Is this description of physical reality complete? by Gordon Watson

Dear Akinbo,

Starting with the * in your postscript, I suspect you've mistaken me for another. For I welcomed THAT court-case which, as I understood it, established the extension of material particles? Or am I mistaken?

Re my response to SNP, you appear to have missed the point that I was making: In normal terms, there was an accidental contradiction in SNP's essay. [SNP has since explained the use of the contest's terms (It, Bit) in a different (reversed) way.] So, referring to your #2, you and I might well hold some related views in common.

Re your #1, I'd welcome your engagement with the high-school maths and logic in my Essay. For it provides an elementary but important base from which to examine even deeper matters.

I also welcome further discussion (if you wish) when you have "re-read the Essay, particularly with the claim that: Bell's theorem and Bell-inequalities refuted; EPR corrected; the so-called boundary between classical and quantum mechanics eliminated..."

With best regards; Gordon

Dear Sreenath BN,

Your enjoyable Essay, with its focus on information and reality in the context of physics, biology and maths, gives me much to think about. Indeed, I'm re-examining my own experience in the light of some of your ideas!

However, that examination also leads me to question some of your phrasing. Consider the following sentence of yours: "Thus Reality is mind dependent, at least in the initial stages of framing hypotheses and Theories."

This sentence may be re-interpreted and understood in its context (at least that's what I attempted), but IMO it exemplifies the need to clearly distinguish between the REALITIES that are out there ... and those within. Here, it seems, the need is to be clear about the PHYSICAL and the MENTAL: the objective and the subjective?

Also, there may be some truth in this: "For a classical physicist, the Reality is 'out there to be discovered', whereas for a quantum physicist, the Reality is 'out there to be Invented' because the quantum Reality simply depends on the measurement outcomes and hence there is no The Reality but only circumstantial Reality."

For one might say that some quantum physicists are off with the pixies (with their nonsense inventions); yet from such thoughts better thoughts sometimes emerge. And thus we arrive at better mental pictures of the real objective (even pristine) physical reality that is independent of our thoughts and experiments.

However, for me, an engineer, most Reality is out there ... to be discovered and understood. So I very much agree with this: "... we find that this journey is full of surprises and joy, and is endless."

But I would differentiate wisdom from knowledge! For, alas, the following is nowhere in sight: "Consequently this provides us with limitless wisdom."

With thanks for the stimulating ideas, and the good wishes; you here have the latter too, from me directly.

Trusting that you'll find more of the former in my Essay; Gordon

Hi Dipak,

Thanks for making contact and thanks for your best wishes.

I've read your Essay and am intrigued by the consequences that you develop from our digital nature. I trust that you will continue to successfully refine your ideas and your mathematics.

As you have seen, my own research has a very different focus. However, in its simplest form, it does derive from the digital nature of orientations in 3-space.

With best regards; and thanks again; Gordon

Dear Michel,

Thank you for making contact. I look forward to a good discussion here, bypassing any questions of your laziness or my age.

For it seems to me that the essence of one significant difference in our thinking relates to Bell's Theorem and your analysis of the CHSH inequality.

The beauty of this difference is that it can be discussed at the level of high-school maths and logic. Thus:

On page-5 of your Essay we find an unnumbered equation representing the TRUISM: C = ±2.

Since this is a TRUISM, we must wonder how it could ever be subverted by any experiment?

So let us expand the truism using Bell's ABCD notation:

B(A+C) - D(A-C) = ±2 = AB + BC - AD + CD. (GW-1)

Let us now recognise this FACT: Entangled photon-pairs are tested one pair at a time; with no two pairs the same.

So: Let the sets of pairs used in evaluating RHS of (GW-1) be identified as i, j, k, l respectively. (The pairs, of course, may be tested in any way -- and in any order -- that you wish.)

Then your experiments (as well as my theory) can yield:

[AB]i + [BC]j - [AD]k + [DC]l >2; (GW-2)

where [.] denotes an average.

What then has gone wrong with the truism that your Essay endorses? For, here, both theory and experiment refute it!

I suggest that your difficulty lies in (GW-1) -- that unnumbered equation of yours with C = ±2 -- where you employ each Bellian outcome twice: 2(ABCD).

For here's a major problem: How can you ensure that the B-result in AB is the same B-result in BC; etc?

Alas, you cannot. So the fault (I suggest) is not with the TRUISM but with naive-realism on which Bellian-Inequalities are based. Please see my Essay: Sections 4-5.

If you refer to my Essay: Equations (21) and (22), there's an even shorter refutation of CHSH and your TRUISM; along the same lines.

Looking forward to your response; with my thanks again; Gordon

Hello Xiong,

and thank you for your comments.

As for the EPR mystery, I believe any "mystery" there may be removed by studying that brief Section 7 in my Essay.

To put it even more briefly, it's my view that EPR does not allow for measurement-perturbation: though the fact that a "measurement" perturbs the "measured" system was known from the earliest days of quantum mechanics.

Recommending that you understand EPR correctly -- and remove the EPR "mystery" from those others that you consider in your own nice Essay -- I'm happy to discuss it further if you wish.

As for the interesting ideas in your own Essay, I'd like to mention this: In an EPR-Bohm or Bell-test set-up, when the Stern-Gerlach devices (SGDs) are displaced so that their symmetry is broken, MUCH NEW INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE.

Especially the neat result in EPRB: [AB] = -a.b; where [.] denotes the expectation.

If the SGDs are independently displaced but their symmetry is maintained (say, accidentally), the symmetry of the particle-pairs again provides an outcome-correlation of +1 or -1: which is not very informative when compared to [AB] = -a.b.

