5 ms·

I have yet to see a subscriber of superdeterminism not look both ways before crossing the road.

digging 3y ago
A good quip, lol. But of course they would, because they must, because the feeling of control (that is: the unconscious belief in control) is just as intrinsic as the actual absence of control.
- voxl 3y ago
  which in other words makes superdeterminism unfalsifiable, because any attempt to do so can be met with "it must have been that way"
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - digging 3y ago
    Absolutely. I find it an interesting thought experiment and nothing more unless and until we determine some way to actually see through the veil and identify these extra-universal hidden variables. (At which point our conception of the universe may expand to include these variables and whatever else exists in that outer layer.)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    Of course every other QM interpretation is also unfalsifiable, e.g. Copenhagen (we have no definition of what constitutes an observation) or many-worlds (obviously unfalsifiable save for actually tunneling through into another universe and coming back to tell the tale)
    - GoblinSlayer 3y ago
      >save for actually tunneling through into another universe and coming back to tell the tale That's verification, not falsification. Many worlds can be falsified by demonstrating that the Schrodinger equation is nonlinear, which dynamic collapse research program tries to do.
  - Pet_Ant 3y ago
    Don't know why this was downvoted. Superdetermination is indeed unfalsifiable, because the "super" part means that there does not exist anything that has been not determined, including our thoughts, this comment and someone rolling their eyes reading this. Being unfalsifiable doesn't mean it's not true, just that it isn't a scientific theory.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    That's why Sam Harris still uses his will to speak to various crowds that he has no will.
- karmakaze 3y ago
  Or rather they must, because it was determined that they do. And I'm sure sometimes, some of them don't look both ways for the same reason.
qarl 3y ago
That's because superdeterminism doesn't imply you shouldn't. Superdeterminism implies that you don't really have a choice as to whether you look both ways.
jeswin 3y ago
The subscriber has no free will. The question would be - why exist?
sheepdestroyer 3y ago
If true, superdeterminism would not permit them to make that choice to look around or not anyway.
PheonixPharts 3y ago
Does believing that gravity exists mean a person will not roll down a hill? Why would belief that we are just agents responding predictably to stimuli imply that one would not respond predictably to stimuli? The fact that ones behavior does not change when one acknowledges that all behavior is deterministic and predetermined seems evidence in favor not against that hypothesis.
- nyssos 3y ago
  > Why would belief that we are just agents responding predictably to stimuli imply that one would not respond predictably to stimuli? This is determinism, not superdeterminism. Superdeterminism claims that the state of any system you measure is always already correlated with the measurements you perform on it: photons emitted a billion years ago encode information about where someone is going to choose to point a telescope tomorrow. Not because of any interaction between the two, but because the initial conditions of the early universe just happened to be set up that way.
  - simiones 3y ago
    Sure, but superdeterminism implies determinism. That is, if the world is superdeterministic, it is certainly deterministic, so living agents definitely react to stimuli in a theoretically predictable manner. Interestingly, it's actually very hard to define what it would mean to believe in determinism, but not superdeterminism. Ultimately if the universe is deterministic, that must mean that everything that happens is predictable from the initial conditions of the universe.
    - nyssos 3y ago
      > Ultimately if the universe is deterministic, that must mean that everything that happens is predictable from the initial conditions of the universe. This is still not superdeterminism. The superdeterminist claim is a statistical one: your choice of measurement is not even approximately conditionally independent of the state of the thing you're measuring. Ever. There are plenty of deterministic processes that nonetheless wipe out most correlations over the long-term: thoroughly mixing two fluids will do it. Preserving a strong correlation between the future state of your brain and the exact luminosity of a star a billion light years away at one particular moment, over the whole history of the universe is incomprehensibly unlikely. And superdeterminists claim that this happens every single time.

A good quip, lol. But of course they would, because they must, because the feeling of control (that is: the unconscious belief in control) is just as intrinsic as the actual absence of control.

voxl 3y ago
which in other words makes superdeterminism unfalsifiable, because any attempt to do so can be met with "it must have been that way"
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- digging 3y ago
  Absolutely. I find it an interesting thought experiment and nothing more unless and until we determine some way to actually see through the veil and identify these extra-universal hidden variables. (At which point our conception of the universe may expand to include these variables and whatever else exists in that outer layer.)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  Of course every other QM interpretation is also unfalsifiable, e.g. Copenhagen (we have no definition of what constitutes an observation) or many-worlds (obviously unfalsifiable save for actually tunneling through into another universe and coming back to tell the tale)
  - GoblinSlayer 3y ago
    >save for actually tunneling through into another universe and coming back to tell the tale That's verification, not falsification. Many worlds can be falsified by demonstrating that the Schrodinger equation is nonlinear, which dynamic collapse research program tries to do.
- Pet_Ant 3y ago
  Don't know why this was downvoted. Superdetermination is indeed unfalsifiable, because the "super" part means that there does not exist anything that has been not determined, including our thoughts, this comment and someone rolling their eyes reading this. Being unfalsifiable doesn't mean it's not true, just that it isn't a scientific theory.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  That's why Sam Harris still uses his will to speak to various crowds that he has no will.
karmakaze 3y ago
Or rather they must, because it was determined that they do. And I'm sure sometimes, some of them don't look both ways for the same reason.

qarl 3y ago

That's because superdeterminism doesn't imply you shouldn't. Superdeterminism implies that you don't really have a choice as to whether you look both ways.

jeswin 3y ago

The subscriber has no free will. The question would be - why exist?

sheepdestroyer 3y ago

If true, superdeterminism would not permit them to make that choice to look around or not anyway.

PheonixPharts 3y ago

Does believing that gravity exists mean a person will not roll down a hill? Why would belief that we are just agents responding predictably to stimuli imply that one would not respond predictably to stimuli? The fact that ones behavior does not change when one acknowledges that all behavior is deterministic and predetermined seems evidence in favor not against that hypothesis.

nyssos 3y ago
> Why would belief that we are just agents responding predictably to stimuli imply that one would not respond predictably to stimuli? This is determinism, not superdeterminism. Superdeterminism claims that the state of any system you measure is always already correlated with the measurements you perform on it: photons emitted a billion years ago encode information about where someone is going to choose to point a telescope tomorrow. Not because of any interaction between the two, but because the initial conditions of the early universe just happened to be set up that way.
- simiones 3y ago
  Sure, but superdeterminism implies determinism. That is, if the world is superdeterministic, it is certainly deterministic, so living agents definitely react to stimuli in a theoretically predictable manner. Interestingly, it's actually very hard to define what it would mean to believe in determinism, but not superdeterminism. Ultimately if the universe is deterministic, that must mean that everything that happens is predictable from the initial conditions of the universe.
  - nyssos 3y ago
    > Ultimately if the universe is deterministic, that must mean that everything that happens is predictable from the initial conditions of the universe. This is still not superdeterminism. The superdeterminist claim is a statistical one: your choice of measurement is not even approximately conditionally independent of the state of the thing you're measuring. Ever. There are plenty of deterministic processes that nonetheless wipe out most correlations over the long-term: thoroughly mixing two fluids will do it. Preserving a strong correlation between the future state of your brain and the exact luminosity of a star a billion light years away at one particular moment, over the whole history of the universe is incomprehensibly unlikely. And superdeterminists claim that this happens every single time.