Lorraine ,

This meeting is a relevant meeting where several thinkers share ideas and put seeds for the others. We need these kind of meetings or conferences to present the ideas, works, theories. They don t tell rubbish because simply they try to explain unknowns and it is well like this.

Secondly you have not define the free will, the consciousness or others. Because even with...

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Lorraine ,

This meeting is a relevant meeting where several thinkers share ideas and put seeds for the others. We need these kind of meetings or conferences to present the ideas, works, theories. They don t tell rubbish because simply they try to explain unknowns and it is well like this.

Secondly you have not define the free will, the consciousness or others. Because even with numbers, variables , changes inserted in the equations of physics, we are limited about the main informations and in philosophy also. These limitations are mainly due to limitations about what is the primoridal essence of informations and hat are the foundamental objects and how is really transformed and coded the energy to create our matters, topologies, geometries, fields.

In fact imagine that the variables , numbers, changes are a key to explain this consciousness, the problem is that you don t know the partitions universal permitting this, that is why it is difficult to explain the free will and the consciousness wich are different of the intelligence. Many confound the intelligence and the consciousness. In fact there is a kind of very fascinating thing about the consciousness, the free will and the unique creations, it is like if something permits specific partitions unique somewhere. It is like even we have an order and after a specific order. like in fact some assymetries appear at the end of somethings where the codes and informations permit these unique creations. It is there the secret to explain this consciousness, we must find what are the main mathematical and foundamental objects, how the cognitive sciences are correlated in these microtubules and the consciousness, what is really the main primordial informations and codes and the general relatifvity alone is a problem like the fields because they are probably emergent. So the variables and numbers are important indeed but they are under a partition so complex and so beyond our understanding that we cannot confound this intelliegcne and this consciousness.

Furthermore never the physicists tell that we cannot act on the laws of nature because we have this consciousness and that this consciousness can be aware of universal truths and so we can understand that we are tools of optimisation and so that we can act on this nature in improving it with wisdom. Maybe it is better to utilise this consciousness than to explain it at this moment .....

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Lorraine,

It is slowly becoming apparent, to more and more people, that all existing physical theories, are merely Effective Theories; like Ptolemy's theory of epicycles, they are good (effective) at quantitatively describing observed effects, but say little, if anything at all, about what causes those effects to exist, in the first place.

Hence, the "laws of physics" in such...

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Lorraine,

It is slowly becoming apparent, to more and more people, that all existing physical theories, are merely Effective Theories; like Ptolemy's theory of epicycles, they are good (effective) at quantitatively describing observed effects, but say little, if anything at all, about what causes those effects to exist, in the first place.

Hence, the "laws of physics" in such theories, do not represent "causal powers", but only precise descriptions of effects. In essence, they fit accurate curves to the observed data, but accomplish little, in regards to actually explaining why anything happens the way it does. The situation is not much different than you or I being able to predict that the sun will rise in the morning; the fact that we can make such successful predictions, does not imply that we are the cause for the effect, but it does imply that something, non-random, is causing it.

But physicists have yet to succeed at identifying any cause, for any of the observed effects, that their theories are so good at describing.

But Shannon did: He identified the most fundamental cause, for every possible interaction; an interaction can only be "triggered" by detecting the mere existence of something to interact with. Nothing needs to be "measured" at all, no variables need to be assigned values, as you keep saying. An entity just needs to be able to determine that something, that it can interact with, actually exists, "right here, right now", right in front of it. What the subsequent interaction is, how the interacting entities behave, is a completely separate issue; but the ultimate fact is that, there can never be any interaction behavior at all, until after the mere existence of the "trigger" has been detected.

