May 18, 2025 08:28 PM
(This post was last modified: May 19, 2025 01:39 AM by C C.)
SABINE HOSSENFELDER
https://youtu.be/2kxoq5UzAEQ
VIDEO EXCERPTS: Gerard ‘t Hooft won the Nobel Prize in 1999, and the recent Breakthrough Prize, for his work on the Standard Model of Particle physics. He also thinks that quantum mechanics is nonsense. Indeed, he has an alternative theory for quantum mechanics that he says is how the world really works. This theory has been almost entirely ignored by physicists. Which is unfortunate, because he predicts a limit for what quantum computers can do.
[...] Let’s start with a quick reminder of how quantum mechanics normally works. We’re used to objects having definite properties that you can quantify. This desk is white, this chair is solid, and this sentence makes sense—so far.
In quantum mechanics it doesn’t work like that. Instead, everything is described by a wave-function. [...] the wave-function usually doesn’t tell you exactly what the particle is doing or where it is, it just gives you a probability that you can calculate from the wave-function.
[...] The issue is that this collapse isn’t local. It doesn’t start at one place and then spreads from there. It happens at one instant, everywhere, faster than the speed of light. That the collapse of the wave-function breaks the speed of light, limit is why Einstein didn’t
like quantum mechanics. I think Einstein was right, and ‘t Hooft thinks so, too.
[...] The way that ‘t Hooft wants to improve quantum physics is by doing away with the collapse of the wave-function. And he does that by getting rid of free will, by making quantum mechanics entirely deterministic.
[...] This is the important point of ‘t Hooft’s proposal and what has sometimes been called “superdeterminism”, that the decision of what you measure is correlated with the state of the system that you measure. It’s not a causation. It’s not that the wave-function of an electron makes a particle physicist turn a knob. It’s just that the laws of nature are so that the two things must always fit together. ‘t Hooft also thinks that the issue of free will in quantum mechanics is somewhat of a red herring because what we’re really talking about is just a mathematical model that helps us make predictions.
As he writes: “the notion of ‘free will’ must be replaced with the notion that a useful model of Nature should give correct predictions”. Somewhat more technically, ‘t Hooft says the following: The wave-function that we use in quantum mechanics is all well and good to describe what is going on. But it isn’t real...
https://youtu.be/2kxoq5UzAEQ
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/2kxoq5UzAEQ
https://youtu.be/2kxoq5UzAEQ
VIDEO EXCERPTS: Gerard ‘t Hooft won the Nobel Prize in 1999, and the recent Breakthrough Prize, for his work on the Standard Model of Particle physics. He also thinks that quantum mechanics is nonsense. Indeed, he has an alternative theory for quantum mechanics that he says is how the world really works. This theory has been almost entirely ignored by physicists. Which is unfortunate, because he predicts a limit for what quantum computers can do.
[...] Let’s start with a quick reminder of how quantum mechanics normally works. We’re used to objects having definite properties that you can quantify. This desk is white, this chair is solid, and this sentence makes sense—so far.
In quantum mechanics it doesn’t work like that. Instead, everything is described by a wave-function. [...] the wave-function usually doesn’t tell you exactly what the particle is doing or where it is, it just gives you a probability that you can calculate from the wave-function.
[...] The issue is that this collapse isn’t local. It doesn’t start at one place and then spreads from there. It happens at one instant, everywhere, faster than the speed of light. That the collapse of the wave-function breaks the speed of light, limit is why Einstein didn’t
like quantum mechanics. I think Einstein was right, and ‘t Hooft thinks so, too.
[...] The way that ‘t Hooft wants to improve quantum physics is by doing away with the collapse of the wave-function. And he does that by getting rid of free will, by making quantum mechanics entirely deterministic.
[...] This is the important point of ‘t Hooft’s proposal and what has sometimes been called “superdeterminism”, that the decision of what you measure is correlated with the state of the system that you measure. It’s not a causation. It’s not that the wave-function of an electron makes a particle physicist turn a knob. It’s just that the laws of nature are so that the two things must always fit together. ‘t Hooft also thinks that the issue of free will in quantum mechanics is somewhat of a red herring because what we’re really talking about is just a mathematical model that helps us make predictions.
As he writes: “the notion of ‘free will’ must be replaced with the notion that a useful model of Nature should give correct predictions”. Somewhat more technically, ‘t Hooft says the following: The wave-function that we use in quantum mechanics is all well and good to describe what is going on. But it isn’t real...
https://youtu.be/2kxoq5UzAEQ