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Superdeterminism may help us overcome the current crisis in physics
- akvadrako 7y agoSuperdeterminism in general is a pretty absurd idea. It basically says the measurement settings you choose were predetermined. But you can use a random source from another galaxy to select them. So something like the configuration of stars in another galaxy must be conspiring to help you choose just the correct settings to fake the results QM predicts, instead of QM being actually true.
- magicalhippo 7y agoYou can also generate them using a mathematical algorithm, say a cryptographically secure PRNG. Then what?
- chopin 7y agoIf superdeterminism is true your PRNG isn't random.
- magicalhippo 7y agoBut that would mean math is not math, which seems a rather hard pill to swallow.
- millstone 7y agoPRNGs need a seed, and that choice is superdetermined.
- magicalhippo 7y agoThe distribution of the experiment results, say correlation in a Bell test, should not matter (significantly) on the choice of seed. But the single electron being sent through the experiment still needs to "know" what the outcome of my PRNG is in order to "know" if it should be spin up or spin down this time. But the measurement setting (PRNG outcome) can be arbitrarily removed from the seed value (by combining PRNGs in various ways). So that doesn't sound very convincing to me.
- nl 7y agoIt's unclear if you mean PRNG (pseudo random number generator) which is already deterministic, or a true random number source (eg, radioactive decay or something). If you mean true random, then, yes, superdeterminism does indeed mean that number is predetermined. Math still works though - there is no way for someone to peek and see what that predetermined number is so it is still random for any observer.
- vardump 7y agoPRNG by definition is not random. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator "A pseudorandom number generator (PRNG), also known as a deterministic random bit generator (DRBG)..."
- chopin 7y agoI was referring to the seed.
- tylerjwilk00 7y agoThis always seemed like the easiest way to explain superdeterminism. It's a universe where the laws of physics do not permit you to generate a truly random number.
- phyzome 7y agoThen you've used a worse randomness source.
- o_p 7y agoI see it more as if the universe was a 4D picture, with time as the 4th dimension, any concept of time "going forward" is just an illusion by how our brains work (we need time to compute every moment), so the outcomes are already written, we just havent seen it.
- ebg13 7y agoIn that framework something most still be moving through an external time to be experiencing individual parts of it sequentially.
- o_p 7y agoWhat do you mean by experiencing sequentially?
- tylerjwilk00 7y agoHe means We (you, me, other humans) experience time passing consciously and sequentially. We are on the inside of a 4 dimensional bulk. We are traveling through the temporal dimension. As opposed to outside of it looking in. In which case we would "see" past, present, and future simultaneously.
- ebg13 7y agoBetter yet, if we're traveling through that temporal dimension there must be real time. Otherwise how would we be traveling?
- gicop 7y agoHere's a thought experiment, similar to the one-electron universe thought experiment: there exists one particle, the "consciousness particle," which randomly jumps around throughout 4D space. Whenever it appears at a 4D position, consciousness is experienced as computed by integrated information theory (or a similar model) [1]. When you experience a moment of consciousness at a specific 4D position, you experience all the memories of the "past" that are in your brain. Thus, the consciousness particle interpretation of consciousness is compatible with your direct perception of living a 3D life along a time dimension. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory
- neltnerb 7y agoThis does not sound that absurd to me, just wildly different. It would require evidence to believe, of course.
- Grieverheart 7y agoI do not understand your statement. Superdeterminism does not imply QM is wrong. You can not dismiss superdeterminism with the pretext that it would render everything pointless as our paths are predetermined. Basically you are arguing that you choose not to consider superdeterminism because you have free will. What sounds more absurd? I suggest you read the original paper for a better reply to your argument.
- wnoise 7y agoIt's not literally saying QM is false in the sense of "gives wrong predictions", but it is saying it is not "what is really going on", because it is incomplete. > it would render everything pointless as our paths are predetermined The objection is subtler than this. It's that it's pointless because it's not a productive stance. Science is in large part about predicting results of interventions. It throws its hands up and says everything happens for essentially conspiratorial reasons, and taken fully doesn't admit the possibility of interventions. Further this is stronger than the normal determinism of classical mechanics -- there, even if we believe in determinism, nondeterminism with respect to unobserved things (such as experimenters brains) is a useful stance for discovering truths about the universe. In contrast, with superdeterminism, any possible "intervention" in this stance is "compensated for" by the initial conditions. It explains quantum mechanics only by saying "initial conditions did it", which is no better than "God did it" of medieval philosophy. In neither case can we usefully ask further questions.
