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The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism

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Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism

#21

Post by teilo »

Superdeterminism is a self-defeating philosophy. In essence, it cedes everything to random chance, and makes all scientific inquiry meaningless. There is no longer any "why" or "how." There is merely, "That's just the way it is." Any apparent order or structure which might be observed is exactly that: merely apparent. Therefore any attempt to understand the universe is vain.

It is little better than the presumption that planets move because a prime mover moves them. It is, in essence, to give as the final answer: "Planets move as they do because they cannot do anything else."

Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism

#22

Post by paganel »

MiroF wrote: post #8
whatshisface wrote: post #4

"The Facts" basically say that among the statements, "Your experiment design isn't predestined by the universe to make it accidentally seem like quantum mechanics is true," "the state of the universe today is all you need to know to predict the state of the universe tomorrow," and "an experiment only has one outcome," there is at least one lie. If the first one is a lie that's superdeterminism, the second one the Cop…

This comment started out good but then stumbled in to some odd critique of philosophy as being incapable of dealing with unknowable things when indeed that seems to be perfectly within the purview of philosophy. Humes Problem of Induction, for instance, is exactly an example of philosophical practice grappling with these unanswerables.

I might have read Hume the wrong way, but for me he was one of the few philosophers who basically said “there’s no way for us to know for sure” which can be approximated to “we don’t know”.

My favorite philosopher however remains Heraclitus, had we chosen to go his way we might have had less stupid questions, like “is the cat in the box dead or alive?” and instead we might have straight up came up with the answer “the cat is dead, alive and all the states between dead and alive, and we’re fine with that”. Unfortunately Aristotle was not fine with accepting the many “states” of the world “happening” all at the same time and went for the binary True-False way, bad-mouthing Heraclitus in the process. We certainly did manage to build a more efficient society by following Aristotle’s way but I think we have reached a local maximum, or it certainly looks that way. Maybe reverting to the pre-Socratics will help us go over this local maximum.

Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism

#23

Post by coldtea »

teilo wrote: post #21

Superdeterminism is a self-defeating philosophy. In essence, it cedes everything to random chance, and makes all scientific inquiry meaningless. There is no longer any "why" or "how." There is merely, "That's just the way it is." Any apparent order or structure which might be observed is exactly that: merely apparent. Therefore any attempt to understand the universe is vain. It is little better than the presumption t…

>In essence, it cedes everything to random chance, and makes all scientific inquiry meaningless. There is no longer any "why" or "how." There is merely, "That's just the way it is."

Which doesn't make it wrong...

Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism

#24

Post by klodolph »

namanyayg wrote: post #19
klodolph wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Falsifiable" is a fantastic term but the philosophy of science did not stop with Popper, and it's not the only term we have available to discuss competing theories.

What other terms would you use? "Falsifiable" is more accurate that "untestable"?

"More accurate" is a good way to phrase it. "More accurate" also describes GR when you compare it to Newtonian mechanics. Strictly speaking, Newtonian mechanics is false and has been falsified if you subscribe to the Popperian view. However, if Newtonion mechanics is false, is it useless? No.

As it turns out, there are a few problems with the epistemology of falsifiability. The main ones I can think of are:

1. Duhem-Quine problem - there is a large number of auxiliary hypotheses under test in any experiment, in addition to the primary hypotheses. These very numerous and we need a framework for deciding how to apply the results of our experiment to the many hypotheses.

2. Statistical claims may be unfalsifiable. Consider a theory that claims that a coin flip has a 50% probability of being heads... how does one falsify this? One can't strictly falsify it, but you can show that the evidence is unlikely given the hypothesis. So we need some framework that connects statistical and probabilistic evidence to our knowledge of the world.

Or in summary, the problems with falsifiability are that falsifying a theory doesn't give us the information that we want, and it's impossible to falsify many theories. To abuse analogies, falsifiability is kind of like trying to cross a river with your car, when there's no bridge and the car won't start.

One approach other than Popperian falsifiability is a Bayesian system of belief and likelihood. This only one direction that the philosophy of science is exploring, but it is probably the one most familiar to HN readers.

Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism

#25

Post by archibaldJ »

scythe wrote: post #20

The problem is that superdeterminism contains a principle of explosion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion If superdeterminism explains quantum mechanics, why not cosmic inflation? Why not matter asymmetry? Why not abiogenesis? Why not Brexit? Superdeterminism, by construction, can explain everything — and all there’s left to do is pray to God.

I will have to disagree with that.

Firstly I don't think anyone has actually formalised superdeterminism in a way that the principle of explosion can be logically introduced to formally undermine superdeterminism. What you are doing here is akin to stretching the conceptual relevance of Godel's incompleteness theorems and trying to use it to prove or disprove the existence of God.

Basically I don't see how it makes sense to say that superdeterminism contains a principle of explosion. Perhaps my interpretation of superdeterminism is very different from yours. Or maybe I simply don't see the picture as you do. If that is the case please enlighten me.

Secondly I think you are missing the point of superdeterminism here.

