My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat it:

Foundations of physics and/or philosophy of physics, and in particular, posts on unresolved or controversial issues

My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat it:

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Here is my challenge to all Bell-believers, extremists and non-extremists alike:

In the standard EPR-Bohm experiments (performed, for example, by Aspect et al.) one is interested in the following four averages over a large number of trials:

E(a, b) = << A(a)B(b) >> ,

E(a, b' ) = << A(a)B(b' ) >> ,

E(a', b) = << A(a' )B(b) >> ,

and

E(a', b' ) = << A(a' )B(b' ) >> ,

where A and B are equal to +1 or -1, and a, a', b, and b' are the four possible measurement settings, freely chosen by Alice and Bob at the two ends of the setup.

Here the averages of all individual outcomes are always found to vanish: << A(a) >> = << B(b) >> = << A(a' ) >> = << B(b' ) >> = 0, regardless of the setting choices.

The corresponding CHSH-correlator is then bounded by 4 (or 2\/2 if you do not neglect the crucial geometrical and topological properties of the physical space):

- 4 < E(a, b) + E(a, b' ) + E(a', b) - E(a', b' ) < + 4

The above bounds of +/-4 are very easy to derive --- see, for example, my derivation in the Appendix D of this paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1501.03393v6.pdf.

Bell and his followers, however, claim that the local-realistic bounds on the above CHSH string of averages are actually +/-2. I claim that their claim is wrong!!!

- 2 < E(a, b) + E(a, b' ) + E(a', b) - E(a', b' ) < + 2

So my challenge to all Bell-believers is simply this: Prove the above Bell-CHSH inequality with the bounds of +/-2 without violating the following two conditions:

(1) You are not permitted to surreptitiously replace the sum E(a, b) + E(a, b' ) + E(a', b) - E(a', b' ) of four separate averages with the following single average:

E( a, b, a', b' ) = << A(a)B(b) + A(a)B(b' ) + A(a' )B(b) - A(a' )B(b' ) >>

The claim that the above single average is somehow demanded by local-realism is utter nonsense. The single average is physically meaningless gobbledegook.

The single average has nothing whatsoever to do with the EPR-Bohm experiments. In fact, it does not pertain to any physically meaningful experiment at all.

(2) You are not permitted to obfuscate this simple challenge by invoking unnecessary concepts from the probability theory. The simple averages I have defined above are all that is needed to understand the EPR-Bohm type correlations. Invoking unnecessary concepts from the probability theory amounts to obfuscation and cheating.

That's it. That is my challenge to Bell-believers. Either put up or shut up. You have done enough damage to physics for the past 50 years. It is time we purge you out.

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Joy Christian
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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

"The claim that the above single average is somehow demanded by local-realism is utter nonsense. The single average is physically meaningless gobbledegook.

The single average has nothing whatsoever to do with the EPR-Bohm experiments. In fact, it does not pertain to any physically meaningful experiment at all."

I think you've discovered the anti-quantum-Randi challenge.

Here is how Karl Hess answered those nonsensical claims:

"Moreover, Larsson and Gill later showed explicitly that the Bell inequality is inadequate for experiments that use a time coincidence technique (time window) to identify pairs of photons (Larsson and Gill, 2004). They gave a specific example for time-and-setting dependent parameters that Walter and I had proposed in all generality in our 2001 PNAS paper (Hess and Philipp, 2001). Of course, they did not recognize the validity of our second PNAS paper (Hess and Philipp, 2002) and claimed that our model was 'not local in the Bell sense.' As 'local in the Bell sense', they defined a model with a probability measure independent of the settings. This definition makes, in general, no sense, because the products A_aA_b, A_aA_c, and A_bA_c and their long-term averages must depend on both settings. Their definition also has nothing to do with Einstein's locality that follows from the limiting velocity of light. This is the only locality that matters".

Best,
Tom
thray

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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

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Thanks, Tom.

Unlike the Bell-believers, I am not concerned about any loopholes at all, let alone the time-coincidence loophole. I am saying that Bell's argument is simply invalid, because it is impossible to derive the bounds of +/-2 on the CHSH-correlator without cheating. The correct mathematical bounds on the CHSH-correlator are in fact +/-4, and the correct physical bounds are +/-2\/2. In my conditions (1) and (2) above I have forbidden the two popular cheats that the Bell-believers use to "derive" the bounds of +/-2. Without such cheats no one will be able to derive the bounds of +/-2, unless of course they come up with some other cheat that I am unaware of.

As for Larsson and Gill, they simply stole the ideas from Hess and Philipp, after trying to thrash them first. It is as simple as that. In fact Gill’s modus operandi for his entire career has been to “thrash and steal" other people’s intellectual property, similar to the modus operandi “divide and conquer” of the colonizing Englishmen.

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Joy Christian
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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

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Well, well, well. Ain't this rather funny? It has been four days since I posted this challenge, but there are no takers so far.