- Grieverheart 7y agoIf you go down that route, you can always dismiss objective reality. There is no way of knowing that what we experience is actually happening. But we still assume it does. The same holds for superdeterminism. You can say we have no way of knowing if what we measure is not a conspiracy, but that doesn't hinder us from doing science as we know it.
- akvadrako 7y agoWithout conspiracies it isn’t superdeterminism and you won’t get the right outcomes.
- millstone 7y agoIn QM, configurations may be "close together" in a way that defies intuition. An example is spatially separated, entangled particles. So why can't configurations be "far apart" in a way that defies intuition? We model measuring at 45.01° as a perturbation of 45°, but perhaps these are very distant configurations.
- mihaaly 7y agoThe way I get is that we are measuring something with itself. Measuring an unknown attribute with something (actually the same thing) having the same unknown attribute. We cannot predetermine the settings of the measurement as we do not know its attributes or parameters. We have no means of calibrating something we do not know. It does not have to be an atom from a distant galaxy - very well may be, we do not know yet - but unknown underlying interdependence locally. The superposition of unknown number of underlying unknowns combine into what happens when we measure an unknown with an other unknown. We measure our universe with itself, the taste of an apple with an other apple.
- ur-whale 7y agoWeren't all particles pretty darn correlated at t=0 (big bang)?
- Grieverheart 7y agoFunny, a couple of days ago I googled about superdeterminism again to see if there are any developments and came across Hossenfelder's and Palmer's paper on arxiv https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.06462 https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.06462 . Strangely enough, even though I've studied theoretical Physics, the fact that some of Quantum mechanic's claims are based on assumptions such as the fact we have free will, were never really discussed except in a course in the Philosophy of science I took, which, unfortunately, was not very scientific. I actually never heard about superdeterminism until I read one of Gerard 't Hooft's papers (see e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548 https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548 https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.02874 https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.02874). Universities should put more emphasis on teaching the things we take for granted and give students the opportunity to question them, if we want to further our understanding.
- seiferteric 7y agoMaybe not the right place to ask, but does anyone have an opinion on GRW/Spontaneous Collapse Theory? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghirardi%E2%80%93Rimini%E2%80%93Weber_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghirardi%E2%80%93Rimini%E2%80%... It seems so sensible compared to other theories but I don't hear much about it.
- l33tman 7y agoIsn't it largely obsolete after decoherence theory explained most of the issues GRW had?
- grizzles 7y agoI hope not. Superdeterminism is fate.
- state_less 7y agoSeems unreasonable to want a world of control and yet escape being controlled by it.
- titzer 7y agoHow are control and the illusion of control distinguishable from a first-person perspective?
- grizzles 7y agoGood point. This seems to be the exception though. If it's fate to be shown that fate exists, some might find that disappointing. Others might find it a relief. Your happiness or sadness at this revelation would also be predetermined. An extreme form of bondage.
- ColanR 7y agoFrom a brief stint in Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism), Superdeterminism looks like it better satisfies Ockhams' Razor than the standard QM interpretation. All we have to give up is free will, and why should science try to defend that?
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoSuperdeterminism means that a hugely macro level decision like which measurement to take is tightly coupled with teeny tiny micro level outcomes. It would mean that the physical predictions are really really complicated. I'd say Occam's Razor points the opposite direction.
- Frost1x 7y agoSatisfying Occam's Razor is not a necessity, it's more a rule of thumb. Based on Occam's Razor alone, modern DNN based models are complete garbage because of the amount of complexity involved in their models, yet they still hold useful predictive power. Sometimes we have to throw out these general rules of thumbs and test the waters outside when we hit walls we can't seem to get around. Interest and pursuit in the philosophy of science is something too largely brushed aside that, IMHO, needs an adrenaline shot these days. Unfortunately, few want to pursue that work because it doesn't pay the bills.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoTotally agree. I was just countering the parent comment that said "occam's razor points this way" with "nah it points the other way." I don't intend to say we necessarily should follow it in either direction.
