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I was speaking to Physicist yesterday about Bell's Inequality experiments, and I asked him "where do each of the photon pairs get their 'instruction set' from?" And he corrected me, saying that the entire point is that the photons do not have an instruction set. I got to mulling that over. Then realized that maybe they do have an "instruction set" of a certain kind -- the instruction set is the summary of how each proton goes about satisfying all the rules and regulations placed on its behavior by natural laws. That is, the instruction set isn't "in" the photon. But the photon has no choice but to follow it, once its state has been "measured." (Which sounds deterministic, but the initial observation that causes local state vector collapse is itself a stochastic event.)

I would say that the randomness lies in the specific outcome of the collapse, rather than in the observation that causes the collapse, but otherwise that's all correct.

Once measured, the nonlocality rules (part of the totality of physical law) specify what the state of its photon twin is, wherever that twin might be in the universe.

I can't argue with any of that

That "instruction set" -- physical laws -- is analogous to the Aristotelian First Cause.

I'm not as up on Aristotle as I should be, but my suspicion is that his understanding of time and causality is not fully modern. According to quantum mechanics, there are uncaused events, and according to relativity, time itself can behave counterintuitively when sharply curved.

I'm not as up on Aristotle as I should be, but my suspicion is that his understanding of time and causality is not fully modern.

That's a fact! -- but how could it be, Physicist? Still, he got so much right. Something in his discussion of limit seems analogous to QM's "observer." I'm mulling it over. Maybe I'm mistaken about this, but it's something to think about.

Thanks for your book recommendation. I'll check it out. Also thanks for all your help to me in working through my understanding of QM. Which I'm still working on. :^)

And thanks for writing!