So while my focus is on the study of correlations, I still ask the question that is presented in Footnote 2, page 2, of my Essay: "Isn't information all about correlations too?" For, if "information" does not correlate with facts, is it really information?

With thanks again; and wishing you the best of good luck: Gordon

Hi Antony,

with thanks for your very welcome comments.

And though I'm inclined to see the ITS as more fundamental, my Essay is certainly based on some interesting BITS and the important ITS that they lead us to.

I've read your own Essay several times and have enjoyed the lively discussion that you've generated. And while your subject ranges far afield from my own specialities, you are to be congratulated on the bold and forthright speculation that you deliver.

One thought: I note, in your discussion with Tejinder, that the subject of quantum superpositions arose in the context of your Fibonacci analysis.

In Sections 9 and 10 of my Essay you will find a local-realistic analysis that delivers the correct EPRB result without recourse to "quantum superpositions" or "collapse" -- which is certainly the way that I see the world -- such mathematical devices being convenient mathematical short-cuts.

So (to my thought): Your analysis might not need to address such entities?

With my thanks again, and wishing you every success in the contest and with the development of your theory; Gordon

Dear Daryl,

Many thanks for your comments, your definite modesty, and our shared hope!

Re the last: Given that my Essay contains repeated requests for critical comments, I'm truly surprised how many "1s" I've scored without one accompanying word of critique. So I do hold hope that some serious criticism may yet be delivered.

As for your own intriguing Essay, I truly am not fit to judge; but I can say this: What an interesting proposition, and so nicely presented!

And I'm certainly on your side re the following: Like you, I do not agree with this from Wheeler (as extracted from your Essay):

"Not until the observing sense, or observing device...has chosen the question to be asked, and by its registration has made a record long enough lived to produce internal or external action, has an elementary quantum phenomenon taken place that contributes to the formation of what we call reality. No other way do we know to build this reality. Existence? How else is it brought into being except through elementary quantum phenomena?"

For my Essay (eliminating QM's "collapse" mechanism), reveals the underlying "beables" in all EPRB-Bell-style experiments: "Beables" being Bell's word for things which exist INDEPENDENT of OBSERVATION.

So, while I oppose Bell's views in so far as his "theory" is concerned, I support him here (as opposed to Wheeler).

With my thanks again, and noting your success in last year's essay contest, I'll be supporting your Essay with a top rating.

PS: Let me add: I also appreciate your courage in taking a stand against something every bit as treasured in the Academy as Bell's Theorem! Though I suspect your target is better constructed, and more resistive, than that! For NO EXPERIMENT supports Bell's Theorem (and every such supports my local realism).

Cheers for now: Gordon

Dear Michel,

Thanks for taking my petite plaisanterie in good spirits. I took your supposed "laziness" as an invitation to bring some "youthful exuberance" into the discussion of our common interests.

I suspect that you are correct in anticipating that our differences may well be focussed on the nature of, and the problems with, counterfactuals.

For my part, I'm inclined to the view: "Impossible experiments have no outcomes!"

Given your fondness for Wheeler, I'm hoping that you can help me recall Wheeler's famous saying; the equivalent to this one from Max Born's Nobel Lecture: "The lesson to be learned from what I have told of the origin of quantum mechanics is that probable refinements of mathematical methods will not suffice to produce a satisfactory theory, but that somewhere in our doctrine is hidden a concept, unjustified by experience, which we must eliminate to open up the road."

Looking forward to our discussions: especially re that hidden concept; with best regards; Gordon

Watson FQXi 2013 FIGURES: 1 and 2 (i).

Figure 1. An attractive low-cost 3D model for understanding every variant of equation (9). [Originally constructed with a 10 mm polyurethane ball, three 200 mm knitting-needles and three annuli cut from coloured paper.] The 'a-b' plane is yellow; the 'a-lambda' plane is red; the 'b-lambda-prime' plane is blue. Using your cursor, the model may be activated and viewed from any angle.

Figure 2: (i) From Fig. 1, a representation of the arbitrary spherical triangle XYZ on a unit sphere; OX = 'a'; OY = 'b'; OZ = 'lambda'; ie, to be clear: orientation 'a' freely chosen by you/Alice; 'b' freely chosen by your partner/Bob;  'lambda' random.Attachment #1: Watson_2013_FIG._1.pdfAttachment #2: Watson_2013_FIG._2_i.pdf

Watson FQXi 2013 FIGURES: 2 (ii) and 2 (iii).

Figure 2: (ii) The unit sphere sectioned on the 'a-b' plane with 'lambda' in the background; showing the angle 'phi = (a; b)', etc.

Figure 2: (iii) The 'a-b plane' with 'lambda' (also 'lambda-prime') rotated into it, preserving the true angle between 'lambda' and orientation 'a'.Attachment #1: Watson_2013_FIG._2._ii.pdfAttachment #2: Watson_2013_FIG._2._iii.pdf

Watson FQXi 2013 FIGURES: 2 (iv) and 3.

Figure 2: (iv) A tabular annotation of Fig. (iii), showing that the results, per (9), agree with the results from Fig. 1 and #19.5.

Figure 3: The causal dynamics and correlative relations in a complete wm specification of EPRB (Bell 1964); after Spekkens (2012:Fig. 1). Spekkens' S, T, X, Y and  are replaced by wm-Its (beables). WM-Bits (information = correlative relations) are shown via labeled dashed-lines. A complete wm specification of EPRB (Bell 1964) is thus provided. Consistent with WLR, the correlative relations void Spekkens' second (unnumbered) equation and many conclusions.Attachment #1: Watson_2013_FIG._2_iv.pdfAttachment #2: Watson_2013_FIG.3.pdf