There is something very computational (and perhaps Taoistic) about superdeterminism. Apparently under this framework the whole notion of "explaining things" is nullified and becomes meaningless. It occurs to me that our everyday notion of "explaining things" exists at a lower abstraction level and thus loses relevance in the face of superdeterminism. I believe if you really want to undermine superdeterminism as a theory (or as a philosophy), the more relevant question here to ask is: is there anything useful/meaningful about reality (or the universe) that can be inferred assuming superdeterminism? And then of course if you are a scientist you would then ask: are they experimentally verifiable?

Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism

#26

Post by archibaldJ »

There is something very Taoistic about superdeterminism.

And there is something very Taoistic about homotopy type theory too.

Also, I feel that both superdeterminism and homotopy type theory have traces of the holographic principle in them in a somewhat conceptual or abstract way.

Perhaps there exists a nice correspondence between superdeterminism and homotopy type theory that can be used to extend (in a purely functional and categorical way) the simulation hypothesis into a full-fledged theory (and perhaps with its own nice little axiomatic system) to make sense of reality.

Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism

#27

Post by teilo »

archibaldJ wrote: post #25
scythe wrote: post #20

The problem is that superdeterminism contains a principle of explosion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion If superdeterminism explains quantum mechanics, why not cosmic inflation? Why not matter asymmetry? Why not abiogenesis? Why not Brexit? Superdeterminism, by construction, can explain everything — and all there’s left to do is pray to God.

I will have to disagree with that. Firstly I don't think anyone has actually formalised superdeterminism in a way that the principle of explosion can be logically introduced to formally undermine superdeterminism. What you are doing here is akin to stretching the conceptual relevance of Godel's incompleteness theorems and trying to use it to prove or disprove the existence of God. Basically I don't see how it makes s…

> I believe if you really want to undermine superdeterminism as a theory (or as a philosophy), the more relevant question here to ask is: is there anything useful/meaningful about reality (or the universe) that can be inferred assuming superdeterminism? And then of course if you are a scientist you would then ask: are they experimentally verifiable?

To even ask the question you must deny your own premise. If indeed superdeterminism is true, then any experimental verification is nullified by definition: the results of any and all experimentation is itself superdetermined regardless of any scientific framework.

Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism

#28

Post by MiroF »

whatshisface wrote: post #9
MiroF wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment started out good but then stumbled in to some odd critique of philosophy as being incapable of dealing with unknowable things when indeed that seems to be perfectly within the purview of philosophy. Humes Problem of Induction, for instance, is exactly an example of philosophical practice grappling with these unanswerables.

So, Hume didn't stop ethical philosophers from trying to derive morals, he only stopped some of them. Wittgenstein and Borges didn't stop philosophers from trying to "beat" language games using only language: they only stopped some philosophers. I'm not saying that there aren't visionary heroes who realize that some discussions aren't going to go anywhere for fundamental reasons; instead, I'm highlighting the fact th…

Hume's problem of induction is not about deriving moral principles (I believe you got it confused with the "is-ought" dichotomy.) Most philosophers have largely given up on giving a rational deductive basis for why we should believe in induction, so if anything that seems to be a perfect example of what you're describing.

I don't think the nature of quantum reality is anywhere near as settled. For decades, we thought that it was impossible to test local hidden-variable theories. Thank god some people were still working on the problem!

Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism

#29

Post by archibaldJ »

teilo wrote: post #27
archibaldJ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will have to disagree with that. Firstly I don't think anyone has actually formalised superdeterminism in a way that the principle of explosion can be logically introduced to formally undermine superdeterminism. What you are doing here is akin to stretching the conceptual relevance of Godel's incompleteness theorems and trying to use it to prove or disprove the existence of God. Basically I don't see how it makes s…

> I believe if you really want to undermine superdeterminism as a theory (or as a philosophy), the more relevant question here to ask is: is there anything useful/meaningful about reality (or the universe) that can be inferred assuming superdeterminism? And then of course if you are a scientist you would then ask: are they experimentally verifiable? To even ask the question you must deny your own premise. If indeed s…

The last part was supposed to be taken with a grain of irony in the spirit of Anton Zeilinger:

"We always implicitly assume the freedom of the experimentalist... This fundamental assumption is essential to doing science. If this were not true, then, I suggest, it would make no sense at all to ask nature questions in an experiment, since then nature could determine what our questions are, and that could guide our questions such that we arrive at a false picture of nature."

I guess that is the problem most people have with superdeterminism. Intellectuals in this day of age are too scientifically trained to have any romanticisation for reality under frameworks like synchronicity (even though it was popularised by Pauli before it lost mainstream appeal after actual fundings went into unfruitful statistical research in the 80s) or (in the newtonian time) alchemy and the love for God. This is why superdeterminism is so unpopular.

I just really like superdeterminism because I think it is cute and I believe in the Tao.

Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism

#30

Post by SubiculumCode »

coldtea wrote: post #23
teilo wrote: post #21

Superdeterminism is a self-defeating philosophy. In essence, it cedes everything to random chance, and makes all scientific inquiry meaningless. There is no longer any "why" or "how." There is merely, "That's just the way it is." Any apparent order or structure which might be observed is exactly that: merely apparent. Therefore any attempt to understand the universe is vain. It is little better than the presumption t…

> In essence, it cedes everything to random chance, and makes all scientific inquiry meaningless. There is no longer any "why" or "how." There is merely, "That's just the way it is." Which doesn't make it wrong...

And indeed, is based on the same math as the more mainstream interpretations.
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