Nothing violates the speed of light

New video:Does quantum theory violate the speed of light? | Claudia de Rham, João Magueijo, and Tim Maudlin.

One guy says:

I don't think 0:32 anything is sacred. it's just it's not 0:35 religion./. right this is science.

Okay, but this is just wrong:

what John Bell proved is that there 7:32 are certain constraints on what any 7:34 theory can predict and quantum theory 7:38 violates those constraints and more 7:40 importantly in the lab you violate those 7:43 constraints that's what the Nobel Prize 7:45 was given for two years ago was 7:47 experiments demonstrating violations of 7:49 Bell's inequality. so I don't even think 7:51 it's an open question whether something 7:53 goes faster than light. we know that 7:56 there's causation that's faster than 7:58 light. how you implement that cleanly and 8:01 mathematically is another question and 8:03 that nobody's worked out quite yet and 8:06 it may be that in working that out we 8:08 will have to abandon or certainly deeply 8:10 modify the picture of space and time 8:13 given by general relativity.

No, the consensus is that nothing goes faster than light. Especially not causation. And they certainly did not give a Nobel Prize for showing anything faster than light in the lab.

Later on, he correctly points out that Michelson-Morley experiment had multiple interpretations, and did not directly measure the speed of light. He needs to apply that same thinking to the Bell experiments, and admit that they have multiple interpretations.

Michelson-Morley must have seemed unremarkable, except to people like Maxwell, who followed aether theories. The Bell experiments were even less remarkable, as they only confirmed what the theory had predicted for 50 years.

Dr. Bee rambles on how the present might be caused by the future, instead of the past:

I find it curious that quantum physics is even compatible with this teleological interpretation. 4:49 It suggests to me that our idea of causes coming before effects might be somewhat of 4:54 a bias based on our personal experience, and maybe not a fundamental property of nature.

That would also be causation going faster than light. It is going so fast that it goes backwards in time!

You can say nothing is sacred, and be open to new ideas. But any causation from the future, or from anything outside the light cone, would be bizarre and contrary to our whole scientific worldview. We have no evidence for it. And if we did, we would not know what to do about it. Anyone who proved it would deserve a Nobel Prize. It has not happened.

Physics Blogs Obsessed with Fascism

I have followed the blogs of Peter Woit (Not Even Wrong) and Scott Aaronson (Shtetl-Optimized), but both of them are increasingly unhinged. Woit just posted:

Scott,
Besides the fact that your goals are delusional, what I’m criticizing is your choice to pursue them by collaborating with a Fascist dictatorship. I’m not going to further waste time trying to deal with your delusions about what is going on here.

As for what universities should do now: they should fight in court, they should tell the truth, and they should not collaborate.

By "not collaborate", he means to allow disruptive anti-Israel demonstrations, and not cooperate with Trump administration demands to obey the law.

It is baffling to me how these men go so nuts over this.

Aaronson has typical liberal Jewish political opinions, and his wife is Israeli, so he is pro-Israel. No surprises there. He largely agrees with Trump administration efforts to support Israel and crack down on antisemitism, DEI, wokism, and disruptions on campus. But he is also a hard-core Trump-hater, and hopes Trump fails in in everything he does, even if he agrees with it.

Woit has been obsessively posting sympathies for the anti-Israel protesters, and for fanatical Trump hatred. Aaronson responds:

Let’s get this straight, Peter. You’re saying that you’re angry and miserable, not for any of the reasons that are immediately apparent, but instead, because a shadowy cabal of unnamed Jewish financial elites is pulling the strings behind the scenes for its own incomprehensibly nefarious purposes?

If that’s really what you think, don’t hold back! Say it loudly, clearly, and often, directly into the microphone.

Woit seems to think that Israel should be destroyed, or that Columbia is unduly influenced by Jewish donors. I am not sure. Woit is chicken to say. Most of the protesters seem to want to destroy Israel, and to celebrate terrorism against Israel.

