According to what anybody on the Earth knows about physics, neither energy, mass, nor information may travel faster than the speed of light.



Let me explain my understanding of “quantum entanglement” based on the explanation I heard from a MIT EE professor who is expert on the subject.



Start with two particles close to each other. The particles can be made “entangled”, which means some aspect of the two are made the same, such as the “spin”. Now, I can move them as far apart from each other as I like, but relativity still holds, and I cannot move them faster than the speed of light. At some agreed upon time, Joe observes the spin on one and Harry observes the spin on the other. Each has instantaneous knowledge of what the other has observed, but since neither can control what spin is observed, there is no communication faster than light.



Let me try a rough analogy. I am alone in a room. I flip a coin, observe if it was heads or tails, and glue it in a box. I glue another coin in another box exactly the some as the first: both are heads or both are tails. I seal the boxes. I set an accurate timer for each box, which is viewable to anyone from the outside. The two clocks remain accurate to within a millisecond of each other The next step is very important – I die. Now, no-one in the entire universe knows if both boxes have heads or both have tails. Therefore, according to quantum physics, both are heads and tails at the same time (I wrote rough analogy.) One timer + box combination remains on Earth, the other timer + box combination is taken by astronauts to Mars, at a speed much less than that of light.). Now, at some predetermined time people on the Earth and Mars open their boxes. Within one one-thousandth of second, each knows what the other has observed. But this cannot be used as a signal between Earth and Mars because no living person has control of if the coins were heads or tails.



Maybe someday someone will discover something new. But so far, no one has. I someone did, they would be quickly notifying the Nobel Committee.

 

According to what anybody on the Earth knows about physics, neither energy, mass, nor information may travel faster than the speed of light.



Let me explain my understanding of “quantum entanglement” based on the explanation I heard from a MIT EE professor who is expert on the subject.



Start with two particles close to each other. The particles can be made “entangled”, which means some aspect of the two are made the same, such as the “spin”. Now, I can move them as far apart from each other as I like, but relativity still holds, and I cannot move them faster than the speed of light. At some agreed upon time, Joe observes the spin on one and Harry observes the spin on the other. Each has instantaneous knowledge of what the other has observed, but since neither can control what spin is observed, there is no communication faster than light.



Let me try a rough analogy. I am alone in a room. I flip a coin, observe if it was heads or tails, and glue it in a box. I glue another coin in another box exactly the some as the first: both are heads or both are tails. I seal the boxes. I set an accurate timer for each box, which is viewable to anyone from the outside. The two clocks remain accurate to within a millisecond of each other The next step is very important – I die. Now, no-one in the entire universe knows if both boxes have heads or both have tails. Therefore, according to quantum physics, both are heads and tails at the same time (I wrote rough analogy.) One timer + box combination remains on Earth, the other timer + box combination is taken by astronauts to Mars, at a speed much less than that of light.). Now, at some predetermined time people on the Earth and Mars open their boxes. Within one one-thousandth of second, each knows what the other has observed. But this cannot be used as a signal between Earth and Mars because no living person has control of if the coins were heads or tails.



Maybe someday someone will discover something new. But so far, no one has. I someone did, they would be quickly notifying the Nobel Committee.

But that view has been disproven at least for now. It's also stated as the suitcase analogy where something is put into one suitcase right side up and the other suitcase upside down, and then one of them is taken to a far off place. Because the states were predetermined, even though nobody may know what each ones contains the up or down version, the relative states will be known for both when either suitcase is opened. That was disproven using a statistical method.
Another way it was explained is that you assume that there is someone or some thing trying to trick you, you can prove that there is no way to know what they will do next. It's unfortunate i cant remember how this goes now and i've searched on the web and cant find it, but it was quite amazing how this works.