The claim by Bell and his followers that the bounds on CHSH are +/-2 has been around for some 52 years! There are literally hundreds of thousands of papers written on Bell's so-called theorem. There are equally many "derivations" of the Bell-CHSH inequality. One would think that it would be a piece of cake for the Bell-believers to come along and set me straight. It would be a piece of cake for them to derive the bounds of +/-2. After all, some of them believe in Bell's theorem implicitly.

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Joy Christian
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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

There is a nice proof of Bell's theorem by Steve Gull which uses Fourier analysis instead of the usual algebra.

http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~steve/maxent2009/
http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~steve/maxent ... s/bell.pdf
guest

Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

guest wrote:There is a nice proof of Bell's theorem by Steve Gull which uses Fourier analysis instead of the usual algebra.

http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~steve/maxent2009/
http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~steve/maxent ... s/bell.pdf

This sketch of the "proof" does not meet my challenge above.

To begin with, the "proof" violates my condition (2) right from the start. Secondly, it says, with emphasis, that "This is a mathematical project. There are no physical assumptions." I couldn't care less about a mathematical project in this context. I am talking about the physically realisable EPR-Bohm type experiment. Thirdly, I see no derivation of the bounds on the CHSH correlator at all in the "proof." Finally, there actually exists an explicit, clear-cut local-realistic model, trivially derived and verified in several independent event-by-event computer simulations: http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.2355.

Therefore the above "proof" cannot possibly have any physical significance.

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Joy Christian
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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

Joy Christian wrote:***
Well, well, well. Ain't this rather funny? It has been four days since I posted this challenge, but there are no takers so far.

The claim by Bell and his followers that the bounds on CHSH are +/-2 has been around for some 52 years! There are literally hundreds of thousands of papers written on Bell's so-called theorem. There are equally many "derivations" of the Bell-CHSH inequality. One would think that it would be a piece of cake for the Bell-believers to come along and set me straight. It would be a piece of cake for them to derive the bounds of +/-2. After all, some of them believe in Bell's theorem implicitly.

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So it has been over a week since I posted this challenge. So far there has been only one failed attempt to take up the challenge. This is absolutely astonishing to me, considering how far the Bell-fanatics like Richard D. Gill and other Bell-mafia have stooped -- both publicly and behind the scenes -- to hurt me personally, financially, and academically, simply because I exposed their irrational belief-system to be scientifically flawed. To justify their actions, all they have to do is meet my challenge.

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Joy Christian
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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

Joy Christian wrote:So it has been over a week since I posted this challenge. So far there has been only one failed attempt to take up the challenge. This is absolutely astonishing to me, considering how far the Bell-fanatics like Richard D. Gill and other Bell-mafia have stooped -- both publicly and behind the scenes -- to hurt me personally, financially, and academically, simply because I exposed their irrational belief-system to be scientifically flawed. To justify their actions, all they have to do is meet my challenge.

Well they haven't done it because it is impossible. Boolean tried to post his argument based on probability theory again which violates your rule (2) so it was rejected.
FrediFizzx
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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

FrediFizzx wrote:Well they haven't done it because it is impossible. Boolean tried to post his argument based on probability theory again which violates your rule (2) so it was rejected.

Indeed. It is impossible to derive the bounds of +/-2 on the CHSH correlator while maintaining the physical conditions (1) and (2): viewtopic.php?f=6&t=275#p6681

Needless to say, my challenge is inspired by the somewhat similar challenge our mutual "friend" with psychopathic tendencies tried to set up several times in the past.

But let me be generous to the Bell-believers and suggest a possible strategy. I am serious now, and am genuinely trying to help here, to further the advance of physics:

While satisfying my two conditions, what the Bell-believers can attempt is to prove that a single correlation function such as $E({\bf a},\, {\bf b})$ cannot exceed the linear limit:

$E({\bf a},\, {\bf b}) = -1 + \frac{2}{\pi} \cos^{-1}({\bf a}\cdot {\bf b})\,.$

Once they have established this, they can consider the four correlation functions in the manner of CHSH to derive the bounds of +/-2, without violating my conditions.

But before anyone tries to waste their time with this strategy, let me help them out again and point to two of my papers which suggest that this attempt too will fail:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.0784

http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.2355

PS: Boolean ( a.k.a Jochen ) keeps falling into the probability trap because, like most Bell-believes, his understanding of the problem is very shallow and superficial.

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Joy Christian
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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

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Well, it has been two weeks since I posted this very simple challenge. I am still waiting. !!!

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Joy Christian
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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

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It has been now over a month since I posted this challenge to Bell's theorem. But so far there has been no serious attempt to meet it.

I have even tried to help out and provide technical hints to anyone who is adventurous enough to take up my challenge: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=275#p6701.

There is of course an easy way out for the Bell-believers: Simply cheat, as they have been doing for the past 52 years: http://arxiv.org/abs/1501.03393.

But there is also a more sophisticated way of cheating --- the philosopher's way:

Simply "bite the bullet" and admit that the only possible way to prove Bell's theorem is to resort to anti-realism: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=267&p=6566#p6566.

