The universe is not locally real

Ok after much more reading, here’s the answer that makes the most sense to me so far: Don't these experiments suggest that locality has to be abandoned in the quantum realm? - Physics Stack Exchange .

To summarize it, Bell’s theorem is just a mathematical proof, nothing else. What Bell’s theorem shows is that it’s impossible to formalize a system (i.e. to make a model), that matches the QM model’s predictions, if the formalization of the system precludes information about the whole system from affecting the probabilities of measurements at a localized part of the system.

Further, the experimental evidence confirms that what actually happens behaves contrarily to any such model ^. So reality cannot be modeled by a system with this limitation ^.

HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean that reality is not “local”, where “local” means “the propagation of changes of one part of a system cannot reach another part of a system at faster than the speed of light”.

Basically QM is a model that is not local in the sense of, the model relies on the entire state of the system, but it is local in that nothing actually can affect something else at faster than the speed of light.

The answer gives this example of two models:

  1. Every coin flip is heads or tails, with a 50/50 chance.
  2. Every time you flip a coin, that coin instantly figures out the last result of any coin flip anywhere in the universe, faster than light. Then, with a 50/50 chance, it either gives the same result or the opposite result.

The first model is local, the latter is not local. But both give same predictions…

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That being said, as I understand it, reality still is fuckin’ weird. Consider this experiment where I’ll avoid using the terms particles or photon or anything that might not exist. Just describing what happens.

Say we have a “doohicker” device with a light on it. And then we have two “globber” devices. The ‘globber’ device is a cylinder with an ‘input’ on one end and two outputs on the other end. The output end has two lights on it, one on the top half and one on the bottom half.

If we line up the doohicker device with two globber devices on opposite sides, input ends pointing toward doohicker device, then once/minute the doohicker device flashes and then a short time after, the globber devices flash, each either the top light or the bottom light. So we say the doohicker device is doing something which makes the globber devices flash.

Now say we set up these devices and the globber devices are 2km away from the doohicker device. We notice btw that ~6.7 microseconds after the doohicker device flashes, the globber devices flash.

Near each globber device we have a piece of paper and we write down the minute, the rotation of the globber device, and whether the globber device read ‘up’ or ‘down’. And we randomly rotate it as the experiment goes on.

We notice that each globber device individually always gives 50/50 up or down, regardless of the rotation.

Now we bring the two pieces of paper together to compare the results of the same emission across the two globber devices. And we notice they are correlated!!

Namely: whenever the globber devices are rotated 180 degrees away from each other, they both either flash top or bottom. Perfectly correlated. If they are rotated the same degree then when one flashes top, the other flashes bottom, and vice versa.

Whenever they were rotated 90 degrees away from each other, then there was no correlation. Whether the first flashed top or bottom, the other flashed top 50% of the time and bottom 50% of the time.

Whenever they were rotated 45 degrees apart, then there was some correlation in between. When one flashed top, the other flashed top 14.64% of the time and bottom 85.36% of the time. When one flashed bottom, the other flashed top 85.36% of the time and bottom 14.64% of the time.

This happens even though we were randomly rotating the globber devices!

This is what actually happens in reality ^ .

You might imagine that that’s because the doohicker devices emits some real “thing” that definitely has some property, and the globber devices are measuring this property, and they have some chance of yes/no based on the actual property of the thing. But Bell showed that any model you come up with that assumes this ^ will not be able to model what actually happens! He showed that, mathematically, you can only model this if you model the probabilities of both devices agreeing/disagreeing, based on the angles of both devices. Even though they are far apart from each other!

But locally each device always gives 50/50. You can’t tell how the other device is rotated when you look just at yours. But when you combine the results together, you notice weird things like “hey whenever I was at angle X and the other device was at angle Y I was only getting up 14% of the time if it got down…”

To me the most significant statement in her presentation is that any environment is a “measurement”.

So at human scale, there is no “dead and alive cat” because it is being “measured” by multiple environments. ( She mentions “air” and the CMB, but I assume it’s not limited to that).

I don’t totally understand her point, but it does seem to imply that what a quantum experiment is doing, is not what the macro universe is doing. That is, just because we can have these experiments, doesn’t mean they are “in the wild” because essentially everything is being “measured” by everything else all the time.

It’s also very informative when she explains the philosophical biases of the scientists involved.

She’s being intellectually dishonest. Normal determinism is: you drop a ball, it falls. If it falls onto a ramp tilted left, it bounces left, if it falls onto a ramp tilted right, it bounces right.

Superdeterminism is more like: you have two ramps, a left and a right. Someone far above you drops a ball on either the left or the right one. You both can’t see or talk to each other. But if you choose to look at the left ramp you always see the ball drop there (and not on the other). If you choose to look at the right one you see the ball drop there (and not on the other). So it’s as if the person on top will “know” where you will look and the ball always drops there, even if you only decide where to look AFTER they choose where to drop the ball.

If one tiny aspect of the universe behaves like this ^ it means it’s a property of the universe as a whole. It doesn’t matter if we only observe it in certain circumstances. So it means the future is predetermined in a totally non intuitive way. Hence “super” determinism.

As the future isn’t actual and hasn’t happened yet, this theory makes no sense.

Yeah, she seems to get a bit brief on the details and skipped over the implications you are describing.

I get a picture of us as humans trying to see the back of our heads by quickly looking behind the mirror!

Is the universe actually moving at all?

I mean, perhaps like the pixels on my screen which don’t move when I watch a movie, the whole universe is a “quantum field” which lights up making it seem that an object moves, but there is no actual movement at all. The universe is perfectly still.

I guess that is the “one electron” theory.

Meaning that the universe is instantly manifest, all at once and the speed of light limit applies to everything slower than it, but not the instantaneous manifestation of what the universe is.

What it seems to me, from the experiments reported, something is faster than light.

Occums Razor; assume the simple answer first.

Oh!!??

This may heresy, but there is something Spinoza argued about the universe which seems applicable;

There can only be one infinite and eternal thing.

His error was monism, that the mental/spiritual and the material/energetic are the same thing.

However, the “single electron/wave function” theory would indeed be only one thing.

There are all kinds of bizarre questions that come to mind;

Does an infinite universe weigh anything?

Is it infinitely heavy or completely weightless?

Is the total energy of an infinite universe infinitely powerful or completely benign ?

The information is the key to everything.

Think of how we as a group have exchanged information. The entire world. That is the “naked apes” evolving…

There is this amazing interplay going on.

I got into the intellectual habit of (and I am making up a name for it on the fly…) “Resolving to Infinity”.

It goes like this;

If something happens, it is a property of the universe. Full stop.

Life?

Property of universe.

Consciousness?

Property of Universe

Then the mysterious origins of things disappears.

All that is left is the joy of discovery.

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Perhaps the obsession with finding (speculating mostly) about the origin of things, the universe being the main one, comes from our instinctual makeup.

Just look at the huge industry around DNA ancestry; finding out where I came from.

The what is happening is swallowed up in a drive to trace our origins.

When I was in the foothills of illumination in my twenties, find the “switches” was one of my obsessions.

I was convinced that at the core of everything there were “switches”. That if I could just master controlling these switches, the power/ freedom I desperately wanted would be mine.

It’s interesting to see a video about essentially this very thing. That Wheeler had already given it a name “It from Bit”.