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My thoughts on - Sean Carroll on the Myths of Quantum Entanglement



Actually the key counter intuitive behavior was still not explained. Remember the description of the experiment starts by saying - prepare two particles which were close to each other in such a way that they have quantum property such as spin which is opposite of the other for each particle. This is similar to saying have two gloves - one for right hand and one for left hand. The gloves are classical objects. Keep that in mind. Now, without measuring if it is not possible for determine the state of quantum system, how can we be sure that we prepared the particles to have opposite valued property. So that is the first objection. OK. Fine. Now let us say that the process that creates those two particles by it's nature creates them in such a way that they have opposite properties. Let us grant that. Then we put one of the two particles and (blindly) left or right hand glove in one box. Put the other particle and (blindly) the other right or left - basically opposite hand glove in another identical box. We shuffle the boxes so that we do not know which is which. Because we blindly picked up the gloves we did not know which glove we put in which box either. We ship those boxes 1 light year away from each other. Then for good measure we wait for 1 more year. And then open one (our) box. We see it has right hand glove. We instantly know the other box has left hand glove. Duh. We see that the particle in our box has spin UP. We instantly know that the other particle in the other box is spin DOWN. BFD. Duh. This is an incomplete description though. The mystery for QM particles is really because of the Bell inequality. That inequality holds for Quantum particles but not for the gloves. That is what needs to emphasized. That is the counter intuitive result for QM. The Bell Equality says in one way or the other, that the particles did not have any spin direction while the boxes remained closed. To be fair Sean did mention Bells inequality in a disconnected manner.


Also note, I very very very intentionally did not use the word mysterious behavior, and I instead used counter intuitive. The reason is that when scientists use the word mysterious - Deepak Chopra or Rupert Sheldrake take it and run with it to spread their woo theories. I think, scientists need to be very careful to not to encourage people like Deepak Chopra who are undermining science every day.

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