What did Einstein mean by “Spooky Action at a Distance"?

Einstein's most impressive understanding was his ability to recognize his audiences comprehension.
Knowing that reality can not be explained, humor fills the void!

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Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole

What did Einstein mean by “Spooky Action at a Distance"?

You guys are already past me on this, but I always thought he was saying that A being here and there at the same time is spooky (i.e. BS).

Tim Wood: You confused the hell out of me Tim. ". . . she claimed there were billions of stars in the universe. True . . ."

then "in a 50 lb. sack of rice there are a few grains of rice. True, that is, but at the same time terribly and ignorantly wrong."

What am I supposed to make of that? Claim - true. Claim - true - wrong.

[quote="tim wood;534973"]

Reply to Down The Rabbit Hole


He meant that the universe is basically a metaphysical, universal language :joke: In this case, diatonic intervals of root-and-fifth!

Good question!!

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Reply to tim wood

Okay. I don't see a disagreement. I think it's more a question of me getting used to your way of saying things. :grin:

Quoting James Riley

What am I supposed to make of that? Claim - true. Claim - true - wrong.

Yup. I wondered the same thing; a kind of incoherent gibberish.

Quoting Rxspence

Einstein's most impressive understanding was his ability to recognize his audiences comprehension.
Knowing that reality can not be explained, humor fills the void!

:up:

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

Quoting tim wood

True, but even worse than claiming that in a 50 lb. sack of rice there are a few grains of rice. True, that is, but at the same time terribly and ignorantly wrong. It's the kind of mistake that anyone who knows does not make. If she told me what time it was, I'd look at a clock.

For fun, Tim Wood's usual ad hominem and/or trolling commentary [questions to Tim Wood from his quote above]:

1. What is so "ignorant" about the OP?
2. What kind of mistake should one know not to make, relative to the subject matter?
3." If she told me what time it was, I'd look at a clock"??? (What does that mean?)

Quoting tim wood

Make clear what was incoherent or gibberish.

Not sure that's possible, since gibberish is gibberish :joke:

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

Quoting tim wood

As it is you seem congenitally unable to answer any question. You've made a substantive evaluation of my post, that it is incoherent and gibberish. See if you can get enough of your foot out of your mouth to say why you think so. I'll read and acknowledge any sense you make.

As I've said, gibberish is gibberish :joke:

Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole

What did Einstein mean by “Spooky Action at a Distance"?

If Sabine says it, I believe it.

Of course the original spooky action at a distance was Newtonian gravity. When Newton explained the observed motions of the moon and planets, the tides, and an apple falling to earth from a tree in terms of a single universal law [math]F = G \frac{m_1 m_1}{r^2}[/math] he was criticized and attacked for merely describing gravity but not explaining it. By what mechanism are two masses, separated in space by a long distance, somehow magically attracted to each other? Newton couldn't answer this; and in the end, ascribed it to God.

I always take Newtonian gravity as the prototypical example of spooky action at a distance. If you drop a bowling ball on your foot, how does the bowling ball know the earth is there? Einstein has some equations but not really much of an explanation. Why does mass curve space, anyway? What is mass? Well we're told that mass arises from the binding energy that confines the quarks to the protons and the neutrons. And how does THAT bend space and cause bowling balls to fall down? God did it. If you've got a better explanation, your Nobel prize awaits.

Reply to fishfry

:up:

Reply to Down The Rabbit Hole IN the context, he was referring to one of the implications of the equations of quantum physics. The particular point in question is the entanglement of apparently separated particles whereby measuring the property of a subatomic particle here, causes an instantaneous change in a twinned particle existing over there – with the rub being that ‘over there’ might be ten thousand miles distant

This appears to defy Einstein’s iron-clad principle that ‘nothing travels faster than light’ because it is instantaneous. That’s right: it doesn’t make any difference how far away the twinned particle is, the change there happens the instant the measurement is taken here. This bothered Einstein – hence his dismissive description of it as ‘spooky action at a distance’.

At a cursory glance, I think Hossenfelder is incorrect in her description. She says

To see what I mean, forget all about quantum mechanics for a moment. Suppose I have two socks that are identical, except the one is red and the other one blue. I put them in two identical envelopes and ship one to you. The moment you open the envelope and see that your sock is red, you know that my sock is blue. That’s because the information about the color in the envelopes is correlated, and this correlation can span over large distances.
....
But isn’t this the same with the two socks? Before you open the envelope the probability was 50-50 and then when you open it, it jumps to 100:0. But there’s no spooky action going on there. It’s just that the probability was a statement about what you knew, and not about what really was the case. Really, which sock was in which envelope was already decided the time I sent them.'