The problem with every "effective theory", is that they all simply assume that "then a miracle occurs"; interacting entities "simply know", seemingly via some "miracle", or "spooky action at a distance" etc., that something to interact with (such as an immeasurably-tiny gravitational field) is now present, and that they should consequently, respond accordingly, and be effected, by whatever it is that happens to be there. But Shannon was "more explicit", regarding that missing step; reality does not function via miracles, it functions via discrete (quantized) "triggers" that initiate all subsequent interactions. The error-free detection of such triggers, is what Shannon's Information Recovery, is all about. When the circumstances are such, that it is possible to accomplish such error-free information recovery, then deterministic behaviors become possible (recovering the same identical trigger, enables a subsequent, identical effect); otherwise they are not possible, which is ultimately why "free-will" exists. When the same (repeatable) trigger cannot possibly be reliably detected, then the corresponding triggered behavior, cannot be reliably "determined", hence determinism cannot exist in such a situation. Determinism cannot exist, in any situation, in which it is not possible to recover at least one, single bit of information, indicative of the existence of some "trigger", that matches whatever triggers an entity is capable of detecting.

Rob McEachern

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"Local slit-geometry and scattering cannot account for these coincidence results..."

When you change the nature of the detector, you will also change the nature of what is being detected.

Whenever a particle passes though the same location within a slit, it induces the same electrical field around the slit, that subsequently causes the particle to scatter off that...

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"Local slit-geometry and scattering cannot account for these coincidence results..."

When you change the nature of the detector, you will also change the nature of what is being detected.

Whenever a particle passes though the same location within a slit, it induces the same electrical field around the slit, that subsequently causes the particle to scatter off that field, in the same deterministic manner. Reproducing the same geometry on the "other side", will reproduce the same deterministic pattern.

As you have correctly stated, that pattern will be obscured, when you send many different particles through the slits, with different incident geometries and/or energies, but if you use a coincidence detector to eliminate every single one of those other particles except for the one that passes through the other slit with exactly the same geometry at exactly the same time, then the same deterministic pattern will emerge from the analysis.

It is just like using a strobe light to make a movie of a rotating, spoked-wheel; you can "freeze" the apparent rotation of the wheel (the observed pattern), and thus subsequently observe a different pattern, that was created by the joint behavior of the coincidence detector and the wheel it is observing, and not just the wheel by itself. When you change the detector, you change what will be detected.

As I stated on the page that you linked to; "Information about that geometry is merely being modulated onto the "carrier" passing through the slits..." When you change the detector (the demodulator), you change the information subset to be extracted from that carrier, but not the information that was being carried in the first place. If you place a colored filter between yourself and a white light, you will no longer see the white light; what is detected depends upon both the nature of the input to a detector and the nature of the detector itself.

Rob McEachern

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Lorraine,

"what the electrical circuits, voltages and transistors represent depends on what human beings want them to represent."

Physical entities "represent" themselves, to other physical entities, by merely BEING themselves - they are what they are.

Hence, Shannon's point was, humans, such as yourself and every physicist on Earth, should never have expected to be...

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Lorraine,

"what the electrical circuits, voltages and transistors represent depends on what human beings want them to represent."

Physical entities "represent" themselves, to other physical entities, by merely BEING themselves - they are what they are.

Hence, Shannon's point was, humans, such as yourself and every physicist on Earth, should never have expected to be capable of reliably detecting the existence of such entities (at any specific location in both space and time), unless you first already know, apriori, EXACTLY what type of detector MUST be employed - a perfect MATCH (copy) of the entity itself.

You, and every physicist on Earth, have been deluding yourselves, by naively assuming, that you ought to be able to correctly detect entities, that exist in the real world (rather than in some idealistic thought experiment), even when you do not know exactly what you need to be looking for.

As Shannon proved, there are situations in which nature, will never allow that to happen. If you do not know EXACTLY what to look for, then you are just "s... out of luck." (Hence the difficulties with detecting "Dark Matter" and "Dark Energy) What humans either want, or expect things to "represent", is not necessarily what they actually do represent; A crappy drug-test will never correctly indicate that the drug being tested for, is actually present. And a crappy test for a "bit of information" will never correctly detect such a bit.

