Paradoxical 'pigeons'

[Q-reeus]

Could this deal a shattering blow to the realist poition?: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2014/jul/25/paradoxical-pigeons-are-the-latest-quantum-conundrum
arXiv link: http://arxiv.org/abs/1407.3194

[Joy Christian]

Could this deal a shattering blow to the realist poition?: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2014/jul/25/paradoxical-pigeons-are-the-latest-quantum-conundrum
arXiv link: http://arxiv.org/abs/1407.3194

This is just magic for the masses. To dazzle the ignorant and get handsomely rewarded is an old magician's trick (I often enjoy it in the town square).

To understand the complete, local, realistic, and deterministic origins of ALL conceivable quantum correlations, please see this page, and references there in.

[FrediFizzx]

Could this deal a shattering blow to the realist poition?: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2014/jul/25/paradoxical-pigeons-are-the-latest-quantum-conundrum
arXiv link: http://arxiv.org/abs/1407.3194

This is just magic for the masses. To dazzle the ignorant and get handsomely rewarded is an old magician's trick (I often enjoy it in the town square).

To understand the complete, local, realistic, and deterministic origins of ALL conceivable quantum correlations, please see this page, and references there in.

With the advent of the two classical experiments I listed in the other thread that have strong correlations, you should be able to add those. So it is not just "quantum correlations" any more.

Yeah, that paper listed above is not real easy to follow. Their proposed experiments are a bit easier to follow but I will be surprised if they get any useful results.

[Joy Christian]

Could this deal a shattering blow to the realist poition?: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2014/jul/25/paradoxical-pigeons-are-the-latest-quantum-conundrum
arXiv link: http://arxiv.org/abs/1407.3194

This is just magic for the masses. To dazzle the ignorant and get handsomely rewarded is an old magician's trick (I often enjoy it in the town square).

To understand the complete, local, realistic, and deterministic origins of ALL conceivable quantum correlations, please see this page, and references there in.

With the advent of the two classical experiments I listed in the other thread that have strong correlations, you should be able to add those. So it is not just "quantum correlations" any more.

Yes, of course. By "quantum" I simply meant "strong." To my mind there is no real distinction between "the classical" and "the quantum." The conventional distinction arises simply because of the commutativity within S^0 and S^1 versus non-commutativity within S^3 and S^7 (there being no other parallelizable spheres!!!).

[harry]

Could this deal a shattering blow to the realist poition?: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2014/jul/25/paradoxical-pigeons-are-the-latest-quantum-conundrum
arXiv link: http://arxiv.org/abs/1407.3194

Funny!
"Perhaps the most famous paradox is Schrödinger's cat, whereby a cat being both dead and alive at the same time illustrates the fact that a particle can exist simultaneously in two quantum states" : Schrödinger's cat was not an illustration, and certainly not of a fact.
Further, what they predict is not -as yet- a fact either.

Anyway, if the experiments succeed, they may be a blow to a "real particles" position.
But in case you were thinking of Bell's theorem, that goes much further: Bell stressed that it doesn't even presume "particles". Assuming "localtity", free will etc., it is challenging the very idea of a physical reality "out there".

[Joy Christian]

...it is challenging the very idea of a physical reality "out there".

A false theorem cannot challenge anything: http://libertesphilosophica.info/blog/d ... orem-book/.

It can, however, confuse people unnecessarily: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=34#p948.

[minkwe]

Another example of confusion about what QM calculations mean. Confusion about individual particles and the meaning of probabilities.

This paper does not raise any questions about our assumptions about nature. It raises serious questions about our assumptions of what QM is all about, and the language we use to describe our calculations. That is the sole source of the paradox.

This paragraph may ring a bell to those who ave been following the Bell debates in these forums:

What the above discussion shows is that there is a significant difference between correlations that can be observed when we measure particles separately and when we measure them jointly.This difference can be observed only when we consider pre- and post- selected ensembles, but it is always there, as an intrinsic part of quantum mechanics. Indeed, one may not be familiar with the idea of pre and post-selection but it fact it is something that we encounter routinely: Everytime when we have a sequence of measurements we can split the original ensemble into a number of different pre and post-selected sub-ensembles according to the result of the final measurement, and in each such sub-ensemble we can observe a similar effect.

The authors should have studied probability theory more carefully. The difference between individual probabilities and joint or conditional probabilities is precisely the same effect they just "discovered" in QM, and the post- processing required to calculate joint probabilities is precisely the post processing they are talking about.

This is why P(AB) = P(A)P(B|A) = P(B)P(A|B)

P(B|A) and P(A|B) are post selected terms. They cannot be calculated empirically except by post selection.

[Q-reeus]

What I find interesting in that arXiv preprint is they claim not just anomalous correlations but an attendant implied modulation of beam energy-momentum, at least on a statistical basis. Beams with classically expected electrostatic repulsion suppressed having X-section profile tighter thus with higher energy-momentum. Best I can tell such modulation would not be due to energy-momentum exchange with measurement procedure per se. Maybe they aren't aware this would constitute violating a Sacred Cow principle. Then again maybe I just don't understand enough of what's claimed overall.

[Q-reeus]

Just in from PhysicsWorld.com: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/new ... physicists
Appears now needn't have bothered about the implications in my last post. Not that the original paradox ever made much if any sense in the first place. So how did it take so long for a 'rational explanation' to surface? Maybe because 'standard' QM (of which around ca 50 'mainstream' interpretations currently exist) intrinsically engenders an expectation of the paradoxical/absurd.
[arXiv link to new paper (given at bottom of above linked article): http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.1333]