TheCampaignForRealPhysics

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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or , and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! - DVdm (talk) 09:42, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Reliable sources and edit warring

Hello, I'm DVdm. I noticed that you made a change to an article, Faster-than-light, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so! If you need guidance on referencing, please see the referencing for beginners tutorial, or if you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page.
Please also have a look at wp:edit warring and wp:BRD, so the place to go now, is the article talk page. Good luck. - DVdm (talk) 09:42, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Highly recommend Cramer's article

Without reliable sources covering (either support or against) Cornwall's arguments, further discussion based on his ideas is a bit of a non-starter on article talk pages. So to avoid flogging a living-impaired member of the equine family, I thought I'd provide some clarification here. Cramer and Herbert's unpublished article, while it does do a brief description of the Dopfer setup with the Heisenberg microscope, they actually do a much more in-depth analysis with variations of Mach-Zender interferometers. One of these (section 5 in version 2) is very similar to one of the setups that Cornwall suggests - a pair of polarization entangled photons are generated, one is sent into a Mach-Zender interferometer (Bob's detectors) and the other is sent into a detector (Alice's detectors) that can either measure or not measure the photon's polarization (in Cramer and Herbert's setup it is another Mach-Zender with a removalable final beam splitter). The analysis shows that the probabilities that Bob sees at his detectors are independent of whether Alice is measuring polarization or just counting photons. Anyways, I just wanted to again suggest you look at Cramer and Herbert's unpublished article as I think it does address Cornwall's setup, or something very similar to it. --FyzixFighter (talk) 02:27, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for that. If you could drop off the reference, I could take a look at it. Cornwall seems to show otherwise most simply. I guess economy of argument then wins - one would have to show that there was an error in Cornwall's analysis. You might be interested in FTL talk pages where I am asking if ArXiv only article are citeable.

Cramer and Herbert's article can be found here: version 1 and version 2. As others have noted on the article talk pages and below, until articles on arXiv are peer-reviewed they fall under WP:SPS. My understanding, which may differ from other editors', is that self-published sources, such as unreviewed arXiv articles, can be cited if they satisfy the WP:SPS caveat "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." Before you go removing or challenging cited arXiv, an action that others may interpret as WP:POINT-y, please consider that caveat. I don't see that Cornwall satisfies it, on the other hand a strong case can be made that Cramer and Herbert do. --FyzixFighter (talk) 01:09, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

What if the unpublished paper is backed up by a letter of reference from professors in the field? Same thing really.TheCampaignForRealPhysics (talk) 08:50, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

I think Cornwall's paper is to be trusted. The Cramer-Herbert paper just quotes expected results (i.e. probability distributions) without explicitly using quantum mechanics and clearly showing the paradox, as Cornwall does. There is no mention of experiment in the Cramer-Herbert paper, only mathematical simulations and graphs which give the illusion that it is based in experiment. In other words, Cramer-Herbert cook their long winded paper to show what they want to believe without doing the correct quantum mechanical analysis of it. I couldn't recommend their paper.TheCampaignForRealPhysics (talk) 09:18, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Anyone can edit Wikipedia

...so argumentum ad hominem or argument from authority (or lack thereof), such as "Are you a professor of physics, where do you draw your right to censor others? Degree, PhD, lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, professor? This is not scholarpedia where the editor is announced", is not the least bit helpful. Editing Wikipedia is not mathematics. There doesn't have to be an objective definition for everything, and you probably won't find that many among our policies. This is coming from someone quite well-versed in mathematics and who usually insists on things being well-defined. Please let me know if you have any questions.--Jasper Deng (talk) 17:28, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Of course it has to be objective. You either have rules or you don't, lest the charge goes up of favourtism, a bastion, a clique, discrimination. The resolution to this is to include unpublished material if it is seconded by senior academics - if you are to include unpublished material at all.TheCampaignForRealPhysics (talk) 08:55, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the real world is not objective, and much of Wikipedia is no exception. We do have rules, they're called policies. They are not decision problems that can be decided automatically by computers, but they easily suffice for running a collaborative project.--Jasper Deng (talk) 16:52, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

@TheCampaignForRealPhysics: In answer to your question "Who are the people making the decisions here, what gives them the right?": such things are usually quickly decided by talk page consensus—see wp:CONSENSUS. Failing that, there is wp:Dispute resolution.

