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The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism

91 points by vectorbunny 7y ago

moomin 7y ago
The thing about superdeterminism is that it's only interesting if you want to argue philosophy. If you're dealing with hidden variables (or even measurement errors) the only practical tool in your box for handling them is probability distributions. So either way, you've got a probability distribution. And at this point people just apply Occam's Razor and get on with their lives. You can theorize an infinite number of systems that work exactly like the real world. The question is whether they're useful.
- trevyn 7y ago
  Could an untestable underlying theory inspire new models and implications that are testable?
  - dharmab 7y ago
    In a general case, yes. This happened recently with gravitational waves. The construction of multiple gravitational wave detectors across the planet allowed us to test a previously untestable hypothesis about the number of dimensions that gravity can act in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HYw6vPR9qU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HYw6vPR9qU
    - SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
      > allowed us to test a previously untestable hypothesis So it is testable now? Is everyone here using the word "untestable" in the same way, i.e. "untestable today with the current state of the art, but it might be tomorrow" vs. "untestable ever, as a principle, even with perfect tech"
      - namanyayg 7y ago
        Untestable is a layman's word, everyone here should be saying "falsifiable". Many Worlds isn't falsifiable and hence untestable; but untestable can also mean not possible to test with current tech. Falsifiable is more accurate here.
        klodolph 7y ago
        "Falsifiable" is a fantastic term but the philosophy of science did not stop with Popper, and it's not the only term we have available to discuss competing theories.
        namanyayg 7y ago
        What other terms would you use? "Falsifiable" is more accurate that "untestable"?
        klodolph 7y ago
        "More accurate" is a good way to phrase it. "More accurate" also describes GR when you compare it to Newtonian mechanics. Strictly speaking, Newtonian mechanics is false and has been falsified if you subscribe to the Popperian view. However, if Newtonion mechanics is false, is it useless? No. As it turns out, there are a few problems with the epistemology of falsifiability. The main ones I can think of are: 1. Duhem-Quine problem - there is a large number of auxiliary hypotheses under test in any experiment, in addition to the primary hypotheses. These very numerous and we need a framework for deciding how to apply the results of our experiment to the many hypotheses. 2. Statistical claims may be unfalsifiable. Consider a theory that claims that a coin flip has a 50% probability of being heads... how does one falsify this? One can't strictly falsify it, but you can show that the evidence is unlikely given the hypothesis. So we need some framework that connects statistical and probabilistic evidence to our knowledge of the world. Or in summary, the problems with falsifiability are that falsifying a theory doesn't give us the information that we want, and it's impossible to falsify many theories. To abuse analogies, falsifiability is kind of like trying to cross a river with your car, when there's no bridge and the car won't start. One approach other than Popperian falsifiability is a Bayesian system of belief and likelihood. This only one direction that the philosophy of science is exploring, but it is probably the one most familiar to HN readers.
- kgwgk 7y ago
  > The thing about superdeterminism is that it's only interesting if you want to argue philosophy. Like the Many Worlds Interpretation!
whatshisface 7y ago
"The Facts" basically say that among the statements, "Your experiment design isn't predestined by the universe to make it accidentally seem like quantum mechanics is true," "the state of the universe today is all you need to know to predict the state of the universe tomorrow," and "an experiment only has one outcome," there is at least one lie. If the first one is a lie that's superdeterminism, the second one the Copenhagen interpretation and the last one Many Worlds. What bothers me about getting philosophical is, philosophers will attempt to choose one or more based on intellectual aesthetic criteria that we developed from the womb onwards in the macroscopic world, while in reality the only legitimate answer is "we don't know." I think that is broadly speaking a problem that hampers the effectiveness of philosophy, there is not enough willingness to say "the present information does not permit a conclusion."
- MiroF 7y ago
