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> I am also personally offended that Baggott gives short shrift to superdeterminism. In this approach, quantum mechanics is emergent from a deterministic hidden

> I am also personally offended that Baggott gives short shrift to superdeterminism. In this approach, quantum mechanics is emergent from a deterministic hidden-variables model which acknowledges that everything in the universe is connected with everything else. He either mistakenly or accidentally leaves the reader with the impression that these have been ruled out for good, which is most definitely not the case. I cannot really blame Baggott for this, though, because this omission is widespread in the scientific literature. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that hidden-variables theory was considered in scientific literature, and was experimentally disproved.

dfan 6y ago
She goes into detail about this in the article that is linked to later in the paragraph you quote.
mbell 6y ago
> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that hidden-variables theory was considered in scientific literature, and was experimentally disproved. 'Disproved' is a bit strong. Bell's theorem is the most used to tool to attempt to rule out hidden-variable solutions. Whiles it's true that experiments thus far support Bell's theorem, they all contain loopholes[0]. It's not even clear if an entirely loophole free test can exist, so far no one has been able to come up with one. I have personally come across two camps of people on this: Those that ignore or discount the loopholes and thus claim that hidden variables have been disproven. Or those that consider the loopholes important, or that the loopholes seemingly being unavoidable is a clue itself. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loopholes_in_Bell_test_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loopholes_in_Bell_test_experim...
jostylr 6y ago
Hidden variables theory was not disproved. Local hidden variables theory was disproved, but, actually, all local theories of any kind whatsoever that say that experiments have definite results have been disproved. EPR is the argument that showed any local theory agreeing with the results of quantum experiments must have hidden variables. Bell showed that any hidden variable theory must be non-local. Conclusion: theory is non-local. Many worlds escapes this by not having definite results of experiments or anything else. Since anything that could happen does happen, there is no need for non-local communication to achieve the (non)results. Bohmian mechanics is a mathematically consistent theory (uniqueness and existence proven for a wide range of Bohmian systems) and it gives rise to an explanation of the quantum formalism. One can choose to dismiss because of prejudice, but there is no mathematical or physical reason to do so. Its biggest flaw, being nonlocal and thus philosophically (not actually) incompatible with relativity, is what Bell established as having to be the case for any theory with results. The story with quantum field theory is more questionable, but there is a perfectly fine setup with creation and annihilation of particles, thereby being compatible in spirit with much of QFT. The biggest problem is that technically QFT has problems with having a well-defined wave function. But there have been Bohmian inspired methods of solving that problem, basically using boundary conditions that respect the preservation of probabilities under annihilation and creation.
im3w1l 6y ago
I suspect that trying to explain quantum computers from a global-hidden-variables perspective will be very difficult and ugly.

dfan 6y ago

She goes into detail about this in the article that is linked to later in the paragraph you quote.

mbell 6y ago

> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that hidden-variables theory was considered in scientific literature, and was experimentally disproved. 'Disproved' is a bit strong. Bell's theorem is the most used to tool to attempt to rule out hidden-variable solutions. Whiles it's true that experiments thus far support Bell's theorem, they all contain loopholes[0]. It's not even clear if an entirely loophole free test can exist, so far no one has been able to come up with one. I have personally come across two camps of people on this: Those that ignore or discount the loopholes and thus claim that hidden variables have been disproven. Or those that consider the loopholes important, or that the loopholes seemingly being unavoidable is a clue itself. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loopholes_in_Bell_test_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loopholes_in_Bell_test_experim...

jostylr 6y ago

Hidden variables theory was not disproved. Local hidden variables theory was disproved, but, actually, all local theories of any kind whatsoever that say that experiments have definite results have been disproved. EPR is the argument that showed any local theory agreeing with the results of quantum experiments must have hidden variables. Bell showed that any hidden variable theory must be non-local. Conclusion: theory is non-local. Many worlds escapes this by not having definite results of experiments or anything else. Since anything that could happen does happen, there is no need for non-local communication to achieve the (non)results. Bohmian mechanics is a mathematically consistent theory (uniqueness and existence proven for a wide range of Bohmian systems) and it gives rise to an explanation of the quantum formalism. One can choose to dismiss because of prejudice, but there is no mathematical or physical reason to do so. Its biggest flaw, being nonlocal and thus philosophically (not actually) incompatible with relativity, is what Bell established as having to be the case for any theory with results. The story with quantum field theory is more questionable, but there is a perfectly fine setup with creation and annihilation of particles, thereby being compatible in spirit with much of QFT. The biggest problem is that technically QFT has problems with having a well-defined wave function. But there have been Bohmian inspired methods of solving that problem, basically using boundary conditions that respect the preservation of probabilities under annihilation and creation.

im3w1l 6y ago

I suspect that trying to explain quantum computers from a global-hidden-variables perspective will be very difficult and ugly.