Entities existing in the real-world, "represent" their very existence, to other entities, by simply, merely BEING themselves: "It takes one, to know one!" and it takes one, a perfect matched filter, to reliably detect the mere existence of one.

In other words, Shannon proved that their are situations, in the real-world, in which it is impossible, even in principle, to "measure" something and then reliably deduce/determine/infer what it was, that you just measured, from those self-same measurements; because, there is nothing there to ever be reliably measured, in the first place! there is no INFORMATION present. Such problems have nothing directly to do with a small physical size, as has been incorrectly assumed for over a century; the problem has to do with a small, TINY (one single bit) information content.

Rob McEachern

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Robert,

you wrote on https://www.quantamagazine.org/famous-experiment-dooms-pilot
-wave-alternative-to-quantum-weirdness-20181011:

“There is no interference - it is just discrete scattering, as Bohm demonstrated, like the balls in an old bin-pall machine, striking obstructions in the field (playing surface) at discrete locations.”

and

“A skier encountering...

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Robert,

you wrote on https://www.quantamagazine.org/famous-experiment-dooms-pilot
-wave-alternative-to-quantum-weirdness-20181011:

“There is no interference - it is just discrete scattering, as Bohm demonstrated, like the balls in an old bin-pall machine, striking obstructions in the field (playing surface) at discrete locations.”

and

“A skier encountering moguls on a ski-slope, might be a better metaphor, for the particle/Gibb-phenomenon interaction, within a slit. The point is, that although you do not "see" the moguls looking at the slits themselves, as Bohm demonstrated, a tiny skier passing through a slit, will encounter the Fourier transform of the slit, whose band-limiting will ensure that any skier passing through a slit, will encounter some very big moguls in the field there.”

No double-slit aperture has the exact same microscopic surface as another. Hence what you replied by writing

“Whenever a particle passes though the same location within a slit, it induces the same electrical field around the slit, that subsequently causes the particle to scatter off that field, in the same deterministic manner. Reproducing the same geometry on the "other side", will reproduce the same deterministic pattern.”

is inconsistent. Even if all double-slit apertures would be exactly identical, you cannot explain the result of the experiment I brought up.

Why should one and the same location within a double-slit have anything to do with what happens at the other double-slit to produce an interference pattern? Nothing is “reproduced” at the other side! What you ascribe to a detector's ability to sample an interference pattern only when there are coincidence counts at another detector is just a wild and confused fantasy of yours.

You wrote

“When you change the detector (the demodulator), you change the information subset to be extracted from that carrier, but not the information that was being carried in the first place."

Man, this is so damned silly what you wrote and I wonder that is indeed you that wrote it. The “carrier” is one bit of information – as you rightfully stated a million times before here and elsewhere. Nothing has been “carried in the first place”!

“If you place a colored filter between yourself and a white light, you will no longer see the white light;”

Deep insight! Needs a Genius to arrive at that conclusion...

“what is detected depends upon both the nature of the input to a detector and the nature of the detector itself.”

Again deep insight, and again meant ironically... I think you should take your personal filters (your model about detectors, filters and the nature of detections) away from your eyes for being able to discuss the experiment objectively and scientificly.

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Robert,

I like to better explain why I find your answers so silly. Let's recap the experiment:

1) A light source sends out particle pairs. For every pair the source sends out the two particles in opposite directions.

2) At side A (left side) there is a double-slit with a fixed detector behind it at a certain location.

3) At side B (right side) there is a double-slit...

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Robert,

I like to better explain why I find your answers so silly. Let's recap the experiment:

1) A light source sends out particle pairs. For every pair the source sends out the two particles in opposite directions.

2) At side A (left side) there is a double-slit with a fixed detector behind it at a certain location.

3) At side B (right side) there is a double-slit with a detector behind it which has to scan the detection plane step by step to make the interference pattern appear.

You explain a double-slit interference pattern by a scattering process at the surface of the slits. Tiny moguls on these surfaces should lead each particle to its place such that there are dark and light stripes as a result (interference pattern).

