Relativity Is Not About Spacetime by Edward J. Gillis

Dear Edward J. Gillis,

Yours is a most impressive essay, well thought out and well argued. It assumes Bell's inequality is valid -- an assumption I reject -- but yet I agree with your conclusion that "in order to make current theory logically coherent, we need ... indeterminism...".

You point out that our brains, "figuring out what we can control" have biased our intuition in favor of determinism. Again, I agree to an extent, but I do not find free will fitting into a deterministic view and yet my intuition is comfortable with it.

As I recall Bernard d'Espagnat noted three assumptions: realism, inductive reasoning, and locality (linked to speed of light). Believers in Bell tend to retain logical inference at the expense of local realism. Perhaps this should be reconsidered.

Several essays in this contest suggest that space-time, locality, unitarity, and causality are "emergent", that is, not fundamental, but artefactual, emerging from deeper fundamentals, akin to temperature emerging from statistical ensembles of particles. Yet they apparently assume that logic and math survive even when space-time, locality, and causality have vanished (coming 'as close to "nothing" as possible').

I have presented logic and math as emergent from real structure (in 'The Automatic Theory of Physics') and if I am correct, then one cannot assume that one can banish spacetime, locality, and causality and yet retain logic and math. [To do so one must be a 'Platonist', having a religious belief in some realm of 'math' not unlike religious belief in a 'Heavenly realm'.]

Thus my intuition and my experience tell me that reality is both 'real' and 'local' while they also inform me that logical coherency is not universal. For instance this FQXi contest contains a number of 'logical maps' that span various regions of the 'territory' [physics], but they are logically inconsistent with each other [and potentially contain logical inconsistencies within themselves.] If anything, this problem grows worse daily, as new math and new physics ideas branch in new directions. Despite the claims of various schools of physics, there is no coherent 'Theory of Everything', nor does one seem to be in sight. Many deny even the possibility of such. Given this state of affairs, I am ever more inclined to believe that the Bell'ists have made the wrong bet, trading local realism for logic, and losing on both counts.

Although is is incompatible [to that extent] with your essay, I invite you to read my essay, The Nature of the Wave Function, for one approach that assumes local realism is fundamental.

Best of luck in the contest,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

E.E.K.:

"As I recall Bernard d'Espagnat noted three assumptions: realism, inductive reasoning, and locality (linked to speed of light). Believers in Bell tend to retain logical inference at the expense of local realism. Perhaps this should be reconsidered."

It'd be neat to see some cites for this other than the insistence of Tom Ray and Joy Christian. Here's from page 6 of "An experimental test of non-local realism," the concluding paragraph of the Zeilinger group's experiment which violated the Leggett Inequality (and those guys are nothing if not Bell aficionados ... Leggett can be thought of, roughly, as an extension of Bell):

"We believe that the experimental exclusion of this particular class indicates that any non-local extension of quantum theory has to be highly counterintuitive. For example, the concept of ensembles of particles carrying definite polarization could fail. Furthermore, one could consider the breakdown of other assumptions that are implicit in our reasoning leading to the inequality. These include Aristotelian logic, counterfactual definiteness, absence of actions into the past or a world that is not completely deterministic[.]"

Also if you checked out the link I posted on your thread to David Harrison's U of Toronto site (he's another one of them) you'd discover that he specifically brings up the logic assumption and notes that it too may fail in Bell tests. You really ought to familiarize yourself more with the thinking and writing of people who believe in BT instead of accepting on faith what its detractors say about those people and their opinions.

Hi nmann,

I'm happy to hear that others are thinking the same way that I am. I try to keep up with Nature, Science, and Phys Rev Lett every week,and arXiv's as I become aware of them, but if I waited until I thought I was up-to-date on every last word, I would never post. I'm spending most of my time working out the details of the work in my essay. You are mistaken to imply that I am following Joy and Tom's lead, as I don't accept his model, only his framework (as do his harshest critics).

And as happy as I am to hear that others are questioning even logic, I am, as far as I know the only one who has developed a theory of emergent logic and math based on physical structure, so I've gone beyond merely mentioning the possibility. You might try to familiarize yourself with my arguments before commenting as above.

And having decided for myself that Bell is incorrect, I do not feel the need to faithfully follow those who are still in his spell. As Feynman noted in his Nobel acceptance lecture, "Since they had not solved the problem, I did not have to pay too much attention to what they did." [probably not his exact words, but the lecture's online.]

