Harry Kellar preforming levitation. I don’t believe him.Inspired...
Harry Kellar preforming levitation. I don’t believe him.
Inspired by this entry in 4 gravitons: What’s so Spooky about Action at a Distance?
The key thing about quantum mechanics is that, as J. S. Bell showed, you can’t have locality…unless you throw out another property, called realism. Realism is the idea that quantum states have definite values for measurements before those measurements are taken. And while that sounds important, most people find getting rid of it much less scary than getting rid of locality. In a non-realistic world, at least we can still predict probabilities, even if we can’t observe certainties. In a non-local world, there might be aspects of physics that we just can’t learn. And that’s spooky.
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TRF published today a nice followup of this post:
I recommend a close reading of cited post, this is the final paragraph:
If you have mastered enough physics and mathematics to understand similar ideas but you are still uncertain about the claim that locality is right but realism (i.e. the basic framework of classical physics) is not, you should try to read this blog post many times and think at the same moment because the blog post does contain the simple proofs that causality (plus the arrow of time), locality, and non-realism are absolutely needed in any laws of physics that are at least remotely plausible.