"There are only three people in the world who understand Superdeterminism" ... thinking people would agree with you if they only understood better what you were saying is a pretty classic rhetorical problem.
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Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
111–120 of 209 posts
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Realism is the axiom to give up, not locality. Just accept MWI as the current best guess and get on with your life.
MWI is fashionable today, tomorrow it will be something else. Such is the case with unfalsifiable semi-mystical interpretations.
MWI may remain fashionable forever in some subset of parallel future universes.
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 con…
In my mind, once you strip down “I am” to “There appears to exist a repeating neural process that is creating a compressed embedding and record of sensory inputs”, it’s just not very mysterious or worthy of much further philosophical analysis.
So these other humans in the world are probably just deterministic robots just like me, that may or may not feel like they have magic conscious aliveness.
But my personal experience tells me that I can turn the “sense” of magic conscious aliveness on or off, and so it too is likely just a neural process that is not particularly interesting.
I observe that the vast majority of other humans do not seem to be able to disable this sense at will, which does not to me imply that they are somehow more magically conscious, just that they have not experienced that particular switch flipping.
Add in the historic social knowledge of “consciousness”, the historical record of neuroscience knowledge, and the rates at which scientific knowledge is processed and absorbed by the public at large, and it really seems like an obvious non-problem.
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#114Earlier 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…
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.
e is related to the complex numbers through trigonometry. And pi is related to trigonometry more directly than that. But e and pi are not related to each other; "being related" isn't transitive like that.
Consider correlations. A correlation is necessarily "transitive" if the correlation values are very, very close to ±1, and not otherwise. If a correlates with b at 0.7, and b correlates with c at 0.68, the correlation between a and c might be 0.69, but only by coincidence.
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#115I'm not sure what exactly the problem is with measurement (Sounds like it is that physically we don't know what it means?) but current quantum categorical logic research usually does have a working definition of what they call measurement.
In most interpretations measurement is interaction, it's difficult to retain the rest of Copenhagen interpretation with the definition.
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#116But where all the information came from then?
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
How so, can you expand on what would be terrifying on a personal and existential level for you? I've encountered a few people that will cite quantum theory when it comes to discussions about questioning if one has free will. I cannot even imagine how quantum theory gives a us true free will and without one's will just being the outcome of the system we reside in.
I am OK with the thought that the the universe sprang into existence, and through some form of randomness or chance, things played out on this planet that allowed for life and for me to exist on it. Now go back to step one and assume that, even on an atomic level, there is no chance, no randomness. Given all of the preconditions, we get this outcome every single time. Then I have to reconsider why is there even the i…
With determinism you determine the choice by thinking and finding the best option, at least it's properly your choice. With indeterminism you don't determine anything, because the choice is not determined by anything, it's just a random process independent from you.
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#118“Should we discover that quantum theory is not fundamentally random” This would be a terrifying revelation on a personal and existential level.
> This would be a terrifying revelation on a personal and existential level. Why is that? I believe the universe is fully deterministic (i.e., no such thing as "true" randomness), yet I also don't think that rules out free will. Free will and determinism aren't necessarily incompatible.
> Free will and determinism aren't necessarily incompatible.
How?
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#119I 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 am on board with the "measurement is just entanglement" solution
Then what is "entanglement"? I sure would agree that 'measurement' and 'entanglement' have a similar nature. I just think this argument doesn't answer the original question, but it is trying to hide it.
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#120A nice and compelling argument in that paper: "The classical Liouville equation is linear in the probability density due to conservation of probability. But this linearity says nothing whatsoever about whether the dynamics of the underlying system from which the probability density derives is also linear. Hence, for example, chaotic dynamical systems, despite their nonlinear dynamics, obey the same linear equation fo…
> linear probabilistic description of an underlying nonlinear deterministic system.
The math is way over my head, but this sub-statement resonates with me deeply and has been my crude but overarching view of the physical world and our interpretations of it for a long time - except applied more broadly - as a description of the interaction between multiple layers of abstractions of reality (whether the things behind those designated abstractions are natural or human made, e.g transistors for digital logic, a "deterministic" quantized layer created atop a non-deterministic one).
It is layered because each deterministic one is only effectively deterministic by being predictable "enough" in a highly uniform way. The next layer then often becomes viewed from a probabilistic perspective again due to chaotic interactions of the previous one (often computationally irreducible). The lack of access to massive initial state and in-feasibility to compute prediction based on the underlying mechanisms are the only reason we switch back to the probabilistic view at these non-fundamental levels of abstraction.
Now I understand quantum physics is not supposed to be such a layer, because we didn't start out with an existing working concept of what's underneath it in the way we know whats underneath equations for some statistical mechanics for example - but from the perspective of a complete amateur the idea of superdeterminism seems quite natural! - yet at the same time I can't help wonder if there is yet another probabilistic layer underneath :)