3 ms·

Maybe a bit off topic, but i've always wondered why most physicists dismiss the possibility of superdeterminism to escape Bell's theorem. Are there any physicis

Maybe a bit off topic, but i've always wondered why most physicists dismiss the possibility of superdeterminism to escape Bell's theorem. Are there any physicists here who would like to elaborate?

steve76 7y ago
If we had that, we should easily be able to speak to the dead! Spoiler Alert: Until further notice, you die!
lisper 7y ago
Not a physicist, but I've been studying QM as a hobby for thirty years. The problem with superdeterminism (SD) is that if QM is true then SD is not falsifiable. SD says that all experimental outcomes are deterministic but derive from hidden state, i.e. some sort of "Cosmic Turing Machine" (CTM) calculating the digits of pi or something like that. So now what? The CTM has to be perpetually hidden from us, otherwise we could examine its state and predict the outcomes of quantum experiments, and that would violate QM. So if QM is true, then the CTM necessarily has the same ontological status as an Invisible Pink Unicorn (IPU). In fact, the deterministic calculations underlying SD may well be carried out by a literal IPU. If QM is correct then there's no way to determine this, even in principle.
- nabla9 7y ago
  Bell-inequality experiments still that leave room for hidden-variable models that fall short of full superdeterminism. Relatively recent experiment using photons from stars in the Milky Way "Cosmic Bell Test: Measurement Settings from Milky Way Stars" http://web.mit.edu/asf/www/Papers/Handsteiner_Friedman+2017.pdf http://web.mit.edu/asf/www/Papers/Handsteiner_Friedman+2017.... The experiment excludes local-realist models with local hidden variable younger than 600 light years. Similar test with cosmic microwave background could push the limit to the early universe.
- corey_moncure 7y ago
  How do you tell if your code is running on a virtual machine or on bare metal?
  - lisper 7y ago
    In our case we know we're running on "quantum bare metal" because we can do quantum mechanics experiments.
kgwgk 7y ago
From the Aspect’s piece I linked to in another comment: “Yet more foreign to the usual way of reasoning in physics is the “free-will loophole.” This is based on the idea that the choices of orientations we consider independent (because of relativistic causality) could in fact be correlated by an event in their common past. Since all events have a common past if we go back far enough in time—possibly to the big bang—any observed correlation could be justified by invoking such an explanation. Taken to its logical extreme, however, this argument implies that humans do not have free will, since two experimentalists, even separated by a great distance, could not be said to have independently chosen the settings of their measuring apparatuses. Upon being accused of metaphysics for his fundamental assumption that experimentalists have the liberty to freely choose their polarizer settings, Bell replied: “Disgrace indeed, to be caught in a metaphysical position! But it seems to me that in this matter I am just pursuing my profession of theoretical physics.” I would like to humbly join Bell and claim that, in rejecting such an ad hoc explanation that might be invoked for any observed correlation, “I am just pursuing my profession of experimental physics.”
ajmarcic 7y ago
Why would a physicist embrace superdeterminism? Present science holds the falsifiability of a theory as a necessity for its utility. Under the light of SD every experimental result may be impossible to interpret as supportive of a theory. Free will seems to be the most difficult philosophical question. Accepting SD invalidates the scientific method's approach to learning about the world. You may be interested in other non-local hidden variable theories as a way to sidestep Bell's Theorem & the Copenhagen interpretation.
- rytill 7y ago
  > Free will seems to be the most difficult philosophical question Please elaborate. It seems like it’s not even possible to phrase a question about free will that makes sense. What would it mean for an entity to have free will, such that you could ask a question about whether or not we had it? If you could ask a meaningful question, it doesn’t seem as difficult as explaining why anything does or does not exist, or qualia.
  - chr1 7y ago
    There is an analog of free will that works even in a cellular automaton. For that you need two things: 1. the part of cellular automata describing a thinking entity can be separated from the rest of the world: that is changing states of cells anywhere outside of it doesn't change the state of the entity itself. 2. it is not possible to replace the computation describing this entity with anything simpler. 2 means that any method of predicting what this thinking entity choses is completely equivalent to that entity living and making the choice it wants by itself. And 1 means that the part of network is indeed a separate entity. With superdeterminism 1 can not be true, and a spin change of a single particle far away triggers very complex change in behavior of all thinking entities that were close to that particle in the past.
- steve76 7y ago
  Knowledge ends with the experimenter's life. The end of all particles are those that arc off the wire and cut your heart out based on your genome alone. All atoms are only different versions of graphene. Without humanity, there is only death. Whimper, and cower at your pettiness. You've lived in paradise all this time. Your self-righteousness lobotomizes you to an effective evil wicked being. All cosmic censors drops. State secrets, a police sting operation, to fool idle children from poisoning us. You have no choice to face your terrifying immortality, as all your faults and misdeeds lay open to the world. It's either that, or I UWB you all into Micro Plumb Island, a living breathing walking medicinal coma to contain your stupidity from murdering us all. We are at the mercy of wicked and evil men and women. They make sure the insiders stay in and the outsiders stay out. Our only option is to scare them, and scare them good. They do indeed have the keys to the kingdom. They won't open the doors just because they are nice. It's not like anyone hasn't died speaking Christ's name before. We need to let them know death is no escape. We keep you alive, no matter if we have to rip your genome out of the noise of the Cosmos itself, poisoning everything out there that is non-human. And all just to prove a point. Such is the stubbornness of such fraudulent and violent treacherous fools!
Strilanc 7y ago
Not a physicist, but in my mind the basic obstacle to superdeterminism is that in the initial state at t=0 you have O(S) degrees of freedom but throughout some chunk of spacetime there will be O(S * T) Bell violations (where 'S' is "amount of space" and 'T' is "amount of time"). The degrees of freedom you get is fixed, but the constraints grow with time; the system is asymptotically overconstrained. So at first glance you'd guess "no superdeterministic solution exists". If a solution did exist, it would probably be because of some convenient symmetry or law w.r.t. how the Bell violations played out. But you can use the behavior of arbitrary computer programs to trigger Bell tests, and computer programs are not a well behaved sort of thing. So that makes it seem unlikely for a set of O(S*T) Bell violations out in the world to follow a well behaved pattern that could be compressed into O(S) bits. Like, suppose I decide to dovetail through all computer programs, running a Bell test every time one of the programs halts. This would appear to force the initial state to encode information about solutions to the Halting problem, without the benefit of encoding it into a process that executes over time. But the Halting sequence is algorithmically random; incompressible...

