Does superdeterminism save quantum mechanics?

Post by naasking » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:48 AM UTC

myridium wrote: post #72

naasking wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Last I checked, many-worlds is a consequence of current quantum theory, not a postulate or additional axiom. There is an additional postulate, namely that the state vector is the real world we inhabit. This may seem obvious to you and not amount to postulating much or anything with any substance, but that's a philosophical claim that isn't suggested by the physics. There are also the problems of deriving the Born r…

I'll have to look into those derivations. Thanks. > There is an additional postulate, namely that the state vector is the real world we inhabit. Well, yes, it's a model for the physical world. Refusing to accept that the state vector is the real world we inhabit is tantamount to rejecting the existence of an objective universe, in which case any discussion is moot, or to the outright rejection of quantum theory, whic…

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 3:00 AM UTC

candiodari wrote: post #14

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #10

Superdeterminism needs some kind of simplicity, for lack of a better word. To take her vaccine trial analogy further, imagine that you randomly assign a group of 100 people to a treatment and control cell (50-50). It could happen that all 50 people in the control cell just happened to be the 50 most a priori healthy people in the group. But it’s extremely unlikely. Following the analogy, superdeterminism says it happ…

The point is that it's only unlikely (or other situations likely) if the events, even from patient to patient, are random. If whether a patient is sick or not determined if they're in the placebo group or the healthy group, you would be testing exactly nothing. The randomness in placing the patient is a required part of the experiment. And more than random, the patient placement must be random and independent from th…

Post by Koshkin » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 3:10 AM UTC

evanb wrote: post #84

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert in this field, but aren't the existing assumptions around time being independent at the slice we want to take a major reason why QM and General Relativity can't be reconciled? If so, that would seem like a good reason to look at alternative ideas in this space.

I think you may be over-simplifying. We have relativistic quantum-mechanical theories, and we can formulate quantum field theories on curved background spacetimes.

Post by mrjangles » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 3:37 AM UTC

meroes wrote: post #20

"If statistical independence is violated, this means that what a quantum particle does depends on what you measure." But in standard QM without superdeterminism, what a particle does already depends what you (i.e. the experimenters) measure - how you set the relative angles of your detectors determines the amount of correlation, even when setting them at spacelike distances after the entangled pair is released (say A…

Post by raylad » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 7:26 AM UTC

Koshkin wrote: post #82

raylad wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not following. If everything is predetermined, there are no actual probabilities except as an artifact lack of knowledge of what the outcome must be. If that is the case, how can the probability amplitudes interfere with each other?

Even as an artifact of a lack of knowledge, probabilities can do many things - correlate, interfere...