From: terry@aslws01.asl.dl.nec.com (Terry Bollinger)
Subject: Bell's Inequality [was: drifting like Finnegan's Wake, IMHO...]
Organization: NEC America, Inc. Irving, Texas
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 21:58:12 GMT

In article <272@mtnmath.UUCP> paul@mtnmath.UUCP (Paul Budnik) writes:

> In an experimental tests of Bell's inequality manipulations of a local
> polarizer must instantaneously influence results obtained by a distant
> observer or Bell's inequality cannot be violated...
> [which] by standard definitions, involves the transfer of information ...
>
> [Does Dr. Baez] disagree?

Whose "standard definition" is that?  I don't know what kind of work you do,
but in computer science and telecommunications we're a rather pragmatic lot
about such things.  As in, "If I cannot use Mechanism X to transmit some
series of bits known only to me to some other location, we most certainly
do NOT call such a thing a 'transfer of information,' no matter how many
funny 'non-local' effects it may exhibit."

Our kind of defintion that is based on whether you can demonstrate it to
a customer and make money off of it by selling her or him a working system.
If you feel that your definition of transfer of information can do that
for you, more power to you -- but if your newfangled telephone is going to
be based on Bell's Inequality, I for one won't be panting to buy any stock.

I've read Bell's delightful book "Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum
Mechanics" a couple of times, and I flat-out do not understand why people
keep insisting on trying to view it as some kind of magical information
transfer mechanism.  It isn't.  It IS "non-local" in the precisely defined
sense that Dr. Bell gave in that same book (a nice, clear light-cone-based
defintion that is well worth reading over), but the whole reason Dr. Bell
went over that issue was to sharpen up the distinction between non-locality
and transfer of information.  They are simply not the same thing.

Non-locality is fascinating and bizarre, yes.  Dr. Einstein absolutely
hated it.  Indeed, Dr. Bell argues that it was really non-locality,
not determinism per se, that drove him to argue with Dr. Bohr about the
underpinnings of QM quite literally until the day before Dr. Bohr died.


Nor is Bell's Inequality fully resolved.  For example...

You used the word "instantaneous."  Talk about undefined words!  Special
relativity flatly does not *allow* such words, because they cannot be
defined or quantified.  Depending on your inertial frame, it could be
*either* observer A or observer B in a Bell experiment who "caused" any
particular "wave collapse."

So what DO commonly used phrases such as "instantaneous influence" mean
for Bell Inequality experiments?  To the best of my knowledge, no one
knows.  Nor (apparently) has one has ever come up with a truly consistent
mathematical quantification of such strange questions.  (My recollection
is that there were some rather unsuccessful attempts in the early 80s --
anyone?)

Bottom line is that while there quite probably ARE some rather profound
mysteries still lurking in non-locality ala Bell, no one has ever developed
a truly sound framework for figuring out what they are.

But they don't appear to be telephones.  Not the last time I checked.

			Cheers,
			Terry Bollinger, Telecommunications Twerp


P.S. -- Dr. Baez:  Thanks for the nice Third Try input.  Believe you may
        have a small boo-boo in it, but it's a good shot & I will try to
        fully decipher it a bit later.  (Very busy with my "real" work.)

Xref: sparky sci.physics:14720 sci.math:11515