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It is important to note that there is a hidden agenda in this essay: Sabine is a superdeterminist, and so her presentations have to be viewed through that lens.
by lisper 4y ago
It is important to note that there is a hidden agenda in this essay: Sabine is a superdeterminist, and so her presentations have to be viewed through that lens. As a superdeterminist, she is committed to idea that classical reality is "actually real" (for some value of "actually real" -- see below). And so Hyperion's chaotic behavior is actually real, and QM cannot account for that. All of which is true.
But there is an alternative view of classical reality which is that it is not "actually real" (the scare quotes are important here), that it is all just a sort of shared illusion among sentient beings. And QM can account for that, i.e. the math of QM can (and does) describe a set of mutually entangled observers all of which agree on an observation, notwithstanding that the observation has not actual referent in the model. And that is actually what we observe. We do not directly observe Hyperion. What we observe is our own subjective perception of seeing Hyperion, and having everyone around us report their own subjective perception of seeing Hyperion. The "actual existence" of a classical entity, i.e. an actual physical referent for "Hyperion" seems like a plausible explanation for this, but what QM tells us is that this explanation is wrong. But Sabine, as a committed superdeterminist, rejects this idea. But she's not being up-front about that.
The problem with QM is not chaos, it is the fact that it is incompatible with classical intuition. The chaos thing just brings this incompatibility into very sharp focus.
- progrus 4y agoQuestion: How often have you seen Quanta Magazine write a disclaimer that their latest story is from a school of superstring theorists? It’s PR, this is just how it is. I do wish Sabine would state the axiom “reality is real” up front though, because I think people should be trusted to consider that one on their own.
- otikik 4y agoI must be super deterministic as well because the alternative you describe sounds … unuseful to me. If we can have illusions like that then all the conclusion you extract from that are also subject to the same effect: it’s not necessarily true that QM can account for it; we could also be “allucinating”collectively that they can account for it. Or, we might not exist at all and all perceptions are all fake. Once you introduce a malicious devil like that it always goes “full universe”. Say, this religious group knocks on your door, tells you that Earth is 2022 years old. You point to dinosaur fossils. They say the Devil put them there to trick us. But then, you follow, our whole existence might as well be fake. The Devil could have created both of us 5 minutes ago, with fake memories of a life that never existed, just so we could have this conversation. And we will both vanish when I close this door (blam!). The usual counter is that the devil has a very specific amount of power: triceratops head is ok, humans is too much. But even accepting that, how can you know you are a human? It might be the Devil tricking you again, maybe you are a teacup that thinks they are human.
- Koshkin 4y agoWhat is useless is to argue with proponents of subjective (i.e. the true) idealism. Because to them you are an illusion.
- Layke1123 4y agoAgreed. I have to believe that there is magic, because my brain cannot handle never existing. These people are hopeless and we should probably label their beliefs as needing mental health rather than "sincerely held beliefs".
- Schroedingersat 4y agoExcept that's a straw man and not what MW is at all
- foobarian 4y agoI guess the bottom line of it all for me is: can it build me an interstellar space ship (FTL would be nice!) or not? I'm OK if we're all merely sharing the illusion of colonizing nearby stars.
- Viliam1234 4y ago> can it build me an interstellar space ship (FTL would be nice!) or not? Only the "illusions" that obey the laws of physics are allowed. The laws of physics are the only "real" thing; positions and speeds of specific objects are not. So if the laws of physics happen to forbid FTL travel, we will not get such spaceship.
- contravariant 4y agoI find the superdeterministic solution more problematic since on its own it just says that the reason the universe seems to not have local reality is just that it has been predetermined that it should seem that way to us. This is worse to me than our experience being a natural consequence of entangling ourselves with the rest of the universe. It's not an illusion, it's just an admission that our experience is also ruled by quantum mechanics and we cannot observe something without interacting with it.
- dontbenebby 4y ago
- lisper 4y agoYou may be missing something here: superdeterminism is a term of art [1], a respectable interpretation of QM, and it's the one to which Sabine professes to subscribe. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism
- dontbenebby 4y agoMy bad! The determinists I met were philosophers. Sorry for the emotional response.
- lisper 4y agoNo worries.
- qsdf38100 4y agoSo there might be a connection between superdeterminism and fascism? Could you elaborate? It’s a genuine question. Something feels off with Sabine and I can’t exactly figure out what it is.
- astrange 4y agoIt’s probably rude to call a German a fascist because you don’t like how they comment on physics?
- dontbenebby 4y agoIt's rude to call anyone something they aren't, doesn't matter where from. And Germans tend to not be the issue, the people I've met who I'd throw that word at very sincerely tended to be from Austria or Hungary, not Germans.
- 4y ago
- thecupisblue 4y agoBeautifully put. A shared illusion of mutually entangled observers with different subjective perceptions of the world with mutual lowest common denominators (senses). The superdeterminism is the thing bugging me most about Sabine's content, that even though it's usually good, it's all from a hard deterministic perspective, which in the end is like any narrow worldview - limited in its usefulness. And superdeterminism at this point is just a philosophical version of saying "no you are" in an argument or "works on my machine" to the QA.
- lisper 4y ago> Beautifully put. Thanks!
- Layke1123 4y agoActually, mainstream superdeterminism would allow us to radically change society and how we view norms. It would lead to radical changes in the criminal justice system for example. It just needs acceptance from people, and there is a lot people who stand to not benefit from these changes in society that are trying to make it harder to do so.
- daveguy 4y agoI'm intrigued. Can you give an example of how mainstream superdeterminism would allow us to radically change society and change how we view norms? From the perspective of current society, superdeterminism and the resulting alternate society?
- Layke1123 4y agoWell for one, we would attribute behavior we don't want in society to genes and/or the expression of those genes in a particular environment. Future treatment would be to note this, remove it from our genome, and see if said behavior is gone.
- thecupisblue 4y agoI assume its by distancing side-effects from personal responsibility. iIt's one of the many reasons favoured by highly intellectual people that lack empathy - it is based upon perfect rationality and assumption everyone is rational like them.
- andi999 4y agoWhere is this elaborated, that QM can account for what you say. What are you precisely refering to?
- lisper 4y agohttps://flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf https://flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- strainer 4y agoYou seem to claim that quantum mechanics can/does in fact model chaotic behavior, only that such chaotic behavior is "not actually real" in ways. That claim would seem to contradict Hossenfelders message, she seems to claim quantum mechanics can't model chaotic systems -however "actually extant" they may or may not be. I just don't know, but I prefer to consider claims of hidden agendas after theoretic details are resolved, if at all.
- lisper 4y agoThe issue is quite simple at its root: the Schroedinger equation is linear, and linear systems can't produce chaotic behavior, so the existence of chaotic behavior implies that there is something going on beside the SE. But this is not news. The existence of classical reality in the first place implies the same thing. This is the measurement problem: if you start with a superposition, and you transform it according to the SE (or any other linear dynamic) then you have to end in a superposition, but in "reality" you don't. So you have only three choices: introduce some non-linear postulate, deny classical reality, or deny free choice. That is the long and the short of it. There's nothing special about choas in this regard, it's just more evidence that QM is weird, but we knew that already.
- Koshkin 4y agoProblem is, if I step off a cliff I will not be able to share the illusion that I am dead.
- lisper 4y agoThis is a problem of metaphysics, and it is not unique to quantum mechanics. Classical mechanics has the same issue.