Quote (doomchaser @ Mar 27 2013 04:11pm)
Quantum entanglement occurs when particles such as photons, electrons, molecules as large as buckyballs,[1][2] and even small diamonds[3][4] interact physically and then become separated; the type of interaction is such that each resulting member of a pair is properly described by the same quantum mechanical description (state), which is indefinite in terms of important factors such as position,[5] momentum, spin, polarization, etc.
Quantum entanglement is a form of quantum superposition. When a measurement is made and it causes one member of such a pair to take on a definite value (e.g., clockwise spin), the other member of this entangled pair will at any subsequent time[6] be found to have taken the appropriately correlated value (e.g., counterclockwise spin). Thus, there is a correlation between the results of measurements performed on entangled pairs, and this correlation is observed even though the entangled pair may have been separated by arbitrarily large distances.
if that is magic too you the so be it
Quantum physics is very confusing, I'll agree. You read about the delayed choice, entanglement, negative Kelvin temperatures, and other weird shit, and it does sound like magic. The difference is that it sounds like magic to EVERYONE, and nobody understands it well enough yet to apply the science in commercial products. We haven't yet gone from science to engineering. We are still exploring and trying to understand.
What Dollard is saying directly contradicts things we have already discovered, understood, and applied in practice. He isn't arguing some brand-new theoretical knowledge, he's arguing scientific facts that are the basis of many successful, working technologies. His ideas don't just contradict empirical evidence, they are basically saying that many, many, many technologies we use don't actually in reality work, or at least don't work the way we see them work.
Imagine that you were hammering a nail into a piece of wood, and some scientist came over and told you that traditional physics are wrong in that one object hitting another would transfer some energy to it. He tells you that hitting the nail with your hammer does absolutely nothing to the nail, and the billions upon billions of nails that mankind has hammered in over the centuries weren't actually hammered in at all, it's all a government conspiracy. Hard to believe something like that, wouldn't you say? I mean... I can go hit a nail with a hammer and I'm pretty damn sure it'll move, so unless this brilliant scientist has a better explanation for something we observe, I will call him a hack and move on with my life.
Same thing here. We have observed some phenomena, such as the speed of light and everything related to it (like refraction, for example), and we have designed some tools that work based on this knowledge. Some guy comes along and goes "Nah, that's all wrong". Well, our tools are still working, that's a fact. If he can't explain why they work the way they do and why we observe the things we observe, then his ideas won't be taken seriously.