Human Eye Could Detect Spooky Action At a Distance 255
KentuckyFC writes "The human eye is a good photon detector--it's sensitive enough to spot photons in handfuls. So what if you swapped a standard photon detector with a human eye in the ongoing experiments to measure spooky-action-at-a-distance? (That's the ability of entangled photons to influence each other, no matter how far apart they might be.) A team of physicists in Switzerland have worked out the details and say that in principle there is no reason why human eyes couldn't do this kind of experiment. That would be cool because it would ensure that the two human observers involved in the test would become entangled, albeit for a short period time. The team, led by Nic Gisin, a world leader on entanglement, says it is actively pursuing this goal (abstract) so we could have the first humans to experience entanglement within months."
Entanglement? Sounds cool! (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, okay, so I just watched X-Men on cable.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
In LAB COATS!1!
Re: (Score:2)
You want them clothed?
Re:Entanglement? Sounds cool! (Score:5, Funny)
I want them wrapped. Same as my gifts.
Doesn't mean they will stay wrapped for very long. ;)
Re:Entanglement? Sounds cool! (Score:4, Funny)
First humans to experience entanglement? (Score:2, Funny)
Hrmm. "The first humans to experience entanglement", huh? And how long before the experiment becomes the basis for a porn movie plot?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And how long before the experiment becomes the basis for a porn movie plot?
You'll be hearing from my lawyers in the morning.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
uh oh ... (Score:4, Funny)
I sense a host of new bad pickup lines coming in the near future.
Re:uh oh ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Read me Dr. Memory?
Systat Uptime I have been awake for 9 hours 53 seconds.
Re:uh oh ... (Score:5, Funny)
Baby, I feel so connected to you. Almost like we simultaneously (from the perspective of a fixed point midway between us) observed a set of photons with quantum properties amplified from the quantum properties of a single photon, that single photon being one of a pair of photons with linked quantum states, so that by observing the photons we caused their probabilities to collapse into a single observed state which was not predetermined but which was shared by both photons, a result which we later confirmed by comparing our observations using a conventional method of information sharing which propagated at less than the speed of light. Ya know, entangled. Don't you feel it?
Actually, I've heard of worse pickup lines.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
The gig is up as soon as you hit the word "photons" there
Re: (Score:2)
The gig is up as soon as he said "baby." If he didn't start that way... maybe a shot.
Re:uh oh ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Prior art: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Re:uh oh ... (Score:5, Funny)
Bad pickup lines? They certainly worked well enough when I became entangled with your mom last night!
Re: (Score:2)
Yo momma so fat I had to entangle with her to actually get any action.
Re:uh oh ... (Score:5, Funny)
Your moma so fat even if I'd entangle with her no information would be able to leave her event horizon.
Re:uh oh ... (Score:5, Funny)
Nobody has managed to put gravitation and QM together yet, and you want to do it in a your-momma-so-fat-joke? Wow.
Re: (Score:2)
What can I say? I'm one of a kind ...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Your mom's so massive she emitted you at just 14 years old.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
When trying to use on a female quantum physicist the pickup line both works and doesn't work. But once the quantum states collapse you'll get slapped regardless. Those chicks are extra spooky!
Also (Score:3, Funny)
It can see sexy action at a distance.
It's better close up (Score:5, Informative)
FYI.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not in the bars I drink in.
It takes two to tango (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Leviticus 23:45
He also goes on to talk about not getting quantumly entangled with beasts of the field.
In fact theres not very many Jewish physicists, because of the risk of accidently entangling yourself with a passing insect or even a flamboyantly gay bosun.
Re:It takes two to tango (Score:5, Funny)
Frogs (Score:4, Funny)
But on a more serious note, what does it really mean for two people to become entangled? And does it matter that the photons are detected by a human retina? Could the entanglement just as easily happen if the photons were fired into my left butt-cheek?
Re:Frogs (Score:5, Funny)
I've heard that frogs have the ability to detect single photons [iop.org]. This is from a cryptographer who jokingly proposed a frog-based system for quantum key distribution.
So I'm guessing that the unit of measurement for frog-based quantum encryption is the "ribbet".
SI Units (Score:5, Funny)
I shudder at the thought of kibiribbits.
Re:SI Units (Score:5, Funny)
Are we gonna have to start using Kermit again? ...and I was getting used to high speed connections.
Re: (Score:2)
Could the entanglement just as easily happen if the photons were fired into my left butt-cheek?
Don't think anybody knows / cares what happens to your left butt-cheek so there is no need (under many-worlds,thoughts are a collapsed state,etc theories) for your left butt-cheek to collapse to a state were it is certain if the photon hit it or not.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I think perhaps we are constantly entangled, but that our "consciousness" (whatever that may be), resolves the entanglement to a specific, given state. The point of the experiment on this interpretation is simply to demonstate entanglement using the human eye, rather than the proxy of a detector mediating between the event and our conscious experience of it. I'm tempted to say "move along, nothing to see here", but (
Re:Frogs (Score:5, Insightful)
I think perhaps we are constantly entangled, but that our "consciousness"
Just because it's unusual to us doesn't mean it's mystical or magical. For your idea to actually be science and not philosophy you'd need a much better grasp of what you're actually saying. Saying something like "we're all constantly entangled" doesn't really mean a lot, since entanglement doesn't occur on a macro-scale.
People have tried to tie together mysticism, quantum mechanics, and consciousness before. At best it's an interesting exercise in thinking. At worst it's nonsense gibberish. To my knowledge it's never really produced anything approaching science.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I've heard that frogs have the ability to detect single photons [iop.org]. This is from a cryptographer who jokingly proposed a frog-based system for quantum key distribution. But on a more serious note, what does it really mean for two people to become entangled? And does it matter that the photons are detected by a human retina? Could the entanglement just as easily happen if the photons were fired into my left butt-cheek?
Furthermore, how does one "record" it such that the data can be retrieved? Yes, I know your dumb girlfriend "saw" the flash, and can report it, but it's still subjective. It's not like saying "hmm, that photon bumped the meter to 3.2eV"
Re: (Score:2)
This makes me wonder why we can't lab-grow a retina for this purpose, or use one from a fresh cadaver.
You could find something 'better' than a human eye, this way.
Re:Frogs (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, your retina is a little more sensible to handfuls of photons than your left butt-cheek, but apart from that, it's no difference. By interacting with an entangled particle you acquire its entanglement.
In this experiment, the entanglement will happen only momentarily in a few cells of the people's retinas. Then the self-interactions of the eye will kill it. So it's not interesting in the consequences, but in the concept of having a micro-macro connection, a human measuring apparatus having quantum mechanical properties.
But what would it mean to people becoming entangled? Technically, their actions would be correlated. Practically, its completely impossible to do it. A person's nervous system is a very slow and noisy system. By the time it would take to the entanglement couple itself all the way from the eyes to the brain it would be long dead. And to spread to rest of the body, pft.
But I can make a car analogy. If those entangled people would be driving cars, the cars would become entangled to. And if Alice turned right, Bob will be turning left at the same time. And vice versa. Not as a result of their actions, just a correlation. But of course this is silly and impossible.
That said, it is one of the funniest articles I've ever read (yes, I RTFA. Sorry;). Filled with subtle jokes, and has some science juice. It appears that the eyes are a quite good detector indeed, very resistant to noise.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Two people observing the same entangled phonon state won't become entangled, that's just bad reporting. You'll get partial coherence between a bunch of electrons in the retinas, that will last next to no time, and that's all. If you like, the human eye will act as a large reservoir of noise to the photons and make them lose coherence. Having the photons entangle the people is like saying a snowflake can significantly increase your body temperature — the actual effect is way too small to measure and th
these guys don't get out much? (Score:5, Funny)
so we could have the first humans to experience entanglement within months
I'm guessing the avalanche of crazy whacked out girlfriend stories is about to start...
Re:these guys don't get out much? (Score:5, Funny)
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to stalking this one chick....
Re:these guys don't get out much? (Score:5, Funny)
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to stalking this one chick....
Sorry to disappoint you. That is a guy with female login-id.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
so we could have the first humans to experience entanglement within months
I'm guessing the avalanche of crazy whacked out girlfriend stories is about to start...