  This comment started out good but then stumbled in to some odd critique of philosophy as being incapable of dealing with unknowable things when indeed that seems to be perfectly within the purview of philosophy. Humes Problem of Induction, for instance, is exactly an example of philosophical practice grappling with these unanswerables.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    So, Hume didn't stop ethical philosophers from trying to derive morals, he only stopped some of them. Wittgenstein and Borges didn't stop philosophers from trying to "beat" language games using only language: they only stopped some philosophers. I'm not saying that there aren't visionary heroes who realize that some discussions aren't going to go anywhere for fundamental reasons; instead, I'm highlighting the fact that even when they do, "all of philosophy" almost never reaches a consensus about quitting the debate. In math, when they deduced that the Axiom of Choice was always going to be an axiom, everybody quit looking for ways to confirm or refute it. I think it's a weakness of philosophy that similar things can't happen.
    - MiroF 7y ago
jfengel 7y ago
I don't think the problem with superdeterminism is the lack of free will, but with the way it doesn't really give you anything mentally to work with. It posits some early state from which everything could be deterministically extrapolated... except that state is both very complicated and completely hidden. It takes all of the probabilities and shoves them in a black box and says, "The answers exist, and they're in there. But you can't actually look in the box for the answers. You have to go do the experiment and wait for the speed of light to propagate the answer to you." Like all interpretations, it's mathematically equivalent to any other. It's just a question of what helps you think about the problem, and I don't think many people find it very edifying. You can replace the box with a random number generator, which is at least small enough to fit in your pocket. The superdeterminism box appears to have been crammed full of untold centillions of answers... none of which are accessible beforehand. If there were reason to think that the superdeterminism box were somehow smaller -- if it all really came down to just one random bit, say, that had been magnified by chaotic interactions to appear like more -- that would attract some attention. And I suppose it would be conceptually testable, by running Laplace's demon in reverse, except that that's not possible either from inside the universe. So it doesn't really come as a surprise that superdeterminism falls behind MWI or Copenhagen or even pilot wave, because each of those hands you something that you can use to mentally organize the world. Superdeterminism just seems to hand you a catchprase, "As it was foretold in the Long Ago -- but which I just found out about".
- zazaraka 7y ago
  Whats wrong with a pseudo-random number generator? You start the universe with 1 million random bits and then just iterate your function on them. How would we detect repetition at the 2^1 mil level? Maybe the universe would repeat itself after a while, but how would we know? Superdeterminism also plays nicely with the simulation hypothesis. You seed the virtual machine with some randomness and the physical laws and then you run the simulation.
  - jfengel 7y ago
    I don't believe you'd need even a million random bits. It's conceivable that only a few random bits are actually required, and then let iteration take care of the rest. There's nothing wrong with that. I just don't think people find it very useful as an organizing principle, so it doesn't attract a lot of attention.
zwkrt 7y ago
Can someone explain more clearly how being in a deterministic universe resolves the “problem” of Bell inequalities? It seems like even if the universe were deterministic it would not cause the classic polarizing-filters Bell inequality to seem “reasonable”. In fact it makes it seem less reasonable to me!
- kgwgk 7y ago
  The point is not that it's "reasonable", is that it's just what it is. It doesn't resolve the problem, it makes it meaningless.
- chr1 7y ago
  The determinism doesn't solve the problem, it makes the non-locality more visible because some people think that state of two particles far away influencing one another is somehow worse than the wave function in whole universe changing it's value at once. The superdeterminism "solves" the problem by claiming that there is no problem to begin with, and the results look non-local only because the experimenters always pick experiments that look non-local. How can a local deterministic theory create such complex behavior as thinking people, and at the same time constrain it in a way that time taken to play mario level is correlated with a photon experiment a year later, is left for the reader as an exercise.
scythe 7y ago
The problem is that superdeterminism contains a principle of explosion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion If superdeterminism explains quantum mechanics, why not cosmic inflation? Why not matter asymmetry? Why not abiogenesis? Why not Brexit? Superdeterminism, by construction, can explain everything — and all there’s left to do is pray to God.
- archibaldJ 7y ago