Now you wrote

“Whenever a particle passes though the same location within a slit, it induces the same electrical field around the slit, that subsequently causes the particle to scatter off that field, in the same deterministic manner.”

If that assumption would be correct, then the detector on side A should always click when a particle passes through the same location within a slit. Maybe there are also other “locations” within those slits that cause this particle to also end up in detector A every time a particle hits such a location. The main point here is to assume that this would be the correct explanation and then to ask why at side B these “moguls” should be located such that they built up an interference pattern for the detector at side B to detect – whenever detector A at side A clicks.

One now can assume that even if detector A does not click but only detector B, that the counts of detector B alone can establish the interference pattern on side B. But that is not the case. Only the coincident counts make the interference pattern appear.

So is that interference pattern simply a filtering result out of many overlapping interference patterns? As tempting as this answer may be, before subscribing to it as the result of your scattering processes one had at first to explain why the myriads of tiny “moguls” of two independently manufactured double-slits coincide such that at side B an interference pattern can be detected. Keep in mind that the source sends out particle pairs such that the two particles fly in opposite directions. Hence each and every of the respective locations a particle pair passes through at one side must be mysteriously correlated with its 180 degree counterpart at the other side such that the result is always the detection of an interference pattern at one side – no matter if we fix detector A at location X in the detection plane or slightly off that location (say at location Y).

Be it double-slits or two roughly identical pencils or screws, I see no rational and scientific reason why two different objects should coincide concerning their microscopic surface properties in such an orchestrated way. I also see no reason why “the nature of the detector” should be responsible for the interference pattern at side B because one can also use a photographic plate and according to your theory that pattern then merely is hidden within different impact locations of other particles. But that does not explain why independent “moguls” on each side TOGETHER lead at all to an identifiable interference pattern instead of leading to any other pattern – or to no pattern.

Hope that the reader and you can now better trace my arguments.

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Robert,

I tell you how I see the issue:

Only in your mind you correlate some locations of some “moguls” for side A of the experiment with some locations of some “moguls” for side B of the experiment to get the known results. You correlate them such that if some moguls on side A lead some particles to detector A, then some moguls on side B lead some particles to detector B...

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Robert,

I tell you how I see the issue:

Only in your mind you correlate some locations of some “moguls” for side A of the experiment with some locations of some “moguls” for side B of the experiment to get the known results. You correlate them such that if some moguls on side A lead some particles to detector A, then some moguls on side B lead some particles to detector B (but surely not all of them).

I don't know how these assumptions can lead in all cases to the observed results. “All cases” means that there are a plethora of double-slit manufactures, surely all with moguls at different locations. You take it for guaranteed that each combination of two double-slits has the right internal “mogul-combination” to enable the measured results – no matter how weird these combinations may be.

All we know is that in the experiment there are less coincidence clicks in destructive areas as are in constructive areas for side B. For at all obtaining clicks at detector A one should not place this detector in areas where there is maximal destructive interference. So we selected a “mogul-location” for detector A with maximum constructive interference after the double-slit. According to your assumptions, that location depends on at least one mogul that leads every particle deterministically to the same location after it passed the slit with the mogul, provided that every such particle hits this mogul.

At which incoming angle the particles hit all the moguls an how this does affect / enable the end result is another open question for me. Another open question is whether or not there are many differently located moguls in one double-slit that could lead all the particles that pass these moguls deterministically to one and the same location (for example to detector A). These complications multiply by not only considering them for one side, but for both sides in combination.

Somehow you seem to believe that once we defined the right place for detector A, then all the differently located moguls in both double-slits together with all the different momenta for the particles that pass the slits can guarantee that there will be less coincidence clicks in destructive areas as are in constructive areas for detector B.

Additionally you also bring a detection statistics into play what reminds me of your assumptions about the necessity to wipe away the false counts from these statistics to get a proper picture of reality. So additionally we also have to consider these false counts (and non-counts?) that coincide with all the other already mentioned coincidences to obtain the “realistic picture of what is really going on”.