Please note that per wp:Talk page guidelines, this subject is off-topic at Talk:Faster-than-light, and it probably will either be ignored, or removed. - DVdm (talk) 17:44, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

To clarify, DVdm means the meta-discussion of who is allowed to do what is off-topic. If you believe a source is unsuitable, however, that is a fine subject of discussion. I will however, warn you that you seem very close to tendentiously editing to prove some kind of point, rather than being productive. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:51, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Who decides the consensus? What qualifications. Who are these people? It ought to be possible to include unpublished material if it is seconded (letter of reference) from senior academics. It's the same token, if you can include a professor's unpublished work, then its the same as including what they second. TheCampaignForRealPhysics (talk) 08:52, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

These people are everyone who is interested and who cares to talk on the talk page. Qualifications are irrelevant. Whether material is seconded from senior academics can help establishing consensus, but is no guarantee. Just read the policy pages wp:CONSENSUS and wp:DISPUTE. It's all there. - DVdm (talk) 10:36, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

As a general rule, we should not be using primary sources for novel results, regardless of whether that source is published or peer-reviewed. Novel results should (almost) always be accompanied by a secondary source. (It is sometimes useful to include primary sources as well). And to be clear, papers (in journals or on the ArXiv) can be primary sources for some statements (the novel results present in the paper), while simultaneously being secondary sources for other statements (e.g. introductions review previous work). Further, secondary sources need not necessarily be peer reviewed papers, they can in principle be books, (lecture) notes, etc., some of which may only appear on the arxiv. Of course, being published in a peer reviewed journal helps in establishing a source as reliable, but this is neither a sufficient nor a necessary criterion for reliability.

Finally, let me point out that the rigor required in referencing claims varies with how exceptional the claim is. Some particularly mundane claims require not reference at all (e.g. the sky is blue), while exceptional claims the (seemingly) contradict common knowledge will require exceptional (secondary and reliable) sources. This is obviously a continuum and there are claims that fall in between. For example, for claims about usage of terminology it can often be enough to simply cite some example using the terminology in that particular way, the example may not even have to come from peer reviewed literature. The needed for having a strong reference is mostly well measured by the likelihood of somebody objecting to a claim. Consequently, when somebody (anybody) ask for reference for an unreferenced claim, we should probably add one. Similarly, if somebody questions the reliability of an unpublished source, it probably needs to be replaced/supplemented by a published secondary source, etc. Most of the time this works out quite naturally. If not there are various ways of settling wp:DISPUTEs. TR 11:40, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

I agree with everything DVdm and TR wrote. Also, I find that most people editing wikipedia have and use common sense, and can be talked to respectfully as if they were smart reasonable people (even though usually I have no idea who they are or what their qualifications are—I am in the minority of editors who uses my real name).

"Senior academics" can be wrong—otherwise you would never find two "senior academics" that disagree with each other on any issue! Indeed, I cannot think of few claims so ludicrous that no "senior academic" has ever endorsed it! You can find a handful of "senior academics" who endorse parapsychology, and cold fusion, and creationism, and you name it. That's why we don't go by rigid oversimplified rules like "all unpublished work is forbidden" or "all unpublished work is allowed" or "all unpublished work is allowed as long as 2 senior academics have endorsed it" or anything like that. Instead we have guidelines like WP:RS which are not black-and-white but shades of gray (e.g. a formula in a widely-used textbook is more likely to be correct than a formula on a blog post, other things equal, but nothing is guaranteed), buttressed by having discussions and establishing consensus among the (normally more-or-less) reasonable and knowledgeable participants. It usually works pretty well, believe it or not. :-D --Steve (talk) 14:39, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Seems disingenuous comparing Cornwall's proofs to CF. He is using the formalism, his paper and proof is very compact [1] and shows that the system can be factorised, yet it maintains the non-local entanglement information by swapping it to local path entanglement. It's just mathematics/analysis and is either right or wrong. There is nothing "new" to it, no invention of new premises to QM, no use of phenomena that aren't known to exist. Two professors, one a NASA research fellow have stated they can find nothing wrong with the proof [2] and indeed, Prof Michael Hall at the Australian PTO, one of the co-founders of the No communication theorem granted Cornwall's patent on the matter, that is on public record (so that's three professors). Also, patents are citeable in academic literature. In all, I would revert the to the original edit with the material as a sufficient case has been made.TheCampaignForRealPhysics (talk) 18:15, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

It does not seem that you have given Wikipedia:Consensus a full read, so please do so. --Jasper Deng (talk) 16:52, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks and thank you for all you deliberations.TheCampaignForRealPhysics (talk) 18:15, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Re Cornwall

FWIW I just emailed Mr Cornwall with an apparent math mistake in "The misuse of the No-communication Theorem". I only sent him or her the most straightforward one of the many problems I saw in my quick read. If you email me (steven.byrnes@gmail.com) I'll forward that email to you if you're curious. (I can't copy it here because it has a screenshot.) --Steve (talk) 02:00, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

What math mistake(s)? I think his proof checks fine, especially the one with the single photon diagram reads very straightforwardly!TheCampaignForRealPhysics (talk) 16:19, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

You really read it and you really understood every last detail and you found nothing whatsoever wrong with it? Really really? I find this very surprising! Here is my quiz...