  I will have to disagree with that. Firstly I don't think anyone has actually formalised superdeterminism in a way that the principle of explosion can be logically introduced to formally undermine superdeterminism. What you are doing here is akin to stretching the conceptual relevance of Godel's incompleteness theorems and trying to use it to prove or disprove the existence of God. Basically I don't see how it makes sense to say that superdeterminism contains a principle of explosion. Perhaps my interpretation of superdeterminism is very different from yours. Or maybe I simply don't see the picture as you do. If that is the case please enlighten me. Secondly I think you are missing the point of superdeterminism here. There is something very computational (and perhaps Taoistic) about superdeterminism. Apparently under this framework the whole notion of "explaining things" is nullified and becomes meaningless. It occurs to me that our everyday notion of "explaining things" exists at a lower abstraction level and thus loses relevance in the face of superdeterminism. I believe if you really want to undermine superdeterminism as a theory (or as a philosophy), the more relevant question here to ask is: is there anything useful/meaningful about reality (or the universe) that can be inferred assuming superdeterminism? And then of course if you are a scientist you would then ask: are they experimentally verifiable?
  - teilo 7y ago
    > I believe if you really want to undermine superdeterminism as a theory (or as a philosophy), the more relevant question here to ask is: is there anything useful/meaningful about reality (or the universe) that can be inferred assuming superdeterminism? And then of course if you are a scientist you would then ask: are they experimentally verifiable? To even ask the question you must deny your own premise. If indeed superdeterminism is true, then any experimental verification is nullified by definition: the results of any and all experimentation is itself superdetermined regardless of any scientific framework.
teilo 7y ago
Superdeterminism is a self-defeating philosophy. In essence, it cedes everything to random chance, and makes all scientific inquiry meaningless. There is no longer any "why" or "how." There is merely, "That's just the way it is." Any apparent order or structure which might be observed is exactly that: merely apparent. Therefore any attempt to understand the universe is vain. It is little better than the presumption that planets move because a prime mover moves them. It is, in essence, to give as the final answer: "Planets move as they do because they cannot do anything else."
- coldtea 7y ago
  >In essence, it cedes everything to random chance, and makes all scientific inquiry meaningless. There is no longer any "why" or "how." There is merely, "That's just the way it is." Which doesn't make it wrong...
  - SubiculumCode 7y ago
    And indeed, is based on the same math as the more mainstream interpretations.
  - cybersnowflake 7y ago
    Bearded Intellectual: Superdeterminism did it. 'Intelligentsia': YAY two minutes later... Evangelist: God did it... 'Intelligentsia': REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
archibaldJ 7y ago
There is something very Taoistic about superdeterminism. And there is something very Taoistic about homotopy type theory too. Also, I feel that both superdeterminism and homotopy type theory have traces of the holographic principle in them in a somewhat conceptual or abstract way. Perhaps there exists a nice correspondence between superdeterminism and homotopy type theory that can be used to extend (in a purely functional and categorical way) the simulation hypothesis into a full-fledged theory (and perhaps with its own nice little axiomatic system) to make sense of reality.
IX-103 7y ago
I'm not fond of superdeterminism since it's not that useful for making predictions. Any purely deterministic model has implications for free will, so that doesn't seem to be a legitimate criticism. Actually I would like to know more about provable violations if Bell's theorem as I am somewhat attached to local determinism and haven't seen an experiment that I would consider convincing. I mean the theories behind the experiments are sound, but I'm not sure they're actually measuring what they think they are measuring due to limitations in the experiment setup -- in order to prove a violation of locality your system cannot be in a cyclostationary equilibrium. In such an equilibrium the system state effectively becomes a standing wave so you risk measuring an effect that was actually a result of a previous cycle and mistakenly interpret it as being a result of the current cycle -- implying a violation in locality because the "cause" was outside of the light cone of the effect. Note that this is analogous to confusing the group and phase velocities of a radio wave (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-phase-velocity-and-group-velocity https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-phase-v...).
- pdonis 7y ago
  > In such an equilibrium the system state effectively becomes a standing wave so you risk measuring an effect that was actually a result of a previous cycle and mistakenly interpret it as being a result of the current cycle I don't know where you're getting this from, but it doesn't describe quantum systems on which Bell inequality violations have been experimentally confirmed (such as photon pairs from parametric down conversion). The only "loophole" that has not been completely closed at this point is that we don't have 100% efficient detectors, but we have detectors that are well over 90% efficient so the claim that somehow all the stuff that will "fix" the Bell inequality violations is hiding in the small percentage of photons not being detected isn't very compelling.
