From: paul@mtnmath.UUCP (Paul Budnik)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Why did Bell not prove QM is an incomplete theory?
Date: 16 Dec 92 17:57:21 GMT
Organization: Mountain Math Software, P. O. Box 2124, Saratoga. CA 95070

Before you answer `because it isn't' consider the following.

In discussing Everett's ideas on QM Bell says:

	In a thoroughly quantum cosmology, a quantum mechanics of the whole
	world, the wave function of the world could not be interpreted in
	the usual way. For this usual interpretation refers only to the
	statistics of measurement results for an observer intervening from
	outside the quantum system. [The outside world is a classical
	world which in the `Copenhagen' interpretation is logically prior
	to the microscopic world of.]  [...] There is of course no sharply
	defined boundary between what is to be treated as microscopic and what
	as macroscopic, and this introduces a basic vagueness into fundamental
	physical theory. But this vagueness [...] is quantitatively
	insignificant in any situation hitherto envisaged.
	-- J. S. Bell, *Speakable and unspeakable in quantum Mechanics*, p. 93

The reason for my question is that this vagueness *does* have a quantitative
effect on time domain measurements in tests of Bell's inequality. The
connection between the macroscopic and microscopic worlds is through the
assumption that the wave function changes instantaneously when we make
an observation. This vague assumption allows us to predict the correlations
expected in tests of Bell's inequality but it does not allow us to predict
the delays between when a polarizer angle changes and when this has an
observable effect.  (If you think there is no delay note that the delay must
at least be as long is the time it takes light to travel for each
polarizer to its *local* detector or one could reconfigure the experiment
to support superluminal communication.) These delays can be measured
experimentally and this is the crucial measurement needed to confirm that
the change in polarizer angles and the detections influenced by them have
a space-like separation. Unless one can make such a measurement one cannot
claim to have demonstrated that Bell's inequality is violated.

Most readers probably suspect there is some flaw in my argument.
Perhaps this is so but the argument is so simple and direct
that I doubt it. I am not spelling it out in detail because I have posted
it previously. I now have a paper under review that makes this case. I
have received an initial rejection because I included some of my speculative
ideas (a tactical error). No mention was made of the main point of my
paper in the review. I have edited the paper to remove all reference to
the speculative ideas and am appealing the rejection. I suspect that
reviewers do not read a paper like mine with much care once they feel they
have found a sound reason for rejecting it.

If I am correct why did Bell not discover this shortly after developing
his inequality? He clearly understood that there was a fundamental vagueness
to quantum theory that makes it vulnerable to such a problem. His
result provided the first mechanism to test the time domain implications
of assuming the wave function changes instantaneously. Obviously Bell
understood that as well. 

I think you only have to pose two simple questions to obtain the
result I claim:
	
	1. How can you measure the time delays between when a polarizer changes
	and when this has an observable effect in tests of Bell's inequality?

	2. What does quantum mechanics predict about such measurements?

I think anyone with a basic understanding of QM that trys to answer those
questions will come of with the result I did. Quantum mechanics is a provably
incomplete theory because it does not make predictions about the statistics
of these delays.

Why did Bell not ask these questions. Why has all the focus been on the
correlation values, and not the crucial time delays? Part of the reason
is that people have dismissed out of hand the possibility that there might
be a local causal process that produces the correlations. This seems too
fantastic to even consider. Thus all the initial focus was on seeing if
the correlations really exist. I think a deeper reason was a psychological
commitment to the belief that quantum mechanics is a complete theory and
that Einstein was wrong. I think this provided a mental block that prevented
Bell and others from simply asking the right questions.

Paul Budnik
Newsgroups: sci.physics