- lisper 7y agoBecause free will is supported by some pretty overwhelming evidence. Every human who has ever lived has had the experience of making a free choice. That experience is every bit as real as the experience of, say, seeing the moon. If you're going to seriously entertain the possibility that there is no free will then you need to be ready to entertain with equal seriousness that the moon does not exist because both are supported by similar bodies of evidence.
- tic_tac 7y agoIf superdeterminism is true, it appears to imply that the universe is discrete at the smallest scales. Were the universe continuous, 'definite' position would be impossible, meaning that certainty itself would be impossible. Everything would be 'fuzzy' meaning superdeterminism would be impossible.
- voxl 7y agoThis is easily falsified by imagining that the computational nature of physics itself is stronger than a Turing machine. There would be no issue with certainty in a continuum if you were actively computing with the continuum itself as data
- tic_tac 7y agoIt's not a matter of computability though, it's a matter of exact precision not being physically possible in a continuum.
- SolarNet 7y agoBut that assertion is based on a set of assumptions that come back to information theory and hence computability. You are right that in modern information theory exact precision on a continuum is physically impossible (for others: as we continue to subdevide the precision we require more bits of information, which has known physical limits). But what I think the other posters was getting at is that if the universe runs on a machine that is not bound by those rules, say rules where arbitrary precision on a continuum can be stored as a value (which again violates physicality as we know it but such a machine is "outside" the universe so physicality is moot already), then that is possible. Which is to say the universe is a machine which can compute things a Turing machine can't (a Turing machine can compute everything that can be computed that we are aware of, ergo if the universe can compute things it can't then the assertion being made - albeit somewhat clumsily - is that the universe doesn't follow the asserts we know).
- tic_tac 7y ago
- titzer 7y agoEverything old is new again. Superdeterminism is basically the concept that everything follows from the initial conditions of the universe in a deterministic fashion. In short, it's a clockwork universe below the quantum level. It is compatible with Bell's theorem because it's not local hidden variables, it's global hidden variables--i.e. the state of the entire universe. The problem is, according to my current understanding, superdeterminism cannot be tested.
- Grieverheart 7y agoThe authors of the article offer a possible test for a class of super deterministic theories.
- Frost1x 7y agoThis is the my first time reading about Superdeterminism and the author hits on my of my amature/novice intuitions on issues like the measurement problem, hidden variables, and Bell's theorem (call me weird but these are topics I enjoy reading, studying, and thinking about--technically and philosophically). I'd be very interested in hearing and explanation and understanding why superdeterminism cannot be tested (it's not clearly obvious to me how that's the case) because if that is the case, it would explain why it was largely unpursued/undeveloped (similar to what someone else in this thread posted--if it's true, it supposeldy offers little useful insight beyond better explaining issues in quantum mechanics by replacing one blackbox of uncertainty with another). Based on the author's description, much of the issue is that the theory has had little attention and as such, is largely undeveloped (and therefore, isn't going to be developed enough for experimental testing).
- dodobirdlord 7y ago> I'd be very interested in hearing and explanation and understanding why superdeterminism cannot be tested What experiment could you run in a superdetermined universe that would distinguish it from a non-superdetermined universe? Vice versa? There's nothing.
- athrowaway3z 7y agoI hope we will see more sci-fi take the route of super-determinism as opposed to multiverse theory. The latter is a nice plot device, but its wide spread use in pop culture has overblown its likelihood of being correct. Maybe in a thousand years from now, people will begin their analogies with: 'Long ago, people used to believe the universe split up infinity many times at an infinite scale' --- I believe the idea that we have to give up free will or that fate exists is unhelpful at best. If super-determinism is correct, then there is nothing to give up. But more practically, if complexity theory is correct in that some things are inherently complex, there is a case to be made that the universe with its variables 'locking' into place from moment to moment is far beyond predetermined from the perspective of anything in it. i.e. you need a universe to simulate a universe.
- sysbin 7y agoI don't believe in free will because it doesn't make sense when you understand determinism. You cannot be free when every thought & action is the outcome of the past forces exerted upon you. My understanding of superdeterminism doesn't necessarily rule out the multiverse theory. Maybe my idea of the multiverse theory isn't traditional but I think the universe can very well identically repeat and or repeat but be somewhat different by how forces can be occurring at different intervals than the past cycle of the universe. edit: people downvote on this site because they don't like thinking of not having free will lol.