That is to say, believe, really really believe, that we the children of Bell can be both in London and New York at exactly the same time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Joy Christian
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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

Joy Christian
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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

ROTFL!!!!
thray

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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

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Some Bell-believers of extreme variety are quick to call "crackpot" anyone who questions the legitimacy of Bell's theorem. For example, I have been called "a crank", "a hoaxer", "an obnoxious fraud", "a charlatan", "a crackpot", "an imbecile", and "a fringe lunatic" on various blogs and Internet sites, including by some in supposedly professorial or academic positions paid by the taxpayers. Since the Bell-believers can't even prove what they have fanatically believed in for 52 years, should we not now retaliate and call them crackpots? Should we not now declare that only crackpots believe in Bell's theorem? Should we not demand that those who have stooped as low as resorting to criminal activities such as cyber-stalking, cyber-bullying, and lynch mobbing to enforce their belief in Bell's theorem onto the physics community be striped-off their professorial or other positions? Should we not demand that they appologize to the physics community for misleading them for over half a century?

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Joy Christian
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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

In https://www.quantamagazine.org/20130917 ... m-physics/
it says: "Pysicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality."
And
"Because “we know that ultimately, we need to find a theory that doesn’t have” unitarity and locality, Bourjaily said, “it’s a starting point to ultimately describing a quantum theory of gravity.” "
Also:
"... the scattering amplitude equals the volume of a brand-new mathematical object — the amplituhedron. The details of a particular scattering process dictate the dimensionality and facets of the corresponding amplituhedron. The pieces of the positive Grassmannian that were being calculated with twistor diagrams and then added together by hand were building blocks that fit together inside this jewel ..."

and apparently this approach does not require unitary.

If anyone understands this article, doesn't it imply that a new and (far) more efficient approach to particle interactions does not require unitary? Ie the probabilities of the interactions do not sum to 1. Is this in any way related to the supposed "missing data in simulations based on a spacetime approach rather than on a twistor diagram approach? [Or on a Clifford Algebra approach?]" Is the new jewel like structure in any way related to a chaotic ball, or whatever?
Ben6993

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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

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But for the record, I don't buy the argument presented in the article you have posted. The argument subscribes to the current fashion of seeing spacetime as emergent, at a price of giving up unitarity and locality, which is far from a rational approach to physics. My challenge to the proponents of such Willo-the-Wisp approaches is to have them reproduce the known physics, just as Einstein was able to reproduce Newtonian physics. If they can, then they would be immortalised as the next Einsteins. Until then theirs is a yet another silly fantasy. At least this is my position. Any theory that violates Einstein's notion of local causality is not worthy to be called physics.

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Joy Christian
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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

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It has been seven weeks since I posted this challenge and not a single person on this planet has been able to prove Bell's theorem. So let us conclude the challenge:

There is no way to prove Bell's theorem ( i.e., the upper bound of 2 on the Bell-CHSH inequality) without cheating, by illegitimately replacing the sum of averages

E(a, b) + E(a, b' ) + E(a', b) - E(a', b' )

with a single average

E(a, b, a', b' ) = << A(a)B(b) + A(a)B(b' ) + A(a' )B(b) - A(a' )B(b' ) >> ,

which has nothing to do with the EPR-Bohm type experiments and surreptitiously assumes anti-realism [ i.e., assumes B(b) and B(b' ) occurring at the same time ].

Therefore those who believe in Bell's theorem are either con-artists or incredibly incompetent fools lacking any ability to think critically about rudimentary physics.

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PS. Fred please don't lock this thread. We should leave this thread open for anyone in the universe, at anytime in the future, to come here and prove me wrong.

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Joy Christian
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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

And where does that leave Bell's theorem? A purely philosophical trope that satisfies none of the 'elements of reality' advanced by EPR.
thray

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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

thray wrote:And where does that leave Bell's theorem? A purely philosophical trope that satisfies none of the 'elements of reality' advanced by EPR.

Indeed, Tom. The main lesson of my uncontested challenge is that it is impossible to prove Bell's theorem without physically unrealistic assumption of anti-realism.

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Joy Christian
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Re: My Challenge to All Bell-Believers --- Meet it or Beat i

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It has been more than 14 months since I posted this challenge to all adherents of Bell's theorem, but it remains unmet. Meanwhile,
in this arXiv paper, I have derived Bell-CHSH inequality without assuming either locality or realism, with the following conclusion:

To summarize our Corollary, Bell inequalities are usually derived by assuming locality and realism, and therefore
violations of the Bell-CHSH inequality are usually taken to imply violations of either locality or realism, or both. But
we have derived the Bell-CHSH inequality above by assuming only that Bob can measure along the directions b and b′
simultaneously while Alice measures along either a or a′, and likewise Alice can measure along the directions a and a′
simultaneously while Bob measures along either b or b′, without assuming locality. The violations of the Bell-CHSH
inequality therefore simply confirm the impossibility of measuring along b and b′ (or along a and a′ ) simultaneously.

In other words, what I have demonstrated in the above paper is that Bell's tacit assumption of compatibility of the manifestly incompatible experiments is the ONLY assumption needed to derive the Bell-CHSH inequality. Therefore it has nothing to do with the issues of locality and realism: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=317&p=7867#p7867

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Joy Christian
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