TFNR - Reasons for the locality / non-locality dispute
From Evolutionary Knowledge Base
In general, I believe that the reason why the phenomenon of entanglement has led to the renunciation of locality, to the acceptance of a sort of strange action at a distance and to the renunciation of a "plausible" realism is to be found in the substantial lack of knowledge in regarding the nature, shape and dynamics of quantum objects (waves and particles), and related phenomena, interactions, etc. This stance opened a never-ending dispute with a more classical vision, linked to Relativity. As already said, I do not agree with either view, for the reasons expressed above.
But let's try to go into more detail:
- Nature and shape of quantum objects: the fact that the nature of particles and waves (quantum objects) is not understood and explained in terms of something more basic in concrete terms (events, relationships, processes, space, time, action, energy/information, etc.), but with general reference to "excitations of quantum fields".
The fact that waves are conceived as something distributed in space, while particles are seen as point-like or almost point-like objects. The fact that waves and particles are substantially thought of as very different entities, and not sharing the same profound nature, even if with different shapes.
The lack of understanding of the nature, shape and dynamics of emission, propagation and absorption of waves, and in particular of the single cycle wave, what is called a photon and assimilated to a particle, here too generating a lot of misunderstandings.
All these aspects and many others, in my opinion, have produced a series of misunderstandings that have spread throughout the history of physics from the first decades of the 1900s to the present day, and will continue to cast their sinister shadow on the scientific research of the future.
- Localization: position and extention in space: related to all this is the lack of understanding of the spatio-temporal significance of the position of a wave and a particle.
In particular, for particles: the nature distributed in space (no point like particles), the virtually infinite but effectively finite extension, the spatial profile of the mass, charge and spin, their dynamics over time, the variable point positions of the center of mass and charge, the orientation of the spin axis, the nature of the inertia and its distribution over the entire extension of the particle.
All these aspects, not understood, have weighed on the vision of Physical Reality, on the lack of or incorrect understanding of quantum phenomena, and therefore determined this dispute and the renunciation of plausible realism.
- Quantum states: in light of these aspects, here is the superposition (the ability of quantum objects to be in different quantum states of conjugated quantities at the same time), the relative collapse of the wave function (the collapse leads to the definition of the quantum state, which gives superposed / probabilistic becomes defined / certain) in the measurement process (a process not understood which has produced disturbing interpretations and unleashed a sort of quantum mysticism) have led to a "magical" vision of quantum states and the impossibility of describing their nature and the dynamics.
- Correlation and entaglement: as if that wasn't enough, to all this confusion and misunderstanding, a truly strange phenomenon has been added, perhaps the true strangeness of quantum physics. Let's talk about entanglement.
A sort of correlation that can be created between two or more quantum objects that exhibit "correlated" quantum layers that appear to evolve coherently (collective wave function) until an event, called decoherence, which breaks this correlation. Correlation that is preserved (unless decoherence, in fact) even at great distances and times, and for this reason it has unleashed this idea (absurd for me) of a connection between entangled entities at distances that can become such as to imply instantaneous communication, therefore at superlunal speeds.
However, this connection does not allow the transfer of information. What about causality? In a sense this instantaneous connection seems to enable transmission of causality, action at a distance so to speak (determining the quantum state of the second entangled object following measurement of the quantum state of the first, for example). The situation is very confusing and actually lends itself to endless misunderstandings.
Links to the tables of contents of TFNR Paper
