From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!agate!apple!apple!netcomsv!iscnvx!psinntp!scylla!daryl Tue Jun  9 10:07:07 EDT 1992
Article 6092 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!agate!apple!apple!netcomsv!iscnvx!psinntp!scylla!daryl
>From: daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Quantum mechanics (no AI here, sorry)
Message-ID: <1992Jun4.201614.10240@oracorp.com>
Date: 4 Jun 92 20:16:14 GMT
Organization: ORA Corporation
Lines: 33

holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:

[about quantum nonlocality]

>It's local properties of the _waves_ that are involved.  Such an
>experiment is carried out by setting up a state in two widely
>separated locations which depends on an unobserved factor in a single
>earlier event.  One then makes observations at the widely separated
>points, and, lo, they agree with one another.  These results make
>perfect sense (require no explanation at all, in fact) on a hidden
>variables interpretation, i.e., on the interpretation that there was a
>real underlying value to the unobserved factor in the earlier event
>which we did not in fact observe (we couldn't observe it and do the
>experiment, in fact).

Randall, I think you are behind the times on this. Einstein *thought*
that a hidden-variables interpretation would explain the seeming
nonlocality of quantum mechanics, but John Bell in fact showed just
the opposite: the nonlocality *cannot* be explained by hidden
variables theories (Bell's Theorem).

>The "non-locality" has to do (on my interpretation) with the fact
>that getting extra information about event A may immediately give
>me extra information about event B even if A and B have space-like
>separation

That explanation has been pretty much ruled out. There is no way
to reproduce the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics by
such a hidden variables theory.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY


