From Einstein's 1905 Postulates to the Geometry of Flat Space-Time

Minkowski diagrams in 1+1 dimensional flat space-time are given a strictly geometric derivation, directly from two gedanken experiments incorporating the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light and the principle of (special) relativity. Rectangles of photon trajectories play a central role in determining the simultaneity convention and in establishing the invariance of the interval.Comment: A few typos and some obvious misstatements have been repaired. A reference has been added. 18 pages, 12 figures. To appear in Annalen der Physik (Leipzig) 14 (2005) [1-3], Special Topic Issue. Albert Einstein: His Work and His Impac

Comment on ``Experimental demonstration of the violation of local realism without Bell inequalities'' by Torgerson et al

We exhibit a local-hidden-variable model in agreement with the results of the two-photon coincidence experiment made by Torgerson et al. [Phys. Lett. A 204 (1995) 323]. The existence of any such model shows that the experiment does not exclude local realism.Comment: LaTeX, 5 page

What is quantum mechanics trying to tell us?

I explore whether it is possible to make sense of the quantum mechanical description of physical reality by taking the proper subject of physics to be correlation and only correlation, and by separating the problem of understanding the nature of quantum mechanics from the hard problem of understanding the nature of objective probability in individual systems, and the even harder problem of understanding the nature of conscious awareness. The resulting perspective on quantum mechanics is supported by some elementary but insufficiently emphasized theorems. Whether or not it is adequate as a new Weltanschauung, this point of view toward quantum mechanics provides a different perspective from which to teach the subject or explain its peculiar character to people in other fields.Comment: 37 pages, no figures. This is the published version of the lecture notes that expand on my earlier ``Ithaca interpretation of quantum mechanics'', quant-ph/9609013. ``Wootters' theorem'' has become the SSC theorem, an earlier citation has been added, and a joke about Talmudic scholarship has been dropped at the request of a refere

Kochen-Specker Obstruction for Position and Momentum Using a Single Degree of Freedom

It is shown that, given a reasonable continuity assumption regarding possessed values, it is possible to construct a Kochen-Specker obstruction for any coordinate and its conjugate momentum, demonstrating that at most one of these two quantities can have a noncontextual value.Comment: This version replaces v1, which contained a faulty continuity condito