  - IX-103 7y ago
    In short the problem I'm addressing is that the interpretation of the experiment assumes that the system is memoryless, so that the only thing being measured is the interaction with the particles being measured. In the experiments generating the photon pairs from parametric downconversion, for example, does the entire system start up, send 1 photon which gets split into the entangled photon pairs which then go to the detectors -- with no other photons generated? If there is a warm-up period for the equipment or other photons are emitted or absorbed then there is the potential for memory effects that could interfere with the measurements. For instance if we treat light as a wave then the cosine correlation with angle we see in the basic "two entangled photons with polarizing lenses experiment" is exactly what we would expect to see. The difficulty is simply resolving this with the particle nature of photons. If the experimental system has memory then it could easily have the phase of the effective wave or some other function of the history of photons encoded in the state of the system. There are probably some ways to compensate for these memory effects and demonstrate their (non)existence, but I am not a physicist.
gus_massa 7y ago
In Superdeterminism each time a particle has to collapse, instead of rolling a dice it looks into a secret table of hidden variables that was calculated at the beginning of the universe. The table was calculated carefully so the apparent random choices follow all the laws of quantum mechanics, and the results are equivalent to what you would expect if any of the other interpretations where correct. To calculate this secret table you must simulate all the interactions and path in the universe until it ends, because you must know which particles will be entangled, which result will have the "random" generator in the experiments, ... So the universe is only a movie that follows the random choices made at the beginning of the universe. But the choices are not arbitrary, they have the correct values so when the events really happen they follow the laws of physics. For example, the random choices at the beginning of the universe make it look that you can't transmit information faster than light. Physics study the laws of the real universe, but we can redefine Physics as the study of the laws that study the random number generator. Both real-Physics and initial-rng-Physics follow special relativity. Bot agree about QM. Both agree about the Bell inequality. So with Superdeterminism we solve the problem of QM in the real word, because everything we is already determined. Now the problem is how the RNG at the beginning of the universe work to simulate QM and all the other effects. Let's call the study of the RNG Physics. Now the problem is as hard as before Superdeterminism.
- chr1 7y ago
  What you describe is not superdeterminism, but a replay of a non local theory. The important part happens in the first run when you calculate the table. What superdeterminism says, is that there exists local and deterministic evaluation rule that will compute consecutive states of the universe, but simply because of the way the rule works experimenters far away end up always choosing the experiments that yield correct results. Superdeterminism is unpopular because the existence of such evaluation rule seems very unlikely.
  - gus_massa 7y ago
    From the article: > Where do these correlations ultimately come from? Well, they come from where everything ultimately comes from, that is from the initial state of the universe. And that’s where most people walk off: They think that you need to precisely choose the initial conditions of the universe to arrange quanta in Anton Zeilinger’s brain just so that he’ll end up turning a knob left rather than right. Besides sounding entirely nuts, it’s also a useless idea, because how the hell would you ever calculate anything with it? And if it’s unfalsifiable but useless, then indeed it isn’t science. So, frowning at superdeterminism is not entirely unjustified.
eridius 7y ago
If Superdeterminism means that the initial state of the universe is such that the universe appears to follow quantum mechanics... why? Why would every single decision have its resolution set in a manner that appears to follow QM?
archibaldJ 7y ago
There was something formless and perfect before the universe was born. It is serene. Empty. Solitary. Unchanging. Infinite. Eternally present. It is the mother of the universe. For lack of a better name, I call it the Tao. It flows through all things, inside and outside, and returns to the origin of all things. The Tao is great. The universe is great. Earth is great. Man is great. These are the four great powers. Man follows the earth. Earth follows the universe. The universe follows the Tao. The Tao follows only itself.

