“Should we discover that quantum theory is not fundamentally random” This would be a terrifying revelation on a personal and existential level.
I discovered this on lsd. I could see exactly where it was random and where it wasn’t.
Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
171–180 of 209 posts
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#172Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What is doing the choosing, your thalamus?
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#174“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.
Under the standard definitions, they are; if will is strictly determined by other material facts, it is not free. If you adopt unusual definitions for one or the other, they may not be, but then you aren't talking about the same thing other people are when you use the terms.
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an absolutely fascinating thing to claim... Your description sounds like what I have very recently read about research into artificial neural networks, which would have vast implications for the future of the field. I have not ever seriously considered the ability to turn consciousness on and off at will. In my experience consciousness is absolute and once deep in reverie when I happened upon a mental switch t…
I mean turning off the sense of intention or agency (i.e. “conscious” decision-making), as well as the sense of self (i.e. self-“consciousness”). There is still awareness of sensory inputs and memory of events, but there is no sense of making deliberate choices, personal identification with the sensory data or events, or emotional response. So there is, for linguistic convenience, “a body” doing things, but it doesn’…
I understand. However self-consciousness is not what I mean by consciousness. If you observe 'your' actions there is still something there along for the ride. It is this which I surmise is common for all humans.
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its just an analogy. Something to show that a distribution might appear interesting but is actually not. The point is that Bell's theorem relies on the assumption that a linear distribution must be expected and the paper is arguing that that has not been sufficiently proven. At least that's my understanding of the paper's argument.
Bell's theorem does not rely on that.
Can you explain how? Wikipedia states:
>With the measurements oriented at intermediate angles between these basic cases, the existence of local hidden variables could agree with/would be consistent with a linear dependence of the correlation in the angle but, according to Bell's inequality (see below), could not agree with the dependence predicted by quantum mechanical theory, namely, that the correlation is the negative cosine of the angle.
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m sorry, but I disagree. A measurement process is mathematically speaking an operator which acts on the wave function in Copenhagen interpretation and the collapse of the wave function is a projection onto the eigenfunctions of this operator. What would you be missing here? Instead of “measurement is just entanglement” I would claim “measurement is just an operator”. Since entanglement and operators can only be def…
> A measurement process is mathematically speaking an operator which acts on the wave function in Copenhagen interpretation and the collapse of the wave function is a projection onto the eigenfunctions of this operator. What would you be missing here? When and how does that projection (which is non-unitary and otherwise ill-behaved) happen? What causes it to occur or not occur? How do you explain the results of the q…
> What causes it to occur or not occur?
Measurements cause it to occur. What causes entanglement to occur?
> quantum eraser
Not sure how it works, but Wikipedia says that it can be explained using Copenhagen carefully.
> (1/sqrt(2))(|up>|you after observing up> + |down>|you after observing down>)
After the measurement I’m not in a superposition of the two entangled states but in one of the two, because I do observe the photon in a particular spin state. Which one is it? And how is it decided?
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Perhaps there is no experience outside of consciousness (depending on exactly what you mean by that). I take it to mean that consciousness is the only thing that we (directly) experience. Fine. But that doesn't mean that "studying consciousness" is the only explanation that is consistent with "no experience outside of consciousness". It's the only explanation that's limited to that. A real external world is perfectly…
"It's the only explanation that's limited to that." Indeed, and that's what makes it the simplest explanation. People posit matter, which nobody has ever had a direct experience of, then can't find a way to explain how consciousness comes out of it. Starting with consciousness is much in line with experience and solves the problem.
I think it's reasonable to assume that an "external" world exists, but it doesn't mean that it's not all consciousness : as Donald Hoffman posits, what we perceive is the combined output of other conscious agents. I don't see how that means the death of science. I suppose you meant physics, which could indeed be seen in this context as a rather convoluted way of studying consciousness, but I'm not so sure : it would become a study of the regularities of consciousness.
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As Sam Harris put it when debating this idea with Deepak Chopra, the moon does not disappear when we're not looking at it. That’s a silly statement. How do we know that, if we aren’t looking at it?
Object permanece is a silly statement? On the contrary it's the mainstream view. Anyone wanting to challenge it has the burden of proof on them to demonstrate otherwise.
I'm pretty sure the mainstream view is that the moon "as a glowing disc" is entirely created by your brain.
It does not mean that there is nothing when no one is looking, just that what we see is a representation by our brain of something objective that we can't directly assess. The representation stops to exist when we stop looking. What part is representation and what part is objective is debatable.
Assigning more to the representation and less to the objective solves some problems neatly, like that of quantum entanglement.
Take Donald Hoffman's example of a cube drawn in perspective as lines on a piece of paper. In your mind you see a cube, but nowhere is there actually a cube. The front and back faces of the cube are entangled : if your mind has decided on the projection in which one face is the "front", the other face has to be the "back", and vice-versa if your mind has decided on the other projection.
Re: Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As Sam Harris put it when debating this idea with Deepak Chopra, the moon does not disappear when we're not looking at it. That’s a silly statement. How do we know that, if we aren’t looking at it?
Because we have object permanence. People like Deepak Chopra select magical assumptions specifically because they can't produce any verifiable predictions, and waste everybody's time promoting meaningless nonsense.
I'm not sure Deepak Chopra is the best representative for such ideas. Donald Hoffman or Bernardo Kastrup make a much more serious case.
But still, the number one unverifiable prediction is that there is a thing called matter that exists outside consciousness and that somehow, consciousness emerges out of it. Nobody can prove matter exists, nobody has ever had a direct experience of it, and nobody has any idea how consciousness could come out of it, yet it's still the default hypothesis…