"The Facts" basically say that among the statements, "Your experiment design isn't predestined by the universe to make it accidentally seem like quantum mechanics is true," "the state of the universe today is all you need to know to predict the state of the universe tomorrow," and "an experiment only has one outcome," there is at least one lie. If the first one is a lie that's superdeterminism, the second one the Copenhagen interpretation and the last one Many Worlds. What bothers me about getting philosophical is, philosophers will attempt to choose one or more based on intellectual aesthetic criteria that we developed from the womb onwards in the macroscopic world, while in reality the only legitimate answer is "we don't know." I think that is broadly speaking a problem that hampers the effectiveness of philosophy, there is not enough willingness to say "the present information does not permit a conclusion."
This comment started out good but then stumbled in to some odd critique of philosophy as being incapable of dealing with unknowable things when indeed that seems to be perfectly within the purview of philosophy.
Humes Problem of Induction, for instance, is exactly an example of philosophical practice grappling with these unanswerables.
There is also the fourth possibility that the physical space is not similar to euclidean space at short distances, and locality in euclidean space is not physical. In this case the entangled particles are actually linked with one another, and can transmit the information about the filter they are interacting with, but because particles prefer to be linked to closeby particles, the long range links easily break not allowing to pass much information.
My issue with the second statement, about knowing the exact state of the universe at any given reference time is that by definition the information within that state would require the entire space of the universe to store with sufficient detail to make an accurate prediction of future states. (One might also assume it would require a real universe's worth of processing power to compute a new state as well.)
I believe it's impossible to completely isolate any segment of that universe (E.G. to make it smaller and thus predictable within the capability bounds of a larger universe) without literally removing it from that universe. That no matter what every part of an existing universe interacts with every other part, even if very, very, indirectly.
As for the question of free will: I believe the biology is largely deterministic. For me, that leaves the main set of questions in the direction of all of the elements that might happen between, outside, or otherwise beyond our current understanding of how the universe works. I feel that if there is any actual freedom in free will that is where it comes from; otherwise it's just the RNG being too complex to understand completely masking the lack of actual choice.
I think you forgot one: "The principle of locality always applies" / "no spooky action at a distance" -- while local hidden variable interpretations have been ruled out, nonlocal ones are still very much on the table.
I don't think the problem with superdeterminism is the lack of free will, but with the way it doesn't really give you anything mentally to work with. It posits some early state from which everything could be deterministically extrapolated... except that state is both very complicated and completely hidden. It takes all of the probabilities and shoves them in a black box and says, "The answers exist, and they're in there. But you can't actually look in the box for the answers. You have to go do the experiment and wait for the speed of light to propagate the answer to you."
Like all interpretations, it's mathematically equivalent to any other. It's just a question of what helps you think about the problem, and I don't think many people find it very edifying. You can replace the box with a random number generator, which is at least small enough to fit in your pocket. The superdeterminism box appears to have been crammed full of untold centillions of answers... none of which are accessible beforehand.
If there were reason to think that the superdeterminism box were somehow smaller -- if it all really came down to just one random bit, say, that had been magnified by chaotic interactions to appear like more -- that would attract some attention. And I suppose it would be conceptually testable, by running Laplace's demon in reverse, except that that's not possible either from inside the universe.
So it doesn't really come as a surprise that superdeterminism falls behind MWI or Copenhagen or even pilot wave, because each of those hands you something that you can use to mentally organize the world. Superdeterminism just seems to hand you a catchprase, "As it was foretold in the Long Ago -- but which I just found out about".
Whats wrong with a pseudo-random number generator? You start the universe with 1 million random bits and then just iterate your function on them. How would we detect repetition at the 2^1 mil level? Maybe the universe would repeat itself after a while, but how would we know?
Superdeterminism also plays nicely with the simulation hypothesis. You seed the virtual machine with some randomness and the physical laws and then you run the simulation.
The thing about superdeterminism is that it's only interesting if you want to argue philosophy. If you're dealing with hidden variables (or even measurement errors) the only practical tool in your box for handling them is probability distributions.
So either way, you've got a probability distribution. And at this point people just apply Occam's Razor and get on with their lives. You can theorize an infinite number of systems that work exactly like the real world. The question is whether they're useful.
In Superdeterminism each time a particle has to collapse, instead of rolling a dice it looks into a secret table of hidden variables that was calculated at the beginning of the universe. The table was calculated carefully so the apparent random choices follow all the laws of quantum mechanics, and the results are equivalent to what you would expect if any of the other interpretations where correct.
To calculate this secret table you must simulate all the interactions and path in the universe until it ends, because you must know which particles will be entangled, which result will have the "random" generator in the experiments, ...
So the universe is only a movie that follows the random choices made at the beginning of the universe. But the choices are not arbitrary, they have the correct values so when the events really happen they follow the laws of physics. For example, the random choices at the beginning of the universe make it look that you can't transmit information faster than light.
Physics study the laws of the real universe, but we can redefine Physics as the study of the laws that study the random number generator. Both real-Physics and initial-rng-Physics follow special relativity. Bot agree about QM. Both agree about the Bell inequality.
So with Superdeterminism we solve the problem of QM in the real word, because everything we is already determined. Now the problem is how the RNG at the beginning of the universe work to simulate QM and all the other effects. Let's call the study of the RNG Physics. Now the problem is as hard as before Superdeterminism.
What you describe is not superdeterminism, but a replay of a non local theory. The important part happens in the first run when you calculate the table.
What superdeterminism says, is that there exists local and deterministic evaluation rule that will compute consecutive states of the universe, but simply because of the way the rule works experimenters far away end up always choosing the experiments that yield correct results.
Superdeterminism is unpopular because the existence of such evaluation rule seems very unlikely.
I'm not fond of superdeterminism since it's not that useful for making predictions. Any purely deterministic model has implications for free will, so that doesn't seem to be a legitimate criticism.
Actually I would like to know more about provable violations if Bell's theorem as I am somewhat attached to local determinism and haven't seen an experiment that I would consider convincing. I mean the theories behind the experiments are sound, but I'm not sure they're actually measuring what they think they are measuring due to limitations in the experiment setup -- in order to prove a violation of locality your system cannot be in a cyclostationary equilibrium.
In such an equilibrium the system state effectively becomes a standing wave so you risk measuring an effect that was actually a result of a previous cycle and mistakenly interpret it as being a result of the current cycle -- implying a violation in locality because the "cause" was outside of the light cone of the effect. Note that this is analogous to confusing the group and phase velocities of a radio wave (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-phase-v...).
> In such an equilibrium the system state effectively becomes a standing wave so you risk measuring an effect that was actually a result of a previous cycle and mistakenly interpret it as being a result of the current cycle
I don't know where you're getting this from, but it doesn't describe quantum systems on which Bell inequality violations have been experimentally confirmed (such as photon pairs from parametric down conversion).
The only "loophole" that has not been completely closed at this point is that we don't have 100% efficient detectors, but we have detectors that are well over 90% efficient so the claim that somehow all the stuff that will "fix" the Bell inequality violations is hiding in the small percentage of photons not being detected isn't very compelling.
There is something very Taoistic about superdeterminism.
And there is something very Taoistic about homotopy type theory too.
Also, I feel that both superdeterminism and homotopy type theory have traces of the holographic principle in them in a somewhat conceptual or abstract way.
Perhaps there exists a nice correspondence between superdeterminism and homotopy type theory that can be used to extend (in a purely functional and categorical way) the simulation hypothesis into a full-fledged theory (and perhaps with its own nice little axiomatic system) to make sense of reality.
If superdeterminism explains quantum mechanics, why not cosmic inflation? Why not matter asymmetry? Why not abiogenesis? Why not Brexit? Superdeterminism, by construction, can explain everything — and all there’s left to do is pray to God.
Firstly I don't think anyone has actually formalised superdeterminism in a way that the principle of explosion can be logically introduced to formally undermine superdeterminism. What you are doing here is akin to stretching the conceptual relevance of Godel's incompleteness theorems and trying to use it to prove or disprove the existence of God.
Basically I don't see how it makes sense to say that superdeterminism contains a principle of explosion. Perhaps my interpretation of superdeterminism is very different from yours. Or maybe I simply don't see the picture as you do. If that is the case please enlighten me.
Secondly I think you are missing the point of superdeterminism here.
There is something very computational (and perhaps Taoistic) about superdeterminism. Apparently under this framework the whole notion of "explaining things" is nullified and becomes meaningless. It occurs to me that our everyday notion of "explaining things" exists at a lower abstraction level and thus loses relevance in the face of superdeterminism. I believe if you really want to undermine superdeterminism as a theory (or as a philosophy), the more relevant question here to ask is: is there anything useful/meaningful about reality (or the universe) that can be inferred assuming superdeterminism? And then of course if you are a scientist you would then ask: are they experimentally verifiable?
Can someone explain more clearly how being in a deterministic universe resolves the “problem” of Bell inequalities? It seems like even if the universe were deterministic it would not cause the classic polarizing-filters Bell inequality to seem “reasonable”. In fact it makes it seem less reasonable to me!
The determinism doesn't solve the problem, it makes the non-locality more visible because some people think that state of two particles far away influencing one another is somehow worse than the wave function in whole universe changing it's value at once.
The superdeterminism "solves" the problem by claiming that there is no problem to begin with, and the results look non-local only because the experimenters always pick experiments that look non-local.
How can a local deterministic theory create such complex behavior as thinking people, and at the same time constrain it in a way that time taken to play mario level is correlated with a photon experiment a year later, is left for the reader as an exercise.
If Superdeterminism means that the initial state of the universe is such that the universe appears to follow quantum mechanics... why? Why would every single decision have its resolution set in a manner that appears to follow QM?
Superdeterminism is a self-defeating philosophy. In essence, it cedes everything to random chance, and makes all scientific inquiry meaningless. There is no longer any "why" or "how." There is merely, "That's just the way it is." Any apparent order or structure which might be observed is exactly that: merely apparent. Therefore any attempt to understand the universe is vain.
It is little better than the presumption that planets move because a prime mover moves them. It is, in essence, to give as the final answer: "Planets move as they do because they cannot do anything else."
>In essence, it cedes everything to random chance, and makes all scientific inquiry meaningless. There is no longer any "why" or "how." There is merely, "That's just the way it is."
whatshisface|6 years ago
MiroF|6 years ago
Humes Problem of Induction, for instance, is exactly an example of philosophical practice grappling with these unanswerables.
chr1|6 years ago
mjevans|6 years ago
I believe it's impossible to completely isolate any segment of that universe (E.G. to make it smaller and thus predictable within the capability bounds of a larger universe) without literally removing it from that universe. That no matter what every part of an existing universe interacts with every other part, even if very, very, indirectly.
As for the question of free will: I believe the biology is largely deterministic. For me, that leaves the main set of questions in the direction of all of the elements that might happen between, outside, or otherwise beyond our current understanding of how the universe works. I feel that if there is any actual freedom in free will that is where it comes from; otherwise it's just the RNG being too complex to understand completely masking the lack of actual choice.
cbkeller|6 years ago
samirillian|6 years ago
masteranza|6 years ago
[deleted]
jfengel|6 years ago
Like all interpretations, it's mathematically equivalent to any other. It's just a question of what helps you think about the problem, and I don't think many people find it very edifying. You can replace the box with a random number generator, which is at least small enough to fit in your pocket. The superdeterminism box appears to have been crammed full of untold centillions of answers... none of which are accessible beforehand.
If there were reason to think that the superdeterminism box were somehow smaller -- if it all really came down to just one random bit, say, that had been magnified by chaotic interactions to appear like more -- that would attract some attention. And I suppose it would be conceptually testable, by running Laplace's demon in reverse, except that that's not possible either from inside the universe.
So it doesn't really come as a surprise that superdeterminism falls behind MWI or Copenhagen or even pilot wave, because each of those hands you something that you can use to mentally organize the world. Superdeterminism just seems to hand you a catchprase, "As it was foretold in the Long Ago -- but which I just found out about".
zazaraka|6 years ago
Superdeterminism also plays nicely with the simulation hypothesis. You seed the virtual machine with some randomness and the physical laws and then you run the simulation.
moomin|6 years ago
So either way, you've got a probability distribution. And at this point people just apply Occam's Razor and get on with their lives. You can theorize an infinite number of systems that work exactly like the real world. The question is whether they're useful.
kgwgk|6 years ago
Like the Many Worlds Interpretation!
trevyn|6 years ago
gus_massa|6 years ago
To calculate this secret table you must simulate all the interactions and path in the universe until it ends, because you must know which particles will be entangled, which result will have the "random" generator in the experiments, ...
So the universe is only a movie that follows the random choices made at the beginning of the universe. But the choices are not arbitrary, they have the correct values so when the events really happen they follow the laws of physics. For example, the random choices at the beginning of the universe make it look that you can't transmit information faster than light.
Physics study the laws of the real universe, but we can redefine Physics as the study of the laws that study the random number generator. Both real-Physics and initial-rng-Physics follow special relativity. Bot agree about QM. Both agree about the Bell inequality.
