
Superdeterminism may help us overcome the current crisis in physics - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/83/intelligence/how-to-make-sense-of-quantum-physics
======
knzhou
I tried to argue against superdeterminism the last time this came up and got a
pile of downvotes because people mixed it up with determinism. And I see this
is happening all over again in the comments below.

I'm not even going to try this time, I'm just going to say to everybody
reading this: superdeterminism _is not at all the same thing as determinism_.
It is a far stronger assumption with far far more unintuitive consequences for
our understanding of nature. If you're reading this and just thinking
"superdeterminism is okay because there's no free will", then you've been
suckered by this article into believing a massive oversimplification.

~~~
wwarner
I really agree with you here. Superdeterminism is much weirder and harder to
accept than non-locality. Of course, with enough non-locality you'll end up
with something just as awkward as superdeterminism. I'm trying learn more
about decoherence as an alternative to wave-function collapse.

I'm listening to the Into to QM course from mit's open courseware [0] and I
have to say that QM represents a complete break with the classical past, not
because of a scientist's ambition or a quirk of history, but because the
experimental evidence demands it. The evidence results in a few postulates,
and QM is really the only theory that satisfies the postulates, in the sense
that _any_ theory that satisfies those postulates will look like
Schroedinger's eq. The story is not over at all, we're still very much at the
beginning of understanding it.

[0] [https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-04-quantum-physics-
i-s...](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-04-quantum-physics-i-
spring-2013/)

~~~
remcob
To me decoherence always seemed so obviously the solution to these 'problems
in QM' that I genuinely don't understand why are still having these quasi-
scientific discussions. Am I missing something or is there a ton of uninformed
arm-chair science going on?

What are the scientific arguments against decoherence? What do up-to-date
theoreticians think?

~~~
akvadrako
No mainstream physicist really objects to decoherence - it is obvious. But
_just_ decoherence doesn’t give you single outcomes - it gives you many
worlds.

And people do debate how to derive our single world experience from many
worlds. It can’t be done without more assumptions.

Many in this field do accept it, but say the other worlds are not real (QBism,
dBB).

But that position is philosophically weak, so those against many worlds still
look for alternatives.

~~~
remcob
I don't see many-world arising from decoherence, please elaborate.

Decoherence doesn't give you single outcomes, but it gives you a classical
probability distribution (like an enthropic ensemble) over pure quantum
states, with the pure quantum states having reduced coherence (i.e. they 'look
classical').

Classical probability distributions are nothing new, we don't need a many
worlds interpretation to explain the butterfly effect.

Quantum states with a small amount of residual superposition also seem fine to
me, as long as you are willing to accept that the world is ultimately quantum
and not classical. That we don't see any quantum effects in daily life is just
because the scales are too small, similar to how we don't observe relativistic
effects because the scales are too large, or how we don't observe the
atomicity of water. But in all these cases we can do experiments to reveal the
true nature.

~~~
akvadrako
So during decoherence you don’t have classical worlds - the probabilities
interfere so you can’t ignore the other terms. Over time that interference
reduces, but as you say never disappears completely.

But at no point does one world even approximately emerge - it’s always many. I
can say only the one I experience is real, but there’s no justification for
it.

Your main problem though is thinking classically - you can't justify your
theory by saying it can be reduced (after an infinite amount of time) to an
old way of thinking. Classical probability is fraught with issues; just saying
it’s always been acceptable isn’t true nor a rational argument.

~~~
Decoherent
What are the issues with Classical probability relevant to accepting there
being a single world?

------
Grieverheart
Funny, a couple of days ago I googled about superdeterminism again to see if
there are any developments and came across Hossenfelder's and Palmer's paper
on arxiv [https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.06462](https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.06462)
. Strangely enough, even though I've studied theoretical Physics, the fact
that some of Quantum mechanic's claims are based on assumptions such as the
fact we have free will, were never really discussed except in a course in the
Philosophy of science I took, which, unfortunately, was not very scientific. I
actually never heard about superdeterminism until I read one of Gerard 't
Hooft's papers (see e.g.
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548](https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548)
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.02874](https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.02874)).
Universities should put more emphasis on teaching the things we take for
granted and give students the opportunity to question them, if we want to
further our understanding.

------
akvadrako
Superdeterminism in general is a pretty absurd idea. It basically says the
measurement settings you choose were predetermined. But you can use a random
source from another galaxy to select them. So something like the configuration
of stars in another galaxy must be conspiring to help you choose just the
correct settings to fake the results QM predicts, instead of QM being actually
true.

~~~
o_p
I see it more as if the universe was a 4D picture, with time as the 4th
dimension, any concept of time "going forward" is just an illusion by how our
brains work (we need time to compute every moment), so the outcomes are
already written, we just havent seen it.