The best explanation i think for an analogy is that you have a true random number generator that can generate either a 1 or a 0 and that is in one suitcase, and in the other suitcase you have another same generator that can generate either a 1 or a 0, and they are constantly flipping back and forth between a 1 and 0 non stop. When you open one suitcase the generator stops and you see a 1, you know the other had stopped and generated a 0, and if you see a 0 then the other had generated a 1. The key point is that the generators are synced and stay synced and they constantly generate true random flips yet somehow when one stops the other stops in the opposite state.
Now this may seem the same as the simpler suit case experiment, but we have to keep in mind that the outcome of a random generator is completely indeterminate, and that means that both generators are completely indeterminate, so there is no way to say for sure that they are flipping to the opposite states all the time, because that is only true when they are determinate and that is when one suitcase is opened. Before that it is entirely acceptable that they are both in the same state sometimes, and sometimes in the opposite state, and of course in the more full blown version sometimes in some in between state.

This is different than when we place a coin in a suitcase glued the bottom or something. To use that analogy we'd have to assume the glue is some kind of flexible glue that allows the coin to flip back and forth with random vibrations while the one suitcase is being transported to a new location, and the other one is sitting on some sort of vibrator that makes random vibrations so that coin flips back and forth also.

What else might be interesting to think about with this last idea is that if you have a bunch of things rocking back and forth randomly with no sync but they are connected in even the mildest way, such as on a table that can rock under the influence of the things on the table, the bunch of things can eventually sync and start rocking back and forth in unison. This can be shown to occur with metronomes. They can be completely non sync'd but eventually they all start rocking back and forth in complete sync.
In the previous example perhaps there is some delicate thread of connection between the two generators that simple never ceases to connect the two. It would not necessarily have to be faster than light because as you noted the two suitcases can not be moved away from each other faster than light, in fact no where near that speed just yet. Could the coupling be broken if both moved away from each other at 99 percent of the speed of light. I cant answer that.

 

The best you can get with “quantum entanglement” is a totally random result without a classical, limited to light speed, communications channel. It's been proven over and over again. There might be some future 'magic' (new physics) for FTL but “quantum entanglement” is NOT the mechanism for it.

https://www.cantorsparadise.com/qua...eins-spooky-action-at-a-distance-1efde58b3ccc
Quantum Entanglement is Not Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance”

But what truly is happening under quantum entanglement is not just the act of being in a certain configuration, but the presence of hidden nonlocal quantum potential that is not capable of transmitting influences or could be used for any form of communication.

If you want to understand the actual distinction between Einstein’s spooky action at a distance and entanglement, I highly suggest you go through this Twitter thread by Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder,

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1577870759065800704

 

The best you can get with “quantum entanglement” is a totally random result without a classical, limited to light speed, communications channel. It's been proven over and over again. There might be some future 'magic' (new physics) for FTL but “quantum entanglement” is NOT the mechanism for it.

https://www.cantorsparadise.com/qua...eins-spooky-action-at-a-distance-1efde58b3ccc
Quantum Entanglement is Not Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance”

If you want to understand the actual distinction between Einstein’s spooky action at a distance and entanglement, I highly suggest you go through this Twitter thread by Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder,

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1577870759065800704

Here's an interesting video supporting what you've just said:

 

The Diffusion Model used in current image generators is vert different, I think, than what you are describing. If encodes the images in the training set by adding noise in successive stages until it can characterize the image as a compact string that doesn't have a direct correlation to the original. To produce an image it starts with Gaussian noise and does a series of "denoising filters" making successive attempts at recognizing the prompted image in the noise, eventually settling on the output and converting it back into a pixel representation.

There are no individual pieces of images stored anywhere.

It's very easy to change what the system produces by changing the training set. No individual pieces of X type images added, no images of X type produced. Nothing creative about it. It's all about processing power and large datasets.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/24...diffusion-version-2-nsfw-artists-data-changes

What has been removed from Stable Diffusion’s training data, though, is nude and pornographic images. AI image generators are already being used to generate NSFW output, including both photorealistic and anime-style pictures. However, these models can also be used to generate NSFW imagery resembling specific individuals (known as non-consensual pornography) and images of child abuse.

https://www.theverge.com/23444685/generative-ai-copyright-infringement-legal-fair-use-training-data
The scary truth about AI copyright is nobody knows what will happen next

The question arises because of the way generative AI systems are trained. Like most machine learning software, they work by identifying and replicating patterns in data. But because these programs are used to generate code, text, music, and art, that data is itself created by humans, scraped from the web and copyright protected in one way or another.

