A puzzle

[gill1109]

Take a look at the table below:

A B A' B' __ A (first column, duplicated)

g r r r __ g
g g r r __ g
g g g r __ g
g g g g __ g
r g g g __ r
r r g g __ r
r r r g __ r
r r r r __ r

You'll notice that:

the A and B column agree 75% of the time
the B and A' column agree 75% of the time
the A' and B' column agree 75% of the time
the B' and A column disagree 75% of the time

Problem: is it possible to come up with a similar table (with any number of rows) such that those four numbers (percentages agree, agree, agree, and disagree) are larger still?

If Joy wins his bet, he will have done just that...

[gill1109]

Notice that we had three high percentages of agreement, 75% each
equivalently, three low percentages of disagreement, 25% each

We had one high percentage of disagreement, 75%
equivalently one low percentage of agreement, 25%

So it is an equivalent problem to try to get the three low percentages of disagreement even lower,
and at the same time the one low percentage of agreement, also lower.

Suppose % rows with A != B is 25% or less, idem for B != A', idem for A' != B'.
Delete all such rows - that's at most 75%.
So in the remaining at least 25% rows, we have A == B, B == A', and A' == B', hence also A == B'.

Thus we can't get the three low percentages of disagreement all below 25% without raising the low percentage of agreement above 25%
Equivalently:

we can't get the three high percentages of agreement all above 75% without lowering the high percentage of disagreement below 75%

[gill1109]

Now suppose Joy submits his two files of directions of angular momentum (whether from experiment of computer simulation, doesn't matter).

Calculate

sign(a0 . u_k), - sign(b45 . v_k), sign(a90 . u_k), - sign(b135 . v_k)

and replace +1 and -1 with "r" and "g" (red and green).

Put the N so created lines one below the other into one big N x 4 matrix

If Joy's experiment or simulation has matched the quantum singlet correlations, then

the percentage of rows of this table such that column 1 = column 2 is 85%

the percentage of rows of this table such that column 2 = column 3 is 85%

the percentage of rows of this table such that column 3 = column 4 is 85%

the percentage of rows of this table such that column 4 = column 1 is 15%

Which is impossible. In fact, if the first three percentages are above 75 then the fourth is above 25...

[minkwe]

Take a look at the table below:

A B A' B' __ A (first column, duplicated)

g r r r __ g
g g r r __ g
g g g r __ g
g g g g __ g
r g g g __ r
r r g g __ r
r r r g __ r
r r r r __ r

You'll notice that:

the A and B column agree 75% of the time
the B and A' column agree 75% of the time
the A' and B' column agree 75% of the time
the B' and A column disagree 75% of the time

Problem: is it possible to come up with a similar table (with any number of rows) such that those four numbers (percentages agree, agree, agree, and disagree) are larger still?

If Joy wins his bet, he will have done just that...

I see that you are back to 4xN again, despite all our exchanges. I wonder why I even bother.

[gill1109]

Michel - this is not about the usual kind of experiment. This is about Joy Christian's experiment, and the bet he has accepted with me.

I bother, because I would love to win 5 000 Euro (for Medecins sans Frontiers) and prove to his last remaining supporters that Joy Christian is badly mixed up. But now you have caught on, and you have a chance to warn him, to get out of the bet before it is too late...

By the way, Michel, I take it you agree with the mathematical claims I make here?

See the topic: The bet on Christian's experiment

http://www.sciphysicsforums.com/spfbb1/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=46

and check out the paper:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3078

Tell Christian what you think.

[minkwe]

Richard, I think your mathematical claims are irrelevant. I take it you believe QM can do the impossible. My advice to you: always present the QM predictions for all your thought experiments/simulations. You will find that your arguments against caricatures of Joy's model also undo QM.

[gill1109]

Dear Michel,

This has nothing much to do either with QM nor with Joy's model. It does have something to do with Joy's experiment.

Please read Joy's experimental paper and study the protocol for deciding the bet, which Joy has agreed to.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3078
http://www.sciphysicsforums.com/spfbb1/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=46

Richard

PS. By the way, I do not believe that QM can do the impossible. I do not even know if QM can do what Bell and others seem to think it can do. So far there is no proof of that. There has still not been a succesful loophole free experiment, and they have already been trying for 50 years. The last few years they have been saying "it will be done within 5 years" but actually, they say exactly the same, every year. Prediction-creep. They say "five years" in order to get public interest and get funding, but do you think it will actually happen? I very much doubt it.