This point is discussed in detail in this video by Jim Baggott, on the meaning of quantum - https://youtu.be/LqY3TUW7skI?t=2162

The point of the Bell Inequality experiments carried out by Alain Aspect and others, is that the correlation can't be said to have pre-existed the act of measurement.

//edit// actually, she admits this:

Yes, that explains the case for the socks. But in quantum mechanics, that explanation does not work. If you think that really it was decided already which spin went into which direction when they were emitted, that will not create sufficiently strong correlations. It’s just incompatible with observations. Einstein did not know that. These experiments were done only after he died.

But I still think Hossenfelder is trying to dismiss the problem too cheaply, or downplay it - it hasn't baffled generations of scientists for no reason.

Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole

What did Einstein mean by “Spooky Action at a Distance"?

Einstein is referring generally to an instantaneous measurement update (collapse) over a region of space which can involve just a single particle. As SEP notes:

Quoting The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument in Quantum Theory - SEP

If the argument developed in EPR has its roots in the 1930 Solvay conference, Einstein’s own approach to issues at the heart of EPR has a history that goes back to the 1927 Solvay conference.
...
On the supposition that quantum theory offers a complete account of individual processes then, in the case of localization, why does the whole wave front collapse to just one single flash point? It is as though at the moment of collapse an instantaneous signal were sent out from the point of collapse to all other possible collapse positions telling them not to flash.

Here are the relevant comments by Einstein from 1927:

Quoting Quantum Theory at the Crossroads Reconsidering the 1927 Solvay Conference, p487 - Bacciagaluppi, Valentini

But on the other hand, I have objections to make to conception II. The scattered wave directed towards P does not show any privileged direction. If |?|² were simply regarded as the probability that at a certain point a given particle is found at a given time, it could happen that the same elementary process produces an action in two or several places on the screen. But the interpretation, according to which |?|² expresses the probability that this particle is found at a given point, assumes an entirely peculiar mechanism of action at a distance, which prevents the wave continuously distributed in space from producing an action in two places on the screen.

In my opinion, one can remove this objection only in the following way, that one does not describe the process solely by the Schrödinger wave, but that at the same time one localises the particle during the propagation. I think that Mr de Broglie is right to search in this direction. If one works solely with the Schrödinger waves, interpretation II of |?|² implies to my mind a contradiction with the postulate of relativity.

There's also a nice discussion of Einstein's comments on p89 of Travis Norsen's Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (Chapter 4 - The Locality Problem).

Reply to Down The Rabbit Hole
By the phrase “spooky action at a distance” Einstein was describing (rather skeptically/ cynically) the wave- particle duality demonstrated by the double slit experiment.

A wave function of possible locations of a particle would seemingly collapse into a discrete singular position when observed / measured. It seemed to suggest that somehow the observer played an integral role in the outcome of quantum physical phenomena.

The double slit experiment seemed to entail that particles behaved like waves even though they were always recorded as discrete particles - forming an “interference pattern” on the detector - a characteristic specific to waves. The spooky action was the inexplicable middle ground between the wave nature and the ultimate particle measurement.

What gave rise to the collapse? It seemed contradictory. Einstein was deeply unsettled by this baffling discovery saying that it was “unintuitive” and “nonsensical”.

By the phrase "spooky action at a distance", Einstein was referring to the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. If two particles are entangled, then even if they are far apart, the state of one particle affects the state of the other particle as well. The interaction is said to be even faster than light. It is really spooky if you think about it how something be changed without being touched at all.

Quoting SupernovaGirl

two particles are entangled

That's the basis of the paradox. Are there physical particles at all or are particles a mental construct to reify our naive perceptions straight down to the subatomic level?

@magritte
Well I personally think that the physical particles are a part of our objective reality.

