The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism
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The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism
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Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism
#2The thing about superdeterminism is that it's only interesting if you want to argue philosophy. If you're dealing with hidden variables (or even measurement errors) the only practical tool in your box for handling them is probability distributions.
So either way, you've got a probability distribution. And at this point people just apply Occam's Razor and get on with their lives. You can theorize an infinite number of systems that work exactly like the real world. The question is whether they're useful.
Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism
#3The thing about superdeterminism is that it's only interesting if you want to argue philosophy. If you're dealing with hidden variables (or even measurement errors) the only practical tool in your box for handling them is probability distributions. So either way, you've got a probability distribution. And at this point people just apply Occam's Razor and get on with their lives. You can theorize an infinite number of…
Could an untestable underlying theory inspire new models and implications that are testable?
Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism
#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 Copenhagen interpretation and the last one Many Worlds. What bothers me about getting philosophical is, philosophers will attempt to choose one or more based on intellectual aesthetic criteria that we developed from the womb onwards in the macroscopic world, while in reality the only legitimate answer is "we don't know." I think that is broadly speaking a problem that hampers the effectiveness of philosophy, there is not enough willingness to say "the present information does not permit a conclusion."
Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism
#5I don't think the problem with superdeterminism is the lack of free will, but with the way it doesn't really give you anything mentally to work with. It posits some early state from which everything could be deterministically extrapolated... except that state is both very complicated and completely hidden. It takes all of the probabilities and shoves them in a black box and says, "The answers exist, and they're in there. But you can't actually look in the box for the answers. You have to go do the experiment and wait for the speed of light to propagate the answer to you."
Like all interpretations, it's mathematically equivalent to any other. It's just a question of what helps you think about the problem, and I don't think many people find it very edifying. You can replace the box with a random number generator, which is at least small enough to fit in your pocket. The superdeterminism box appears to have been crammed full of untold centillions of answers... none of which are accessible beforehand.
If there were reason to think that the superdeterminism box were somehow smaller -- if it all really came down to just one random bit, say, that had been magnified by chaotic interactions to appear like more -- that would attract some attention. And I suppose it would be conceptually testable, by running Laplace's demon in reverse, except that that's not possible either from inside the universe.
So it doesn't really come as a surprise that superdeterminism falls behind MWI or Copenhagen or even pilot wave, because each of those hands you something that you can use to mentally organize the world. Superdeterminism just seems to hand you a catchprase, "As it was foretold in the Long Ago -- but which I just found out about".
Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism
#6The thing about superdeterminism is that it's only interesting if you want to argue philosophy. If you're dealing with hidden variables (or even measurement errors) the only practical tool in your box for handling them is probability distributions. So either way, you've got a probability distribution. And at this point people just apply Occam's Razor and get on with their lives. You can theorize an infinite number of…
Could an untestable underlying theory inspire new models and implications that are testable?
In a general case, yes. This happened recently with gravitational waves. The construction of multiple gravitational wave detectors across the planet allowed us to test a previously untestable hypothesis about the number of dimensions that gravity can act in.
Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism
#7Can someone explain more clearly how being in a deterministic universe resolves the “problem” of Bell inequalities? It seems like even if the universe were deterministic it would not cause the classic polarizing-filters Bell inequality to seem “reasonable”. In fact it makes it seem less reasonable to me!
Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism
#8"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.
Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism
#9"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.
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 that even when they do, "all of philosophy" almost never reaches a consensus about quitting the debate. In math, when they deduced that the Axiom of Choice was always going to be an axiom, everybody quit looking for ways to confirm or refute it. I think it's a weakness of philosophy that similar things can't happen.
Re: The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism
#10"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…
Where does Pilot Wave theory fall?