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Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

backreaction.blogspot.com

101–110 of 209 posts

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#101

I find it strange that they claim that QM lacks any explanation for measurement. There are explanations for measurement. Not everyone agrees with any single one of them, but they definitely exist. Superdeterminism is one, but it's not the only one. It is really only the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM that has a measurement problem. Personally, I am on board with the "measurement is just entanglement" solution (it se…

I'm also a Many-Worldser, but I don't quite know how to answer the question "How does the Born Rule work?" That is, if "worlds" branch off with some amplitudes, and there's a "me" on this branch and another on that branch, how does it make sense to talk about the probability of "me me" being this one or that one? Empirically we know how to calculate it from the amplitude, but why is that more reasonable than any othe…

According to Bayesianism probability is a subjective interpretation for the purpose of decision making, so if you think this interpretation helps you, then it's fine.

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#102
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But e and pi, despite being numerically distant, are in one sense "close" - related - via Euler's formula. So there's a "local closeness" - the arithmetic difference of pi and its neighbor - but also a "relationship closeness" where pi and e are intimately linked. I don't understand how Euler's formula establishes a special relationship. You can compute a function of any two numbers. Where f(a,b) = a^{ib}, then f(e…

Put more simply, there's nothing special about -1.

-1 has unit magnitude. It's pretty special. ;D

e and pi are special too; nobody's questioning that. But they're not related to each other.

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#103
post #87
post #7

I've always been mystified at why people take superdeterminism as a good explanation for anything, when it actually acts as a stopsign for thought. For example, suppose I am betting with you on the outcomes of a coin toss. You call heads, the coin comes up tails, you give me some money. You call tails, the coin comes up heads, you give me some more money. This repeats a number of times. The common sense response is t…

Is this a proper understanding of superdeterminism? I may be totally off base but my understanding is the analogy is more like Craps. Two dice with fair odds create an uneven distribution such that 7 is more common. The dice have "conspired" to bring 7 up more often than 2 because their states interact in a non-linear way.

Ahem, there isn't anything more linear than the sum of two variables...

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#105
post #89
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm super curious about people who make this claim. Are you not conscious? The idea that there are people walking around who look and act like everybody else but behind the eyes there is nothing is terrifying and exhilarating to me. I'm open to the idea that when you observe yourself there is nothing looking back at you, but that doesn't generalize the necessarily subjective experience.

You don't understand. In their mind they are not special. To a determinist, the way you feel about yourself is exactly how a fully deterministic being would feel because, in this theory, you are deterministic. Ascribing to new theories doesn't change the world at all, they can only change your understanding of how the world already existed.

Doesn't this perspective generalize to monism? I.e. everything is conscious? I don't have a problem with that, but the only way I can consolidate someone's claim that consciousness does not exist is if their experience differs from mine.

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#106
post #75
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm super curious about people who make this claim. Are you not conscious? The idea that there are people walking around who look and act like everybody else but behind the eyes there is nothing is terrifying and exhilarating to me. I'm open to the idea that when you observe yourself there is nothing looking back at you, but that doesn't generalize the necessarily subjective experience.

I think “subjective experience” in the everyday human sense is something that we learn / are taught to have — we are taught as children that there is this thing called “me”, how it works, and how to put sensory experiences into its context. Unlearning that — understanding that this model is one interpretation, but not the only interpretation — is indeed terrifying and exhilarating. I personally wouldn’t call my exper…

The root of this puzzle is described by Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." 'Thinking' here does not need to be rational thought. Perhaps it does not even need to be the ability to form new memories. It is hard to say anything meaningful about the dichotomy of one's personal existence but for the purpose of my question it should not matter. In altered states of awareness such as dissociation or 'ego death' this conscious 'eye' which observes one's experiences remains unchanged. It is not the idea of the self described by "I am I", but the self which only asserts its own existence as "I am".

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#107
> But Tim Palmer turned out to not only be a climate physicist with an interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics, he also turned out to be remarkably persistent. He wasn’t remotely deterred by my evident lack of interest. Indeed, I later noticed he had sent me an email already two years earlier. Just that I dumped it unceremoniously in my crackpot folder. Worse, I seem to vaguely recall telling my husband that even the climate people now have ideas for how to revolutionize quantum mechanics, hahaha.

> Cough.

My favourite crackpot sent her his theory about gravity because she published a bimetric model of gravity a decade earlier. She accused him of plagiarism. Full story (french, bad subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKWqh75ErNI&t=40m54s

Also she made a few music-videos (the music is her own it seems):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrswlFxEiV4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDkfXCMDzZs

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#108
post #55

Since we are looking at an alternative interpretation: Max Planck's Loader Model - the simplest interpretation that is never looked at. In the Loader Model atoms have a hidden and random energy state, and a detectable state. The energy of light is spread evenly as waves. And when the energy reaches a threshold the detectable state changes. Photons do not exist. What we see are just detectable jumps of the energy stat…

The simplest interpretation is that there is no such thing as matter. Physicists are studying consciousness.

It is actually the only explanation that is consistent with experience, since there is no experience outside of consciousness.

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it like so: pi has many transcendental neighbors, which are in no way related to pi. But e and pi, despite being numerically distant, are in one sense "close" - related - via Euler's formula. So there's a "local closeness" - the arithmetic difference of pi and its neighbor - but also a "relationship closeness" where pi and e are intimately linked. Perhaps quantum states obey the relationship closeness, no…

> But e and pi, despite being numerically distant, are in one sense "close" - related - via Euler's formula. So there's a "local closeness" - the arithmetic difference of pi and its neighbor - but also a "relationship closeness" where pi and e are intimately linked. I don't understand how Euler's formula establishes a special relationship. You can compute a function of any two numbers. Where f(a,b) = a^{ib}, then f(e…

So: e is the basis giving rise to a group homomorphism between (R,+) and the unit circumference. That is: e is inherently trigonometric. Not irrelevant.

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#110
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But e and pi, despite being numerically distant, are in one sense "close" - related - via Euler's formula. So there's a "local closeness" - the arithmetic difference of pi and its neighbor - but also a "relationship closeness" where pi and e are intimately linked. I don't understand how Euler's formula establishes a special relationship. You can compute a function of any two numbers. Where f(a,b) = a^{ib}, then f(e…

Put more simply, there's nothing special about -1.

Except that when discussing transcendentals (full-blooded reals such as e and π) integers such as –1 have measure zero and are therefore ruled out as freak coincidences.
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