
Beyond Quantum Mechanics [video] - akakievich
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvsTVlwek-g
======
jessriedel
Some context: t' Hooft the man is treated with great reverence among
physicists for his many impressive accomplishments and deep physical insight,
but the overwhelming majority think he is dead wrong on quantum mechanics.
Even among the small number of nonconformists who would describe their primary
work as on the foundations of quantum mechanics, his position is a distinctly
minority one.

~~~
trevyn
Einstein also personally believed in complete determinism and lack of free
will, but did not formulate a solid argument before he decohered.

See also superdeterminism:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism)

It’s interesting that it’s possible for there to be unfalsifiable theories
that are nevertheless true, widely believed, and inform how we might approach
everyday problems. While not able to be “proved”, it still may be possible one
day to come up with large amounts of evidence in favor of such a theory;
Stephen Wolfram’s work and ideas seem like they could be in the right
direction, even if it is only the very first initial steps: “If the rules are
simple enough, one might be able to do something that seems quite outrageous:
just search the universe of all possible rules, and find our own physical
universe.” - [https://blog.wolfram.com/2007/09/11/my-hobby-hunting-for-
our...](https://blog.wolfram.com/2007/09/11/my-hobby-hunting-for-our-
universe/)

While the scientific method is extraordinarily effective _for questions in its
domain of applicability_ , there _are_ questions that exist out of that domain
on which we can nevertheless make progress.

~~~
kittiepryde
(I'm new to this concept) Does free will in the context mean, people's actions
could be predicted? Is it just referring to particles as having free will?

If it's people, is it generally considered that if a person could be
accurately modeled and predicted, then they have no free will?

~~~
trevyn
Superdeterminism implies that people’s actions are fully _determined_ for
their entire lives, but we would likely not be able to _predict_ them in any
meaningful way even if we had access to all the necessary information, because
the computation would be too large to handle. (The “you need a computer more
powerful than the universe to compute the universe faster than the universe
computes itself” argument.)

In the PDF book linked elsewhere in these comments, t’ Hooft makes the
argument that what we mean colloquially by “free will” is more of an emotional
definition, and he proposes a rigorous scientific definition that may be more
productive.

(Of course, given certain neural data from a person, we _can_ predict certain
actions on the order of 100’s of ms in advance of the person’s conscious
awareness of choice, so...)

------
Mugwort
If you're interested in learning t'Hooft's theory in detail here's a link to
download his book for FREE. You have to pay for a physical copy but Springer
has decided to make this book open access.

[https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319412849](https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319412849)

------
tux1968
He gets to the meat of his argument at 22:37

[https://youtu.be/jvsTVlwek-g?t=1357](https://youtu.be/jvsTVlwek-g?t=1357)

Essentially that the Bell theorem is wrong because his definition of causality
was incorrect. I'm in no position to comment on it one way or another, but it
seems like quite an odd forum to be presenting his case.

~~~
wolfgke
A less odd forum, where he presents his ideas, is his book "The Cellular
Automaton Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics":

>
> [https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-41285-6](https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-41285-6)

------
automada
One quantum automata question I have is this: is there a rigid lattice that
the photons exists on?

If one photon is able to exist at any arbitrary position and at any arbitrary
spin orientation it would seem simple to imagine an event space between two
photons having a distance between 0 and the plank length

Unless there is a lattice that ensures that all photons are minimally oriented
at a distance of at least a plank length in all directions and whose spins
must orient along the lattice in 90deg transformations

~~~
trevyn
Possibly but not necessarily; one of the models is where the fabric of
spacetime itself is constructed from an automata where individual graph edges
reconfigure as part of the evolution of the automata; this could be
responsible for relativistic distortions of spacetime.

It gets really interesting when you consider that the lowest-level edges do
not have to obey what appears to be local speed-of-light restrictions —
entangled photons could have a “thread” cutting across the higher-level
emergent spacetime that could provide a simple mechanism for “action at a
distance” that does not actually allow external information to be transferred
from one location to another, just information internal to the functioning of
a superdeterministic universe. (Though, strictly speaking, if you believe in
superdeterminism, you don’t need such a mechanism, but it could be useful for
convincing other humans.)

------
danbmil99
While the math in this paper is way too dense for me to fully comprehend, the
larger premise here -- that the mysteries of quantum mechanics as presently
understood mask a deeper, deterministic, discontinuous regime -- is actually
gaining ground in many quarters.

(Disclaimer: I co-authored a paper referenced in the article)

~~~
wolfgke
> (Disclaimer: I co-authored a paper referenced in the article)

The submission links to a video, not a paper. Thus: what paper are you
referring to?

~~~
danbmil99
I should have specified I was talking about the book "The Cellular Automaton
Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" mentioned in the thread.

The paper he references is "Two-state, Reversible, Universal Cellular Automata
in Three Dimensions"