- tsimionescu 7y agoYour explanation of why you don't believe in free will is very philosophically unrefined, and your smug tone (implying people who do believe in free will must not understand determinism) is not helpful. The reality is that a great many philosophers believe that determinism and free will are perfectly compatible. There is also supernatural defense of free-will, as in many religions (where the physical universe may well be deterministic, except for interaction with a spiritual world of will, which may produce physical effects without a physical cause). Both of these ideas are example of people who believe in free will even if they do understand (physical) determimism. There are probably other groups as well.
- guscost 7y agoThis is just what you get if you combine Bohmian mechanics with Bell’s theorem, right? If QM relies on hidden variables, they can’t be local.
- tsimionescu 7y agoJust because this relies on global hidden variables doesn't make it the same as any other global hidden variable theory.
- guscost 7y agoAh ok, thanks for answering.
- mcnamaratw 7y agoOk, particle states are correlated in a way we've missed. Fine. Every set of particles has fewer degrees of freedom than we assumed. We can check experimentally: the heat capacity of your set of particles is proportional to the number of degrees of freedom. It would be nice to see something about this point in the essay.
- gus_massa 7y ago> the heat capacity of your set of particles is proportional to the number of degrees of freedom IIRC that is only valid for a classic system.
- tom-thistime 7y agoSure, but it's the same issue. In a quantum system some degrees of freedom are "frozen out"--the energies are much higher than (Boltzmann's constant)(Absolute temperature) and they become irrelevant. But the accessible degrees of freedom show up in the heat capacity.
- gus_massa 7y agoWhen the Cv of a diatomic gas goes from 3/2R to 5/2R there is an intermediate part that is complicated. A photon gas has also a strange Cv. I think it's not easy to dismiss superdeterminism using just the Cv, because sometimes Cv is more complicated. [Disclaimer: I really really dislike superdeterminism. I just think that Cv is the wrong reason to dismiss it.]
- tom-thistime 7y agoFor sure. The transition from 3/2kT to 5/2kT is a good example of a frozen-out mode getting "unfrozen". Within the transition we have to count density of states and not screw around with classical analogs. ( I'm an optics person, so I think the Cv of a photon gas is normal and understandable ... If I take half an hour to write it all out again!) This is technical stuff we're talking about ... but it's not difficult for particle physicists to address! Anyway I don't think I'm dismissing the idea of "superdeterminism". I'm only puzzled that directly measuring degrees of freedom, which was a central reason for adopting quantum mechanics, isn't even mentioned in an article where the public is being told there are fewer "real" degrees of freedom than generally thought.
- knzhou 7y agoI tried to argue against superdeterminism the last time this came up and got a pile of downvotes because people mixed it up with determinism. And I see this is happening all over again in the comments below. I'm not even going to try this time, I'm just going to say to everybody reading this: superdeterminism is not at all the same thing as determinism. It is a far stronger assumption with far far more unintuitive consequences for our understanding of nature. If you're reading this and just thinking "superdeterminism is okay because there's no free will", then you've been suckered by this article into believing a massive oversimplification.
- miltondts 7y agoWhat is need is less arguing and more experimenting. That's how this will be resolved.
- willis936 7y agoNo no, arguing is important. It lubricates an essential step in the scientific process. No one can design experiments, let alone predict results or even understand results, without understanding.
- miltondts 7y agoLet me clarify. In this particular case there has been plenty of arguing already and no progress in more than 50 years. So I'm suggesting it is time to start experimenting more.
- rpz 7y agoI've mentioned this in a couple different HN posts regarding QM recently and I'd like to mention this again. I'd greatly appreciate it if we could do some back and forth. I think the "current crisis in physics" has much to do with the foundations of QM. If what I present below is just false, then fine, I'd appreciate an explanation of why instead of a downvote. In short, I believe what Planck found was not an action constant, but rather it was an energy constant. Planck's constant has the wrong units. The constant should be in Joules/oscillation as opposed to Joule*sec. Planck inadvertently "hard coded" a one second measurement into his constant. His equation should be E=htf where h is in Joules/oscillation t in seconds and f in oscillations/second. I think there is a reason why the units for frequency aren't explicitly listed as oscillations/sec. the units of E=hf don't balance if f has the units oscillations/second. But you don't need to believe me... please read the following paper by Juliana H.J. Mortenson (Formerly Juliana H.J. Brooks). https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/e266e5e7-739c-437c-89c3-eed60d3a9f3f/downloads/1cfqec4a8_58871.pdf https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/e266e5e7-739c-437c-89c3-eed... Can you find an error in her paper? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! Thanks! Upshot: Every oscillation of light has the same energy, and what we regard as a photon today is actually a one second measurement of oscillations of light at some frequency f.