~~~
ebg13
In that framework something most still be moving through an external time to
be experiencing individual parts of it sequentially.

~~~
gicop
Here's a thought experiment, similar to the one-electron universe thought
experiment: there exists one particle, the "consciousness particle," which
randomly jumps around throughout 4D space. Whenever it appears at a 4D
position, consciousness is experienced as computed by integrated information
theory (or a similar model) [1].

When you experience a moment of consciousness at a specific 4D position, you
experience all the memories of the "past" that are in your brain. Thus, the
consciousness particle interpretation of consciousness is compatible with your
direct perception of living a 3D life along a time dimension.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory)

~~~
ebg13
You still need real time for this. Without real time that particle can't move.

------
skosch
This is very exciting.

To a computer scientist, superdeterminism seems like the most elegant solution
to most of the current problems in physics. But it has always been firmly out
of the mainstream, perhaps because it runs directly counter to our human
experience. Gerard t'Hoofts framing of the universe as a cellular automaton
([https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548](https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548)) is
relatively intuitive, but still only a rough sketch. Hopefully, Hossenfelder
and Palmer now publicly arguing for superdeterminism will recruit some more
bright minds to fleshing out these models into workable theories.

~~~
Decoherent
It has been proven to require fine tuning though. It's a very unnatural
solution from a physical perspective.

------
atq2119
Is there any coherent fixed theory of superdeterminism at all? Something with
a system of equations that are nailed down and that one could build solid
thought experiments on top of?

The article mentions it but kind of downplays the fact that the prevailing
theory of QM has a very clear mathematical formalism without any wiggle room,
while superdeterminism doesn't have this.

That seems like a far better explanation for why QM has won, and makes me
wonder whether superdeterminism wouldn't just be the next string theory.

~~~
harmoat
Superdeterminism isn't supposed to be an alternative to QM, usually it's an
alternative interpretation of QM which allows hidden variables from what i've
gathered.

~~~
naasking
It allows _local_ hidden variable theories. Non-local hidden variable theories
have existed for decades (de Broglie-Bohm/Bohmian mechanics).

------
raverbashing
Well I just went down the rabbit hole
[http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-forgotten-
solut...](http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-forgotten-solution-
superdeterminism.html) and I still don't see how this is not a cop-out of
theological proportions

Two statistical dependent variables "can be made" independent, for example by
feeding one into an PRNG. This seems like a similar cop-out as the "particle
changes behaviour when it is observed _hence_ consciousness is needed in the
universe"

(And this answer explained it better [https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-
crackpot-scientists-go-aft...](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-crackpot-
scientists-go-after-super-deterministic-theories-when-Bells-theorem-has-
proved-that-local-realism-is-false/answer/Paul-Mainwood) as usual for Quora,
awful questions with great answers)

~~~
naasking
> Two statistical dependent variables "can be made" independent, for example
> by feeding one into an PRNG

No statistical test can _assure_ statistical independence for all possible
cases. The very fact that you pipe it through a PRNG means the output is
deterministically correlated with the input, because PRNGs are deterministic,
and _some_ statistical test will be able to detect it. At the base level, a
test that tries every conceivable PRNG, for instance.

~~~
raverbashing
That's why I said it's a theological problem

In practice the universe can't know all the ways you can mix-up a variable

~~~
naasking
Who says the universe can't "know" all the ways? That's like saying momentum
can't be conserved because the universe can't know all the ways that we could
transform momentum into other forms of energy and back again.

~~~
raverbashing
Momentum comes from the interaction of forces, there's nothing that's "needed"
to know. Two billiard balls colliding and a billiard ball colliding with a
ball of mud conserves momentum (in a vacuum, in space, etc) the same because
it all boils down to forces. F=dP/dt

That's very different from "regardless how you throw the dice it will always
"know" what you did".

~~~
naasking
In other words, we invented some concepts (force, momentum, energy) that
exhibit a symmetry under various transformations.

It's only "very different" in superdeterminism because that which is conserved
doesn't yet have a widely accepted formulation that you've internalized the
way you've internalized the other common concepts in physics.

------
omazurov
Superdeterminism appears to aspire to come up with a classical model that
would explain quantum correlation. If successful it would render a quantum
computer to be fancy, highly parallel, very expensive but still a classical
one. A non-classical superdeterministic model would just substitute one
mystery for another (sneaked in non-locality or something).

------
titzer
Everything old is new again. Superdeterminism is basically the concept that
everything follows from the initial conditions of the universe in a
deterministic fashion. In short, it's a clockwork universe below the quantum
level. It is compatible with Bell's theorem because it's not local hidden
variables, it's global hidden variables--i.e. the state of the entire
universe.

The problem is, according to my current understanding, superdeterminism cannot
be tested.

~~~
Frost1x
This is the my first time reading about Superdeterminism and the author hits
on my of my amature/novice intuitions on issues like the measurement problem,
hidden variables, and Bell's theorem (call me weird but these are topics I
enjoy reading, studying, and thinking about--technically and philosophically).

I'd be very interested in hearing and explanation and understanding why
superdeterminism cannot be tested (it's not clearly obvious to me how that's
the case) because if that is the case, it would explain why it was largely
unpursued/undeveloped (similar to what someone else in this thread posted--if
it's true, it supposeldy offers little useful insight beyond better explaining
issues in quantum mechanics by replacing one blackbox of uncertainty with
another).

Based on the author's description, much of the issue is that the theory has
had little attention and as such, is largely undeveloped (and therefore, isn't
going to be developed enough for experimental testing).