91 points by vectorbunny 7y ago

The thing about superdeterminism is that it's only interesting if you want to argue philosophy. If you're dealing with hidden variables (or even measurement errors) the only practical tool in your box for handling them is probability distributions. So either way, you've got a probability distribution. And at this point people just apply Occam's Razor and get on with their lives. You can theorize an infinite number of systems that work exactly like the real world. The question is whether they're useful.

trevyn 7y ago
Could an untestable underlying theory inspire new models and implications that are testable?
- dharmab 7y ago
  In a general case, yes. This happened recently with gravitational waves. The construction of multiple gravitational wave detectors across the planet allowed us to test a previously untestable hypothesis about the number of dimensions that gravity can act in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HYw6vPR9qU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HYw6vPR9qU
  - SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
    > allowed us to test a previously untestable hypothesis So it is testable now? Is everyone here using the word "untestable" in the same way, i.e. "untestable today with the current state of the art, but it might be tomorrow" vs. "untestable ever, as a principle, even with perfect tech"
    - namanyayg 7y ago
      Untestable is a layman's word, everyone here should be saying "falsifiable". Many Worlds isn't falsifiable and hence untestable; but untestable can also mean not possible to test with current tech. Falsifiable is more accurate here.
      - klodolph 7y ago
        "Falsifiable" is a fantastic term but the philosophy of science did not stop with Popper, and it's not the only term we have available to discuss competing theories.
        namanyayg 7y ago
        What other terms would you use? "Falsifiable" is more accurate that "untestable"?
        klodolph 7y ago
        "More accurate" is a good way to phrase it. "More accurate" also describes GR when you compare it to Newtonian mechanics. Strictly speaking, Newtonian mechanics is false and has been falsified if you subscribe to the Popperian view. However, if Newtonion mechanics is false, is it useless? No. As it turns out, there are a few problems with the epistemology of falsifiability. The main ones I can think of are: 1. Duhem-Quine problem - there is a large number of auxiliary hypotheses under test in any experiment, in addition to the primary hypotheses. These very numerous and we need a framework for deciding how to apply the results of our experiment to the many hypotheses. 2. Statistical claims may be unfalsifiable. Consider a theory that claims that a coin flip has a 50% probability of being heads... how does one falsify this? One can't strictly falsify it, but you can show that the evidence is unlikely given the hypothesis. So we need some framework that connects statistical and probabilistic evidence to our knowledge of the world. Or in summary, the problems with falsifiability are that falsifying a theory doesn't give us the information that we want, and it's impossible to falsify many theories. To abuse analogies, falsifiability is kind of like trying to cross a river with your car, when there's no bridge and the car won't start. One approach other than Popperian falsifiability is a Bayesian system of belief and likelihood. This only one direction that the philosophy of science is exploring, but it is probably the one most familiar to HN readers.
kgwgk 7y ago
> The thing about superdeterminism is that it's only interesting if you want to argue philosophy. Like the Many Worlds Interpretation!

whatshisface 7y ago

"The Facts" basically say that among the statements, "Your experiment design isn't predestined by the universe to make it accidentally seem like quantum mechanics is true," "the state of the universe today is all you need to know to predict the state of the universe tomorrow," and "an experiment only has one outcome," there is at least one lie. If the first one is a lie that's superdeterminism, the second one the Copenhagen interpretation and the last one Many Worlds. What bothers me about getting philosophical is, philosophers will attempt to choose one or more based on intellectual aesthetic criteria that we developed from the womb onwards in the macroscopic world, while in reality the only legitimate answer is "we don't know." I think that is broadly speaking a problem that hampers the effectiveness of philosophy, there is not enough willingness to say "the present information does not permit a conclusion."

