🚀 go-pugleaf

Baez writes to Firth:
I already told Robert this.  Perhaps I wasn't sufficiently eloquent to
get my point across.  But let me just say that I agree completely with
Benjamin Weiner's point.  It makes perfect sense to argue about what can
or cannot happen according to orthodox QM without doing any experiments.
If Sarfatti claimed he had a NEW THEORY that contradicted orthodox QM
one would have to see if his theory was consistent and met experimental
tests.  But he seems to be claiming that orthodox QM predicts FTL
communication.  Of course, his way of doing orthodox QM looks very
unorthodox, i.e., wrong.

This indicates to me that Baez does not understand orthodox quantum
mechanics. I am willing to retract my statement if Baez can pinpoint
the deviation of my argument from orthodox qm.

The red herring that |a,e,+> is orthogonal to |a,o,+> is hogwash
and contradicts standard QM and is not required by local unitarity of time
evolution between measurements.  Thinking that they are orthogonal
shows a lack of physical understanding. A half-wave plate rotates plane
of polarization by 90 degrees. Therefore, although |a,e,+> is orthogonal
to |a,o,->, it is not orthogonal to |a,o,+> and this is not a non-
unitary transformation. The unitary transformation is

U(1/2)|a,o,-> = |a,o,+>
U(1/2)|a,o,+> = |a,o,->
U(1.2)|a,e,+> = |a,e,+>
H(1/2)|a,e,-> = |a,e,->
(typo H last line is U)

<a,o,-|a,o,+> = 0

<a,e,+|a,e,-> = 0

<a,e,+|a,o,-> = 0

|<a,e,+|a,o,+>| = 1

|<a,e,-|a,o,->| = 1

If Baez has another objection what is it?

Baze is a good formalist, perhaps. But he totally lacks the physical
understanding (i.e. Bohm's "informal language") that connects the
formalisim of kets and unitary matrices to the physical devices. The
same goes for Ramsay and Weiner. Formalism is like "statistics" you
can prove all kinds of lies with it - and then you can abuse your
opponent by calling him "crackpot" or saying the work is "nonsense".
I am not accusing Baez of the latter - I refer to others.

As Einstein said:"Great spirits have always encountered violent
opposition from mediocre minds."

Baez, I am not referring to you here - but to some rude person from
Skidmore College physics Dept who sent me a gratuitous malicious
and very unprofessional e-mail.