~~~
dodobirdlord
> I'd be very interested in hearing and explanation and understanding why
> superdeterminism cannot be tested

What experiment could you run in a superdetermined universe that would
distinguish it from a non-superdetermined universe? Vice versa? There's
nothing.

------
tsimionescu
One thing that I am disappointed is not discussed in the article are the
experiments done to validate statistical independence based on extremely old
and far-away phenomena. There have been experimental validations of Bell's
inequalities with measurements chosen based on distant quasars, and they held
up very well. This would suggest that the state of two particles we just fired
is caused by reactions in a quasar millions of years ago, or by even older
phenomena.

This suggests there isn't even some kind of 'local-ish' theory of hidden
variables, like in the case of throwing dice, and we would really need to
account for the state of the whole universe for all of its history to
accurately predict what happens when we type at our keyboards.

~~~
naasking
> This suggests there isn't even some kind of 'local-ish' theory of hidden
> variables, like in the case of throwing dice, and we would really need to
> account for the state of the whole universe for all of its history to
> accurately predict what happens when we type at our keyboards.

Yes, because all particles in the universe share a common entangled past
because they all originated from the same source, ie. the Big Bang.

------
Gatsky
I think progress in physics is going to be on hold for a while. This kind of
fundamental scientific inquiry does not proceed in a linear fashion, and there
was incredible progress in the last century. Physicists seem to realise this
on some level - in the last 5 years I have noticed physicists turning up in
other fields, particularly origin of life and consciousness studies.

~~~
gizmo686
I think this becomes even clearer if you look at what the major recent
experimental results in physics are.

The two that come to mind are gravitational waves and the Higgs Boson.

Gravitational waves were observed by LIGO and Virgo. These observatories were
built in 1993/1994, but did not observe a gravitational wave until 2015 (many
have been observed since then).

VIRGO costs ~10mil Euro/year to operate and is staffed by over 300 people.

LIGO had an initial budget of $395 million in 1994, with a $200million
overhaul in 2015.

The Higgs Boson was detected using the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC began in
1995, and would not discover the Higgs until 2012. The LHC had a construction
cost of $4.4 billion, with an annual operating budget of $1billion.

Most of the discoveries of the 20th centuary did not require anywhere near
this scale of experiment. There is still some room to grow here (more powerful
colliders and more sensitivy gravitational observatories are being planned),
but fundamental physisics seems to be fast approaching the limits of our
current engineering capabilities; and may need to enter a quite period while
it waits for the more applied sciences to catch up. Or, worse, the laws of
physicis end up being such that the "next step" of experiments is simply
outside the range of what we could conceivably build.

------
seiferteric
Maybe not the right place to ask, but does anyone have an opinion on
GRW/Spontaneous Collapse Theory?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghirardi%E2%80%93Rimini%E2%80%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghirardi%E2%80%93Rimini%E2%80%93Weber_theory)

It seems so sensible compared to other theories but I don't hear much about
it.

~~~
l33tman
Isn't it largely obsolete after decoherence theory explained most of the
issues GRW had?

------
mcnamaratw
Ok, particle states are correlated in a way we've missed. Fine. Every set of
particles has fewer degrees of freedom than we assumed. We can check
experimentally: the heat capacity of your set of particles is proportional to
the number of degrees of freedom.

It would be nice to see something about this point in the essay.

~~~
gus_massa
> _the heat capacity of your set of particles is proportional to the number of
> degrees of freedom_

IIRC that is only valid for a classic system.

~~~
tom-thistime
Sure, but it's the same issue. In a quantum system some degrees of freedom are
"frozen out"\--the energies are much higher than (Boltzmann's
constant)(Absolute temperature) and they become irrelevant. But the
_accessible_ degrees of freedom show up in the heat capacity.

~~~
gus_massa
When the Cv of a diatomic gas goes from 3/2R to 5/2R there is an intermediate
part that is complicated. A photon gas has also a strange Cv. I think it's not
easy to dismiss superdeterminism using just the Cv, because sometimes Cv is
more complicated.

