Dec 20, 2021 06:40 PM
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/12...antum.html
EXCERPTS (Sabine Hossenfelder): Superdeterminism is a way to make sense of quantum mechanics. But some physicists and philosophers have argued that if one were to allow it, it would destroy science. Seriously. How does superdeterminism work, what is it good for, and why does it allegedly destroy science? That’s what we’ll talk about today.
First things first, what is superdeterminism? [...] Superdeterminism is exactly as deterministic as plain old vanilla determinism. ... According to superdeterminism, the reason we can’t predict the outcome of a quantum measurement is that we are missing information. This missing information is usually referred to as the “hidden variables”. I’ll tell you more about those later. But didn’t this guy what’s his name Bell prove that hidden variables are wrong?
No, he didn’t, though this is a very common misunderstanding, depressingly, even among physicists. Bell proved that a hidden variables theory which is (a) local and (b) fulfills an obscure assumption called “statistical independence” must obey an inequality, now called Bell’s inequality. We know experimentally that this inequality is violated. It follows that any local hidden variable theory which fits to our observations, has to violate statistical independence.
If statistical independence is violated, this means that what a quantum particle does depends on what you measure. And that’s how superdeterminism works: what a quantum particle does depends on what you measure...
[...] This is where the word “superdeterminism” comes from. Bell called a violation of statistical independence “superdeterminism” and claimed that it would require giving up free will. He argued that there are only two options: either accept spooky action and keep free will which would mean that Bell was right, or reject spooky action but give up free will which would mean that Einstein was right. Bell won. Einstein lost.
Now you all know that I think free will is logically incoherent nonsense. But even if you don’t share my opinion, Bell’s argument just doesn’t work. Spooky action at a distance doesn’t make any difference for free will because the indeterministic processes in quantum mechanics are not influenced by anything, so they are not influenced by your “free will,” whatever that may be. And in any case, throwing out determinism just because you don’t like its consequences is really bad science.
Nevertheless, the mathematical assumption of “statistical independence” has since widely been called the “free will” assumption, or the “free choice” assumption. And physicists stopped questioning it to the point that today most of them don’t know that Bell’s theorem even requires this additional assumption.
This is not a joke. All the alleged strangeness of quantum mechanics has its origin in nomenclature. It was forced on us by physicists who called a mathematical statement the “free will assumption”, never mind that it’s got nothing to do with free will, and then argued that one must believe in it because one must believe in free will.
If you find this hard to believe, I can’t blame you, but let me read you a quote from a book by Nicolas Gisin, who is Professor for Physics in Geneva and works on quantum information theory...
[...] Keep in mind that superdeterminism just means statistical independence is violated which has nothing to do with free will. However, even leaving that aside, fact is, the majority of philosophers either believe that free will is compatible with determinism, about 60% of them, or they agree with me that free will doesn’t exist anyway, about 10% of them.
But in case you’re still not convinced that physicists actually bought Bell’s free will argument, here is another quote [...] I assume you are shivering in fear of being robbed of your free will if one ever were to allow this. And not only would it rob you of free will, it would destroy science.
Indeed, already in 1976, Shimony, Horne, and Clauser argued that doubting statistical independence must be verboten. They wrote: “skepticism of this sort will essentially dismiss all results of scientific experimentation”. And here is one final quote about superdeterminism from the philosopher Tim Maudlin: “besides being insane, [it] would undercut scientific method.”
As you can see, we have no shortage of men who have strong opinions about things they know very little about, but not like this is news. So now let me tell you how superdeterminism actually works, using the double slit experiment as an example...
[...] And that’s what superdeterminism is. It takes our observations seriously. What the quantum particle does depends on what measurement will take place. Now you may say uhm drawing lines on YouTube isn’t proper science and I would agree. If you’d rather see equations, you’re most welcome to look at my papers instead.
[...] Okay, so I hope I’ve convinced you that superdeterminism doesn’t limit anyone’s free will and doesn’t kill science, now let’s see what it’s good for.
Once you understand what’s going on with the double slit, all the other quantum effects that are allegedly mysterious or strange also make sense...
[...] So, in my eyes, all those experiments have been screaming us into the face for half a century that what a quantum particle does depends on the measurement setting, and that’s superdeterminism. The good thing about superdeterminism is that since it’s local it can easily be combined with general relativity, so it can help us find a theory of quantum gravity.
Let me finally talk about something less abstract, namely how one can test it. You can’t test superdeterminism by measuring violations of Bell’s inequality because it doesn’t fulfil the assumptions of Bell’s theorem, so doesn’t have to obey the inequality. But superdeterminism generically predicts that measurement outcomes in quantum mechanics are actually determined, and not random.
Now, any theory that solves the measurement problem has to be non-linear, so the reason we haven’t noticed superdeterminism is almost certainly that all our measurements so far have been well in the chaotic regime. In that case trying to make a prediction for a measurement outcome is like trying to make a weather forecast for next year. The best you can do is calculate average values. That’s what quantum mechanics gives us.
But if you want to find out whether measurement outcomes are actually determined, you have to get out of the chaotic regime. This means looking at small systems at low temperatures and measurements in a short sequence, ideally on the same particle. Those measurements are currently just not being done. However, there is a huge amount of progress in quantum technologies at the moment, especially in combination with AI which is really good for finding new patterns. And this makes me think that at some point it’ll just become obvious that measurement outcomes are actually much more predictable than quantum mechanics says. Indeed, maybe someone already has the data, they just haven’t analyzed it the right way.