So with Superdeterminism we solve the problem of QM in the real word, because everything we is already determined. Now the problem is how the RNG at the beginning of the universe work to simulate QM and all the other effects. Let's call the study of the RNG Physics. Now the problem is as hard as before Superdeterminism.
chr1|6 years ago
What superdeterminism says, is that there exists local and deterministic evaluation rule that will compute consecutive states of the universe, but simply because of the way the rule works experimenters far away end up always choosing the experiments that yield correct results.
Superdeterminism is unpopular because the existence of such evaluation rule seems very unlikely.
IX-103|6 years ago
Actually I would like to know more about provable violations if Bell's theorem as I am somewhat attached to local determinism and haven't seen an experiment that I would consider convincing. I mean the theories behind the experiments are sound, but I'm not sure they're actually measuring what they think they are measuring due to limitations in the experiment setup -- in order to prove a violation of locality your system cannot be in a cyclostationary equilibrium.
In such an equilibrium the system state effectively becomes a standing wave so you risk measuring an effect that was actually a result of a previous cycle and mistakenly interpret it as being a result of the current cycle -- implying a violation in locality because the "cause" was outside of the light cone of the effect. Note that this is analogous to confusing the group and phase velocities of a radio wave (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-phase-v...).
pdonis|6 years ago
I don't know where you're getting this from, but it doesn't describe quantum systems on which Bell inequality violations have been experimentally confirmed (such as photon pairs from parametric down conversion).
The only "loophole" that has not been completely closed at this point is that we don't have 100% efficient detectors, but we have detectors that are well over 90% efficient so the claim that somehow all the stuff that will "fix" the Bell inequality violations is hiding in the small percentage of photons not being detected isn't very compelling.
archibaldJ|6 years ago
And there is something very Taoistic about homotopy type theory too.
Also, I feel that both superdeterminism and homotopy type theory have traces of the holographic principle in them in a somewhat conceptual or abstract way.
Perhaps there exists a nice correspondence between superdeterminism and homotopy type theory that can be used to extend (in a purely functional and categorical way) the simulation hypothesis into a full-fledged theory (and perhaps with its own nice little axiomatic system) to make sense of reality.
scythe|6 years ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion
If superdeterminism explains quantum mechanics, why not cosmic inflation? Why not matter asymmetry? Why not abiogenesis? Why not Brexit? Superdeterminism, by construction, can explain everything — and all there’s left to do is pray to God.
archibaldJ|6 years ago
Firstly I don't think anyone has actually formalised superdeterminism in a way that the principle of explosion can be logically introduced to formally undermine superdeterminism. What you are doing here is akin to stretching the conceptual relevance of Godel's incompleteness theorems and trying to use it to prove or disprove the existence of God.
Basically I don't see how it makes sense to say that superdeterminism contains a principle of explosion. Perhaps my interpretation of superdeterminism is very different from yours. Or maybe I simply don't see the picture as you do. If that is the case please enlighten me.
Secondly I think you are missing the point of superdeterminism here.
There is something very computational (and perhaps Taoistic) about superdeterminism. Apparently under this framework the whole notion of "explaining things" is nullified and becomes meaningless. It occurs to me that our everyday notion of "explaining things" exists at a lower abstraction level and thus loses relevance in the face of superdeterminism. I believe if you really want to undermine superdeterminism as a theory (or as a philosophy), the more relevant question here to ask is: is there anything useful/meaningful about reality (or the universe) that can be inferred assuming superdeterminism? And then of course if you are a scientist you would then ask: are they experimentally verifiable?
zwkrt|6 years ago
chr1|6 years ago
The superdeterminism "solves" the problem by claiming that there is no problem to begin with, and the results look non-local only because the experimenters always pick experiments that look non-local.
How can a local deterministic theory create such complex behavior as thinking people, and at the same time constrain it in a way that time taken to play mario level is correlated with a photon experiment a year later, is left for the reader as an exercise.
kgwgk|6 years ago
archibaldJ|6 years ago
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao. It flows through all things,
inside and outside, and returns
to the origin of all things. The Tao is great.
The universe is great.
Earth is great.
Man is great.
These are the four great powers. Man follows the earth.
Earth follows the universe.
The universe follows the Tao.
The Tao follows only itself.
eridius|6 years ago
teilo|6 years ago
It is little better than the presumption that planets move because a prime mover moves them. It is, in essence, to give as the final answer: "Planets move as they do because they cannot do anything else."
coldtea|6 years ago
Which doesn't make it wrong...