Price-Wharton Constrained Colliders: Co-Causation or No Causation?

TL;DR

This paper argues that Price-Wharton’s constrained collider bias does not cause entanglement but offers a new causal modeling perspective consistent with quantum mechanics and relativity principles.

Contribution

It introduces a novel causal modeling approach called constrained colliders that aligns with quantum mechanics and relativity, clarifying the nature of entanglement.

Findings

CCC provides a perspectival co-causal relationship without violating locality.

Quantum mechanics remains complete with Bell states as the entanglement mechanism.

The approach aligns with the quantum reconstruction program and relativity principles.

Abstract

Price and Wharton have recently suggested that "constrained retrocausal collider bias is the origin of entanglement." In this paper, we argue that their connection across a constrained collider (CCC) for the V-shaped case with the Bell states is not "a mechanism for entanglement," providing a negative answer to the title of arXiv:2406.04571. Rather, CCC should be viewed as a novel approach to the causal modeling of entanglement, providing a perspectival co-causal relationship between the two wings of the experiment that does not violate locality or statistical independence. The key is to accept that quantum mechanics is complete, so the Bell states provide the "mechanism for entanglement" and CCC provides a causal model of entanglement per causal perspectivalism in accord with the different subjective spacetime models of the experiment. When combined into an objective spacetime model of the experiment, the subjective co-causation disappears leaving an objective acausal view of entanglement in accord with the quantum reconstruction program. Essentially, the quantum reconstruction program has rendered quantum mechanics a principle theory based on the observer-independence of Planck's constant h as justified by the relativity principle ("no preferred reference frame" NPRF), exactly as special relativity is a principle theory based on the observer-independence of the speed of light c as justified by the relativity principle. Thus, NPRF + c is an adynamical global constraint on the configuration of worldtubes for the equipment in the experiment while NPRF + h is an adynamical global constraint on the distribution of quantum detection events in that context. Accordingly, CCC then provides a new way to understand causation subjectively per causal perspectivalism in this objectively acausal spacetime model of the experiment.