[ExI] QT and SR

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Sat Sep 6 22:43:58 UTC 2008


John writes

> [Lee wrote]
> 
>> that's how Special Relativity sees things moving "faster than light", as
>> conceptually incoherent.
> 
> Absolutely true, but remember "things" are made of matter or energy or
> information and the correlations (and feel free to invent your own word) I'm
> talking about are made of none of these things.

Things are more general that just matter or energy. It includes
whatever the hell it *is* that you are talking about, whether it
be idiotic "spooky actions at a distance" or any other insane
rambling.

>> Remember that on a spacetime diagram relative velocity causes the angle
>> between the space and time axes to diminish. Well, you can [not] diminish
>> that angle to [magnitude size] less than zero!
> 
> I don't give a hoot in hell. If a space-time diagram says one thing and
> experimental results say something else then you can take your space-time
> diagram and stick it where the sun don't shine.

Or.... hold on.... this may be a radical thought coming up:  Or maybe
just maybe you can re-examine your experimental result and what you 
*think* it is "saying" (your word) and perhaps, just perhaps
reinterpret it according to a very solid theory that has never at all
in any way been disproven. (I speak of SR of course.)

>> tell me exactly where in this chain of reasoning you demur:
>> 1. Something we do *here* causes an effect *there*.
> 
> I demur at step 1. If it were a cause you could have instantaneous
> communication and I specifically said more than once and for at least a
> decade that is not possible. Perhaps you could call it instantaneous
> correlation. Sometimes I like to think that you can send a message faster
> than light but it's encoded and the key to decode it can only be sent at
> light speed or less.

Totally wrong.  "I like to think that you can send [something blah blah]
faster than light but it's encoded".  Purely wrong. Completely wrong!
Nothing got sent in any way anywhere, neither from there to here nor
from here to there.  Read on!  You'll see exactly why this is so!

>> If I read that right, then you put your money on influences traveling
>> faster than light
> 
> Yes.

I expect that you think that because *you* do something here,
something *there* ends up different than it would have been,
and that it ends up being that "different" or that "influenced"
faster than it could have happened if a light signal had gone
between here and there or there and here. Right?

I'm telling you that that is a terrible and wrong way to look at
it. Here is why.  For, as soon as you claim that you did 
something here and what happened there was different
*as a result* then you are forced to concede by SR that
it would make just as much sense for them *there* to
claim that what they did there made it turn out *here*
to be different than would have happened here anyway.

May I pin you down? (1) You claim that you did 
something here and what happened there was 
*different* as a result from what it would have been? (Y/N)

(2) You then say that the situation is not symmetrical, 
i.e., that it is false that what they did there made what
you did here turn out differently than what it would have
been?  (I pray that you agree that this lack of symmetry
would be completely wrong.)  Yes or No: Did what
happened here turn out as a result of what they did there,
and would have or could have turned out differently if they
had not got the result they did?

Look, both events, A and B, are outside each other's light
cone. You know that.  So their claim holds just as strongly
(i.e. not at all) as yours does.

Want to avoid that whole mess?  Want to *never* have to
say that if you hadn't done it here, or got a different result
here,  then they would have had a different outcome there?
It's easy: just adopt MWI.

Under MWI here is what happens: you and your pals here
are thinking about measuring a photon. You debate it long
and hard and either you do it on the night of Jan 22 or you
don't.  "Meanwhile" Andy and his friends in Andromeda have
the photon that is EPR entangled with yours. They too debate
long and hard whether or not to measure it on the night of 
Jan 22.  (All dates approved by the Intergalactic Committee
that lies squarely between the two galaxies, and towards which
the two galaxies are moving at equal and very sub-luminal 
velocities.)

Okay, so youse decide to measure it, and it come up Vertical.
"Ha!", you guys say to yourselves, "We know that when
*they* measure it, it will come up Vertical." Some Judas
among you says, "Well, maybe they measured it early this
evening and according to the IC date and time, beat us to it!
So what we have here would have been different or might
have been different because they went "first"!"    Of course,
all of you shout him down, because indeed he *is* wrong,
quite wrong. Because, as you know, such statements made
outside of light cones have no meaning and are only
idiotic ramblings.

Well, years and years later it turns out that they didn't get
around to measuring it because of some huge internal political
turmoil. It's still over in Andromeda trapped between two
mirrors. "Well," you say (and here is WHERE YOU REALLY
GO WRONG), "we measured it and found that it was Vertical
and so whenever they *do* get around to measuring it, or,
if they did a century or so later, they'll get or did get Vertical.
They *must* get Vertical!"   Which is absolutely wrong.

What really happened was this:  You got Vertical all right, but
you got Horizontal too!   There was a split here!   Whether or
not they measured theirs we won't know for at least 2.5 million
years. But for them ALSO they'll get H and they'll get V, because
the universe splits there too.  The *only* interesting and peculiar
part is that many millions of years from now folks will discover
that the branch of you than measured V will be in the same 
universe as the branch of them that measured V, and that the
branch of you that measured H branches will also end up in
the same world as the branch of them that measured H:
simply imagine a big sheet of plastic that is pulled apart here
due to a weakness half way between one side and the other,
and that it so happens that whenever they pull theirs apart,
your parts are connected so that just two separate sheets
remain---in one sheet everyone got V and in the other sheet
everyone got H.

No spookiness.  No action at a distance. No quantum weirdness.
No bullshit at all. Nothing really to even explain (except why there
are only two universes that come out of the whole shebang and not
four).  What's wrong with avoiding the mumbo-jumbo and adopting
the only coherent and sensible view, that of MWI?

Lee




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