Yes, and the first story will start out like this, "My girlfriend and I ..." and we'll all stop reading right there.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:these guys don't get out much? (Score:5, Funny)
Not here, I never saw my crazy (ex) girlfriend coming...
For people who are about to post an immature, snide comment about this being the possible reason for HartDev and his girlfriend's estrangement (ostensibly due to HartDev's ineffectual sexual performance) or how they have personally witnessed the orgasmic pleasure of HartDev's ex-girlfriend (insinuating that they not only were able to locate the ex-girlfriend of a virtually anonymous poster, but have also succeeded in obtaining coitus with her and moreover had satisfied her pure animal lust one warm summer night with the moonlight playing upon her silken hair, her nipples erect on her firm heaving breasts, while every thrust of the throbbing manhood penetrated deep within her quivering quim bringing her ever closer to a screaming climax the likes of which only the mythical consorts of the Greek gods have ever experienced), please take note:
HartDev is blind, you insensitive clods!
Re: (Score:2)
ROFL I'm not sure that double vision simultaneously contracted with beer goggles is the same thing as photonic entanglement... though I'm certain that there is room for such a story somewhere [wikia.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Damn, it's already there [wikia.com]
This news .... (Score:2)
is for NERDS....
And I don't get a lick of it. I started to RTFA but then I started to nod off and drool.
This sounds fascinating... sooooo anyone care to offer an explanation? Pictures are welcome... and metaphor encouraged!
We can hope (Score:2)
I'd like to see more research in this direction. It might eventually have implications on the experimental testing of the microtubules-tapping-into-the-quantum-gravity bullshit that Roger Penrose has been peddling as an explanation for how the brain gets intelligence. It might not be great for Penrose's book sales in the long run but it will be good for science, or at least we can hope.
Re:We can hope (Score:5, Informative)
There are no quantum-entanglement phenomena going on in the body.
To put it in simple terms: It's too warm, and too wet.
Or in a bit more advanced terms: The decoherence times are FAR too short to have any chemical effect, much less a biological one. Almost nobody takes Penrose's ideas seriously, but just for the hell of it, the cosmologist Max Tegmark did the math a number of years ago to prove it.
Here's a link to an article about that paper that was in Science [mit.edu].
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
That's not to say that there's no promise in there. I'm not really in favor of the idea of quantum consciousness, but it is interesting to think about.
Not that long ago John H. Conway and Simon Kochen proved a theorem they call the "Strong Free Will Theorem" (which improves on past results; hence the "strong") that shows that if the quantum world satisfies a few axioms then the measured response of a particle is not a function of the past state of the universe. I.e. if we have free will then so do elementar
Re:We can hope (Score:4, Informative)
>To put it in simple terms: It's too warm, and too wet.
Penrose never claimed that quantum computations were going on in the conscious brain. In fact, he specifically says "non-computational action". What he proposed is that quantum processes in collections of microtubules might manifest macro behaviors at the neuronal level. Tegmark is way off base when he starts ranting about quantum computing and doesn't seem to understand Penrose's theory. As to Tegmark's claims of to rapid decoherence... he doesn't have a clue how hot or how wet or what other factors might be in play at the microtubule level, so really it's just one guy's opinion...
> Almost nobody takes Penrose's ideas seriously...
Well, technically it's Hameroff's theory, but Penrose was a big and influential supporter. However, there are still a few advocates of the idea as evidenced by the large number of books on the subject from Mindell, Walker, Paster, Radin, Rosenblum, Kuttner, Talbot, Stapp, Barrett, Lockwood, Wolberg, Clayton, Stern, Jibu, Yasue, Tuszynski,...(I got tired of typing - I didn't run out of authors)... So "almost nobody" seems a bit of a mischaracterization...
BTW, for the record, I don't personally buy into the Hameroff-Penrose theory of quantum consciousness, but at least I understand it. I wonder if Tegmark ever read "The Emperor's New Mind" or "Shadows Of The Mind"...
