Gerald wants to prove two guitar strings to be in an entangled state when played simultaneously. He poses that when reading the state of the one string, you can determine whether the other string is (still) vibrating. Let us have a look at how he is coping..
After much testing and experimenting, Gerald comes up with a theory. He poses that every string has a specific frequency and that the frequency is slightly altered (off pitch) to an amount of as substantial as 0,1 percent in case another string (in its vicinity) is also vibrating.
And so he decides that he can determine whether the one string is on or off (vibrates of not) by measuring the frequency of another string. But since there is a lot of randomness in his reading, he adopts a statistical approach.
He can now analyze a large amount of guitar playing. And as he does so, he selects out of all the readings of simultaneously stricken strings, what he calls “events”. An event is where you have both strings off pitch for an amount of more than 0,05 percent.
Now Gerald is on his way to prove that within a set of events, he can predict from the reading of the one string, whether the other string vibrates or not. His accuracy is at about 72 percent. That is well above the average of 50 percent that one would expect as a random outcome.
Now our hero makes a big theoretical step. He pronounces that the strings of a guitar are entangled. And he rests his case here. Nobody will ever know what the reasons are for the one string to affect the frequency of the other. Nobody will ever ask him or herself why this is not always the case. Strings just share a magical common state and that’s it.
We can now say something very deep and meaningful about guitar strings without knowing anything about the underlying physical processes. Or to put it more bluntly: he thinks he is onto something very profound and meaningful precisely because he has got no idea what so ever about what is going on.
(c) january2025
Peter Schuttevaar
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