Maybe a bit off topic, but i've always wondered why most physicists dismiss the possibility of superdeterminism to escape Bell's theorem. Are there any physicists here who would like to elaborate?

steve76 7y ago

If we had that, we should easily be able to speak to the dead! Spoiler Alert: Until further notice, you die!

lisper 7y ago

Not a physicist, but I've been studying QM as a hobby for thirty years. The problem with superdeterminism (SD) is that if QM is true then SD is not falsifiable. SD says that all experimental outcomes are deterministic but derive from hidden state, i.e. some sort of "Cosmic Turing Machine" (CTM) calculating the digits of pi or something like that. So now what? The CTM has to be perpetually hidden from us, otherwise we could examine its state and predict the outcomes of quantum experiments, and that would violate QM. So if QM is true, then the CTM necessarily has the same ontological status as an Invisible Pink Unicorn (IPU). In fact, the deterministic calculations underlying SD may well be carried out by a literal IPU. If QM is correct then there's no way to determine this, even in principle.

nabla9 7y ago
Bell-inequality experiments still that leave room for hidden-variable models that fall short of full superdeterminism. Relatively recent experiment using photons from stars in the Milky Way "Cosmic Bell Test: Measurement Settings from Milky Way Stars" http://web.mit.edu/asf/www/Papers/Handsteiner_Friedman+2017.pdf http://web.mit.edu/asf/www/Papers/Handsteiner_Friedman+2017.... The experiment excludes local-realist models with local hidden variable younger than 600 light years. Similar test with cosmic microwave background could push the limit to the early universe.
corey_moncure 7y ago
How do you tell if your code is running on a virtual machine or on bare metal?
- lisper 7y ago
  In our case we know we're running on "quantum bare metal" because we can do quantum mechanics experiments.