Reply to Wayfarer Thanks for the fairly detailed exposition on "spooky action at a distance". Before going any further, a few points:

1. Nothing can travel faster than light. Check!

2. Bell's inequality experiments show that there are no hidden variables i.e. quantum mechanics, at least one interpretation of it, is complete i.e. quantum entanglement does entail that knowing the state of one entangled particle gives us instantaneous knowledge of the state of the other entangled particle. Conclusion: information travels faster than light or, as per the OP, spooky action at a distance. This violates Einstein's speed limit (1 above) or so it seems...more on this in a while

3. The socks analogy is very illuminating and the only difference between the superposition states of entangled particles and it is that in the case of the socks, my hunch is, someone already knows the color of the socks as they were placed in the envelope i.e. an observation occurred beforehand but in the case of entanglement no one knows the states of the entangled particles...or so it seems (see vide infra).

This is probably going to sound crazy and it is. What if we...someone...already knows the state of the two entangled particles just like someone already knew the color of the socks when they were put in the envelopes? Einstein's speed limit isn't violated in this case because nothing instantaneous actually happened at all.

In short, I'm offering an alternative "solution" to the EPR paradox viz. that...someone (god? :smile: )...knows beforehand what the states of the particles are, we just don't know about it. The way the situation will evolve is that the experimenters who make the observation will erroneously infer that faster-than-light or instantaneous transmission of information had occurred but this is an illusion just like in the socks analogy.

Another avenue worth exploring would be the possibility that the experimenters know the states of the entangled particles, it's just that they don't know that they know them. This line of inquiry will probably open up pandora's box.

What say you?

Quoting SupernovaGirl

By the phrase "spooky action at a distance", Einstein was referring to the phenomenon of quantum entanglement.

Note that Einstein didn't mention entanglement when he used the famous "spooky" phrase below:

Quoting Einstein letter to Born - March 3, 1947 (via StackExchange)

I cannot make a case for my attitude in physics which you would consider at all reasonable. I admit, of course, that there is a considerable amount of validity in the statistical approach which you were the first to recognise clearly as necessary given the framework of the existing formalism. I cannot seriously believe in it because the theory cannot be reconciled with the idea that physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance.

I am, however, not yet firmly convinced that it can really be achieved with a continuous field theory, although I have discovered a possible way of doing this which so far seems quite reasonable. The calculation difficulties are so great that I will be biting the dust long before I myself can be fully convinced of it. But I am quite convinced that someone will eventually come up with a theory whose objects, connected by laws, are not probabilities but considered facts, as used to be taken for granted until quite recently. I cannot, however, base this conviction on logical reasons, but can only produce my little finger as witness, that is, I offer no authority which would be able to command any kind of respect outside of my own hand.

Einstein's more general concern was the apparent non-local dynamics of wavefunction collapse which he raised at the 1927 Solvay conference. Entanglement is just a specific manifestation of that more general concern, and was first discussed in the 1935 EPR paper (with the term "entanglement" subsequently coined by Schrodinger).

Quoting TheMadFool

In short, I'm offering an alternative "solution" to the EPR paradox viz. that...someone (god? :smile: )...knows beforehand what the states of the particles are, we just don't know about it. The way the situation will evolve is that the experimenters who make the observation will erroneously infer that faster-than-light or instantaneous transmission of information had occurred but this is an illusion just like in the socks analogy.

That apparently common-sense conclusion is just what Bell addresses.

Quoting Bertlmann’s socks - Wikipedia

In 1978 Bertlmann went to CERN, where he worked together with J. S. Bell.[1] Bertlmann always wore socks of different colours. In 1981 Bell wrote the article "Bertlmann’s socks and the nature of reality", where he compared the EPR paradox with Bertlmann’s socks: if you observe one sock to be pink you can predict with certainty that the other sock is not pink. Thus you might assume that quantum entanglement is just the same. However, this is a non-admissible simplification, and Bell in his article explains why.[2]

Quoting Bertlmann's socks and the nature of reality - J.S. Bell, 1981

The philosopher in the street, who has not suffered a course in quantum mechanics, is quite unimpressed by Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen correlations. He can point to many examples of similar correlations in everyday life. The case of Bertlmann's socks is often cited. Dr. Bertlmann likes to wear two socks of different colours. Which colour he will have on a given foot on a given day is quite unpredictable. But when you see (Fig. 1) that the first sock is pink you can be already sure that the second sock will not be pink. Observation of the first, and experience of Bertlmann, gives immediate information about the second. There is no accounting for tastes, but apart from that there is no mystery here. And is not the EPR business just the same?

Quoting Andrew M

However, this is a non-admissible simplification, and Bell in his article explains why.