[Disclaimer: I really really dislike superdeterminism. I just think that Cv is
the wrong reason to dismiss it.]

~~~
tom-thistime
For sure. The transition from 3/2kT to 5/2kT is a good example of a frozen-out
mode getting "unfrozen". Within the transition we have to count density of
states and not screw around with classical analogs. ( I'm an optics person, so
I think the Cv of a photon gas is normal and understandable ... If I take half
an hour to write it all out again!) This is technical stuff we're talking
about ... but it's not difficult for particle physicists to address!

Anyway I don't think I'm dismissing the idea of "superdeterminism". I'm only
puzzled that directly measuring degrees of freedom, which was a central reason
for adopting quantum mechanics, isn't even mentioned in an article where the
public is being told there are fewer "real" degrees of freedom than generally
thought.

------
ben509
> Even more importantly, no one has ever proposed a consistent, non-
> reductionist theory of nature

It seems the point of non-reductionism is that you can't propose such a
theory.

For instance, if we were in a simulation that decides whether to optimize
quantum to macroscopic transition based on what we're looking at, we're simply
not going to find what causes wave functions to collapse because there isn't
an underlying rule to find. We're "observers" just because we're flagged as
such. For us in the simulation, certain things just happen for apparently
arbitrary reasons because we can't peer into the source code.

It'd be like a character in an FPS trying to figure out why shooting breaks
some things but others are indestructible.

------
sebastianconcpt
_This update (aka the “collapse” of the wave function) is instantaneous; it
happens at the same time everywhere._

So it's like the refresh rate of The Universe?

------
viach
Non-determinism requires some kind of RNG which is truly random (TRNG), right?
So the next value can't be calculated from the previous one. This means all
values of truly random RNG just exist as we don't need to iterate all of them
in order to calculate what's next? So truly random RNG is just pre-determined
instantly from step one and RRNG is as pre-determined as TRNG?

------
amai
An interesting discussion can be found here:
[http://mateusaraujo.info/2019/12/17/superdeterminism-is-
unsc...](http://mateusaraujo.info/2019/12/17/superdeterminism-is-
unscientific/)

------
athrowaway3z
I hope we will see more sci-fi take the route of super-determinism as opposed
to multiverse theory.

The latter is a nice plot device, but its wide spread use in pop culture has
overblown its likelihood of being correct.

Maybe in a thousand years from now, people will begin their analogies with:
'Long ago, people used to believe the universe split up infinity many times at
an infinite scale'

\---

I believe the idea that we have to give up free will or that fate exists is
unhelpful at best.

If super-determinism is correct, then there is nothing to give up. But more
practically, if complexity theory is correct in that some things are
inherently complex, there is a case to be made that the universe with its
variables 'locking' into place from moment to moment is far beyond
predetermined from the perspective of anything in it.

i.e. you need a universe to simulate a universe.

~~~
sysbin
I don't believe in free will because it doesn't make sense when you understand
determinism. You cannot be free when every thought & action is the outcome of
the past forces exerted upon you.

My understanding of superdeterminism doesn't necessarily rule out the
multiverse theory. Maybe my idea of the multiverse theory isn't traditional
but I think the universe can very well identically repeat and or repeat but be
somewhat different by how forces can be occurring at different intervals than
the past cycle of the universe.

edit: people downvote on this site because they don't like thinking of not
having free will lol.

~~~
tsimionescu
Your explanation of why you don't believe in free will is very philosophically
unrefined, and your smug tone (implying people who do believe in free will
must not understand determinism) is not helpful.

The reality is that a great many philosophers believe that determinism and
free will are perfectly compatible. There is also supernatural defense of
free-will, as in many religions (where the physical universe may well be
deterministic, except for interaction with a spiritual world of will, which
may produce physical effects without a physical cause). Both of these ideas
are example of people who believe in free will even if they do understand
(physical) determimism. There are probably other groups as well.

~~~
sysbin
> philosophically unrefined

No. It's nonsensical to think a person created in the universe is separate
from the universe. There are no great philosophers that believe in free will.
It would be only wishful thinking with ignoring logic to assume you can make a
choice that's truly your own and not the outcome of the system we're in.
Furthermore, neuroscience illustrates determinism (no free will) and physics
has as well until people lost their minds with quantum physics that's grossly
unfinished. please email me if you want to discuss in great detail.

~~~
tsimionescu
> It's nonsensical to think a person created in the universe is separate from
> the universe. There are no great philosophers that believe in free will.

And yet compatibilism is a common philosophical belief ever since ancient
times, supported throughout history by philosophers such as Schopenhauer,
Thomas Aquinas, and Daniel Denett.

The essential idea is that what we understand by free will can exist even in a
purely deterministic naturalistic universe - mostly, free will should be
understood as the ability of any agent to act based on its motivations. So,
for example, an artificial neural net is in some important sense free to act
as it 'wills' to solve a problem, even though it is following its programming.

~~~
sysbin
Compatibilism is defining free will differently than how most people think of
free will. Free will is an illusion in the traditional sense and thinking of
compatibilism changes everything but doesn't give free will in the traditional
sense.