[minkwe]

This has nothing much to do either with QM nor with Joy's model. It does have something to do with Joy's experiment.

Let me get this straight, You are saying it has nothing to do with QM or Joy's model but has to do with Joy's experiment? Which means you believe Joy's experiment has nothing to do with QM or Joy's model and yet at the same time you believe Joy's experiment will disagree with QM even though it has nothing to do with it?

Are betting on something which has no relevance to physics or Joy's model? Is that it? I actually thought you were interested in testing Joy's model experimentally.

PS. By the way, I do not believe that QM can do the impossible. I do not even know if QM can do what Bell and others seem to think it can do.
So far there is no proof of that. There has still not been a succesful loophole free experiment, and they have already been trying for 50 years. The last few years they have been saying "it will be done within 5 years" but actually, they say exactly the same, every year. Prediction-creep. They say "five years" in order to get public interest and get funding, but do you think it will actually happen? I very much doubt it.

Interesting, I remember when somebody said:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.5103v4.pdf

The paper argues that Bell's theorem (and its experimental confirmation) should lead us to relinquish not locality, but realism.

In view of the experimental support for violation of Bell’s theorem (despite shortcomings of experiments done to date, to be described later in the paper), the present writer prefers to imagine a world in which “realism” is not a fundamental principle of physics

Here is the puzzle for you Richard, assuming you want one that is relevant to the claims you and like-minded individuals are making (you might recognize the question):
In the case of equal settings, how can it be that the outcomes are equal and opposite, if they were not predetermined at the source?

If you can answer this puzzle, then you can answer the one you posted above.

[gill1109]

I am interested in proving that Christian is a charlatan (though indeed, at present I do believe that he is a charlatan who believes in what he preaches - so he is the better kind of charlatan).

In my opinion, Joy's "model" has no relevance whatsoever to physics.

I am interested in helping people who believe otherwise, to see the truth.

Yes: I am betting on something which I believe has no relevance whatsoever to physics. I am betting in order to prove that something which people claims has relevance to physics, actually has no relevance to physics.

Is there anything wrong with that? Sure, it is an easy way to make money, by betting on a certain outcome, but my motives are not financial - my motives are "science outreach". Moreover, when I win, Joy's money goes to "Médecins sans frontiéres". So that will be a wonderful outcome.

[Joy Christian]

I am interested in proving that Christian is a charlatan.

I am interested in proving that Gill is an algebraically challenged third-rate statistician who has no background in physics or understanding of mathematics.

In my opinion, Joy's "model" has no relevance whatsoever to physics.

In my opinion entanglement and non-locality are make-beliefs of the topologically naïve.

Bell's theorem, which claims to "prove" that these concepts are genuine properties of Nature, is in fact based on an elementary topological error: http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.4259, http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.1958, http://libertesphilosophica.info/blog/.

I am interested in helping people who believe otherwise, to see the truth.

I am betting in order to prove that something which people claim has relevance to physics, actually has no relevance to physics.

It is an easy way to make money, by betting on a certain outcome, but my motives are not financial - my motives are deeper understanding of Nature.

Moreover, when I win, Joy's money goes to "Médecins sans frontiéres".

That is never going to happen.

[gill1109]

Christian has no background in mathematics. He is statistically challenged. He has some difficulty distinguishing "for all" from "there exists". His understanding of experimental science is quite extraordinarily weak for someone who calls himself a physicist.

The fact that he says that I am a third-rate statistician is very revealing ...

***

I do not believe in non-locality.

Whether or not all phenomena observed in the real world and predicted by quantum theory can actually all be just as well explained by recourse to a deeper more "classical" physical level is still an open question. Experimenters in quantum physics have for the last several years been predicting that a definitive experiment may well be done within the next five years. Each year, the horizon moves up one year.

