Skip to main content

Write a PREreview

Conservation or Conspiracy? An Operational Criterion for Fine-Tuning in Time-Symmetric Models, with a Symmetry Theorem and a Coincidence-Rate Protocol

Posted
Server
Preprints.org
DOI
10.20944/preprints202609.1066.v1

Causal-model arguments establish that a classical causal model reproducing Bell correlations while exhibiting no-signalling must be unfaithful: its no-signalling independences are not entailed by d-separation in the causal graph. Applied to time-symmetric, retrocausal, and all-at-once models, this is the fine-tuning objection. The resulting debate has largely concerned whether faithfulness is the appropriate norm, without a criterion for deciding particular cases or an associated measurement.This paper supplies a proposed criterion and establishes a precise symmetry result for the balanced binary singlet sector. If a nonnegative \(2\times2\) compatibility table has the simultaneous-outcome-flip symmetry \[ m_{++}=m_{--}, \qquad m_{+-}=m_{-+}, \] then every common scalar entrywise map \[ m_{xy}\longmapsto f(m_{xy}) \] with nonnegative output and nonzero normalization preserves uniform local marginals. No monotonicity, continuity, differentiability, or power-law assumption is required. Within two-qubit quantum kinematics with ideal analyzer projectors, joint rotational invariance and perfect same-axis anticorrelation force the singlet state and hence this pairing symmetry. The theorem establishes robustness relative to the symmetry-restricted deformation class; it does not confer causal faithfulness or robustness against arbitrary symmetry-breaking cellwise perturbations.The same singlet-plus-common-map structure has a deformation-independent surplus consequence: \[ E^f(\pi-\Delta)=-E^f(\Delta), \qquad E^f(\pi/2)=0. \] These angular identities are distinct from no-signalling and can fail experimentally. They provide the surplus consequence required by the proposed criterion in the balanced sector.A separate constant-flux completion law predicts an exactly flat ideal joint completion rate. We compare it with a Bell-local sign--cosine model followed by a joint two-bin selection rule. The pointwise maximal acceptance envelope for reproducing the singlet correlator has symmetric minima \[ Z^\ast\simeq0.878567 \] near \(46.44^\circ\) and \(133.56^\circ\). A flat calibrated joint acceptance rate above this value excludes that two-bin class. More generally, total variation gives \[ S_{\mathrm{obs}} \le \min\left\{ 4,\, 2+2\sum_{q\in Q}(1-Z_q) \right\}, \] so a flat rate above \[ \frac{5-\sqrt2}{4}\simeq0.896447 \] excludes every Bell-local measurement-independent selection model covered by this bound when \(S_{\mathrm{obs}}=2\sqrt2\).Finally, an exact eight-state reconstruction of a published post-processing model has acceptance rate \(3/4\) in every setting context while attaining the algebraic CHSH value \(4\). Its accepted laws satisfy \[ \Delta_Q=1, \qquad D_Q=\frac13, \] saturating both the selection-inflation lower bounds and the upper bounds permitted by the absolute rate. Thus rate flatness is not a certificate of fair sampling, although the absolute rate remains quantitatively useful. The quantity requiring structural certification is the conditional acceptance function, or a sufficient experimentally accessible proxy for it.

You can write a PREreview of Conservation or Conspiracy? An Operational Criterion for Fine-Tuning in Time-Symmetric Models, with a Symmetry Theorem and a Coincidence-Rate Protocol. A PREreview is a review of a preprint and can vary from a few sentences to a lengthy report, similar to a journal-organized peer-review report.

Before you start

We will ask you to log in with your ORCID iD. If you don’t have an iD, you can create one.

What is an ORCID iD?

An ORCID iD is a unique identifier that distinguishes you from everyone with the same or similar name.

Start now