Re: (Score:2)
Let's be careful here - there are quantum processes going on in the body (all the time !) and, unless something really weird is going on, at least some of them will show entanglement. Indeed, if you take two quantum particles in a random state they will be partially entangled.
Secondly, the argument in the article is quite specific to the proposed mechanism and there is just so much we don't know ! In particular, why is it not possible to ha
Not quite... (Score:5, Informative)
That's not what entanglement is. It's knowing "this is currently the same as that" or "this is currently the opposite of that" without knowing what "this" or "that" actually is. There is no "connection" or "influence", just a relation that says knowing what "this" is tells you about what "that" is (until it gets changed by interacting with the environment).
Re:Not quite... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not quite... (Score:4, Interesting)
Bingo. It's saddening how quantum mechanics is made out to be so much more mysterious and spooky than it really is.
A non-quantum version of entanglement is this: I cut a coin through its side, so I have two pieces, one with the head, and one with the tail side. I put each one and in a separate envelope, and give one envelope to Alice, and the other two Bob.
I separate them by a jillion miles.
Now Alice opens her envelope and sees tails. So she knows Bob must have heads. Wow! So awesome and spooky and mysterious and wonderful! Not! They're not sending information to each other or influencing each other. Alice only has access to the information she *brought* with her when they separated.
And after she sees the half-coin, if she polishes the tail image off and inscribes another image ... no more entanglement! That is, by looking at her half-coin, you no longer are capable of learning what Bob had.
Ditto on the quantum level. When the particles are entangled, it simply means that learning one tells you something about the other ... but influence spread is still limited to the speed of light.
***
Now, with that in mind, can anyone clarify what exactly is meant by this paper? What do human eyes add, and what insight is gained by proposing or performing this experiment?
Re:Not quite... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The coins-in-envelope model is the same idea as the "hidden variable" theory, no? As I understand it, observations don't support the idea that the photons (or whatever) have a "heads" or "tails" hidden away somewhere that they synchronized when they were together- the probabilities are wrong.
No, the hidden variable theory is independent of explanation I gave. I didn't intend for the analogy to carry over so far to claim that "learning more information can increase your knowledge beyond probability assignment of the outcomes", which is what the hidden variable theory says. My point was just that entanglement of the particles means that -- until the entanglement is broken -- learning one tells you about the other, if only in a probabilistic sense. It is *not* a continual interaction that jumps
Re: (Score:2)
Alice only has access to the information she *brought* with her when they separated.
it makes sense, and is essentially determinism, AFAICT. I don't really understand how this is possible:
And after she sees the half-coin, if she polishes the tail image off and inscribes another image ... no more entanglement! That is, by looking at her half-coin, you no longer are capable of learning what Bob had.
Okay, she wipes out the state (or rather non-state?) of the particle by the interaction of viewing. It's not my field at all, but it looks pretty much identical to Schroedinger's Cat. But I'd say that's the point that gets viewed as weird/possibly mystical. I could be completely off base, but it seems to me that the simplest example is the problem of knowing an electron's
Re:Not quite... (Score:5, Informative)
You're missing the point by describing quantum entanglement as "less mysterious". It was Einstein's (discredited) "hidden variable" theory that used the analogy of two (unknown but predetermined) coins in a pair of envelopes. In that analogy the state of the coins exists but is unknown, and the relationship between the two coins is known. The key feature of entanglement of a pair of photons is that the state of the photons is FUNDAMENTALLY UNKNOWN i.e. "does not exist", but the relationship between the two photons is known.
The only way you can explain that is in the real world is that the instant the state of one photon is measured (remember, quantum theory states that the state does not exist until measured) it them communicates this new information to the other photon (faster than the speed of light).
If we were going to try to stick to the coin analogy, we would be mailing two identical dice in envelopes to two different cities. Who ever opens their letter first roles the dice. Whenever the second person opens their letter and rolls their dice, they get the SAME RESULT as the first person. Both dice are completely random, but they both roll the same result, ***even if they roll their dice at exactly the same instant***.
Now I know you're thinking "the second dice isn't random at all". Well, it doesn't make any sense, but it's exactly as random as the first dice, it's just that the dice are both random in the same way. (btw, this only works for the first dice role. Looking at the die destroys the entanglement)
Einstein said (politely) that "entanglement" was proof that Quantum Theory was a load of fucking bullshit. Problem is: entanglement happens.