 

But that view has been disproven at least for now. It's also stated as the suitcase analogy where something is put into one suitcase right side up and the other suitcase upside down, and then one of them is taken to a far off place. Because the states were predetermined, even though nobody may know what each ones contains the up or down version, the relative states will be known for both when either suitcase is opened. That was disproven using a statistical method.
Another way it was explained is that you assume that there is someone or some thing trying to trick you, you can prove that there is no way to know what they will do next. It's unfortunate i cant remember how this goes now and i've searched on the web and cant find it, but it was quite amazing how this works.

The best explanation i think for an analogy is that you have a true random number generator that can generate either a 1 or a 0 and that is in one suitcase, and in the other suitcase you have another same generator that can generate either a 1 or a 0, and they are constantly flipping back and forth between a 1 and 0 non stop. When you open one suitcase the generator stops and you see a 1, you know the other had stopped and generated a 0, and if you see a 0 then the other had generated a 1. The key point is that the generators are synced and stay synced and they constantly generate true random flips yet somehow when one stops the other stops in the opposite state.
Now this may seem the same as the simpler suit case experiment, but we have to keep in mind that the outcome of a random generator is completely indeterminate, and that means that both generators are completely indeterminate, so there is no way to say for sure that they are flipping to the opposite states all the time, because that is only true when they are determinate and that is when one suitcase is opened. Before that it is entirely acceptable that they are both in the same state sometimes, and sometimes in the opposite state, and of course in the more full blown version sometimes in some in between state.

This is different than when we place a coin in a suitcase glued the bottom or something. To use that analogy we'd have to assume the glue is some kind of flexible glue that allows the coin to flip back and forth with random vibrations while the one suitcase is being transported to a new location, and the other one is sitting on some sort of vibrator that makes random vibrations so that coin flips back and forth also.

What else might be interesting to think about with this last idea is that if you have a bunch of things rocking back and forth randomly with no sync but they are connected in even the mildest way, such as on a table that can rock under the influence of the things on the table, the bunch of things can eventually sync and start rocking back and forth in unison. This can be shown to occur with metronomes. They can be completely non sync'd but eventually they all start rocking back and forth in complete sync.
In the previous example perhaps there is some delicate thread of connection between the two generators that simple never ceases to connect the two. It would not necessarily have to be faster than light because as you noted the two suitcases can not be moved away from each other faster than light, in fact no where near that speed just yet. Could the coupling be broken if both moved away from each other at 99 percent of the speed of light. I cant answer that.

Thanks. I think your analogy is better than mine.

 

Thanks. I think your analogy is better than mine.

Hi,

Well i had difficulty with this too at first. It seems like we can reproduce it with a classical example, but we cant. That's the difference.
That means that no matter what we can come up with (with the exception of a true random number generator i 'think') if it is based on classical physics then it wont be a good analogy it will be a simplified view which really does not do the quantum world justice.
Thanks for your input too though.

Hey if i forget this in a few years you can tell me again

 

https://www.theguardian.com/science...aby-wormhole-without-rupturing-space-and-time

They said that based on the quantum information teleported, a traversable wormhole appeared to have emerged, but that no rupture of space and time was physically created in the experiment, according to the study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

A wormhole – a rupture in space and time – is considered a bridge between two remote regions in the universe. Scientists refer to them as Einstein-Rosen bridges after the two physicists who described them: Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen.

 

https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=13181

I just saw that the New York Times also has a big story about this: Physicists Create ‘the Smallest, Crummiest Wormhole You Can Imagine’. At least this article has some sensible skeptical quotes, including:

“The most important thing I’d want New York Times readers to understand is this,” Scott Aaronson, a quantum computing expert at the University of Texas in Austin, wrote in an email. “If this experiment has brought a wormhole into actual physical existence, then a strong case could be made that you, too, bring a wormhole into actual physical existence every time you sketch one with pen and paper.”