Maybe after the experiment we should redo the experiment, but with an exchange of the double-slit at side B. If we change that double-slit with another appropriate one, we change the locations for the moguls in that slit – unless you believe that every double-slit of the same kind must have the same moguls at the exact some locations.

What do you think, will there be changes in the frequencies of coincident clicks at certain former locations at side B?

I do not mind if you don't answer that question, but then a further discussion makes no sense to me.

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Robert,

let me tell you how I see all this.

Concerning the experiment, we are talking about a subset of all the particles that manage to get through the slits and to the detection plane, independent of whether or not they will be detected there by some apparatus.

The only difference between you and me here is that I do not correlate the word “subset” automatically to a...

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Robert,

let me tell you how I see all this.

Concerning the experiment, we are talking about a subset of all the particles that manage to get through the slits and to the detection plane, independent of whether or not they will be detected there by some apparatus.

The only difference between you and me here is that I do not correlate the word “subset” automatically to a mechanical, deterministic filtering process. I do not automatically associate “subset” with “filtering”. It is a subset in relation to the whole set, independently of how the whole set or the subset got into appearance / existence. So I am not confused, I just try to understand how you explain the formation of the whole set / subset.

Now you have given an explanation scheme in terms of electromagnetic ripples and diffraction. If an electromagnetic field is something physical, it has to consist of some kind of matter. Your metaphor with the water and the boat is enlightening. The boat is a huge amount of times larger than the “atoms” the water is composed of. On the other hand, the “atoms” of an electromagnetic field – if such a field is really a real physical entity – is composed of myriads of photons of the same size as the photons that later hit the detectors. Surely one can assume that this field is composed of much smaller “atoms” then photons are. But I think that would be a too great leap into the unknown.

So let's assume the electromagnetic field is composed out of myriads of photons. If we think in terms of scattering (little balls bumping into each other and changing each others locations and momenta) I see no straightforward way that these myriads of photons can lead a single photon of the same size reliably to ever the same location whenever it passes the same location at a slit. It is not a boat sitting on classical water waves that are much smaller than the boat. Additionally photons are defined to travel with a very high speed, they do not hover around the same area.

Moreover, unlike the “classical” double-slit experiment with single photons where the source is such that we know with certainty one of the space coordinates the photon came from (always straight from the left side for example), the situation in the experiment we discuss here is different: each photon that passes the slits could have had a slightly different impact angle.

Now, what is true here is that all these different impact angles for each particle pair are indeed correlated, since the particle pairs are always send out from the source in opposite directions. Leaving aside the nature of the electromagnetic field for a moment (many photons in a small area), we then can say that whenever the source sends out a particle pair in exactly the same directions, it logically should hit the same spots at the slits and should encounter the same scattering angle.

But besides the issue with the electromagnetic field, there is now another issue. Namely that coincidence counts are only valid when detector A clicks (of course also detector B). If detector A does only click when the source has send out the particles in only one allowed direction (in the direction such that the end result of this deterministic billiard chain is a click of detector A), then it can only hit one allowed location at the slits and the deterministic result would be only one allowed place at the detection plane to arrive for it (namely detector A).

Since the same exclusive behaviour is then logically mandatory also for particle B, the logical result in this case would be that particle B also can only arrive at one and the same allowed spot at the detection plane. Since this is not what has been registered, we are forced to conclude that there necessarily must be much more than one spot at the slits that allow a photon to arrive at detectors A and B.

But we also know that there must be spots at the slits that do not allow both twin particles to arrive at the detectors A and B. And we also know that there must be spots at the slits where only one of the twin particles is allowed to arrive at a detector. Whereas this behaviour could be intuitively explained by the correlated impact angles for each particle pair, the conservation of that correlation of their momenta before they hit the slits and after they have hit the slits is not a guaranteed thing.