[gill1109]

Here is the puzzle for you Richard, assuming you want one that is relevant to the claims you and like-minded individuals are making (you might recognize the question):
In the case of equal settings, how can it be that the outcomes are equal and opposite, if they were not predetermined at the source?
If you can answer this puzzle, then you can answer the one you posted above.

That's quite a puzzle, indeed, Michel. (Though I am not sure who are the "like-minded individuals" you compare me too, because so far, whenever you claimed that I subscribed to some belief, you were completely wrong in your assumption. And I even pointed out where I have explicitly contradicted the beliefs which you ascribed to me).

What is your solution?

Counterfactual definiteness? Or post-selection (the detection loophole)?

I remind you that EPR argued from the fact that outcomes were equal and opposite when the settings were equal (but otherwise, not predictable), that they must have been predetermined at the source.

So you do subscribe to counterfactual definiteness? Or do you think that all the experimental results which recovered the negative cosine correlation were merely the result of post-selection? Just as your simulation experiments? Whose results fall beautifully inside the well-known "bounds" determined by Jan-Ake Larsson and others (up to statistical variation, of course).

[Joy Christian]

Christian has no background in mathematics. He is statistically challenged. He has some difficulty distinguishing "for all" from "there exists". His understanding of experimental science is quite extraordinarily weak for someone who calls himself a physicist.

I would have never bothered to reveal Gill's embarrassing weaknesses in mathematics and physics had he not started using abusive language and calling me names.

As for my academic credentials, they speak for themselves: http://libertesphilosophica.info/blog/about/. If still in doubt, you may ask Sir Roger Penrose about them.

Getting back to physics, I think it is worth repeating minkwe's sombre advise to Gill:

Richard, I think your mathematical claims are irrelevant. I take it you believe QM can do the impossible. My advice to you: always present the QM predictions for all your thought experiments/simulations. You will find that your arguments against caricatures of Joy's model also undo QM.

[gill1109]

As for my academic credentials, they speak for themselves: http://libertesphilosophica.info/blog/about/. If still in doubt, you may ask Sir Roger Penrose about them.

OK, I'll ask him. I haven't noticed any articles by him supporting your analyses. And did Sir Michael Atiyah ever publish support for you? I recall that you sadly said that he was perhaps the only person who could understand you.

[gill1109]

Getting back to physics, I think it is worth repeating minkwe's sombre advise to Gill:

Richard, I think your mathematical claims are irrelevant. I take it you believe QM can do the impossible. My advice to you: always present the QM predictions for all your thought experiments/simulations. You will find that your arguments against caricatures of Joy's model also undo QM.

This is not sombre advice.

I do not believe that QM can do the impossible.

A succesful loophole free Bell-CHSH experiment still has not been done, despite 50 years of attempts. So it is not at all clear that Nature can reproduce what Bell saw as "QM predictions".

Indeed, if you believe in local realism and do not subscribe to some conspiratorial super-determinism, then QM must be wrong, or Bell's fifth position must hold: QM itself prevents us setting up the initial conditions for the experiment to succeed.

[Joy Christian]

As for my academic credentials, they speak for themselves: http://libertesphilosophica.info/blog/about/. If still in doubt, you may ask Sir Roger Penrose about them.

OK, I'll ask him. I haven't noticed any articles by him supporting your analyses. And did Sir Michael Atiyah ever publish support for you? I recall that you sadly said that he was perhaps the only person who could understand you.

Actually, many people understand my work perfectly well. One does not have to be Einstein to understand my arguments: http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.2529.

I haven't heard from Sir Michel Atiyah lately, but I did hear back from Professor Karl Hess, confirming my opinion about you and about your blunders in mathematics and statistics. He told me some very unflattering things about you, citing the late Joseph Doob, that I cannot really repeat here without breaking the forum rules.

[minkwe]

Indeed, if you believe in local realism and do not subscribe to some conspiratorial super-determinism, then QM must be wrong, or Bell's fifth position must hold: QM itself prevents us setting up the initial conditions for the experiment to succeed.

I believe QM is correct. But maybe you do not understand QM the same way I do. I believe the QM predictions are for precisely the experiments which have been done and loopholes are irrelevant. The QM correlations are for outcomes of performable experiments only. If you can describe a performable experiment, QM will correctly give you the right results. The only contradictions arise when you believe, like you've stated many times elsewhere that the QM predictions represent properties of an un-measured population prior to measurement, and measurement simply "samples it". I believe QM is not a physical theory but a measurement theory.