We can have different opinions about Israel and the Jews. That does not bother me.

What I find bizarre is how both of these guys have total comtempt for the administrations of Columbia and other universities, and yet they are so vehemently opposed to any government accountability. Their one point of agreement is that Pres. Trump is a fascist dictator.

Trump is not a fascist dictator. He was popularly elected, and he is doing what he was elected to do. He is trying to cut government waste, and most federal academic grants go for wasted research.

These universtities do some good research, but I do not expect them to get much public sympathy. A lot of the research is garbage. They are overwhelmingly slanted to the political Left. They arrogantly oppose any accountability. They allows these stupid Gaza protests to disrupt everyone, when Gaza has nothing to do with the university mission.

The Jewish angle to this is weird, as the universities have lot of Jewish professors, students, and donors. They have a history of being pro-Jewish. Trump is also pro-Jewish in his policies. And yet the universities are overwhelmingly anti-Trump.

The universities do not need to be taking a stand on either Zionism or Trump. They get billions of dollars in aid, and they ought to comply with government demands to obey the law. And they ought to be willing to do sensible things like shutting down the Gaza protests, even if the request comes from Trump and they hate Trump.

Reading these blogs just further convinces me that academia has lost its way. Radical reform is needed, and you can sure of a lot more complaints.

Textbooks Define the Orthodox Interpretation

Some modern popularizers of quantum mechanics like to say that the theory lacks foundations; that it has been corrupted by the Copenhagen interpretation; that Copenhagen is nonsense because the ramblings of Niels Bohr were incoherent; that no one understands QM; that we need a new interpretation; etc.

All of that is false. The theory is spelled out in textbooks that are mostly in agreement. You could call the agreement the Copenhagen Interpretation, but calling it that sometimes get sidetracked into what Bohr meant, and not everyone agrees.

A new paper by Geoff Beck dives into what the textbooks say:

This work sets out to answer a single question: what is the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics? However, we adopt a different approach to that normally used. Rather than carefully surveying the precise details of the thoughts of Bohr and Heisenberg, we extract an orthodoxy empirically. To do this we review a collection of 33 textbooks on quantum mechanics, encompassing the most popular and prominent works of this nature. We then gauge their response to 12 propositions to build up a picture of exactly what is believed by an orthodox quantum mechanic. We demonstrate that this orthodoxy is largely unchanged over the past century, with some interesting emerging deviations, and has many aspects of Copenhagen-like viewpoints.

This is correct. We do have an orthodox version of the theory, and general agreement on most points for about a century. And it does not include parallel universes, nonlocal interactions, Bohmian ghosts, Bell beables, or any of that.

Orthodox QM is used all the time in computer chip industries, and many others. It has been spectacularly successful, both theoretically and commercially.

What Einstein Would Tell Trump

SciAm opinion piece:

Einstein offers a lesson for scientists who are protesting an out-of-control nationalist administration attacking U.S. science today ...

Einstein was one of the first public critics of the Nazi regime, which he never ceased to criticize. Today his powerful stance may appear natural and uncontroversial. It was different then. ...

What would Einstein tell Trump today? Einstein would urge Trump to strive for high morality in his actions, as the scientist so eloquently presented in a 1950 letter to a minister in Brooklyn, N.Y.:

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.

Yes, Einstein was a Jew who opposed the Nazi, but his politics were nothing to admire. He was a Communist fellow traveler. UPI reported

In one of the final entries in the file, the FBI noted, 'Extensive investigation in U.S. reflected Einstein affiliated or his name extensively associated with literally hundreds of pro-Communist groups.

'No evidence of CP membership was developed,' it added.

The FBI file described Einstein as a 'pacifist' and a 'liberal thinker' affiliated in some way with more than 30 'Communist-front' organizations.

'He has opposed militarism and universal military training in the United States and has espoused world government,' the file said.

He frequently criticized the USA government, while refusing to criticize the Soviet Union.