That conservation of correlation is nothing other than the fact that there are less coincidence clicks in destructive areas as are in constructive areas for side B.

The issue here is that at the one hand we talk about real particles that fly off the source (billiard balls) and at the other hand these billiard balls should fly through myriads of other billiard balls (the electromagnetic field) and at the end are guaranteed to produce less coincidence clicks in destructive areas as for constructive areas at side B (or in other words, produce a distinctive pattern instead of a chaotic, homogenous mix). Even a highly orchestrated “dance” of these myriads of billiard balls in the electromagnetic field does not alter the picture that it then needs an unbelievably complex orchestrated behaviour for all these balls to govern one photon reliably such that the interference pattern can establish. What is already a non-trivial task on an ordinary billiard table with a dozen of balls gets astronomically magnified when thinking of the electromagnetic field as composed of myriads of photons.

On the other hand, if we give up thinking of photons as material objects, what then remains of your deterministic explanation scheme with all the interactions being strictly local and working perfectly together like geared wheels? Additionally we necessarily need many different locations in a double-slit that all result in the same impact location for a detector. Together with the myriads of interactions within the sea of electromagnetic photons I see no way to perfectly orchestrate / correlate all these variables to obtain at all a distinct pattern instead of just a chaotic, homogenous impact mix.

You wrote

"Information about that geometry is merely being modulated onto the "carrier" passing through the slits..."

If a photon is “one bit of information” as you repeatedly asserted here and elsewhere, how then is it able to being “modulated” such that it deterministically reaches its destined location at the detection plane? Your answer is that the “carrier” is the electromagnetic field with its myriads of photons. But each of those photons again have only “one bit of information”, each of them can't even “carry” or “represent” where in 3D-space they themselves should be located and with what momenta they should move. I think you strictly have to differentiate a model of the world as a computer program where the nature of the entities (and even the nature of 3D space, whatever it is) is negligible from the model of the world in physical 3D-space where the nature of each of the material entities plays a crucial role for any local and deterministic explanation.

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Stefan,

"Your metaphor with the water and the boat is enlightening." Good.

"I see no straightforward way... " Because you have incorrectly assumed that the induced EM field is being caused by the "water", when it is in fact caused by the huge structure of the nearby slits, which are many, many, many orders of magnitude larger than the "boats".

To continue with the...

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Stefan,

"Your metaphor with the water and the boat is enlightening." Good.

"I see no straightforward way... " Because you have incorrectly assumed that the induced EM field is being caused by the "water", when it is in fact caused by the huge structure of the nearby slits, which are many, many, many orders of magnitude larger than the "boats".

To continue with the metaphor:

The "water" is not in an open ocean, it is in a narrow channel, with huge, nearby walls and the "boats" are not all going EXACTLY down the center-line of the channel. Hence boats that are nearer to one side-wall than the other, induce a different EM field (caused by the walls, not the water) than a boat moving down the center-line of the channel. The resulting "ripples" interact with both the boat and the walls, so they are no longer exactly symmetrical along the center-line and thus deflect the boat slightly, to one side or the other, in a deterministic pattern, that depends upon how much off-center, each boat was while passing through the channel. At a great distance from the slits, these deterministic deflections "add up" to a deterministic pattern - the interference pattern observed.

"If a photon is “one bit of information” ..., how then is it able to being “modulated” such that it deterministically reaches its destined location at the detection plane?"

The photon itself, the boat, is not being modulated, it is not being altered. Only its induced behavior, how it is deflected (or, if it even is deflected!), by the asymmetrical, induced EM field, is what is being modulated; by the fact that there can be no modulated, altered behavior at all, when, in effect, the boat cannot even detect that such ripples even exist - the boat is simply too insensitive to the ripples. That "test for existence", is what "information" detection/recovery IS, it is not about making "measurements", and the outcome of that test, is what is being altered/modulated. Whenever one entity cannot recover that one, single bit of carried (within the induced field) information, being "caused" by the existence of a second entity, that MEANS that it has totally failed to detect the very existence of the second entity - hence, it cannot "trigger" any interaction at all. That is what "quantum" is all about; either you detect that "something" else exists and consequently modulate/alter your behavior, or you fail to detect that "something" exists and therefore behave just as if nothing exists to ever cause a change in behavior.

