# A Frabjous, Albeit Delayed, Day

David Mermin thanked me for finding a glitch in one of his papers. I can retire now, right?

The matter concerns “Hidden variables and the two theorems of John Bell” [Reviews of Modern Physics 65, 3 (1993), pp. 803–15]. Specifically, we turn our attention to Figure 4, the famous “Mermin pentagram,” reproduced below for convenience.

The caption to this figure reads as follows:

Ten observables leading to a very economical proof of the Bell–KS theorem in a state space of eight or more dimensions. The observables are arranged in five groups of four, lying along the legs of a five-pointed star. Each observable is associated with two such groups. The observables within each of the five groups are mutually commuting, and the product of the three observables in each of the six groups is $+1$ except for the group of four along the horizontal line of the star, where the product is $-1$.

In that last sentence, “three observables in each of the six groups” should instead read “four observables in each of the five groups” (in order to agree with the diagram, and to make sense).

Glitches and goofs can happen to anybody. I’m embarrassingly prone to them myself. I also have the pesky kind of personality that is inclined to write in when I find them. This has led to a journal-article erratum once before, and now that I think about it, it provided the seeds for two papers of my own. As they say about Wolverine, being per-SNIKT-ety pays off!

(Incidentally, it took two months for this latest erratum to appear. A sensible system could have done it in as many days, but that’s scientific publishing for you.)

# New(-ish) Publications

I’ve had a few scholarly items come out in the past several weeks—new stuff, and updated versions of old stuff. Here are their coordinates:

# My Year in Publications

This is, apparently, a time for reflection. What have I been up to?

And so this is Korrasmas
Things have been Done
Kuvira is fallen
A new ‘ship just begun

Kor-ra-sa-mi
We all knew it
Kor-ra-sa-mi
now-ow-ow-owwwwwww

Well, other than watching cartoons?

At the very beginning of 2014, I posted a substantial revision of “Eco-Evolutionary Feedback in Host–Pathogen Spatial Dynamics,” which we first put online in 2011 (late in the lonesome October of my most immemorial year, etc.).

In January, Chris Fuchs and I finished up an edited lecture transcript, “Some Negative Remarks on Operational Approaches to Quantum Theory.” My next posting was a solo effort, “SIC-POVMs and Compatibility among Quantum States,” which made for a pretty good follow-on, and picked up a pleasantly decent number of scites.

Then, we stress-tested the arXiv.

By mid-September, Ben Allen, Yaneer Bar-Yam and I had completed “An Information-Theoretic Formalism for Multiscale Structure in Complex Systems,” a work very long in the cooking.

Finally, I rang in December with “Von Neumann was Not a Quantum Bayesian,” which demonstrates conclusively that I can write 24 pages with 107 references in response to one sentence on Wikipedia.

# Epistricted Trits

In quantum mechanics, we are always calculating probabilities. We get results like, “There is a 50% chance this radioactive nucleus will decay in the next hour.” Or, “We can be 30% confident that the detector at position X will register a photon.” But the nature and origin of quantum probabilities remains obscure. Could it be that there are some kind of “gears in the nucleus,” and if we knew their alignment, we could predict what would happen with certainty? Fifty years of theorem-proving have made this a hard position to maintain: quantum probabilities are more exotic than that.

But what we can do is reconstruct a part of quantum theory in terms of “internal gears.” We start with a mundane theory of particles in motion or switches having different positions, and we impose a restriction on what we can know about the mundane goings-on. The theory which results, the theory of the knowledge we can have about the thing we’re studying, exhibits many of the same phenomena as quantum physics. It is clearly not the whole deal: For example, quantum physics offers the hope of making faster and more powerful computers, and the “toy theory” we’ve cooked up does not. But the “toy theory” can include many of the features of quantum mechanics deemed “mysterious.” In this way, we can draw a line between “surprising” and “truly enigmatic,” or to say it in a more dignified manner, between weakly nonclassical and strongly nonclassical.

