Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

backreaction.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 209 posts

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#121

Post by lmm »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #97
tsimionescu wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, the limitation of light speed is something that exists to make a consistent theory, not something that somehow has value in itself...? The limitation of causation to a constant speed is well proven in experiments, and seems to be a fundamental aspect of the universe at large scales. If this same limitation doesn't hold at small scales then either: 1. There must be some cutoff between large scale and small s…

Thanks for the explanation. It really is non-intuitive and hard to get especially just from informal texts. What I don't get at all is the bit about quantum entanglement not carrying any information. Apparently, that has to do something with the fact that the collapse of the wave function is a random process? But, if you have probability then you have information, yes? What's the explanation?

> But, if you have probability then you have information, yes?

What do you mean by that?

Suppose you and I are far apart in space and are each going to toss a coin, but we somehow magically know that one of us will get heads and the other will get tails. Can we use this pair of magic coins to communicate information? Actually no.

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#122

Post by lmm »

yyyk wrote: post #100
AgentME wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simpler (as in fewer rules; not that it results in a "simpler" smaller world) than a lot of other interpretations: it doesn't need to specify an explicit concept of wave collapse.

But it has no good explanation for why the Born rule applies at all. The current attempts are IMHO very unconvincing, since I see no reason why rational choice theory should apply at all. A much more detailed way of saying about the same thing as the above sentence: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-trouble-with-m...

> it has no good explanation for why the Born rule applies at all.

Indeed it doesn't, but the Born rule is much smaller and simpler than the notion of collapse that other approaches rely on.

> A much more detailed way of saying about the same thing as the above sentence: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-trouble-with-m....

This post doesn't seem to understand many-worlds. There is no concept of a privileged "detector". All that many-worlds postulates is that detectors, experimenters, and anything else you might measure with obeys the normal rules of physics, and can be put into an entangled superposition just like anything else.

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#123

Post by lmm »

edna314 wrote: post #119
gliese1337 wrote: post #12

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 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.

Entanglement is a well-understood part of QM, and even Copenhagenists agree on how it applies to elemental particles. (They just think something strange and different happens to macroscopic objects).

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#124

Post by [deleted] »

comex wrote: post #83
ouid wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evolution of a manifold under Ricci flow is deterministic as mentioned, and it is also irreversible, ie many manifolds are smoothed to the same manifold. It's also a diffeomorphism, meaning that it preserves all of the topological information of the manifold that it acts on. Furthermore it can act on manifolds which have no normal form, in at least some sense. Because smooth manifolds with no triangulation do ind…

Aren't diffeomorphisms invertible by definition?

[deleted]

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#125

Post by [deleted] »

arnoooooo wrote: post #108
zyxzevn wrote: 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.

[deleted]

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#126

Post by edna314 »

lmm wrote: post #123
edna314 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Entanglement is a well-understood part of QM, and even Copenhagenists agree on how it applies to elemental particles. (They just think something strange and different happens to macroscopic objects).

If it is well understood, could you tell me how it works? I know the mathematics of entanglement just as I know the the mathematics of a collapse of a wave function, so I wouldn't take any mathematical argument as a valid answer.

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#127

Post by thicknavyrain »

zyxzevn wrote: 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…

I haven't heard of the Loader model, but as an (ex-) Particle Physicist, I should point out that photons are just one example of the more general phenomenon of gauge bosons. In terms of the particle content associated with nature (and the predictions the _existence_ of those particles imply as emergent phenomena from "gauge theories" in quantum field theory), the photons of electrodynamics as well as their counterparts, the weak bosons of the weak force and the gluons of quantum chromodynamics, all make very specific predictions about how certain particles ought to behave and the strength with which they should do so.

In that light, photons (and to a lesser extent, the other gauge bosons) play a significant role in theoretically calculating the dipole moment of the electron (how strong the electron interacts electromagnetically) which has been calculated to about 12 decimal places theoretically and experimentally measured to roughly the same precision. And the prediction fits _beautifully_, I believe it is the most (numerically) accurate prediction in all of science. So at the very least, photons are meaningful descriptions of some kind of quantum field oscillation whose existence is, implicitly, extraordinarily well determined.

Typing this in a rush, but just to say, photons are a very specific kind of energy quanta, and I don't think the loader model really replaces them in that sense.

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#128

Post by okpatil »

I am just going to put it here. This wikipedia article is about an ancient Indian school of thought which believed that everything is composed of atoms, but the aggregation and nature of these atoms was predetermined by cosmic forces. They also believed in absense of "Free Will". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80j%C4%ABvika

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#129

Post by comboy »

themgt wrote: post #8

I find this Quora answer convincingly reflects my thinking as to why Superdeterminism can't possibly be correct given Bell’s theorem[1] Skimming the actual paper[2] I'm not really seeing a convincing explanation, this in particular just strikes me as hard to believe / failing Occam's razor: The belief that such tests tell us something about (the implausibility of) Superdeterminism goes back, once again, to the idea t…

As Quora answer mentions, this paper exists because of Bell's inequality. But that answer is not convincing at all. It's a simple non-controversial fact of physics that whatever experiment you choose to perform there is some common element that influenced it all in the past. There is no true independence in the real world and you don't need superdeterminism to acknowledge that. Am I missing something?

Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

#130

Post by philip142au »

ajkjk wrote: post #24
philip142au wrote: post #22

I believe strongly that everything is deterministic. As a programmer, that means all is purely functional.

What does it matter what you believe? The universe is evidently somewhat probabilistic, what's left is explaining the details.

No its deterministic, but it appears to be probabilistic to you. Which it can be.
Post reply on HN