Show me a simpler theory that can explain chemistry. Without QM, slow electrons would just drop into the nucleus all the time. The question is odd and makes it seem almost like Aaronson knows all about theoretical QC, but little about actual physics.
Why Quantum Mechanics?
71–80 of 248 posts
Re: Why Quantum Mechanics?
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not satisfying that it would be considered free will if the outcome is based on the result of a probabilistic random number generator but perhaps that's what they mean... As for moral responsibility, essential no, it cannot exist again unless supernatural is involved for the same reasons outlined above, there is no "you" making a decision, just a process. As for whether you should feel guilty... well again I am…
The fact that your process knows about and is able to comprehend and reason about its own workings gives it the opportunity to change itself based on this knowledge. To hear about it and to then decide "this absolves me of any guilt, because I couldn't have done it any differently" is also a choice your process made. Counterfactually, it could've made the opposite choice (though it didn't do so). Now, me pointing thi…
Why do we absolve some people of guilt for being a product of their genes and environment and not others? Where do you draw the line? It would seem that "they couldn't help it" just as much as the people that you describe.
Re: Why Quantum Mechanics?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the question of free will is even simpler. It doesn't come down to determinism vs indeterminism because either way it's not "you" making a decision. At the lowest level (neuron or whatever) when a decision is "made" it is either deterministic (determinism) or probabilistic (indeterminism) based on physics but either way, where is the "you" in the process? Only way free will makes sense is if something superna…
> At the lowest level (neuron or whatever) when a decision is "made" it is either deterministic (determinism) or probabilistic (indeterminism) based on physics but either way, where is the "you" in the process? It's a matter of scale. At the highest level, of the individual, if you present them with two options, they will chose one of the options. At that level, the question is a trivial: yes, obviously they have "th…
>should you really feel guilty if you couldn't have done differently?
Well in case of strong determinism, you don’t have a choice not to feel guilty. Also, you don’t a have choice to believe or not in determinism.
Re: Why Quantum Mechanics?
#74Randomly found a link to this video on super determinism from his blog and found it super interesting. 100% agree, what is 'free will' anyways? A concept with no scientific definition. Why is it even used to explain anything in quantum mechanics? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytyjgIyegDI
I think the question of free will is even simpler. It doesn't come down to determinism vs indeterminism because either way it's not "you" making a decision. At the lowest level (neuron or whatever) when a decision is "made" it is either deterministic (determinism) or probabilistic (indeterminism) based on physics but either way, where is the "you" in the process? Only way free will makes sense is if something superna…
I have an answer. Consider the opposite of free will. Things that aren't considered to have free will inherit their reasons for doing/being from the outside. A computer isn't considered to have free will, the reason for everything it does serves the purpose of the programmer or user. A piston doesn't push on its free will, but does so because of steam pressure and the steam pressure doesn't choose to be in the pipe, but is put there by the engineer to serve some design purpose. A person doing a job isn't generally expressing their free will. They are manifesting the will of their boss, who himself is manifesting the will of the company on up the chain.
In general, the concept of reason for things (aka purpose) follows a hirearchy tree structure. X happens because Y wills it. Y wills it because Z wills it. And so on. Whenever we reach a node in this tree where we can't find the parent node, we are left with a free floating will.
So long as there are things about our likes and dislikes and how we spend our time which can't be correlated with anything measurable, there is no choice but to attribute those things to our free will. The moment some component of who we are becomes predictable by science, we stop attributing that component to our free will.
Re: Why Quantum Mechanics?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the question of free will is even simpler. It doesn't come down to determinism vs indeterminism because either way it's not "you" making a decision. At the lowest level (neuron or whatever) when a decision is "made" it is either deterministic (determinism) or probabilistic (indeterminism) based on physics but either way, where is the "you" in the process? Only way free will makes sense is if something superna…
This goes against the idea of strong emergence (mainly the bottom up causation part). I’m not arguing for or against it, but the SEP has an entry about it https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/ “This often takes the form of rejecting physical realization, affirming fundamental higher-level causal powers, or both.” I find it fascinating to wonder about causal powers in multiple directions. Does it eve…
> multiple directions. [...] Does it conflict with physicalism?
Since you like SEP, "Backward Causation"[1] is sometimes attempted as an explanation for entanglement. I don't buy it but it could be related to your question.
Re: Why Quantum Mechanics?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly feel that the mystery of consciousness is somehow deeply tied into why we have things like QM and not classical physics. If it was just classical physics, then you get yourself into the thinking that you can rewind time and all the "billiard balls" knock into each other the same way, which is why you order a soup and not a sandwich every single time on that day. That eliminate free will. There is something…
IMO the concept of free will doesn't make sense, at least not without also believing in the existence of a soul. If you were to make a decision that is not in some sense pre-determined by the structure of your brain (as shaped by biology and past experiences), it would be essentially random and just as meaningless as an uranium atom "deciding" to decay at some specific moment and not another.
But even though the arguments supporting free will at the ontological level is unconvincing, free will in the phenomenological sense is not the same.
I am of the hard determinist camp but I'm pessimistic about if we're ever going to be able to predict chaotic systems. Even if someone could predict what I'm about to do, this information would be fundamentally out of reach for me since getting this information would influence the outcome (also, maybe the predicting machine itself would causally perturb me enough to not be able to make meaningful predictions).
Re: Why Quantum Mechanics?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seem to suggest some kind of hidden variable theory for free will: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory . As far as I know they're not particularly popular among physicists, although we haven't (completely) ruled out such an explanation.
Newton and Einstein both seem to be on the side of hidden variables, so I'm not sure if it's unpopular among the elites. I have a lot of trouble imagining any experiment which could completely rule out every other influencing factor. There are silly thought experiments such as what if the world has been objective for the last x00 years - prior to that and after, the laws we've observed during the period would bend; t…
> I have a lot of trouble imagining any experiment which could completely rule out every other influencing factor
It's called Bell's theorem and it can even be tested at home[4]. There are no local hidden variables in quantum mechanics.[1][2][3]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory
Re: Why Quantum Mechanics?
#78Show me a simpler theory that can explain chemistry. Without QM, slow electrons would just drop into the nucleus all the time. The question is odd and makes it seem almost like Aaronson knows all about theoretical QC, but little about actual physics.
I think you misunderstand the post, he's not arguing against QM in any way at all, this isn't QM denial. He's just asking _why_ the universe is built that way.
Re: Why Quantum Mechanics?
#79> why complex values amplitudes? If you multiply the left and right sides of schrodingers equation by its complex conjugate, do you still get an equation that the real valued square of the wave function solves? Can you do QM with just the real valued probability distribution? If you can, why not say that that’s the “real” thing, and factoring it is just a convenient way to solve it, same as imaginary solutions to qua…
> Can you do QM with just the real valued probability distribution? You can't. The key fact is that other observables, such as momentum, depend on the complex part of the wave function.
Complex amplitudes are a qubit the universe gives us for free.
If you were to append some fictitious spin system to whatever quantum state, you could put all the real amplitude on the spin down state and all the imaginary amplitude on the spin up state.
Perhaps "the simulation" is on a quantum computer and some of the qubits are not directly encoding things we can touch.
Re: Why Quantum Mechanics?
#80Im just taking the easy course of QM by Suesskind. He had an example like you have two coins and give them randomy to your kids. The they move far away. Then one kid discovers what it got, it knows what the other has.
So what I dont get is why QM you could argue that there is some hidden shared state. Guess this is a typical question. But anyway I‘m somehow not convinced that it is really random.