...
I hadn’t noticed that the Nature issue comes with an article by Brown and Susskind, A holographic wormhole traversed in a quantum computer. Amidst the hype, they do at least point out:

because nine qubits can be easily simulated on a classical computer, the results of this experiment cannot teach us anything that could not be learnt from a classical computation, and will not teach us anything new about quantum gravity.

Still useless for communications (at FTL or any speed) or space travel. Another trip on the HYPE train.

 

It's very easy to change what the system produces by changing the training set. No individual pieces of X type images added, no images of X type produced. Nothing creative about it. It's all about processing power and large datasets.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/24...diffusion-version-2-nsfw-artists-data-changes


https://www.theverge.com/23444685/generative-ai-copyright-infringement-legal-fair-use-training-data
The scary truth about AI copyright is nobody knows what will happen next

https://arstechnica.com/information...opt-out-of-stable-diffusion-3-image-training/
Stability AI plans to let artists opt out of Stable Diffusion 3 image training

As a brief recap, Stable Diffusion, an AI image synthesis model, gained its ability to generate images by "learning" from a large dataset of images scraped from the Internet without consulting any rights holders for permission. Some artists are upset about it because Stable Diffusion generates images that can potentially rival human artists in an unlimited quantity. We've been following the ethical debate since Stable Diffusion's public launch in August 2022.

 

https://arstechnica.com/information...opt-out-of-stable-diffusion-3-image-training/
Stability AI plans to let artists opt out of Stable Diffusion 3 image training

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.03860.pdf
Diffusion Art or Digital Forgery? Investigating Data Replication in Diffusion Models

Cutting-edge diffusion models produce images with high quality and customizability, enabling them to be used for commercial art and graphic design purposes. But do diffusion models create unique works of art, or are they replicating content directly from their training sets? In this work, we study image retrieval frameworks that enable us to compare generated images with training samples and detect when content has been replicated. Applying our frameworks to diffusion models trained on multiple datasets including Oxford flowers, Celeb-A, ImageNet, and LAION, we discuss how factors such as training set size impact rates of content replication. We also identify cases where diffusion models, including the popular Stable Diffusion model, blatantly copy from their training data.
...
Data replication in generative models is not inevitable; previous studies of GANs have not found it, and our study of ImageNet LDM did not find any evidence of significant data replication. What makes Stable Diffusion different?
We note that both ImageNet LDM (Section 6) and Stable Diffusion are built using similar update rules and training routines, and contain similar numbers of parameters. This rules out a number of factors that may contribute to their difference in behavior.
The most obvious culprit is image duplication within the training set. However this explanation is incomplete and oversimplified; Our models in Section 5 consistently show strong replication when they are trained with small datasets that are unlikely to have any duplicated images. Furthermore, a dataset in which all images are unique should yield the same model as a dataset in which all images are duplicated 1000 times, provided the same number of training
updates are used.
We speculate that replication behavior in Stable Diffusion arises from a complex interaction of factors, which include that it is text (rather than class) conditioned, it has a highly skewed distribution of image repetitions in the training set, and the number of gradient updates during training is large enough to overfit on a subset of the data.

https://stablediffusionlitigation.com/pdf/00201/1-1-stable-diffusion-complaint.pdf

I think this case is technically incorrect in how they see images stored but that doesn't mean it has no merit IMO.

 

https://www.barrons.com/news/getty-images-targets-ai-firm-for-copying-photos-01673961609
Getty Images Targets AI Firm For 'Copying' Photos

Getty said it had started legal proceedings at the High Court in London.

"It is Getty Images' position that Stability AI unlawfully copied and processed millions of images protected by copyright," the firm said in a statement.

The photo firm said it had provided licences tailored to firms that wanted to train AI models.

"Stability AI did not seek any such license from Getty Images and instead, we believe, chose to ignore viable licensing options and long‑standing legal protections in pursuit of their stand‑alone commercial interests."

An image created by Stable Diffusion showing a recreation of Getty Images’ watermark. Image: The Verge / Stable Diffusion


The software has no idea the watermark is not part of the image so it copies (learns it) it. Like I said before, the images are not directly stored but the learning process is at least partially reversible to the originals.

