🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug16.203826.10685@galois.mit.edu>, tycchow@riesz (Timothy Y. Chow) writes:
>1. How accurate is Peebles' claim?  To what extent can it be proved that
>nobody will ever devise a local hidden variables theory?

It can't be, as Pitowsky has devised such.  Unsurprisingly, it has certain
features that fit in the "cure is worse than the disease" category.  He
uses non-measurable sets and the continuum hypothesis to construct his
spin models, thereby evading one of the basic assumptions of the proof.
In short, quantum indeterminacy is a byproduct of our inability to ever
get a grasp on non-measurability, and that the EPR correlations are really
due to extended objects interacting locally.

(Note that "non-measurable" here is the Lebesgue notion, and it is not
related to the quantum notion of "measurement".)

>2. Are there any plausible non-local hidden variables theories around?

Not really.  The people who peddle them are under the delusion that
determinism is so inherently overwhelmingly plausible that no one will
notice the tons of raw sewage rotting in the far corner.  It doesn't
work that way.

>I frequently encounter technically naive philosophers who have a strong
>feeling that nature is fundamentally deterministic, and so I'm interested
>in seeing how strongly one can argue against hidden variable theories.

Such are not just technically naive.  They are also philosophically naive.
The job of philosophy is not to demonstrate right or wrong but validity
or invalidity.  It's not enough to have one particular strong feeling
about nature--you have to show how it fits in with everything else.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)