John Bell Workshop 2014

Bell’s theorem has been called “the most profound discovery of science”. However, there have been controversies on the deep implications of the theorem. The main purpose of this online workshop is to highlight the existing debates and address the controversies. Another purpose is to get some constructive inputs to the forthcoming Bell volume edited by Mary Bell and Shan Gao. This workshop will be the last event to celebrates the 50th anniversary of Bell’s theorem.

Workshop Date: Thursday, December 18, 2014 to Friday, January 16, 2015

Organizers: International Journal of Quantum Foundations

Different from a conventional workshop, this online workshop will be self-organized to a large extent. It means that if a participant has a paper or ideas to present, he may create a topic in the workshop forum on his own, which gives a concise introduction to his ideas to be discussed, and which also states the date and time of his two-hour discussion (e.g. in the title of the topic). Then other participants can leave comments beforehand or participate in the discussions by text chat in the forum in the two-hour duration at the time. Every member is welcome to participate in the workshop.

If you have any questions or suggestions about the workshop, please feel free to contact us. Selected presentations in this workshop will be published in a special issue of International Journal of Quantum Foundations.

See also First iWorkshop on the Meaning of the Wave Function.

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One Response

  1. Ruth Kastner
    Ruth Kastner at |

    I would like to reply to Lee Smolin’s recent query, but can’t seem to access that comment while logged in, so I’m replying here:

    We need to be clear about what we mean by ‘retrocausation’. Retrocausation in the sense that a pre-existing future event influences the past or the present is not at all a necessary inference from time symmetry. The slide into this inference is based on the assumption that time symmetric quantum process necessarily imply a block world, which is not the case. I present a formulation of the transactional interpretation in which the underlying quantum processes–specifically the emissions of quantum states– are time-symmetric, but the actualization of a specific spacetime event involves time-asymmetric collapse. Out of this, we get a growing universe, not a block universe. This is all perfectly harmonious with relativity, as it aligns with the ‘causal set’ growing universe picture as proposed by Sorkin et al. The time-asymmetric process arises from the response of absorbers and provides for a natural physical referent for the Born Rule. I discuss this in my Cambridge talk at the Conference on Retrocausation in Quantum Theory (link available at the Cambridge site or on youtube).

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