Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take

Post by lmm » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 7:55 AM UTC

edna314 wrote: post #177

lmm wrote: post #170

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> 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 t…

Post by arnoooooo » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 8:05 AM UTC

vokep wrote: post #162

slashdev wrote: post #140

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This is a new agey woo kind of idea that comes probably from a layman's interpretation of the effect of the observer on changing the quantum system being measured. However, it does not scale to macro systems. As Sam Harris put it when debating this idea with Deepak Chopra, the moon does not disappear when we're not looking at it. The universe was before consciousness and will continue to be afterwards.

But the moon does disappear. The moon as I understand it is a glowing disk with particular patterns on it. That disc and patterns only ever existed in my mind. When not looking at the moon, it goes back to being a very large number of particles near each other and nothing more.

Post by yyyk » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 9:34 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #169

yyyk wrote: post #147

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>Indeed it doesn't, but the Born rule is much smaller and simpler than the notion of collapse that other approaches rely on. First, not all of the other approaches have a collapse. e.g. Bohm and a few lesser known others don't have it. Second, it's not clear Born is 'smaller and simpler' than the collapse of some other interpretations. e.g. in QBism collapse arises naturally from the theory and it would be weird if c…

> e.g. Bohm and a few lesser known others don't have it. Bohm is just MWI with a bunch of extra epicycles. > Second, it's not clear Born is 'smaller and simpler' than the collapse of some other interpretations. e.g. in QBism collapse arises naturally from the theory and it would be weird if collapse didn't happen. I'd be interested in hearing more, but from a quick look I'd argue that the notion of an agent who shoul…

Post by mikk14 » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 11:24 AM UTC

AgentME wrote: post #168

mikk14 wrote: post #133

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I just had a funny thought. I don't know if it makes any sense, but it's funny to think about it. This is all made with my tongue firmly in my cheek, I don't know nearly enough about the topic to have any sort of confidence on what follows, so hold your downvotes :-) Let's assume MWI is correct. This means that, as far as I understand, the Schrodinger equation imposes that for each quantum event there is a forking in…

I believe your understanding of MWI is close enough, but I don't think your use of "superdeterminism" is correct. Superdeterminism is an attempt to give a local explanation for seemingly-non-local quantum phenomena. MWI is a specific local explanation for quantum phenomena, so there's no reason to add in a superdeterministic explanation for non-local phenomena, because there are no non-local phenomena in MWI that nee…

Post by jcranberry » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 1:43 PM UTC

knzhou wrote: post #54

millstone wrote: post #46

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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…

Yes, but in order to actually explain the results of existing experiments superdeterministically, this "implicate" order must be vast. It has to link the results of spin measurements, coin flips, radioactive decays halfway across the world, and the twinkling of the light from a long-dead star, all of which are sources of apparent randomness used together in experiments. All of this has to work in concert. If that rea…