[gill1109]

The only contradictions arise when you believe, like you've stated many times elsewhere that the QM predictions represent properties of an un-measured population prior to measurement, and measurement simply "samples it". I believe QM is not a physical theory but a measurement theory.

Michel, we agree. Einstein was wrong, Christian is wrong, Hess and Phillip were wrong.

Now, the interesting thing is, that due to the loopholes afflicting all past experiments, it is still possible to believe that QM actually is a physical theory, and not just a measurement theory. De Raedt and colleagues have simulated them all. However the experiment that is still to come (five years off, they say) will be different, if it is successful. They will no longer be able to simulate it!

[gill1109]

I haven't heard from Sir Michel Atiyah lately, but I did hear back from Professor Karl Hess, confirming my opinion about you and about your blunders in mathematics and statistics. He told me some very unflattering things about you, citing the late Joseph Doob, that I cannot really repeat here without breaking the forum rules.

I bump into Roger Penrose from time to time, so I'll ask his opinion. Could email Michael too. Interesting.

Now the Karl Hess story is very interesting, and sheds most of all light on his and Walter Phillips (RIP) characters. Both at Illinois, both Austrians. They published a disproof of Bell in PNAS (as academicians they have a fast track to publication in their own journal - no troublesome referees). It turned out to contain a fatal error. The "local" hidden variable was so complex one needed a lot of notation and at one point three "hidden" indices to describe it. One of the indices got forgotten, leading to a normalization error. They didn't divide by the right "constant". With Zeilinger, Weihs and Zukowski, and later help from Larsson, we identified the error. Hess and Phillip were furious. After about just one polite email we were getting angry, abusive mails back. Phillips soon after died of a stroke. He had actually been acting strange the previous few years, brain tumour; before that he had been a highly respected very abstract pure probabilist. Hess is an electronic engineer. Phillips did the math, Hess did the physics. Now Joe Doob is a wonderful probabilist, one of the greatest of the last century, and he certainly never knew any of my work nor would have the slightest interest in it. I used some elementary martingale theory to study the memory loophole. Simple stuff. So to Doob, I am/was quite simply completely unknown, off the radar. The remark "third rate statistician" is not Doob's, but Hess or Phillip's. Notice Christian's also "not even a mathematician, you are just a statistician" remark. This is quite extraordinary arrogance and not only that, stupidity, if we look at the enormous importance of statistics today and the incredible strides which have been taken in the field in such a short time.

So the Hess-Phillip model was dead, but because of the renormalization, it could be resurrected as a detection loophole model. And nowadays, indeed, Hess works with de Raedt. Unfortunately, Hess will not be at Vaxjo this year. I'll ask Hans if he can ask Karl to confirm or deny the Doob story. The remark seems completely out of character, in Doob's mouth. I know many people who knew him well. But it fits very well to both Hess and Phillips' characters. Rather sad. Ego's getting in the way of science.

[Joy Christian]

The only contradictions arise when you believe, like you've stated many times elsewhere that the QM predictions represent properties of an un-measured population prior to measurement, and measurement simply "samples it". I believe QM is not a physical theory but a measurement theory.

Michel, we agree. Einstein was wrong, Christian is wrong, Hess and Phillip were wrong.

What??? You have simply lost your marbles. Michel is saying that Einstein was right, I am right, Hess and Phillip's local-realistic adherence was right. See what Michel wrote in the last line in this:

(2) "Why do we need a single source (as opposed to two separate sources) to begin with if we do not believe the source imparts shared hidden properties to the particle pairs?"

My answers are, (1), no they can't be, unless of course in the mean time they each came into interaction with two other entangled particles, and their entanglement got swapped; and (2) I agree, we don't need a single source if ...

So again, you are confirming the fact that hidden properties are being transferred to the pair as they interact with the source or other particles. Therefore it can not be that the world is irreducibly stochastic/probabilistic, what we see is predetermined by past interactions of the particles.

Based on your answers, I would say according to Einstein, you are a local realist too. You are in good company, it is the only logically consistent position.