions are continuous to infinity.

One must never forget the rational premise that Einstein lived by: that a mathematically complete structure has to match every element of the mathematical theory to every element of the physical observation. That rock-solid premise allows us to distinguish what is a mathematical *artifact* of a physical model from what is physically real; an artifact describes the limit of a measure, as opposed to the measure of a limit. To give an example, I'm sure I am not the only one who is dismayed to see the number of arguments in this forum suggesting that the variation of the speed of light under special conditions falsifies special relativity -- that's nonsense. The constant term only describes how we *know* that rest energy of matter *can* be precisely measured in a relativistic framework. It has absolutely nothing to do with how we measure the speed of light.

By the same reasoning, Joy demonstrates how we *know* that measured quantum correlations *can* be explained in a fully relativistic, analytical model of octonionic dimensions. There is nothing mysterious or ad hoc (much less mathematically incorrect) in Joy's framework. It is no more difficult to explain the limit of 8 dimensions in our physics, than it is to explain 4.

Tom

Because I expect Vongehr may delete it (he's already deleted Joy Christian's comments on his site), and because it is relevant to my essay, I want to reproduce here some comments by nmann and my reply:

nmann wrote:

To the best of my imperfect knowledge, this is the only recorded comment or commentary by (Ludwig Wittgenstein) directly in re: QM. It feels like it's saying much the same thing as Anton Zeilinger's "Photons are clicks in photon counters." --:

"The views of modern physicists (Eddington) tally with mine completely, when they say that the signs in their equations no longer have 'meanings', and that physics cannot attain to such meanings but must stay put at the signs. But they don't see that these signs have meaning in as much as -- and only in as much as -- immediately observable phenomena (such as points of light) do or do not correspond to them.

"A phenomenon isn't a symptom of something else: it is the reality. A phenomenon isn't a symptom of something else which alone makes the proposition true or false: it itself is what verifies the proposition." -- Philosophical Remarks, pp 282-3 (1929-30)

-------------

I replied:

You're right, nmann. As an early influence in the Vienna school of logical positivism, Wittgenstein subscribed to the notion of language analysis as the limit of knowledge.

Though such belief logically leads to Vongehr's fatuous "quantum Randi challenge," it is completely divorced from rational empirical science. All meaning is invested in observation alone ("What you see is what you get") such that every observer's interpretation of the physical phenomenon is equally valid in the context of the language used to describe it -- while the language itself is held to be meaningless. This is the core belief of postmodern drivel, which thankfully has not so far infected science to any degree greater than isolated cases like Vongehr. The knee-jerk reaction of legitimate scientists -- whom I won't further embarrass by naming -- in the endorsement of Vongehr's view, betrays their innocence of the pseudo-science philosophy that actually supports the "challenge."

I don't know if Vongehr has actually corresponded with Amazing Randi -- though I doubt it. Randi's challenge is itself based on rational science -- the correspondence between mathematical theory and physical result. Randi's skepticism is grounded in the fact that there is no theory that supports coherent psychic communication (whose failure is explained quite adequately by decoherence); it has nothing to do with Vongehr's quantum mysticism and postmodern babble.

Tom

Sorry, Robert. I find your explanation logically incoherent. For if there is no correlation of one point to another, there is no information.

Tom

Robert, a quantum or classical bit is a pair, a fundamental unit of information. If you think otherwise, you are against not only the logic, but the physical evidence.

Hi Robert,

I had to hop over to your essay site to make some sense of this dance. Even though I haven't read your essay (I will, promise) -- I find this comment you made to a discussant significant in understanding what you're getting at:

" ... the uncertainty principle represents a fundamental limit. The point is that the limit is true by definition of what is meant by a bit of information. It says nothing at all 'interesting' about the nature of reality. Heisenberg mistakenly thought he had discovered some deep, underlying mystery of nature. In fact, he merely discovered a very peculiar way of restating the definition of a bit of information."