kgwgk 7y ago

From the Aspect’s piece I linked to in another comment: “Yet more foreign to the usual way of reasoning in physics is the “free-will loophole.” This is based on the idea that the choices of orientations we consider independent (because of relativistic causality) could in fact be correlated by an event in their common past. Since all events have a common past if we go back far enough in time—possibly to the big bang—any observed correlation could be justified by invoking such an explanation. Taken to its logical extreme, however, this argument implies that humans do not have free will, since two experimentalists, even separated by a great distance, could not be said to have independently chosen the settings of their measuring apparatuses. Upon being accused of metaphysics for his fundamental assumption that experimentalists have the liberty to freely choose their polarizer settings, Bell replied: “Disgrace indeed, to be caught in a metaphysical position! But it seems to me that in this matter I am just pursuing my profession of theoretical physics.” I would like to humbly join Bell and claim that, in rejecting such an ad hoc explanation that might be invoked for any observed correlation, “I am just pursuing my profession of experimental physics.”

ajmarcic 7y ago

Why would a physicist embrace superdeterminism? Present science holds the falsifiability of a theory as a necessity for its utility. Under the light of SD every experimental result may be impossible to interpret as supportive of a theory. Free will seems to be the most difficult philosophical question. Accepting SD invalidates the scientific method's approach to learning about the world. You may be interested in other non-local hidden variable theories as a way to sidestep Bell's Theorem & the Copenhagen interpretation.

rytill 7y ago
> Free will seems to be the most difficult philosophical question Please elaborate. It seems like it’s not even possible to phrase a question about free will that makes sense. What would it mean for an entity to have free will, such that you could ask a question about whether or not we had it? If you could ask a meaningful question, it doesn’t seem as difficult as explaining why anything does or does not exist, or qualia.
- chr1 7y ago
  There is an analog of free will that works even in a cellular automaton. For that you need two things: 1. the part of cellular automata describing a thinking entity can be separated from the rest of the world: that is changing states of cells anywhere outside of it doesn't change the state of the entity itself. 2. it is not possible to replace the computation describing this entity with anything simpler. 2 means that any method of predicting what this thinking entity choses is completely equivalent to that entity living and making the choice it wants by itself. And 1 means that the part of network is indeed a separate entity. With superdeterminism 1 can not be true, and a spin change of a single particle far away triggers very complex change in behavior of all thinking entities that were close to that particle in the past.
steve76 7y ago
Knowledge ends with the experimenter's life. The end of all particles are those that arc off the wire and cut your heart out based on your genome alone. All atoms are only different versions of graphene. Without humanity, there is only death. Whimper, and cower at your pettiness. You've lived in paradise all this time. Your self-righteousness lobotomizes you to an effective evil wicked being. All cosmic censors drops. State secrets, a police sting operation, to fool idle children from poisoning us. You have no choice to face your terrifying immortality, as all your faults and misdeeds lay open to the world. It's either that, or I UWB you all into Micro Plumb Island, a living breathing walking medicinal coma to contain your stupidity from murdering us all. We are at the mercy of wicked and evil men and women. They make sure the insiders stay in and the outsiders stay out. Our only option is to scare them, and scare them good. They do indeed have the keys to the kingdom. They won't open the doors just because they are nice. It's not like anyone hasn't died speaking Christ's name before. We need to let them know death is no escape. We keep you alive, no matter if we have to rip your genome out of the noise of the Cosmos itself, poisoning everything out there that is non-human. And all just to prove a point. Such is the stubbornness of such fraudulent and violent treacherous fools!

Strilanc 7y ago

Not a physicist, but in my mind the basic obstacle to superdeterminism is that in the initial state at t=0 you have O(S) degrees of freedom but throughout some chunk of spacetime there will be O(S * T) Bell violations (where 'S' is "amount of space" and 'T' is "amount of time"). The degrees of freedom you get is fixed, but the constraints grow with time; the system is asymptotically overconstrained. So at first glance you'd guess "no superdeterministic solution exists". If a solution did exist, it would probably be because of some convenient symmetry or law w.r.t. how the Bell violations played out. But you can use the behavior of arbitrary computer programs to trigger Bell tests, and computer programs are not a well behaved sort of thing. So that makes it seem unlikely for a set of O(S*T) Bell violations out in the world to follow a well behaved pattern that could be compressed into O(S) bits. Like, suppose I decide to dovetail through all computer programs, running a Bell test every time one of the programs halts. This would appear to force the initial state to encode information about solutions to the Halting problem, without the benefit of encoding it into a process that executes over time. But the Halting sequence is algorithmically random; incompressible...