The agent cannot make decisions free of what the system has influenced. So, it
still is nonsensical to think a person has free will in the traditional sense.
People are not making their own decisions when they couldn't have been
different from the result of the system they reside in. I do consider
Schopenhauer a great philosopher but what most people think of free will isn't
a possibility. Compatibilism isn't even worthwhile because it doesn't make
determinism & free will compatible but instead just redefines free will to
delude people into thinking traditional free will is a real thing.

~~~
tsimionescu
It might not bring back the magical kind of idea where we assert our will over
the physical world, true. But if people really believed in that, they would
also believe in actual magic, or telekinesis (of course, quite a few do, but
there's really no arguing with some people).

But the compatibilist free will has most of the characteristics that we
associate with any kind of free will. For example, there is still value in
arguments, as hearing one agent's argument can well be the cause of the other
agent's change in behavior. By the same token, it still makes sense to hold
agents responsible for their actions and punish them for their decisions,
since the cause of their behavior is very much related to their 'person', the
sum total of what they have experienced, learned, and have projected about the
future through their own rationality.

In fact, it's hard to find anything in the compatibilist free will that
contradicts intuitive notions of free will, except for the most religious of
intuitions, unless you push it to the brink and try to ask questions where we
don't have good intuitions anyway, usually by asking counterfactuals, or
moving to the relationship between free will and consciousness.

There is also another kind of approach to this question, one I first heard
from Noam Chomsky. His point was: if determinism were to contradict our most
immediate experience (as discussed before, it may not), the one of deciding
how to interact with the world, wouldn't it make more sense to say that we are
missing something from our scientific understanding in this area, rather than
insisting that the most common empirical observation we have is completely
wrong?

~~~
sysbin
My opinion is compatiblism (like it or not) does delude people into not
understanding they have no control over how they came to be as a person, the
wealth they accumulate, the relationships, the awful things that happened to
them if they do, all these things were by fate, and that people deeply believe
the "thought" of realizing free will is an illusion equates to an unpleasant
existence or some nonsense of realizing consciousness is really fake (in a
sense similar to the colour red changing to orange with yellow added).

I'm sure some people read about compatiblism and shortly later go back to
believing the traditional free will nonsense. I don't think many people think
about not having free will for much time at all. Thinking about determinism
for awhile makes it hard to not understand predeterminism. Progresses into
making it fairly easy to understand we're just part of a complex system and
the system works from a collective mesh of subsystems being "us" to the
smallest thing.

We're similar to the concept of robots. The universe wrote code for the
instructions of us. Similar, we made the robots "code" and people don't
consider the robots having free will from our "human code" functioning the
operating robots. When people have their thought on robots, they think of
determinism subconsciously and think "no.., the actions are really from us,
who coded & setup the robots" while the residing of the robots has environment
external forces interacting with the robots' outcomes.

I personally think the world is good but resembles evil and overtime becomes
less resembling evil. I further think the universe repeats more likely than
not ever repeat throughout infinity. A good majority of people don't realize
they don't have free will; that's keeping evil resembling experiences around
longer on earth from what I observe and while people are punished severely.
They're never being told they had no free will required to have a better
outcome or being given the time observing how their mentality came to be that
resulted in the bad outcome.

Most people don't even experience what the punishments are from unfavourable:
genetics, financial status, health condition, and whatever life variable
factoring into conflicting with the system of society; outcomming in not
living a mediocre or higher status life but an awful one.

So yes, I get freaked out when I even observe all the travesties in society,
that likely would have more empathy if people understood "success isn't
earned" but given to you at birth and like everything else that follows after
birth. Awareness of how the universe at the moment of the creation, resulted
in the future (sad or happy) outcomes from the summation of sequential forces
upon everything and then thinking of the more privileged vs misfortunate
situations in comparison.

The forgoing makes me think the system of society would adapt to be more
compassionate than the opposite incorrect belief of traditional free will.
It's like when people thought it was better to think the world was flat.
Delusion isn't better than realism. Eventually, leads me into thinking people
can eventually be more likely to agree on universal healthcare and even
futuristic things like universal income & homes.

So I think free will belief needs to be killed sooner than later. Even though
whatever happens is what fate already decided on upon creation. So I'm
somewhat hopeful people examine this topic.

~~~
tsimionescu
I think your perspective on free will is somewhat closer to my own then I
originally thought. I completely agree that outcomes in life are determined
much, much more by the world than by any kind of personal responsibility. I
think that there are plenty of people who believe even in magical free will
(say, christian concepts of it) who actually understand this same thing,
though you are right that there are many who don't.

However, I don't believe in full predetrminism, and you don't either. If you
did, you would not think about improving the world, or convincing people of
things - if you believe that the next speech by the president was determined
at the time of the big bang, then thinking about change is meaningless, and
none of us can help feel or not feel however we do.

However, if you believe in a world where the future has not happened yet and
it evolves more like a complex computation, with room for changing program
code by the program itself, perhaps even with some randomness thrown in, you
get a fully naturalistic deterministic world where nevertheless you can try to
influence things in some direction or another.

To articulate my own belief about this more clearly, I think the example of
robots you gave is very good. I believe that even a robot with a simplistic
machine learning algorithm can be meaningfully said to have a kind of free
will, in that it can do a better or worse job at what it was designed to do
based on the examples it is given and on accidents of its training process.
Two such robots may well have different beliefs about the world (in a very
basic sense)and they could even influence one another based on their
experience (training set) and conclusions (parameters of their algorithm).
This is how I believe humans and animals work as well - we have a pre-
determined algorithm (vastly more complex), with different starting parameters
between different people, we have a training set consisting of all of our
lived experiences, and our algorithm can modify itself or its parameters
during training, in pre-specified ways. This does end up meaning that some
people end up with better models/algorithms than others, based on better
starting conditions, or on more luck with experiences. And decision points in
this algorithm are what I think represents our experience of free will.