Anyway, thanks for making me aware that others are now thinking this way.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Edward,

I like the logical presentation of your essay. You say that "Relativity is an expression of the observational equivalence of spacetime descriptions of physical processes. This observational equivalence is due to the essentially probabilistic nature of quantum theory."

But finally, in your opinion, which of our basic physical assumptions are wrong in Relativity or in Quantum Theory?

G S Sandhu

+

Just for the information of other readers, Edwin's model is NOT based on my framework. Whatever it is based on, it has nothing to do with my framework.

" ,,, You really ought to familiarize yourself more with the thinking and writing of people who believe in BT instead of accepting on faith what its detractors say ...:

nmann, people who "believe in" BT or any other theorem or theory are not doing science in defending their beliefs. They are doing science only by demonstrated correspondence between the theory and the physical result. When the fundamental assumptions of the theory (probability measurement schemata based on infinite domain and range) only guarantee a result (nonlocality) consistent with the assumption -- one had better question the science, because the logic of double-negation has no chance of meeting the scientific standard of objective knowledge.

That's all we detractors are saying.

An observer-created reality is not rational -- this irrational tenet can only stand uniquely alone among the results of objective science when there is no alternative. If one replaces the assumptions of probability with a specifically constructed domain of defined limit, the nonlocality of quantum correlations is an illusion, and the locally real alternative is in evidence. It's sound math, it's sound physics, it's good science -- and Joy Christian has done it.

Edward Gillis, even though I disagree with your assumptions, I appreciate your competence in seeing them through to their logical conclusion -- and wish you the best in the contest.

Tom

ahahah stop your car Benhur.

And buy a bibble Tom.ahahah it will be good for your redemption.

Spherically yours

and buy also some books of maths, and make several copies and give them to your friends ! Because there it becomes ironical. I just say that for your credibility :)

Hi, E.E.K.,

Well, questioning logic became unavoidable post-Gödel.

You, of course, following (I accept this on faith) d'Espagnat, specifically noted inductive logic. Which is notoriously slippery, only partially codified and thus certainly more open to challenge than deductive logic. But to whatever extent Bell's thinking, as adapted by d'Espagnat and Harrison (see below) was inductive, the result's Venn-provable. Take the formulation (presented here without the official inequality or plus signs, sorry):

Number of (A, not B) plus Number of (B, not C) is greater than or equal to Number of (A, not C) --

and then construct a tripartite Venn diagram with circles or ovals A, B and C. (Instead of "Number" think "Amount of Space"). For simplicity try it first with the shapes separated with no overlap:

(1 [because no A is within B]) plus (1 [because no B is within C]) is greater than (1 [because no A is within C]) ... 2 is greater than 1. Good so far.

Now, continuing with the maximally simple, do it with complete overlap:

(0 [because all A is within b]) plus (0 [because all B is within C]) is equal to (0 [because all A is within C]). ... 0 plus 0 = 0. Still good.

Next play with the degree of overlapping however you want. Try overlapping two to whatever extent you wish while putting one aside. The inequality still holds. (We need to assume both that d'Espagnat's derivation from Bell is valid and that Harrison's tweaking of d'Espagnat is also.)

As I've noted elsewhere, the formulation works with all sets of separable physical objects as long as you can define three parameters. If you had dogs running around in a fenced parking lot full of automobiles you could define such a set because dogs and cars have weight, length (or height) and color, and are animate or inanimate, black or not, have fur or not, are or aren't predominately metal etc. Or take a paragraph of text. Make the individual words your set members and three specific letters your parameters. Still works. In English, Russian, any alphabetical language. Then take your existing data table and switch the parameters around ... make A into C, C into B and B into A. Still works. Pretty profound, actually.

Now, it's the macroscopic world we're doing this in, and the logic is classical. BT is (BT and Leggett are) formulated as classical logic because that's the logic we know. It's entirely conceivable that BT is experimentally violated because classical logic doesn't cut it when you're experimenting with microscopic entities. Theorists tend to give that possibility less weight because BT (and its spinoffs such as Bell Entanglement) are based the same logic and general formalism that makes nuclear bombs explode and semiconductors semiconduct but still it could be.

Naturally we'd probably need a whole new logic and mathematics to deal with the microworld in that case.

Hi nmann,

I don't wish to use Ed's thread for this.

