[ExI] QT and SR

[scerir]

Damien writes:
> See, from my point of view, this whole discussion omits key empirical
> data that seem clearly to undermine those standard claims. [...]
> The empirical evidence for extra-chance correlations in psi
> precognition experiments and natural experiments seems to me now
> beyond doubt (and, unlike most doubters, I've actually looked closely
> at a lot of the evidence). [...]
> So rather than asserting endlessly and pointlessly that X *can't*
> happen because reigning doctrine seems to argue against its
> possibility, even though X *does* occur quite often, physicists might
> be well advised to start looking for loopholes that permit these
> effects. Maybe entanglement is one; or maybe some version of Cramer's
> second time dimension, coupling past and future. Or maybe there's
> leakage in the Simulation.

John Bell wrote that quantum "correlations cry out for explanation".
Extra-chance correlations in psi experiments also cry out for 
explanation. To my knowledge, there are no explanations, 
for both kinds of correlations.

But, regarding quantum correlations, there is more than 
the reigning mantra of the "no-go" theorems. There are many 
different approaches. I do not know whether these approaches 
may have some value, or some meaning, regarding the extra-chance 
correlations in psi precognition or other psi phenomena. 
In any case here is a very  small sample of those non-standard 
- but perhaps interesting - approaches.

1) According to Asher Peres any attempt to inject realistic 
explanations in quantum theory (if not in physics tout court) 
is bound to lead to inconsistencies. There are questions which 
can be formulated in the ordinary language of experimental
physics, but cannot be represented in the mathematical framework 
of quantum theory. It is often impossible to ascribe objective
existence to physical quantities. Something vaguely reminiscent
of Godel.

2) Arthur Fine (author of 'The Shaky Game') suggests that, in a 
truly indeterministic world, those weird correlations stand in 
no more need of explanation than does a random string of outcomes
of measurements made at a single location. Why should the fact
that there is a pattern between random sequences require any more
explaining than the fact that there is a pattern internal to the
sequences thenselves? Quantum theory takes for granted those
weird patterns, those weird correlations. This rather radical
position seems to be close to David Mermin's position (correlations
are primitive concepts, there is nothing beyond, there are no
'correlata'). Following a famous dictum. 'It is easy to think
that when we find a linear regression of y on x we have evidence
that increasing x causes y to increase. Much less is true.'

3) There are people (Cramer, Price, Costa de Beauregard, Klyshko,
etc.) who think that quantum correlations can be explained
by a sort of two-time effect: actions (in positive time) from 
the source of entangled states to the space-like separated wings 
where measurements occur, reactions (in negative time) from each 
wing to the source and then to the other wing, via Fourier 
transforms. There are troubles to implement this picture if 
dimensions are more than one or perhaps two. Similar pictures 
you get when, instead of using two-time dynamics, you use negative 
probabilities. or negative entropies (entropy of two entangled 
subsystems is less -sometimes is even negative- than the entropy 
of the two separated subsystems, after the so called 'tracing out').

4) There are people (Nicolas Gisin, A. Suarez) who think that
quantum correlations occur outside space-time. The algebraic
nonfactorizable expression of an 'operating system' entails 
the geometric nonlocality.

5) There are people (Shimony, Jarrett) who think that the 
source of this 'uncontrollable nonlocality' (as opposed to 
FTL signals) is quantum indeterminism. The concepts of
localized events and causality need to be broadened. Maybe
the new physics will be able to modify the topology of
space-time in the small? And that will yield a new 
interpretation of nonlocality? Interestingly (for Damien) 
Shimony also thinks that features of QM like objective indefiniteness,
objective chance, entanglements, have obvious analogies
to some features of mentality. (See Shimony's review of
the book by R.Faber, 1986, 'Clockwork Garden', in 'Foundations
of Physics', vol. 17, year 1987).

6) Since in EPR effects there is no before and no after 
and no time (because correlations seem to occur outside
space-time, in any case outside time) there are people who 
think that the 'block universe' may play a role here. 
In the sense that a correlation may connect events from 
the future and from the past. Especially when we introduce 
a sort of quantum indeterminism in the 'block universe'.
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0605049