~~~
sysbin
> However, I don't believe in full predetrminism, and you don't either.

I actually do believe in complete predeterminism.

Example: everything you & I wrote was fated to happen and similar to our
thoughts on the subject. Multiple persons I've conversed with (even hard
determinists) will express similar opinions as you "well then your thoughts on
improvement don't matter because if the universe is functioning under under
predeterminism, well it was fated to improve if it happens" and then try to
use that assertion as an argument in some way to make a rhetoric against my
personal thoughts or the discussion.

I personally, enjoy reading about what you wrote to me and similar to myself
writing about the subject. Otherwise I'll never learn something new on the
topic. I don't care knowing it's all fated and same are my thoughts on
thinking the world slowly improves without me having a real will separate from
the system.

My thoughts continue to be, I'm a person that enjoys learning about this topic
and that requires conversing about it. I think the understanding of free will
being an illusion, will one day improve society exponentially faster than a
universe that didn't result in people coming to realization sooner. The
majority of people just need to function with understanding of the illusion to
the point of understanding complete predetermination.

> However, if you believe in a world where the future has not happened yet and
> it evolves more like a complex computation, with room for changing program
> code by the program itself, perhaps even with some randomness thrown in, you
> get a fully naturalistic deterministic world where nevertheless you can try
> to influence things in some direction or another.

My idea is that the universe is more probable to repeat than not repeat. I do
have wishful thinking and it makes me agnostic. I like to think if there is a
higher power that people typically name as a God. Well, God cannot do the
impossible like making traditional free will be real. So, I like to think that
the universe repeats with adjustments made after it runs its course. I take a
position close to Einstein, such as once the universe iteration starts, God
doesn't interfere, and I acknowledge that belief is impossible to prove. I
only assume my thought on that are more probable from the horrible things that
happen to people and this is under the assumption a higher power wouldn't want
suffering in the complex system created. So again I think after universe runs
the course for humanity, it will repeat and there will be adjustments so
things improve for the previous stories the humans experienced.

The forgoing will now provide you with different thoughts on what I previously
wrote. The last part of what you're expressing is how our brains function and
we could describe nature similar to what we define as evolution. But I
wouldn't say that's free will. My idea is free will isn't a possibility even
if I die, ..the universe eventually repeats, and I live again from the
recursion but with new improvements making everyone have a happier story;
created from an higher power understands my desires in the previous life I
lived. That's not anymore free will because every universe iteration would be
fated from the previous summation of forces.

------
RobertoG
I don't understand, how super-determinism explain interference in, for
instance, the double-slit experiment?

It's not the result of that experiment a proof that the photons are
interfering with something?

------
guscost
This is just what you get if you combine Bohmian mechanics with Bell’s
theorem, right? If QM relies on hidden variables, they can’t be local.

~~~
tsimionescu
Just because this relies on global hidden variables doesn't make it the same
as any other global hidden variable theory.

~~~
guscost
Ah ok, thanks for answering.

------
grizzles
I hope not. Superdeterminism is fate.

~~~
titzer
How are control and the illusion of control distinguishable from a first-
person perspective?

~~~
grizzles
Good point. This seems to be the exception though. If it's fate to be shown
that fate exists, some might find that disappointing. Others might find it a
relief. Your happiness or sadness at this revelation would also be
predetermined. An extreme form of bondage.

------
tus88
No. It. Won't.

Only philosophy will.

------
tic_tac
If superdeterminism is true, it appears to imply that the universe is discrete
at the smallest scales. Were the universe continuous, 'definite' position
would be impossible, meaning that certainty itself would be impossible.
Everything would be 'fuzzy' meaning superdeterminism would be impossible.

~~~
voxl
This is easily falsified by imagining that the computational nature of physics
itself is stronger than a Turing machine. There would be no issue with
certainty in a continuum if you were actively computing with the continuum
itself as data

~~~
tic_tac
It's not a matter of computability though, it's a matter of exact precision
not being physically possible in a continuum.

~~~
SolarNet
But that assertion is based on a set of assumptions that come back to
information theory and hence computability.

You are right that in modern information theory exact precision on a continuum
is physically impossible (for others: as we continue to subdevide the
precision we require more bits of information, which has known physical
limits).

But what I think the other posters was getting at is that if the universe runs
on a machine that is not bound by those rules, say rules where arbitrary
precision on a continuum can be stored as a value (which again violates
physicality as we know it but such a machine is "outside" the universe so
physicality is moot already), then that is possible.

Which is to say the universe is a machine which can compute things a Turing
machine can't (a Turing machine can compute everything that can be computed
that we are aware of, ergo if the universe can compute things it can't then
the assertion being made - albeit somewhat clumsily - is that the universe
doesn't follow the asserts we know).