I have thought of a different simplification, which I think hits closer to the mark. But first let me quote from Bell's lecture, where he quotes Einstein stating his (meta)physical beliefs:

Einstein in a letter to Born:If one asks what, irrespective of quantum mechanics, is characteristic of the world of ideas of physics, one is first of all struck by the following: the concepts of physics relate to a real outside world... It is further characteristic of these physical objects that they are thought of as arranged in a space time continuum. An essential aspect of this arrangement of things in physics is that they lay claim, at a certain time, to an existence independent of one another, provided these objects "are situated in different parts of space".

The following idea characterizes the relative independence of objects far apart in space (A and B): external influence on A has no direct influence on B.

Imagine an ideal 2D plane in 3D space (you can picture it as a thin glass pane). When we write a word on one side of the plane, a mirror image of the same word can be seen from the other side. This is no mystery, of course, since the two sides are nothing more than different perspectives on one and the same plane.

Now imagine that the front and back surfaces are separated by a distance, but as before, when we write a word on one surface, the same word is instantaneously reflected on the distant surface. That would seem like magic, "spooky action at a distance." Our physical intuitions tell us that objects situated in different parts of space must have an independent existence, so that whatever happens to one cannot have a direct influence on the other. Any influence would have to be mediated by a retarded causal mechanism.

But what if we persist in thinking of the two separated surfaces as being, in a sense, a single object that just happens to be located in different parts of space? Their correlation would then have a natural explanation that does not involve an instantaneous action at a distance, any more than the appearance of a mirror image on the reverse side of a plane requires an action in addition to that which produces the image on the front side.

Interestingly, in topology, where you can imagine all sorts of exotic spaces, you can do just that. You can take two separated points on a plane and "glue" them together, making them one and the same point. You can do that with lines and surfaces as well. That's not to say that puzzling quantum mechanical correlations should be explained by weird space topology. (Although if someone were to produce a topological account, I would be open to it. I just doubt that it would be the topology of the physical space - configuration space perhaps?) Rather, I was thinking of Einstein's concluding remarks:

Einstein:There seems to me no doubt that those physicists who regard the descriptive methods of quantum mechanics as definitive in principle would react to this line of thought in the following way: they would drop the requirement... for the independent existence of the physical reality present in different parts of space; they would be justified in pointing out that the quantum theory nowhere makes explicit use of this requirement.

I admit this, but would point out: when I consider the physical phenomena known to me, and especially those which are being so successfully encompassed by quantum mechanics, I still cannot find any fact anywhere which would make it appear likely that (that) requirement will have to be abandoned.

I am therefore inclined to believe that the description of quantum mechanics... has to be regarded as an incomplete and indirect description of reality, to be replaced at some later date by a more complete and direct one.

I don't have an unshakable commitment to quantum physics in its standard form, but neither do I have an unshakable commitment to the conventional metaphysical ideas articulated by Einstein. Like those physicists whom he opposes, I would consider relaxing some of those ideas if it helps us better accommodate lessons from physics.

What if we are now in the position of the inhabitants of Flatland who reluctantly conclude that they may in fact live in a Klein bottle?

Quoting SophistiCat

you can do just that. You can take two separated points on a plane and "glue" them together, making them one and the same point.

Refresh my memory, how is this done?

Edit: OK. Quotient topology. From Wiki: "Intuitively speaking, the points of each equivalence class are identified or "glued together" for forming a new topological space." Your reference to "points on a plane" confused me a tad.

Just one of a great many math things I was unaware of! :chin:

Reply to jgill How do you glue two points in a set together? You make them equivalent.

Quoting Andrew M

That apparently common-sense conclusion is just what Bell addresses.

Oh! I thought God and mind were no-go zones for physicists. How come they don't come up with regard to the EPR paradox vis-à-vis Bell inequality?

On the off chance that my "explanations" for quantum entanglement is accepted by the scientific community, we would have to deal with:

1. Some observer who already has information on the state of entangled particles. God???

2. Psychic phenomena since the experimenters know beforehand the state of entangled particles, it's just that they don't know that they know.

Reply to SophistiCat You are not making two points on a plane into one point on the plane. You are moving to a point in another topology based on equivalence classes of the original points.

Reply to jgill Yes, so? I think it should be obvious from the style that I was speaking informally.