The ancient Greek for “knowledge” is episteme (επιστημη) and so a restriction on our knowledge is an epistemic restriction, or epistriction for short.

A trit system is one where every degree of freedom has three possible values. Looking at Figure 4 of Spekkens’ “Quasi-quantization: classical statistical theories with an epistemic restriction,” we see that the valid states of an epistricted trit follow the same pattern as the SIC-allied Mutually Unbiased Bases of a quantum trit. But that is a story for another day.

Google Scholar is definitely missing citations to my papers.

The cited-by results for “Some Negative Remarks on Operational Approaches to Quantum Theory” [arXiv:1401.7254] on Google Scholar and on INSPIRE are completely nonoverlapping. Google Scholar can tell that “An Information-Theoretic Formalism for Multiscale Structure in Complex Systems” [arXiv:1409.4708] cites “Eco-Evolutionary Feedback in Host–Pathogen Spatial Dynamics” [arXiv:1110.3845] but not that it cites My Struggles with the Block Universe [arXiv:1405.2390]. Meanwhile, the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System catches both.

This would be a really petty thing to complain about, if people didn’t seemingly rely on such metrics.

EDIT TO ADD (17 November 2014): Google Scholar also misses that David Mermin cites MSwtBU in his “Why QBism is not the Copenhagen interpretation and what John Bell might have thought of it” [arXiv:1409.2454]. This maybe has something to do with being worse at detecting citations in footnotes than in endnotes.

# #WhyTheQuantum

One day, I’ll be able to explain the story behind how I got into this, but looking back on all the oddities of it, I’m not sure that a medium other than manga could do it justice.

My Struggles with the Block Universe [arXiv:1405.2390]

Christopher A. Fuchs, Maximilian Schlosshauer (foreword), Blake C. Stacey (editor)

This document is the second installment of three in the Cerro Grande Fire Series. Like its predecessor arXiv:quant-ph/0105039, “Notes on a Paulian Idea,” it is a collection of letters written to various friends and colleagues, most of whom regularly circuit this archive. The unifying theme of all the letters is that each has something to do with the quantum. Particularly, the collection chronicles the emergence of Quantum Bayesianism as a robust view of quantum theory, eventually evolving into the still-more-radical “QBism” (with the B standing for no particular designation anymore), as it took its most distinctive turn away from various Copenhagen Interpretations. Included are many anecdotes from the history of quantum information theory: for instance, the story of the origin of the terms “qubit” and “quantum information” from their originator’s own mouth, a copy of a rejection letter written by E. T. Jaynes for one of Rolf Landauer’s original erasure-cost principle papers, and much more. Specialized indices are devoted to historical, technical, and philosophical matters. More roundly, the document is an attempt to provide an essential ingredient, unavailable anywhere else, for turning QBism into a live option within the vast spectrum of quantum foundational thought.

As the comment field says, “CAUTION, do not unthinkingly print from a printer: 2,348 pages, 4 indices, 6 figures, with extensive hyperlinking.”

MSwtBU was originally submitted to the arXiv on 10 May 2014, the anniversary of the predecessor volume and before that of the Cerro Grande Fire, which started the whole business. To my knowledge, it is the longest item currently on the arXiv.

omg 2000+ pages. There goes my free time.

# New Paper Dance

B. C. Stacey, “SIC-POVMs and Compatibility among Quantum States” [arXiv:1404.3774]:

An unexpected connection exists between compatibility criteria for quantum states and symmetric informationally complete POVMs. Beginning with Caves, Fuchs and Schack’s “Conditions for compatibility of quantum state assignments” [Phys. Rev. A 66 (2002), 062111], I show that a qutrit SIC-POVM studied in other contexts enjoys additional interesting properties. Compatibility criteria provide a new way to understand the relationship between SIC-POVMs and mutually unbiased bases, as calculations in the SIC representation of quantum states make clear. Along the way, I correct two mathematical errors in Caves, Fuchs and Schack’s paper. One error is a minor nit to pick, while the other is a missed opportunity.