~~~
tic_tac
I understand that if we posit a super-Turing machine in which arbitrary
positions on a continuum can be maximally expressed as finite values what I am
saying does not logically follow.

However, I would argue that such a super-Turing machine is logically
impossible. In principle continuous values cannot be physically manifested
with certainty or arbitrary precision regardless of what world we are in.

Positing such a super-Turing machine is like saying "I have a square circle in
my pocket".

~~~
SolarNet
> However, I would argue that such a super-Turing machine is logically
> impossible.

I mean we are discussing it so it's certainly logically possible.

> In principle continuous values cannot be physically manifested with
> certainty or arbitrary precision regardless of what world we are in.

Why would they need to be physically manifestable? Again how can you make
assertions about what parts of physicality are maintained by the machine that
is computing physicality? How can you make assertions about the world
containing our own?

> Positing such a super-Turing machine is like saying "I have a square circle
> in my pocket".

Except it isn't. It's more like "I launched my square circle beyond the
observable universe". If it was in my pocket I could take it out and show it
to you.

Positing a "super-Turing" machine is pointless because it isn't testable. But
it is possible. I feel like that distinction is important which is why I
commented. Which is much how I feel about super-determinism in general, sure
it's possible, but how do we test it? It's pointless because whether not it
exists doesn't change anything. The issue of the discrete values is an
interesting facet of that, one that might lead to something testable, like
those "is the universe a hologram" experiments. Establishing what would be
required of such a system is useful, but it doesn't dismiss it out of hand.

I guess my issue is that your arguments don't fully embrace the theory so they
are bit like trying to disprove the existence of a different god using the
holy book of your own god. There are valid reasons to disagree with
superdeterminism, but arguing from the lens of physicality misses the issue at
hand.

------
dchyrdvh
Complex solution for a simple problem. I'll sound naive, but I think that
quantum entaglement is a very simple thing: it's a link, like an edge in a
mathematical graph, between two particles. The length of the link is 1. Not
nanometers or something else, just 1. The particles rapidly change their
state, but they are synchronized via this link and at any moment they are in
the opposite states. Measuring one particle is done by bombarding it with
another particle, which stabilizes its state, and also the other particle, via
the link. In other words, our world is just a mathematical graph that appears
to have continuous properties at scale.

~~~
axilmar
My own theory is that there is no entanglement and no link between the
particles, it is just that the particle states are affected the moment they
are created.

I also think that light is not a wave and that light particles are not fired
in a straight line in the double slit experiment; they are fired at an angle,
and then they bounce off the slits and create the interference pattern; and
when we put a detector in front of the slits, it only serves as creating new
light particles that do not have this angle in them and they go straight
ahead, making the diffraction pattern disappear.

And it's not that quantum math is wrong; it's right, but my intuition says
that any system can be described by statistics.

As for quantum mechanics applications, all the applications mentioned (from
clocks to computers to anything the article and other articles mention) are
not based in any QM specific property. None of those applications are actually
dependent on entanglement and on collapsing the wave function, and
entanglement cannot be used for any application despite what they write in
articles because it would violate the principles of relativity. And none of
those applications would cease to exist if light was not an actual wave and
photons simply moved in wave patterns.

Let the downvotes begin!

------
orbifold
All these people working on the foundations of quantum mechanics must somehow
have missed the fact that quantum mechanics has been superseded by quantum
field theory. Quantum field theory resolves basically all of the typically
interpretation of quantum mechanics questions in a rather sophisticated way.
Unfortunately and I guess this is why these "Interpretation of QM" are still
popular most things become harder to calculate with QFT instead of plain old
quantum mechanics. Still I think that the perspective of taking quantum fields
and the path integral as fundamental clarifies a bunch of things even about
measurements. In the path integral formulation you can view a measurement as
an additional term in the Lagrangian (for example a non-zero external magnetic
field for Zeeman-Splitting). You then have to expand around the classical
solutions summed over all initial conditions, so if you have for example a
spin-1/2-based dependence as it is the case for the Zeeman-Effect, you would
have to expand around these two different classical solutions. There is
nothing mysterious about this and in the cases where you can carry the
calculation out you get the correct predictions. Fundamentally there is no
such thing as measurements, just local interactions of quantum fields and any
measurement can be either modelled as such an interaction or as an additional
term in the Lagrangian.

The truly interesting things discoveries within in the framework of quantum
field theory, such as ADS/CFT, going from String Theory to low energy
effective theories or the Amplituhedron. All of those have direct and
immediate connections to state of the art quantum field theories.