• Take a piece of paper and write down the quantum operator for a Faraday rotator (should be a 2x2 matrix for the 2-dimensional space of polarizations). OK, now look at the alleged Faraday rotator operators in Eq. (6). Is yours the same??
• Here's a question: In the figure on page 3, does the detector on the right measure a photon no matter what? I say yes. If not, where precisely does the right photon go instead of into the detector? Relatedly, why are the kets in Eq. (11) and (15) not normalized? Unitary evolution requires that if your initial state is normalized, then so is your final state, right? Which is the step where some of the probability density disappears?
• Do you understand what "bit 1" means in Appendix 2?

If you can answer all these questions in a satisfying way then I should apologize for giving Cornwall far too little credit!! :-P --Steve (talk) 18:57, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Not to mention the horrible abuses of notation, which makes it nearly impossible to follow what he means. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:13, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

There's definitely a few typos but any editor or undergraduate checker on a summer internship would sort that out. The general thrust is correct. I mean the bit about the detector and photon is just silly, there can be constructive and destructive interference. Why not just contact him about the typos? It seems small and just carping, trying to trip him up and make out that he doesn't understand the subject. I think he rings circles around a lot of people and that probably grates. I believe talent should be nurtured and science furthered. It would be a terrible shame if people's prejudices and pettiness (or even envy) got in the way of that. I know someone who is incredibly shy in my research team and they need an environment where they can put their ideas forward without being shouted down by smart @rses. TheCampaignForRealPhysics (talk) 20:34, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

I told you, I did email him. If he thinks a propagating photon can be made to simply disappear entirely due to destructive interference - and his emails to me so far suggest that he stands by this belief - then that is a big conceptual misunderstanding, not a typo, and it sure looks like this misunderstanding affects the headline conclusions of the section, i.e. Eqs. (11) and (15) with their non-normalized kets.

If the analysis is really sound - and I believe with extremely high confidence that it is fundamentally not sound - I hope you or he or somebody writes a version 2 which is less confusing and has fewer mistakes. --Steve (talk) 20:55, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Maybe so, but Wikipedia's goal is not to form scholars and teach them how to write their arguments in a manner than can be understood, or teach them how to do math correctly. Once Cornwall publishes his ideas in reputable peer-reviewed journals (or something equivalent, like be award a PhD for this work by a reputable university), and that his claims convince the physics community, believe me, if there are ways to violate the no-communication theorem, especially if it is testable, he will be known to every physicist out there, and quite likely in-line for a Nobel prize. Until then, no dice. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:58, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Don't worry, in this particular conversation, we are not discussing the issue of whether this paper belongs in any wikipedia article. We're just chatting about physics on a user talk page. I know that WP:NOTFORUM but I don't think we are out of bounds here. :-D --Steve (talk) 21:38, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

I think I figured it out. Take the M-Z drawn on p3, and let's charitably replace the bizarre detector thing with a normal M-Z arrangement, i.e. beamsplitter + 2 detectors. Then this M-Z is basically a roundabout, unnecessarily-complicated way to measure whether the right-going photon is initially |D> or |D*>, the two diagonal states. D goes to one detector, D* goes to the other detector. The trick that the paper pulls is hiding one of the two possibilities by only showing one of the two detectors. Basically that amounts to assuming that the right-going photon is initially D. And then - surprise surprise - the state is factorizable! You can see it in Eq. (8). The left-going photon (photon 1) is in a pure diagonal state! Do you see that? Half the possibilities have been suppressed, Alice has the same pure state every time according to that equation. Just like I said, the state is factorizable because the analysis (in a very confusing way) implicitly assumes that Bob gets a specific measurement result, while pretending that Bob hasn't yet measured anything at all! --Steve (talk) 19:38, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Copying within Wikipedia requires attribution

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October 2020

Hello, I'm Doniago. I noticed that you added or changed content in an article, List of Magical Negro occurrences in fiction, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so. You can have a look at the tutorial on citing sources. If you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. DonIago (talk) 14:21, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Please sign your comments

Please use four '~' to sign your comments (Talk pages).Xx236 (talk) 13:33, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Please use meaningful edit summaries

I wondered why you used ~~~~ as your edit summaries. Maybe the preceding comment is the explanation. But the four tildes are meant for signing comments on talk pages, while an edit summary should be a short summary of your edit. Thanks a lot and happy editing. --Rsk6400 (talk) 15:28, 10 September 2021 (UTC)