MiroF 7y ago
This comment started out good but then stumbled in to some odd critique of philosophy as being incapable of dealing with unknowable things when indeed that seems to be perfectly within the purview of philosophy. Humes Problem of Induction, for instance, is exactly an example of philosophical practice grappling with these unanswerables.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  So, Hume didn't stop ethical philosophers from trying to derive morals, he only stopped some of them. Wittgenstein and Borges didn't stop philosophers from trying to "beat" language games using only language: they only stopped some philosophers. I'm not saying that there aren't visionary heroes who realize that some discussions aren't going to go anywhere for fundamental reasons; instead, I'm highlighting the fact that even when they do, "all of philosophy" almost never reaches a consensus about quitting the debate. In math, when they deduced that the Axiom of Choice was always going to be an axiom, everybody quit looking for ways to confirm or refute it. I think it's a weakness of philosophy that similar things can't happen.
  - MiroF 7y ago

jfengel 7y ago

I don't think the problem with superdeterminism is the lack of free will, but with the way it doesn't really give you anything mentally to work with. It posits some early state from which everything could be deterministically extrapolated... except that state is both very complicated and completely hidden. It takes all of the probabilities and shoves them in a black box and says, "The answers exist, and they're in there. But you can't actually look in the box for the answers. You have to go do the experiment and wait for the speed of light to propagate the answer to you." Like all interpretations, it's mathematically equivalent to any other. It's just a question of what helps you think about the problem, and I don't think many people find it very edifying. You can replace the box with a random number generator, which is at least small enough to fit in your pocket. The superdeterminism box appears to have been crammed full of untold centillions of answers... none of which are accessible beforehand. If there were reason to think that the superdeterminism box were somehow smaller -- if it all really came down to just one random bit, say, that had been magnified by chaotic interactions to appear like more -- that would attract some attention. And I suppose it would be conceptually testable, by running Laplace's demon in reverse, except that that's not possible either from inside the universe. So it doesn't really come as a surprise that superdeterminism falls behind MWI or Copenhagen or even pilot wave, because each of those hands you something that you can use to mentally organize the world. Superdeterminism just seems to hand you a catchprase, "As it was foretold in the Long Ago -- but which I just found out about".

zazaraka 7y ago
Whats wrong with a pseudo-random number generator? You start the universe with 1 million random bits and then just iterate your function on them. How would we detect repetition at the 2^1 mil level? Maybe the universe would repeat itself after a while, but how would we know? Superdeterminism also plays nicely with the simulation hypothesis. You seed the virtual machine with some randomness and the physical laws and then you run the simulation.
- jfengel 7y ago
  I don't believe you'd need even a million random bits. It's conceivable that only a few random bits are actually required, and then let iteration take care of the rest. There's nothing wrong with that. I just don't think people find it very useful as an organizing principle, so it doesn't attract a lot of attention.

zwkrt 7y ago

Can someone explain more clearly how being in a deterministic universe resolves the “problem” of Bell inequalities? It seems like even if the universe were deterministic it would not cause the classic polarizing-filters Bell inequality to seem “reasonable”. In fact it makes it seem less reasonable to me!

kgwgk 7y ago
The point is not that it's "reasonable", is that it's just what it is. It doesn't resolve the problem, it makes it meaningless.
chr1 7y ago
The determinism doesn't solve the problem, it makes the non-locality more visible because some people think that state of two particles far away influencing one another is somehow worse than the wave function in whole universe changing it's value at once. The superdeterminism "solves" the problem by claiming that there is no problem to begin with, and the results look non-local only because the experimenters always pick experiments that look non-local. How can a local deterministic theory create such complex behavior as thinking people, and at the same time constrain it in a way that time taken to play mario level is correlated with a photon experiment a year later, is left for the reader as an exercise.

scythe 7y ago

The problem is that superdeterminism contains a principle of explosion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion If superdeterminism explains quantum mechanics, why not cosmic inflation? Why not matter asymmetry? Why not abiogenesis? Why not Brexit? Superdeterminism, by construction, can explain everything — and all there’s left to do is pray to God.