# 10 LINKS 20 GOTO 10

My “Worked Physics Homework Problems” book now stands at 372 pages. If you ever wonder what I do instead of meeting people.

“You’ll get so preoccupied with equations that you forget to eat!” #BadWaysToPromoteScienceToYoungWomen

# One and One and One Make Three

Every once in a while, a bit of esoteric mathematics drifts into more popular view and leaves poor souls like me wondering, “Why?”

Why is this piece of gee-whizzery being waved about, when the popularized “explanation” of it is so warped as to be misleading? Is the goal of “popularizing mathematics” just to inflate the reader’s ego—the intended result being, “Look what I understand!,” or, worse, “Look at what those [snort] professional mathematicians are saying, and how obviously wrong it is.”

Today’s instalment (noticed by my friend Dr. SkySkull): the glib assertion going around that

$$1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + \cdots = -\frac{1}{12}.$$

Sigh.

It’s like an Upbuzzdomeworthy headline: These scientists added together all the counting numbers. You’ll never guess what happened next!

“This crazy calculation is actually used in physics,” we are solemnly assured.

Sigh.

The physics side of the story is, roughly, “Sometimes you’re doing a calculation and it looks like you’ll have to add up $$1+2+3+4+\cdots$$  and so on forever. Then you look more carefully and realize that you shouldn’t—something you neglected matters. It turns out that you can swap in $$-1/12$$ for the corrected calculation and get a good first stab at the answer. More specifically, swapping in $$-1/12$$ tells you the part of the answer which doesn’t depend on the particular details of the extra effect you originally neglected.”

For an example of this being done, see David Tong’s notes on quantum field theory, chapter 2, page 27. For the story as explained by a mathematician, see Terry Tao’s “The Euler-Maclaurin formula, Bernoulli numbers, the zeta function, and real-variable analytic continuation.” As that title might hint, these do presume a certain level of background knowledge, but that’s kind of the point. This is an instance where the result itself requires at least moderate expertise to understand, unlike, say, the four-colour theorem, where the premise and the result are pretty easy to set out, and it’s the stuff in between which is much harder to follow.

ADDENDUM (19 January 2014): I’ve heard the argument in favour of this gee-whizzery that it “gets people excited about mathematics.” So what? A large number of people are misinformed; a tiny fraction of that population goes on to learn more and realize that they were, essentially, lied to. Getting people interested in mathematics is a laudable goal, but you need to pick your teaser-trailer examples more carefully.

And I see Terry Tao has weighed in himself with a clear note and some charming terminology.

# Time Capsule

While looking through old physics books for alternate takes on my quals problems, I found a copy of Sir James Jeans’ Electricity and Magnetism (5th edition, 1925). It’s a fascinating time capsule of early views on relativity and what we know call the “old quantum theory,” that is, the attempt to understand atomic and molecular phenomena by adding some constraints to fundamentally classical physics. Jeans builds up Maxwellian electromagnetism starting from the assumption of the aether. Then, in chapter 20, which was added in the fourth edition (1919), he goes into special relativity, beginning with the Michelson–Morley experiment. Only after discussing many examples in detail does he, near the end of the chapter, say

If, then, we continue to believe in the existence of an ether we are compelled to believe not only that all electromagnetic phenomena are in a conspiracy to conceal from us the speed of our motion through the ether, but also that gravitational phenomena, which so far as is known have nothing to do with the ether, are parties to the same conspiracy. The simpler view seems to be that there is no ether. If we accept this view, there is no conspiracy of concealment for the simple reason that there is no longer anything to conceal.

# Delayed Gratification

A post today by PZ Myers nicely expresses something which has been frustrating me about people who, in arguing over what can be a legitimate subject of “scientific” study, play the “untestable claim” card.