 

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/quantum-entanglement-faster-than-light/
Even with quantum entanglement, there’s no faster-than-light communication

 

So the act of observing tends to destroy quantum entanglement?

Let the search for wormholes begin! Though I suspect the moment you use a wormhole you're really looking into the metaverse and not ours. Still would be darn useful though.

 

So the act of observing tends to destroy quantum entanglement?

Let the search for wormholes begin! Though I suspect the moment you use a wormhole you're really looking into the metaverse and not ours. Still would be darn useful though.

Wormholes are fine, but once in one, you can't escape because escape requires physical FTL speed of the object instead of just a fold of spacetime.

 

Wormholes are fine, but once in one, you can't escape because escape requires physical FTL speed of the object instead of just a fold of spacetime.

So ... what would then be the difference between a wormhole and a black hole if nothing can escape them?

 

So ... what would then be the difference between a wormhole and a black hole if nothing can escape them?

It's sort of like this.
The wormhole is the event-horizon stretched between separated black holes or singularity. With a supermassive black hole you could can pass the event-horizon without ill-effects, move in different directions other than a escape path until you eventually crashed into the physical singularity.

 

It's sort of like this.
The wormhole is the event-horizon stretched between separated black holes or singularity. With a supermassive black hole you could can pass the event-horizon without ill-effects, move in different directions other than a escape path until you eventually crashed into the physical singularity.

Would that mean that a wormhole is absolutely useless for the purpose of traversing matter or information from one point of space to another?

 

Would that mean that a wormhole is absolutely useless for the purpose of traversing matter or information from one point of space to another?

Yes, that's why they are a staple of science fiction, not science fact today.

https://www.livescience.com/traversable-wormholes-modified-gravity.html

The idea of such a whimsical shortcut has captured the imaginations of scientists and science-fiction writers for decades.

"The possibility to visit other stars (or even other galaxies), possibly finding alien civilizations, and the possibility to revisit the past or not having to wait for the future have been part of the human imagination and fantasy for a long time, and wormholes provide a (relatively) simple and unified solution for both of these problems," Rosa told Live Science in an email.

But wormholes constructed based on the criteria laid out by general relativity suffer a major problem: They're not actually traversable. The entrances of general relativity wormholes are hidden behind event horizons, which are one-way barriers in space. That means if you were to enter the wormhole, you could never leave, which would defeat the purpose.

The other problem is that they are ridiculously unstable. The moment even a single photon, or light particle, enters the throat, the whole wormhole catastrophically collapses before that packet of light can escape.

All you need is exotic matter/energy usually known as Unobtainium.

In order to solve these problems in general relativity and stabilize a wormhole, a cosmic traveler must fashion the wormhole out of an incredibly exotic ingredient, a form of matter that has negative energy or negative mass. Negative mass (also known as exotic matter) is exactly what it sounds like: If something weighs negative 10 pounds, it would have negative mass. Scientists have not observed negative mass anywhere in the universe. Negative energy is slightly more attainable, which is just a condition where the energy in a particular location is negative relative to its surroundings, but that can only be achieved at microscopic, quantum scales.
...
But the questions wouldn't end there. Wormholes can also act as time machines, so a viable wormhole solution would mean that time travel into the past is possible; that, of course, raises all sorts of difficult problems (like the so-called "grandfather paradox" and questions about causality). Knowing for sure that traversable wormholes could exist wouldn't just make our sci-fi dreams come true, it would totally upend our understanding of physics.

 

So the act of observing tends to destroy quantum entanglement?

Hi Wendy,

Well that's the way it is NOW, and the reason i believe we have to say this is because we simply just do not know how to do it YET without bothering the entanglement itself. If we look back in time though we can see many things we did not know how to do simply because we did not know how to perturb something fragile in a way that would not destroy it. Then some time later we learned that something more delicate in nature could be used to probe these more fragile objects and that allowed us to be able to understand the objects better as well as control them. Every day we use light to probe many objects and it works because light interacts with large objects in a way that does not destroy them yet allows us to discover their properties without too much difficulty, and when done we still have the object intact.
Physics is always evolving so it may just be a matter of time until we can deal with entanglement in a more useful way.