On the bright side, you're in exalted company if you think this is a load of bullshit. :)
As for why they are using eyeballs instead of electronic photon detectors... I have no idea. Based on the abstract (not the "fine" article) I'd say they were really working on amplifying entangled photons (which sounds HARD!) and someone said, "hey, if we could cascade >x photons, you could actually see it....". Well, after that, it's just a matter of writing an important-sounding article to justify the expense! :)
And I for one welcome our new entangled overlords.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Your analogy would be better if stated as follows:
The spooky part is that you separate the (supports of the future)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that according to quantum mechanics, if after handing out the envelopes, you hypnotize Alice to see heads when she opens the envelope, Bob will see tails.
Yes, that's a dreadful oversimplification but that's the analogy you gave me to work with.
Your scenario is an accurate analogy for the hidden variables hypothesis (and local realism). However, experimental evidence doesn't support hidden variables and local realism. That is, that the measurements are of some characteristic that is located entirely w
Re:Not quite... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now Alice opens her envelope and sees tails. So she knows Bob must have heads. (...) Alice only has access to the information she *brought* with her when they separated.
That's correct, but that's not the whole story. From what you said, it looks like classic mechanics is good enough to explain it, and it's not.
The problem is that there is not only one way you can measure the state of this "coin" -- depending on the orientation of your measurement, you get heads or tails on that specific orientation. So, when Alice measures the coin in a specific orientation, this *orientation* is "felt" by Bob's coin, and it may influence the result of Bob's measurement. That effect simply can't be explained by classic mechanics.
For a more detailed explanation, see the section on Bell's Inequality in http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/f04quantum/notes/lecture1.pdf [berkeley.edu] (warning: requires a bit of math).
not quite a first, guys (Score:4, Interesting)
We live in the physical world and experience entanglement all the time. Physics doesn't stop outside the lab.
That's a cute gimmick, but that's all it is.
Re:not quite a first, guys (Score:5, Insightful)
We live in the physical world and experience entanglement all the time
Absolutely. This is just a PR stunt, and very bad science if you think that science involves not misleading naive people for the purposes of PR.
The claim that the two human observers would be entangled is problematic at best. Not only wouldn't any entanglement last longer than the coherence time of a human being (~10^27 particles in thermal equilibrium at 310 K!), it is difficult to understand how the researchers would fail to notice that in some reference frames one observer would detect their photons quite a bit sooner than the other observer. In those frames the entanglement of the observation systems never happens, which is why sensible people don't talk about such things.
The very notion of assigning "an instant" to an "event" that is by its nature nonlocal is simply incoherent. This is what makes the whole business spooky: it cannot be described using the relativistic physics that necessarily describes the world of human experience.
Re: (Score:2)
well said.. mod this up please..
Re: (Score:2)
Not only wouldn't any entanglement last longer than the coherence time of a human being (~10^27 particles in thermal equilibrium at 310 K!), it is difficult to understand how the researchers would fail to notice that in some reference frames one observer would detect their photons quite a bit sooner than the other observer.
Decoherence isn't a button that resets all entanglements at once. Otherwise, the experiment wouldn't work at all. It should be possible for the coherence time of the experiment to be much longer than the coherence time of the human brain. All you would need to do is insure that there's no entanglement between the quantum teleportation and the internal state of the human observer.
huh? Wha? (Score:3, Funny)
I know, I know, I should do a Google search. Problem is, I suspect that I'd have to construct my search queries very carefully, as I worry about what kind of results I'd get...
Yeouch. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is getting closer to a novel by Greg Egan called Quarantine, in which a girl escapes from a mental institution. How she escaped, nobody knows. Cameras show nothing. Security doors show no logs. The plastic sheet used for the window shows no anomalies of breaking and fixing.