What is done in
([https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.06462.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.06462.pdf)),
especially the last part, where they suddenly invoke p-adic numbers in support
of a very vague argument and a cartoon of Penrose's impossible triangle in a
similar vague manner, won't be taken serious by most physicists, but is
sufficient apparently to convince non-technical people to continue funding
them. Nautil.us probably is just grateful for the free content.

~~~
Grieverheart
Do you consider Gerard 't Hooft also one of those non-technical people?
Mocking the use of certain diagrams does not give you any credit. I would
refrain from such petty arguments if you want to be taken seriously.

About your argument, as far as I know, the measurement problem is not solved
in QFT. I have also never heard of adding a term to the Lagrangian to
represent a measurement. The addition of the external field to hamiltonian of
the atom when calculating the Zeeman effect is something unrelated to
measurement afaik. If you have any references on your claims please point them
out.

------
ColanR
From a brief stint in Wikipedia
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism)),
Superdeterminism looks like it better satisfies Ockhams' Razor than the
standard QM interpretation. All we have to give up is free will, and why
should science try to defend that?

~~~
lisper
Because free will is supported by some pretty overwhelming evidence. Every
human who has ever lived has had the experience of making a free choice. That
experience is every bit as real as the experience of, say, seeing the moon. If
you're going to seriously entertain the possibility that there is no free will
then you need to be ready to entertain with equal seriousness that the moon
does not exist because both are supported by similar bodies of evidence.

~~~
baseballdork
That seems more like evidence that humans believe they have free will than
evidence that they actually have it.

~~~
narag
What really seems a mirage to me is mistaking free will for unpredictability.
That's like saying that your mind needs to be outside the physical world ("a
soul") to make "real decisions", which is absurd.

------
rpz
I've mentioned this in a couple different HN posts regarding QM recently and
I'd like to mention this again. I'd greatly appreciate it if we could do some
back and forth. I think the "current crisis in physics" has much to do with
the foundations of QM. If what I present below is just false, then fine, I'd
appreciate an explanation of why instead of a downvote.

In short, I believe what Planck found was not an action constant, but rather
it was an energy constant. Planck's constant has the wrong units. The constant
should be in Joules/oscillation as opposed to Joule*sec.

Planck inadvertently "hard coded" a one second measurement into his constant.

His equation should be E=htf where h is in Joules/oscillation t in seconds and
f in oscillations/second. I think there is a reason why the units for
frequency aren't explicitly listed as oscillations/sec. the units of E=hf
don't balance if f has the units oscillations/second.

But you don't need to believe me... please read the following paper by Juliana
H.J. Mortenson (Formerly Juliana H.J. Brooks).
[https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/e266e5e7-739c-437c-89c3-eed...](https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/e266e5e7-739c-437c-89c3-eed60d3a9f3f/downloads/1cfqec4a8_58871.pdf)

Can you find an error in her paper? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
Thanks!

Upshot: Every oscillation of light has the same energy, and what we regard as
a photon today is actually a one second measurement of oscillations of light
at some frequency f.

~~~
qayxc
> Can you find an error in her paper?

Sure, just one you say? In Ch. 2 §1 Mortenson, MD tries to derive the "mean
energy per oscillation". She refers to the dimensionless scalar "N" as the
number of "waves" the photon is comprised of.

Not only doesn't that make any sense whatsoever, since a photon can only have
a single frequency, and is hence described by a single wave. She also
introduces a "unit" that doesn't exist - namely the "osc" (=oscillation),
which is DIMENSIONLESS, i.e. it's doesn't have a physical representation and
therefore cannot be unit...

She then continues to fail to apply the most basic dimensional analysis and I
basically stopped right there.

It's a bunch of hogwash and esoteric pseudo-science, sorry.

~~~
rpz
> since a photon can only have a single frequency

The current interpretation of E=hf is what suggests that a photon is the
elementary particle of light, and that a photon can only have a single
frequency so I dont think that is a fair critique. She is trying to point out
that E=hf and the current interpretation is wrong and is not assuming it's
true in her analysis.

> DIMENSIONLESS

Although this is an aside to your point, can I hear your thoughts on using the
dimensionless fine structure constant in equations?

Following your reasoning are we not allowed to use radians (an SI unit) in
equations either?

~~~
qayxc
> She is trying to point out that E=hf and the current interpretation is wrong
> and is not assuming it's true in her analysis.

If you want to prove an equation wrong, you cannot use it as a starting point.
Let me show you the fundamental error she makes in detail:

E=hf

Dimensional analysis: J=J * s * s^-1=J * s / s=J * 1=J

So the original checks out ok.

The paper tries to argue that J _s is the wrong unit for h and replaces the
"1" from above with bogus "oscillations", which are never defined. The proper
inverse of frequency is not "oscillations", however, it's period (singular!),
which is measured in seconds.

Dividing by "oscillations" gives you the same unit you started with and
changes nothing. This is independent of your interpretation of what a photon
is. Since she also never specifies the relationship between "oscillations" and
wavelength, I wonder how E=h_c/λ follows, let alone the de Broglie
wavelength...

> can I hear your thoughts on using the dimensionless fine structure constant
> in equations?

Using the fine structure constant in equations is equivalent to using pi in
equations. Proportionality factors exist in nature.