- rpz 7y agoalso see https://forgottenphysics.com/ https://forgottenphysics.com/
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rpz 7y agoThe paper linked above is a quick and very easy read.
- qayxc 7y ago> Can you find an error in her paper? Sure, just one you say? In Ch. 2 §1 Mortenson, MD tries to derive the "mean energy per oscillation". She refers to the dimensionless scalar "N" as the number of "waves" the photon is comprised of. Not only doesn't that make any sense whatsoever, since a photon can only have a single frequency, and is hence described by a single wave. She also introduces a "unit" that doesn't exist - namely the "osc" (=oscillation), which is DIMENSIONLESS, i.e. it's doesn't have a physical representation and therefore cannot be unit... She then continues to fail to apply the most basic dimensional analysis and I basically stopped right there. It's a bunch of hogwash and esoteric pseudo-science, sorry.
- omazurov 7y agoSuperdeterminism appears to aspire to come up with a classical model that would explain quantum correlation. If successful it would render a quantum computer to be fancy, highly parallel, very expensive but still a classical one. A non-classical superdeterministic model would just substitute one mystery for another (sneaked in non-locality or something).
- Gatsky 7y agoI think progress in physics is going to be on hold for a while. This kind of fundamental scientific inquiry does not proceed in a linear fashion, and there was incredible progress in the last century. Physicists seem to realise this on some level - in the last 5 years I have noticed physicists turning up in other fields, particularly origin of life and consciousness studies.
- gizmo686 7y agoI think this becomes even clearer if you look at what the major recent experimental results in physics are. The two that come to mind are gravitational waves and the Higgs Boson. Gravitational waves were observed by LIGO and Virgo. These observatories were built in 1993/1994, but did not observe a gravitational wave until 2015 (many have been observed since then). VIRGO costs ~10mil Euro/year to operate and is staffed by over 300 people. LIGO had an initial budget of $395 million in 1994, with a $200million overhaul in 2015. The Higgs Boson was detected using the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC began in 1995, and would not discover the Higgs until 2012. The LHC had a construction cost of $4.4 billion, with an annual operating budget of $1billion. Most of the discoveries of the 20th centuary did not require anywhere near this scale of experiment. There is still some room to grow here (more powerful colliders and more sensitivy gravitational observatories are being planned), but fundamental physisics seems to be fast approaching the limits of our current engineering capabilities; and may need to enter a quite period while it waits for the more applied sciences to catch up. Or, worse, the laws of physicis end up being such that the "next step" of experiments is simply outside the range of what we could conceivably build.
- raxxorrax 7y agoFor theoretical physicists that may be that case. I think it is intuitive that the cost of new discoveries increases the more we know about a universe that probably has a limited amount of laws. But on the other hand there are still unlimited opportunities for applied physics without having to go into more metaphysical fields. Material and energy research, optics... I think we are still more or less brute forcing optimal lens setups for specific applications with complex simulators to fit specific applications. Useful to be a physicist in that case.
- tus88 7y agoNo. It. Won't. Only philosophy will.
- atq2119 7y agoIs there any coherent fixed theory of superdeterminism at all? Something with a system of equations that are nailed down and that one could build solid thought experiments on top of? The article mentions it but kind of downplays the fact that the prevailing theory of QM has a very clear mathematical formalism without any wiggle room, while superdeterminism doesn't have this. That seems like a far better explanation for why QM has won, and makes me wonder whether superdeterminism wouldn't just be the next string theory.
- harmoat 7y agoSuperdeterminism isn't supposed to be an alternative to QM, usually it's an alternative interpretation of QM which allows hidden variables from what i've gathered.