Turns out her brain was "broken" in a most unusual sense: she cannot collapse her own view. Instead, her multiple worlds (from the MWI) combine and create a non-collapsed lifeform. All this comes about in finding a created device that selectively prevents the collapse, but allows the user to change it at will.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Why 2 people? (Score:2)
Why do two people need to agree when one well educated physicist can agree with themselves? (cause all the best ones are crazy, oh wait, those are mathematicians)
Many eyes more sensitive than humans. (Score:4, Informative)
Hey we need more funding!!! (Score:2)
Instead we need to introduce a subjective element so that we can find whatever we want to find.
I wrote a very short story kind of like this (Score:2)
http://thelazysci-fiauthor.blogspot.com/2007/07/observation-via-entangled-computers.html [blogspot.com]
but kind of different.
Are they for real? Its not April 1st yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Are they for real? Its not April 1st yet... (Score:4, Interesting)
Last time I checked the human eye was incapable of determining anything about a photon except whether it was received or not, and the color if in sufficient quantity for a long enough period of time. Polarization? Not a chance.
Humans are barely capable of detecting polarization. If you're reading this on an LCD monitor, you can probably see the effect if you look at a completely white image.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haidinger's_brush
More to the point, yeah, TFA seems like BS.
the most exact apparatus... (Score:2)
"The human being himself, to the extent that he makes sound use of his senses, is the most exact physical apparatus that can exist." (Goethe, Scientific Studies)
Observers would not become entangled (Score:2, Insightful)
> the two human observers involved in the test would become entangled...
Not really. By definition, once "observed" the photons cease to be entangled (the wavefunction collapses)- and by "observed" we mean that one or the other photon is sensed by a rod or cone in one of the observers' eyes.
Re: (Score:2)
Not really. By definition, once "observed" the photons cease to be entangled (the wavefunction collapses)- and by "observed" we mean that one or the other photon is sensed by a rod or cone in one of the observers' eyes.
If I understand this stuff correctly, photons only cease to be entangled for those particular observers. For the meta-observers (who watch the observers who watch the photons), until the meta-observation takes place, the observers are entangled as well.
I already have enough entanglement (Score:2)
"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all (Score:3, Funny)
How many libraries of congress..... (Score:2)
Is a handful of photons?
Sounds like a frikkin lot of photons to me. I would've thought a human could see much less than a whole hand filled with photons.
Who to tangle with (Score:2)
What makes me feel slightly uneasy about this is that these entangled photon are bound to be flitting around in nature all the time - and while there are, admittedly, some that I wouldn't mind getting entangled with, there are more that I would rather not be too intimate with.
xkcd (Score:2)
Human eyes? (Score:2)
Where do they get *those*?
Oh, attached to people. Never mind. This sounded Frankensteinian. :P
Re:What it'd be like to be entangled: (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No. They are statute.
Re: (Score:2)
The bigger question I have is how they managed to trap all these photons in someone's hand and who counted them all.
Besides, it seems like you could fit a lot of photons in your hand...surely our scientific instruments can detect less than a handful...
Re:What could possibly go wrong? They are just eye (Score:4, Interesting)
They're just chemicals. If they ever did achieve momentary entanglement, chances are that there would be no way of detecting or knowing such a thing had actually occurred. In the grand scheme of things, one person may register as having seen a tiny, dim flash of light that is identical to the tiny, dim flash of light that the other one saw.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm trying to mod you but I can't find the "WTF?!" modifier.
> For any of you who do not follow politics,...
Can somebody please explain this to me? Its Friday afternoon here. After lunch. My brain is not working.
Re:ESP = Quantum entanglement (Score:5, Interesting)
I can propose a real quantum and biological mechanism for people to think along the same lines, simultaneously
Do two different brains operate in the same way, though? What data format do you use for the transmission of information? It's not like we all install the same mental OS when we're born...
I genuinely don't believe that we can "stream" thought from one brain to another in the way you seem to be suggesting. Neurological development isn't fixed, it's highly influenced by environment, culture, genetics, food... That two independent brains would interpret the same information in exactly the same way seems highly unlikely, if not impossible. Hell, I'm honestly amazed that we even manage to communicate as well as we do.
I'm also willing to admit that my viewpoint here has been highly influenced by Wittgenstein :)
Re:Ah, but once entangled... (Score:5, Funny)