archibaldJ 7y ago
I will have to disagree with that. Firstly I don't think anyone has actually formalised superdeterminism in a way that the principle of explosion can be logically introduced to formally undermine superdeterminism. What you are doing here is akin to stretching the conceptual relevance of Godel's incompleteness theorems and trying to use it to prove or disprove the existence of God. Basically I don't see how it makes sense to say that superdeterminism contains a principle of explosion. Perhaps my interpretation of superdeterminism is very different from yours. Or maybe I simply don't see the picture as you do. If that is the case please enlighten me. Secondly I think you are missing the point of superdeterminism here. There is something very computational (and perhaps Taoistic) about superdeterminism. Apparently under this framework the whole notion of "explaining things" is nullified and becomes meaningless. It occurs to me that our everyday notion of "explaining things" exists at a lower abstraction level and thus loses relevance in the face of superdeterminism. I believe if you really want to undermine superdeterminism as a theory (or as a philosophy), the more relevant question here to ask is: is there anything useful/meaningful about reality (or the universe) that can be inferred assuming superdeterminism? And then of course if you are a scientist you would then ask: are they experimentally verifiable?
- teilo 7y ago
  > I believe if you really want to undermine superdeterminism as a theory (or as a philosophy), the more relevant question here to ask is: is there anything useful/meaningful about reality (or the universe) that can be inferred assuming superdeterminism? And then of course if you are a scientist you would then ask: are they experimentally verifiable? To even ask the question you must deny your own premise. If indeed superdeterminism is true, then any experimental verification is nullified by definition: the results of any and all experimentation is itself superdetermined regardless of any scientific framework.

teilo 7y ago

Superdeterminism is a self-defeating philosophy. In essence, it cedes everything to random chance, and makes all scientific inquiry meaningless. There is no longer any "why" or "how." There is merely, "That's just the way it is." Any apparent order or structure which might be observed is exactly that: merely apparent. Therefore any attempt to understand the universe is vain. It is little better than the presumption that planets move because a prime mover moves them. It is, in essence, to give as the final answer: "Planets move as they do because they cannot do anything else."

coldtea 7y ago
>In essence, it cedes everything to random chance, and makes all scientific inquiry meaningless. There is no longer any "why" or "how." There is merely, "That's just the way it is." Which doesn't make it wrong...
- SubiculumCode 7y ago
  And indeed, is based on the same math as the more mainstream interpretations.
- cybersnowflake 7y ago
  Bearded Intellectual: Superdeterminism did it. 'Intelligentsia': YAY two minutes later... Evangelist: God did it... 'Intelligentsia': REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

archibaldJ 7y ago

There is something very Taoistic about superdeterminism. And there is something very Taoistic about homotopy type theory too. Also, I feel that both superdeterminism and homotopy type theory have traces of the holographic principle in them in a somewhat conceptual or abstract way. Perhaps there exists a nice correspondence between superdeterminism and homotopy type theory that can be used to extend (in a purely functional and categorical way) the simulation hypothesis into a full-fledged theory (and perhaps with its own nice little axiomatic system) to make sense of reality.

IX-103 7y ago

I'm not fond of superdeterminism since it's not that useful for making predictions. Any purely deterministic model has implications for free will, so that doesn't seem to be a legitimate criticism. Actually I would like to know more about provable violations if Bell's theorem as I am somewhat attached to local determinism and haven't seen an experiment that I would consider convincing. I mean the theories behind the experiments are sound, but I'm not sure they're actually measuring what they think they are measuring due to limitations in the experiment setup -- in order to prove a violation of locality your system cannot be in a cyclostationary equilibrium. In such an equilibrium the system state effectively becomes a standing wave so you risk measuring an effect that was actually a result of a previous cycle and mistakenly interpret it as being a result of the current cycle -- implying a violation in locality because the "cause" was outside of the light cone of the effect. Note that this is analogous to confusing the group and phase velocities of a radio wave (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-phase-velocity-and-group-velocity https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-phase-v...).