As another metaphor, instead of thinking about boats interacting with walls, think of two submarines, each weighing thousands of tons, that are, by design, difficult to detect; when they each actually do fail to detect that the other exists, when they pass near each other, neither's behavior will be "modulated", they will behave just as if the other does not even exist. They are both inducing changes in the behavior of the water around them, but neither is sensitive enough to those changes, to detect the other's existence. The point being, that such behaviors have nothing directly to do with small, physical size. It is the small information content of the induced "signal" (only one recoverable bit, indicative of only two possible states; "trigger some interaction" or "do not trigger any interaction at all"), not small physical size, that determines (AKA causes) such "quantized" behaviors. That is what "quantum" behavior is all about. That is what "information" is all about. Physicists have been confusing themselves, and every one else, for an entire century, by naively assuming that "information" is about making "measurements". It is not. It is about detecting existence itself.

"the nature of each of the material entities plays a crucial role for any local and deterministic explanation." Not quite. A boat traveling through a sea of oil, rather than a sea of water, would still "make waves"; the question is "Would waves in oil, deflect the boats in an observably different pattern than waves in water?" Or would boats made of one type of plastic, induce waves/ripples that differ from those induced by boats made of a different type of plastic. As another metaphor to consider in this regards, the "father" of Quantum Field Theory, Paul Dirac, pointed out that how chess pieces are moved, how they behave, is independent of the nature of the material they are made of, and the same seems to be true in quantum theory; we can only actually observe how entities, such as electrons and photons behave, not what they are made of. And how they behave when they encounter each other, seems to be "triggered" in exactly the same manner that the process of "information" recovery" triggers observable changes in behaviors.

Rob McEachern

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Lorraine,

I agree with your statement that: "I’m saying that information is an aspect of the world that people can only symbolically represent..."

My point is, that "physics" is not about trying to figure out how people, do what they do. It is about trying to figure out how "elementary" entities, do what they do.

Until people figure out how "elementary" entities...

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Lorraine,

I agree with your statement that: "I’m saying that information is an aspect of the world that people can only symbolically represent..."

My point is, that "physics" is not about trying to figure out how people, do what they do. It is about trying to figure out how "elementary" entities, do what they do.

Until people figure out how "elementary" entities represent and process information, they will never understand the nature of reality.

I am not disputing your claims, about the way most "people" deal with what they consider to be "information." I am merely trying to get those very same people, to understand, that the only people that have learned to process information, in a manner anything like the way "elementary" entities process it (which appears to be extremely different from the methods that you describe) are the people that design communications systems - the people that created "Information Theory", precisely for that purpose. Physicists have yet to figure that out. But it is about time that they try.

As described towards the end of this Article about Shannon's Information Theory, what Shannon discovered was a way to do the one thing that everyone thought was a logical impossibility, "the one Fano called 'unknown, unthinkable,' until Shannon thought it."

Shannon discovered a way to create highly complex systems, that work PERFECTLY, in spite of being constructed entirely out of maximally IMPERFECT PARTS! Every single "bit" being used to build the system can be deeply flawed, but nevertheless, the entire complex system built from those highly corrupted "bits" will still function PERFECTLY - no errors whatsoever!

It is the HOLY GRAIL of reality! It is what enables complex systems, like "life" to exist, in the first place. As the article states: "(In technical terms, it was a promise of an “arbitrarily small” rate of error: an error rate as low as we want, and want to pay for.)": PERFECTION is just a matter of cost, not a logical impossibility. And the cost of "near-perfection", turns out to be surprisingly affordable - which is why we humans exist.

Rob McEachern

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