- naasking 7y agoIt allows local hidden variable theories. Non-local hidden variable theories have existed for decades (de Broglie-Bohm/Bohmian mechanics).
- xelxebar 7y agoHossenfelder and Palmer have a nice, accessible paper about it: https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.06462 https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.06462 It makes a strong case IMHO that there is some meat here. The main idea is that Bell inequalities make ~4 assumptions, which Hossenfelder and Palmer argue can be meanifully weakened in precise ways that have the potential for testable predictions. The paper also spends some time dispelling the FUD that stems from the unfortunate associations made with the name "superdeterminism." It's only ~20 pages of mostly prose, so if you're interested, I highly recommend the quick read.
- skosch 7y agoThis is very exciting. To a computer scientist, superdeterminism seems like the most elegant solution to most of the current problems in physics. But it has always been firmly out of the mainstream, perhaps because it runs directly counter to our human experience. Gerard t'Hoofts framing of the universe as a cellular automaton (https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548 https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548) is relatively intuitive, but still only a rough sketch. Hopefully, Hossenfelder and Palmer now publicly arguing for superdeterminism will recruit some more bright minds to fleshing out these models into workable theories.
- Decoherent 7y agoIt has been proven to require fine tuning though. It's a very unnatural solution from a physical perspective.
- dchyrdvh 7y agoComplex solution for a simple problem. I'll sound naive, but I think that quantum entaglement is a very simple thing: it's a link, like an edge in a mathematical graph, between two particles. The length of the link is 1. Not nanometers or something else, just 1. The particles rapidly change their state, but they are synchronized via this link and at any moment they are in the opposite states. Measuring one particle is done by bombarding it with another particle, which stabilizes its state, and also the other particle, via the link. In other words, our world is just a mathematical graph that appears to have continuous properties at scale.
- Grieverheart 7y agoSorry to burst you bubble, such statements should always be supported by actual mathematics, to be taken seriously.
- axilmar 7y agoMy own theory is that there is no entanglement and no link between the particles, it is just that the particle states are affected the moment they are created. I also think that light is not a wave and that light particles are not fired in a straight line in the double slit experiment; they are fired at an angle, and then they bounce off the slits and create the interference pattern; and when we put a detector in front of the slits, it only serves as creating new light particles that do not have this angle in them and they go straight ahead, making the diffraction pattern disappear. And it's not that quantum math is wrong; it's right, but my intuition says that any system can be described by statistics. As for quantum mechanics applications, all the applications mentioned (from clocks to computers to anything the article and other articles mention) are not based in any QM specific property. None of those applications are actually dependent on entanglement and on collapsing the wave function, and entanglement cannot be used for any application despite what they write in articles because it would violate the principles of relativity. And none of those applications would cease to exist if light was not an actual wave and photons simply moved in wave patterns. Let the downvotes begin!
- RobertoG 7y agoI don't understand, how super-determinism explain interference in, for instance, the double-slit experiment? It's not the result of that experiment a proof that the photons are interfering with something?
- ben509 7y ago> Even more importantly, no one has ever proposed a consistent, non-reductionist theory of nature It seems the point of non-reductionism is that you can't propose such a theory. For instance, if we were in a simulation that decides whether to optimize quantum to macroscopic transition based on what we're looking at, we're simply not going to find what causes wave functions to collapse because there isn't an underlying rule to find. We're "observers" just because we're flagged as such. For us in the simulation, certain things just happen for apparently arbitrary reasons because we can't peer into the source code. It'd be like a character in an FPS trying to figure out why shooting breaks some things but others are indestructible.
- viach 7y agoNon-determinism requires some kind of RNG which is truly random (TRNG), right? So the next value can't be calculated from the previous one. This means all values of truly random RNG just exist as we don't need to iterate all of them in order to calculate what's next? So truly random RNG is just pre-determined instantly from step one and RRNG is as pre-determined as TRNG?