pdonis 7y ago
> In such an equilibrium the system state effectively becomes a standing wave so you risk measuring an effect that was actually a result of a previous cycle and mistakenly interpret it as being a result of the current cycle I don't know where you're getting this from, but it doesn't describe quantum systems on which Bell inequality violations have been experimentally confirmed (such as photon pairs from parametric down conversion). The only "loophole" that has not been completely closed at this point is that we don't have 100% efficient detectors, but we have detectors that are well over 90% efficient so the claim that somehow all the stuff that will "fix" the Bell inequality violations is hiding in the small percentage of photons not being detected isn't very compelling.
- IX-103 7y ago
  In short the problem I'm addressing is that the interpretation of the experiment assumes that the system is memoryless, so that the only thing being measured is the interaction with the particles being measured. In the experiments generating the photon pairs from parametric downconversion, for example, does the entire system start up, send 1 photon which gets split into the entangled photon pairs which then go to the detectors -- with no other photons generated? If there is a warm-up period for the equipment or other photons are emitted or absorbed then there is the potential for memory effects that could interfere with the measurements. For instance if we treat light as a wave then the cosine correlation with angle we see in the basic "two entangled photons with polarizing lenses experiment" is exactly what we would expect to see. The difficulty is simply resolving this with the particle nature of photons. If the experimental system has memory then it could easily have the phase of the effective wave or some other function of the history of photons encoded in the state of the system. There are probably some ways to compensate for these memory effects and demonstrate their (non)existence, but I am not a physicist.

gus_massa 7y ago

In Superdeterminism each time a particle has to collapse, instead of rolling a dice it looks into a secret table of hidden variables that was calculated at the beginning of the universe. The table was calculated carefully so the apparent random choices follow all the laws of quantum mechanics, and the results are equivalent to what you would expect if any of the other interpretations where correct. To calculate this secret table you must simulate all the interactions and path in the universe until it ends, because you must know which particles will be entangled, which result will have the "random" generator in the experiments, ... So the universe is only a movie that follows the random choices made at the beginning of the universe. But the choices are not arbitrary, they have the correct values so when the events really happen they follow the laws of physics. For example, the random choices at the beginning of the universe make it look that you can't transmit information faster than light. Physics study the laws of the real universe, but we can redefine Physics as the study of the laws that study the random number generator. Both real-Physics and initial-rng-Physics follow special relativity. Bot agree about QM. Both agree about the Bell inequality. So with Superdeterminism we solve the problem of QM in the real word, because everything we is already determined. Now the problem is how the RNG at the beginning of the universe work to simulate QM and all the other effects. Let's call the study of the RNG Physics. Now the problem is as hard as before Superdeterminism.

chr1 7y ago
What you describe is not superdeterminism, but a replay of a non local theory. The important part happens in the first run when you calculate the table. What superdeterminism says, is that there exists local and deterministic evaluation rule that will compute consecutive states of the universe, but simply because of the way the rule works experimenters far away end up always choosing the experiments that yield correct results. Superdeterminism is unpopular because the existence of such evaluation rule seems very unlikely.
- gus_massa 7y ago
  From the article: > Where do these correlations ultimately come from? Well, they come from where everything ultimately comes from, that is from the initial state of the universe. And that’s where most people walk off: They think that you need to precisely choose the initial conditions of the universe to arrange quanta in Anton Zeilinger’s brain just so that he’ll end up turning a knob left rather than right. Besides sounding entirely nuts, it’s also a useless idea, because how the hell would you ever calculate anything with it? And if it’s unfalsifiable but useless, then indeed it isn’t science. So, frowning at superdeterminism is not entirely unjustified.

eridius 7y ago

If Superdeterminism means that the initial state of the universe is such that the universe appears to follow quantum mechanics... why? Why would every single decision have its resolution set in a manner that appears to follow QM?

archibaldJ 7y ago

There was something formless and perfect before the universe was born. It is serene. Empty. Solitary. Unchanging. Infinite. Eternally present. It is the mother of the universe. For lack of a better name, I call it the Tao. It flows through all things, inside and outside, and returns to the origin of all things. The Tao is great. The universe is great. Earth is great. Man is great. These are the four great powers. Man follows the earth. Earth follows the universe. The universe follows the Tao. The Tao follows only itself.