Their ideal is the experiment that, in one session, shoots down a claim cleanly and neatly. So let’s bring in dowsers who claim to be able to detect water flowing underground, set up control pipes and water-filled pipes, run them through their paces, and see if they meet reasonable statistical criteria. That’s science, it works, it effectively addresses an individual’s very specific claim, and I’m not saying that’s wrong; that’s a perfectly legitimate scientific experiment.

I’m saying that’s not the whole operating paradigm of all of science.

Plenty of scientific ideas are not immediately testable, or directly testable, or testable in isolation. For example: the planets in our solar system aren’t moving the way Newton’s laws say they should. Are Newton’s laws of gravity wrong, or are there other gravitational influences which satisfy the Newtonian equations but which we don’t know about? Once, it turned out to be the latter (the discovery of Neptune), and once, it turned out to be the former (the precession of Mercury’s orbit, which required Einstein’s general relativity to explain).

There are different mathematical formulations of the same subject which give the same predictions for the outcomes of experiments, but which suggest different new ideas for directions to explore. (E.g., Newtonian, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics; or density matrices and SIC-POVMs.) There are ideas which are proposed for good reason but hang around for decades awaiting a direct experimental test—perhaps one which could barely have been imagined when the idea first came up. Take directed percolation: a simple conceptual model for fluid flow through a randomized porous medium. It was first proposed in 1957. The mathematics necessary to treat it cleverly was invented (or, rather, adapted from a different area of physics) in the 1970s…and then forgotten…and then rediscovered by somebody else…connections with other subjects were made… Experiments were carried out on systems which almost behaved like the idealization, but always turned out to differ in some way… until 2007, when the behaviour was finally caught in the wild. And the experiment which finally observed a directed-percolation-class phase transition with quantitative exactness used a liquid crystal substance which wasn’t synthesized until 1969.

You don’t need to go dashing off to quantum gravity to find examples of ideas which are hard to test in the laboratory, or where mathematics long preceded experiment. (And if you do, don’t forget the other applications being developed for the mathematics invented in that search.) Just think very hard about the water dripping through coffee grounds to make your breakfast.

# Of Two Time Indices

In the appendix to a paper I am currently co-authoring, I recently wrote the following within a parenthetical excursus:

When talking of dynamical systems, our probability assignments really carry two time indices: one for the time our betting odds are chosen, and the other for the time the bet concerns.

A parenthesis in an appendix is already a pretty superfluous thing. Treating this as the jumping-off point for further discussion merits the degree of obscurity which only a lengthy post on a low-traffic blog can afford.

# Bohr’s Horseshoe

Now and then, one hears physicist stories of uncertain origin. Take the case of Niels Bohr and his horseshoe. A short version goes like the following:

It is a bit like the story of Niels Bohr’s horseshoe. Upon seeing it hanging over a doorway someone said, “But Niels, I thought you didn’t believe horseshoes could bring good luck.” Bohr replied, “They say it works even if you don’t believe.” [source]

I find it interesting that nobody seems to know where this story comes from. The place where I first read it was a jokebook: Asimov’s Treasury of Humor (1971), which happens to be three years older than the earliest appearance Wikiquote knows about. In this book, Isaac Asimov tells a lot of jokes and offers advice on how to deliver them. The Bohr horseshoe, told at slightly greater length, is joke #80. Asimov’s commentary points out a difficulty with telling it:

To a general audience, even one that is highly educated in the humanities, Bohr must be defined — and yet he was one of the greatest physicists of all time and died no longer ago than 1962. But defining Bohr isn’t that easy; if it isn’t done carefully, it will sound condescending, and even the suspicion of condescension will cool the laugh drastically.

Note the light dusting of C. P. Snow. Asimov proposes the following solution.

If you despair of getting the joke across by using Bohr, use Einstein. Everyone has heard of Einstein and anything can be attributed to him. Nevertheless, if you think you can get away with using Bohr, then by all means do so, for all things being equal, the joke will then sound more literate and more authentic. Unlike Einstein, Bohr hasn’t been overused.

I find this, except for the last sentence, strangely appropriate in the context of quantum-foundations arguments.