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Physicists essentially like "free will" because it is essential to do physics in a meaningful way (*). If you have something like superdeterminism then everythi
by eigenket 5y ago
Physicists essentially like "free will" because it is essential to do physics in a meaningful way (*). If you have something like superdeterminism then everything can be set up to make it look like your experimental results mean something, but while you're not looking anything could be happening, since your choice of what experiment to do can be correlated with the system you're observing without you knowing it.
For example you can have a system with two possible states, A and B. My decision to do experiments some superdeterministic setup is correlated with the state of the sytem so I only do experiments when the state of the system is A. I conclude that A is a physical law, but I'm completely wrong, its quite often B but I am only "choosing" to do experiments when it A.
(*) this is my opinion and the opinion of many, but absolutely not all physicists
- MattPalmer1086 5y agoYes. Although it's technically a valid loophole, the likelihood the entire universe is set up to consistently give misleading results is extremely hard to believe. The universe could still be entirely deterministic, in that your choice of experiment and measurement to make was fixed at the moment of creation. But you still believe that the results you are getting are a fair and accurate reflection of how the universe actually works. Free will (in the philosophical sense) is irrelevant. Your choice of measurement is only influenced by what is happening locally to you at that time. The game isn't rigged to produce misleading results from the very moment of creation for all time.