I know it’s somewhat boring coming from a German but I think Einstein was right about quantum mechanics. Call me crazy if you want but to me it’s obvious that superdeterminism is the correct explanation for our observations. I just hope I’ll live long enough to see that all those men who said otherwise will be really embarrassed... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS (Sabine Hossenfelder): Superdeterminism is a way to make sense of quantum mechanics. But some physicists and philosophers have argued that if one were to allow it, it would destroy science. Seriously. How does superdeterminism work, what is it good for, and why does it allegedly destroy science? That’s what we’ll talk about today.
First things first, what is superdeterminism? [...] Superdeterminism is exactly as deterministic as plain old vanilla determinism. ... According to superdeterminism, the reason we can’t predict the outcome of a quantum measurement is that we are missing information. This missing information is usually referred to as the “hidden variables”. I’ll tell you more about those later. But didn’t this guy what’s his name Bell prove that hidden variables are wrong?
No, he didn’t, though this is a very common misunderstanding, depressingly, even among physicists. Bell proved that a hidden variables theory which is (a) local and (b) fulfills an obscure assumption called “statistical independence” must obey an inequality, now called Bell’s inequality. We know experimentally that this inequality is violated. It follows that any local hidden variable theory which fits to our observations, has to violate statistical independence.
If statistical independence is violated, this means that what a quantum particle does depends on what you measure. And that’s how superdeterminism works: what a quantum particle does depends on what you measure...
[...] This is where the word “superdeterminism” comes from. Bell called a violation of statistical independence “superdeterminism” and claimed that it would require giving up free will. He argued that there are only two options: either accept spooky action and keep free will which would mean that Bell was right, or reject spooky action but give up free will which would mean that Einstein was right. Bell won. Einstein lost.
Now you all know that I think free will is logically incoherent nonsense. But even if you don’t share my opinion, Bell’s argument just doesn’t work. Spooky action at a distance doesn’t make any difference for free will because the indeterministic processes in quantum mechanics are not influenced by anything, so they are not influenced by your “free will,” whatever that may be. And in any case, throwing out determinism just because you don’t like its consequences is really bad science.
Nevertheless, the mathematical assumption of “statistical independence” has since widely been called the “free will” assumption, or the “free choice” assumption. And physicists stopped questioning it to the point that today most of them don’t know that Bell’s theorem even requires this additional assumption.
This is not a joke. All the alleged strangeness of quantum mechanics has its origin in nomenclature. It was forced on us by physicists who called a mathematical statement the “free will assumption”, never mind that it’s got nothing to do with free will, and then argued that one must believe in it because one must believe in free will.
If you find this hard to believe, I can’t blame you, but let me read you a quote from a book by Nicolas Gisin, who is Professor for Physics in Geneva and works on quantum information theory...
[...] Keep in mind that superdeterminism just means statistical independence is violated which has nothing to do with free will. However, even leaving that aside, fact is, the majority of philosophers either believe that free will is compatible with determinism, about 60% of them, or they agree with me that free will doesn’t exist anyway, about 10% of them.
But in case you’re still not convinced that physicists actually bought Bell’s free will argument, here is another quote [...] I assume you are shivering in fear of being robbed of your free will if one ever were to allow this. And not only would it rob you of free will, it would destroy science.
Indeed, already in 1976, Shimony, Horne, and Clauser argued that doubting statistical independence must be verboten. They wrote: “skepticism of this sort will essentially dismiss all results of scientific experimentation”. And here is one final quote about superdeterminism from the philosopher Tim Maudlin: “besides being insane, [it] would undercut scientific method.”
As you can see, we have no shortage of men who have strong opinions about things they know very little about, but not like this is news. So now let me tell you how superdeterminism actually works, using the double slit experiment as an example...
[...] And that’s what superdeterminism is. It takes our observations seriously. What the quantum particle does depends on what measurement will take place. Now you may say uhm drawing lines on YouTube isn’t proper science and I would agree. If you’d rather see equations, you’re most welcome to look at my papers instead.
[...] Okay, so I hope I’ve convinced you that superdeterminism doesn’t limit anyone’s free will and doesn’t kill science, now let’s see what it’s good for.
Once you understand what’s going on with the double slit, all the other quantum effects that are allegedly mysterious or strange also make sense...
[...] So, in my eyes, all those experiments have been screaming us into the face for half a century that what a quantum particle does depends on the measurement setting, and that’s superdeterminism. The good thing about superdeterminism is that since it’s local it can easily be combined with general relativity, so it can help us find a theory of quantum gravity.
Let me finally talk about something less abstract, namely how one can test it. You can’t test superdeterminism by measuring violations of Bell’s inequality because it doesn’t fulfil the assumptions of Bell’s theorem, so doesn’t have to obey the inequality. But superdeterminism generically predicts that measurement outcomes in quantum mechanics are actually determined, and not random.
Now, any theory that solves the measurement problem has to be non-linear, so the reason we haven’t noticed superdeterminism is almost certainly that all our measurements so far have been well in the chaotic regime. In that case trying to make a prediction for a measurement outcome is like trying to make a weather forecast for next year. The best you can do is calculate average values. That’s what quantum mechanics gives us.
But if you want to find out whether measurement outcomes are actually determined, you have to get out of the chaotic regime. This means looking at small systems at low temperatures and measurements in a short sequence, ideally on the same particle. Those measurements are currently just not being done. However, there is a huge amount of progress in quantum technologies at the moment, especially in combination with AI which is really good for finding new patterns. And this makes me think that at some point it’ll just become obvious that measurement outcomes are actually much more predictable than quantum mechanics says. Indeed, maybe someone already has the data, they just haven’t analyzed it the right way.
I know it’s somewhat boring coming from a German but I think Einstein was right about quantum mechanics. Call me crazy if you want but to me it’s obvious that superdeterminism is the correct explanation for our observations. I just hope I’ll live long enough to see that all those men who said otherwise will be really embarrassed... (MORE - missing details)