You mention the logic that "makes nuclear bombs explode". I have at least twice on these threads quoted Norman Cook, who has submitted an essay on nuclear dynamics. He points out that the main theories of nuclear structure are incompatible, and have been for over 50 years. I'm not sure what this proves about logic.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Hi Ed,

I will tell you both what is wrong with the Bell-CHSH argument and why it does not apply to the analysis of the entangled states considered by Bell.

As stated, there is nothing wrong with your or Bell's argument. The inequality you and Bell-CHSH derived is a completely straightforward and mathematically valid inequality.

But here is a problem: Bell-CHSH inequality is not respected by Nature. It is routinely violated in the actual experiments. So, clearly, at least one physical assumption that has gone into the derivation of the inequality must be wrong, or at least unjustified. The question is: Which assumption?

Bell of course thought that it was the assumption of local causality that was unjustified. But I think that he was unduly influenced by his fondness of Bohm's theory to think that.

Suppose we did not know anything about quantum theory or Bohm's theory. We could of course still derive Bell-CHSH inequality, as Bool did before Bell. Without the knowledge of quantum theory do you think we would blame the violations on non-locality? Not unless we are completely mad.

So what is going on behind the violations? Well, to begin with not all alternatives, ab, ab', a'b, and a'b', can be simultaneously realized in any actual experiment. Only one pair can be realized at a time. So there is clearly an assumption of counterfactual definiteness of the joint outcomes ab, ab', a'b, and a'b' that has gone into the derivation of the inequality. But this can be eliminated by considering a single pair, say ab, for the sake of argument, because even a single pair produces stronger-than-classical correlation. So, counterfactual definiteness cannot be the real culprit behind the violations.

What other assumption, then, has gone into the derivation that could be wrong. Well, I claim that it is the assumption of wrong topology of the co-domain of the measurement functions Bell considered. Bell assumed measurement functions of the form

A(a, L) = +1 or -1

in the very first equation of his famous paper. But one cannot write a function like this without specifying its co-domain. Usually one assumes the co-domain to be just {-1, +1}. But I have proved that that makes the above prescription of Bell incomplete. With {-1, +1} it cannot satisfy the completeness criterion of EPR. The only way to satisfy the completeness criterion is by taking the co-domain to be a parallelized 3-sphere.

Here is where things get a bit technical. To understand why what I am saying is true, I invite you to read the attached paper of mine (which is the first chapter of my book). Please read at least up to page 4 to understand my argument. Further details can be found in several other chapters of my book.

I hope this helps,

JoyAttachment #1: 11_Origins.pdf

Hi Ed,

You say, "I do believe that logic and math are more certain than physical laws." I do also. What I do not believe is that logic and math underlie physical existence! Some seem to think that physical existence emerges from logic and math, and others in this contest seem to be saying that if you get rid of space and time and causality (etc?), coming 'as close as possible to "nothing"', that math and logic will still be there. This is the assumption I question.

You say, "If we give up logical coherence, then we can believe that local causality is both true and false. we can conclude anything that we want..." It is my opinion that that state of affairs already holds, although usually not in the same physicist's mind. Even above, while quoting Tresser, you note: "it appears to contain a flat-out logical contradiction". It's possible that you and Tresser conclude different things. And, beyond a certain point, I'm not sure that such things are resolvable. Joy and his competent opponents have certainly not been able to resolve such. Anyway, I do not reject logic, but I probably would do so before giving up local realism. Even then I would continue to believe in the efficacy of logic for most things, just as math approximations are useful even in the case of unsolvable problems.

For both experiential reasons, intuitive reasons, and because my local realistic theory (of which my essay represents just the tip of the iceberg) seems to answer unresolved questions, I choose to work with local realism. If I am wrong, then I can consider it a hobby. I am not yet convinced I am wrong.

Thanks again for your excellent essay and for hosting such stimulating comments on your thread.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Hi, E.E.K.,

I should have noted that the Venn circles don't need to be the same size. More on the order of a Euler diagram. That brings the exercise more in line with physical reality.

You are not -- how can I put this? -- dealing with the real issues of BT. You've admitted you don't really know all that much about BT. JC (not the Second Person of the Trinity in this case) has accused you of not understanding the material he advances in relation to BT, maybe not even BT itself. But still you reject Bell's Theorem.

Also waiting for Ed.

Wait ... a truly excellent post yesterday.

I hate the layout of this site. The honchos apparently believe it's more logical than straight chronological order. That's because nobody ever told them you can number posts for reference.

Not just one excellent post.