- raverbashing 7y agoWell I just went down the rabbit hole http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-forgotten-solution-superdeterminism.html http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-forgotten-solut... and I still don't see how this is not a cop-out of theological proportions Two statistical dependent variables "can be made" independent, for example by feeding one into an PRNG. This seems like a similar cop-out as the "particle changes behaviour when it is observed hence consciousness is needed in the universe" (And this answer explained it better https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-crackpot-scientists-go-after-super-deterministic-theories-when-Bells-theorem-has-proved-that-local-realism-is-false/answer/Paul-Mainwood https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-crackpot-scientists-go-aft... as usual for Quora, awful questions with great answers)
- naasking 7y ago> Two statistical dependent variables "can be made" independent, for example by feeding one into an PRNG No statistical test can assure statistical independence for all possible cases. The very fact that you pipe it through a PRNG means the output is deterministically correlated with the input, because PRNGs are deterministic, and some statistical test will be able to detect it. At the base level, a test that tries every conceivable PRNG, for instance.
- raverbashing 7y agoThat's why I said it's a theological problem In practice the universe can't know all the ways you can mix-up a variable
- naasking 7y agoWho says the universe can't "know" all the ways? That's like saying momentum can't be conserved because the universe can't know all the ways that we could transform momentum into other forms of energy and back again.
- raverbashing 7y ago
- sebastianconcpt 7y agoThis update (aka the “collapse” of the wave function) is instantaneous; it happens at the same time everywhere. So it's like the refresh rate of The Universe?
- tsimionescu 7y agoOne thing that I am disappointed is not discussed in the article are the experiments done to validate statistical independence based on extremely old and far-away phenomena. There have been experimental validations of Bell's inequalities with measurements chosen based on distant quasars, and they held up very well. This would suggest that the state of two particles we just fired is caused by reactions in a quasar millions of years ago, or by even older phenomena. This suggests there isn't even some kind of 'local-ish' theory of hidden variables, like in the case of throwing dice, and we would really need to account for the state of the whole universe for all of its history to accurately predict what happens when we type at our keyboards.
- naasking 7y ago> This suggests there isn't even some kind of 'local-ish' theory of hidden variables, like in the case of throwing dice, and we would really need to account for the state of the whole universe for all of its history to accurately predict what happens when we type at our keyboards. Yes, because all particles in the universe share a common entangled past because they all originated from the same source, ie. the Big Bang.
- orbifold 7y agoAll these people working on the foundations of quantum mechanics must somehow have missed the fact that quantum mechanics has been superseded by quantum field theory. Quantum field theory resolves basically all of the typically interpretation of quantum mechanics questions in a rather sophisticated way. Unfortunately and I guess this is why these "Interpretation of QM" are still popular most things become harder to calculate with QFT instead of plain old quantum mechanics. Still I think that the perspective of taking quantum fields and the path integral as fundamental clarifies a bunch of things even about measurements. In the path integral formulation you can view a measurement as an additional term in the Lagrangian (for example a non-zero external magnetic field for Zeeman-Splitting). You then have to expand around the classical solutions summed over all initial conditions, so if you have for example a spin-1/2-based dependence as it is the case for the Zeeman-Effect, you would have to expand around these two different classical solutions. There is nothing mysterious about this and in the cases where you can carry the calculation out you get the correct predictions. Fundamentally there is no such thing as measurements, just local interactions of quantum fields and any measurement can be either modelled as such an interaction or as an additional term in the Lagrangian. The truly interesting things discoveries within in the framework of quantum field theory, such as ADS/CFT, going from String Theory to low energy effective theories or the Amplituhedron. All of those have direct and immediate connections to state of the art quantum field theories. What is done in (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.06462.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.06462.pdf), especially the last part, where they suddenly invoke p-adic numbers in support of a very vague argument and a cartoon of Penrose's impossible triangle in a similar vague manner, won't be taken serious by most physicists, but is sufficient apparently to convince non-technical people to continue funding them. Nautil.us probably is just grateful for the free content.
- Grieverheart 7y agoDo you consider Gerard 't Hooft also one of those non-technical people? Mocking the use of certain diagrams does not give you any credit. I would refrain from such petty arguments if you want to be taken seriously. About your argument, as far as I know, the measurement problem is not solved in QFT. I have also never heard of adding a term to the Lagrangian to represent a measurement. The addition of the external field to hamiltonian of the atom when calculating the Zeeman effect is something unrelated to measurement afaik. If you have any references on your claims please point them out.
- amai 7y agoAn interesting discussion can be found here: http://mateusaraujo.info/2019/12/17/superdeterminism-is-unscientific/ http://mateusaraujo.info/2019/12/17/superdeterminism-is-unsc...