Your first sentence contradicts your trivialization of Heisenberg's principle in your last sentence. Discovering a fundamental limit as a physical law is indeed a " ... deep, underlying ..." property of how Nature works. It isn't trivial.

One problem I have had in getting across my own view is that a cadre of true believers in Bell's theorem as physical law (a very large cadre as I have discovered) lump all who don't accept that quasi-law into a category of "Bell deniers" who don't know the theorem and must be crackpots. Joy Christian has the same problem (although I think he must accept some blame for framing his argument as a "disproof.")

Fact is, though, that neither Joy Christian nor I are "Bell deniers." To these true believers, I'll wager, if JSB were alive today HE would be a "Bell denier." No -- it is exactly because we do understand how strong quantum correlations are, that we see why Bell's theorem fails at a fundamental level. Or I should say, that Joy led me to that understanding by introducing the correct topological domain that incorporates those results in a local realistic manner.

We don't have to dismiss Heisenberg uncertainty or any experimental facts. We only need a classical explanation that obviates nonlocality and probabilism.

Best,

Tom

As predicted, the posts from Sascha Vongehr's site have disppeared. What has not disappeared, is the reason why one should care about whether Vongehr's idea of science is rational -- and whether it is important that the scientific enterprise should continue to be based on rationalism.

Vongehr advocates a postmodern social constructivist view. I would bet that most scientists are not even aware of what that is, for mainstream science has for 300 years followed the "fingo non hypotheses" philosophy of Newton -- that is, an objective model is not interpreted into existence by the language of the observer, nor is it dependent on such language for objective validity. As my collaborator Pat Frank and I wrote for an article in "Free Inquiry" in 2004, " ... the meaning of empirical data is found only within the context of a falsifiable theory. This is true, even if the meaning is that the data contradict the prediction and refute the theory. Only a falsifiable physical theory distinguishes the meaning of lightning away from the hand of god. Only the capacity of falsification produces a unique prediction and provides an unambiguous meaning to the data."

Vongehr's strawman argument -- in which he asserts with absolutely no support that most scientists are naive realists -- would have us believe that there is no unambiguous meaning. That the message is in the eye of the beholder and truth is constructed by consensus. In trying to fit his philosophy to the scientific enterprise, he has managed to profoundly misinterpret the same John Wheeler who said, "No phenomenon is a physical phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon,"* into saying that Wheeler's utterly simple idea is to assume the quantum and accept nonlocality as physical law. Wrong -- Wheeler assumed nothing -- the comparison of Wheeler's idea to Einstein's elevator gedanken experiment requires an actual physical analogue. Vongehr's proposal does not only fail to meet that standard, it bypasses and subverts the rationalist enterprise entirely.

What would Randi do? Assuredly, not this.

Tom

*Quoted by Robert Scully in *The Demon and the Quantum* 2007

Not only is Vongehr's program philosophically bankrupt, it is mathematically and physically flawed. In rallying his "fanboys" -- an epithet that Sascha is fond of hanging on me -- to the cause of irrational science with his "quantum Randi challenge," he appeals to the digital magic of the computer:

"Some have suggested that (hidden variables) are 'topological' and related to hyper spheres. This is entirely irrelevant, because there is no difference for a computer whether it calculates relations applicable to our usual Euclidian three dimensional space or something else. Many strange geometries and topologies (e.g. black holes and worm holes and the SU(2) double covering that Fermions modeled. Computers have no idea about which of those worlds is the one they happen to actually compute in." (http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1207/1207.5294.pdf)

Here's a prime example of one who knows a lot about computers and next to nothing about computing. The series of logical operations that go into simulating a physical phenomenon only implement the expected result, not the physical experiment. Vongehr's claim is identical to a claim that a computer simulation of the Einstein light-bending experiment in 1919 proves special relativity.

That's the problem with those true believers who want Bell's theorem to be enshrined as a physical law -- their models prove what their models assume.

If science is a rationalist enterprise (which means that elements of the mathematical theory correspond 1 to 1 with elements of the physical result, where the mathematics is independent of the physics) -- this ain't science.

Tom