Quoting SophistiCat

Interestingly, in topology, where you can imagine all sorts of exotic spaces, you can do just that. You can take two separated points on a plane and "glue" them together, making them one and the same point. You can do that with lines and surfaces as well. That's not to say that puzzling quantum mechanical correlations should be explained by weird space topology. (Although if someone were to produce a topological account, I would be open to it. I just doubt that it would be the topology of the physical space - configuration space perhaps?)

Yes, that would avoid Bell's Theorem since the two surfaces would be part of the same local object. The idea is similar to ER=EPR where the two entangled particles are connected via a wormhole.

Susskind discusses this here:

Quoting Copenhagen vs Everett, Teleportation, and ER=EPR - Leonard Susskind

Quantum gravity may have as much to tell us about the foundations and interpretation of quantum mechanics as it does about gravity. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and Everett’s Relative State Formulation are complementary descriptions which in a sense are dual to one another. My purpose here is to discuss this duality in the light of the of ER=EPR conjecture.

Sean Carroll discusses his team's work on this at his blog:

Quoting Space emerging from quantum mechanics - Sean Carroll

A version of the ER=EPR conjecture is recovered, in that perturbations that entangle distant parts of the emergent geometry generate a configuration that may be considered as a highly quantum wormhole.
...
...as far as we know we’re the first to start directly from Hilbert space, rather than assuming classical variables, a boundary, or a background spacetime.

-

Quoting SophistiCat

I don't have an unshakable commitment to quantum physics in its standard form, but neither do I have an unshakable commitment to the conventional metaphysical ideas articulated by Einstein. Like those physicists whom he opposes, I would consider relaxing some of those ideas if it helps us better accommodate lessons from physics.

What if we are now in the position of the inhabitants of Flatland who reluctantly conclude that they may in fact live in a Klein bottle?

:up:

Quoting TheMadFool

1. Some observer who already has information on the state of entangled particles. God???

There is no set of local hidden variables that can reproduce the predictions of quantum mechanics. So (subject to the assumptions of Bell's Theorem) there's no information to know, whether for an observer or for God.

To see why that's the case, you'll need to work through Bell's Theorem. I attempt an explanation here, if that helps.

Quoting Andrew M

There is no set of local hidden variables that can reproduce the predictions of quantum mechanics. So (subject to the assumptions of Bell's Theorem) there's no information to know, whether for an observer or for God.

To see why that's the case, you'll need to work through Bell's Theorem. I attempt an explanation here, if that helps.

:up: Perhaps I read too much into the socks analogy. Thanks!

Quoting Andrew M

The idea is similar to ER=EPR where the two entangled particles are connected via a wormhole.

Quoting Andrew M

Sean Carroll discusses his team's work on this at his blog:

ER=EPR is way above my paygrade, but I think I get the gist of what Carroll et al. are trying to do:

Quoting Space emerging from quantum mechanics - Sean Carroll

Divide Hilbert space up into pieces — technically, factors that we multiply together to make the whole space. Use quantum information — in particular, the amount of entanglement between different parts of the state, as measured by the mutual information — to define a “distance” between them. Parts that are highly entangled are considered to be nearby, while unentangled parts are far away.

From this the usual spacial geometry is supposed to emerge at larger scales. But he notes that

It might seem like entangled particles can be as far apart as you like, but the contribution of particles to the overall entanglement is almost completely negligible — it’s the quantum vacuum itself that carries almost all of the entanglement, and that’s how we derive our geometry.

My naive idea of how to reconcile Einstein's physical intuitions about distant objects with quantum entanglement was to propose that entangled systems can be interpreted as presenting different aspects of the same "object" that just happens to be spread out in space. Perhaps a more promising approach towards reconciling physical intuitions (aka metaphysics) with quantum mechanics is to acknowledge that these intuitions are only valid at some scales, but might be emergent at others.

Reply to SophistiCat Whenever you have to enclose 'object' in scare quotes you can be sure you're talking metaphysics.

Reply to SophistiCat Perhaps a non-Euclidean metric designed for entanglement, a novel metric space, could be a key to describing if not explaining the phenomenon. Maybe this has already been done. Just a passing thought.

Reply to jgill Yeah, but it couldn't be just the regular space(time) metric, because that already accounts for distance and gravity - not something you would want to screw with in order to account for something else. Perhaps something on top of that? I don't know.

Quoting fishfry

By what mechanism are two masses, separated in space by a long distance, somehow magically attracted to each other?

They find each other sexy. See? Not tricky at all.

Quoting Book273

They find each other sexy. See? Not tricky at all.

Now THAT's action at a distance!