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Superdeterminism


Silly Druid

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I just watched a video from Sabine Hossenfelder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytyjgIyegDI

She talks about an idea that can fix some problems with our understanding of quantum mechanics. And I have some things to say about it. First, I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't believe in all that free will nonsense. Second, I think the idea of superdeterminism has some very interesting implications.

It states that the path of the particle depends on what you measure. But what she doesn't say in the video is that the measurement takes place after the particle "chooses" its path. Which means we have causality that works backwards in time.

She also mentions that superdeterminism can be combined with general relativity. So, if we do it, I think it will imply the existence of tachyons, particles that always move faster than light, and can carry information back in time. But their function should be somewhat limited, to avoid time paradoxes. Maybe this will be a part of the long awaited theory of quantum gravity?

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as a person whose framework for understanding things requires time, responsibility and causality, while I can understand the reverse of these things... I can in no way input the concepts you describe into my mind :P

could you gimme a non-abstract implication of these abstractions to help meh understand :) 

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But what she doesn't say in the video is that the measurement takes place after the particle "chooses" its path.

https://youtu.be/ytyjgIyegDI?t=962

 

Also there was some talk about hidden variables, which should potentially cover "information".

 

This whole topic is quite advanced for me. I like to know more about the double-slit experiment as it is always described quite loosely on YouTube. I have seen countless of videos, all explaining the same thing, or with different words and animations, but still, the same thing.

What Sabine did what caught my eye was saying that a single quantum particle would choose 50% for one slit, and 50% for the other, and that as soon as a measurement was made, the interference pattern disappears, because of a 100%!
So where can I see this interference pattern disappearing? I have currently only seen the interference pattern, but never when it is disappeared. Still, that is something that is reality, and is proven, but I can just take the words of slideshows as proof.
But I did hear something about information being faster than light (particle knows which slit it went through, and the particle moves at the speed of light), which I find quite interesting! Einstein sure doesn't like when you go against his speed of light being the fastest ever! :awwthanks:

 

Free will? Backwards in time (information)?
I do believe in the hidden variables myself, that there is something more that we are simply missing. Or we are starting to reach garbage results as we reach outside our own reality (as far as we can mechanically comprehend the world), and I don't have a problem with that. It doesn't affect my free will, to completely think I have free will, even if I don't.

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@abrony-mouse @Splashee

I'm going to make another entry on superdeterminism, where I will address your comments. For now, I will only make a small comment about free will. Sabine did make a video about it, and she arrived at similar conclusions as I did in my blog post, which I made before seeing the video. Great minds think alike :-P

Edited by PawelS
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I got out of the field years ago, but I tend to agree with her. And I reject the idea that loss of free will destroys science. I stopped being interested in these "layman" explanation of science. You lose a lot when you aren't looking at the math. This means that you really can't "do science" by talking. No amount of youtube videos or popular science books is going to make you an expert on a topic. You have to actually get a degree and do the math. I did that, and I stopped, so I don't care any more. I guess my fate was all super determined anyway.

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@Brony Number 42 I'm not advanced enough in this field to actually do the math, but I think I understand some general ideas behind it, and I think it's fun to speculate about these ideas. I'm aware that I'm not doing any real science here, and I respect your opinion that there's no point in doing it. I'm still going to do it though :-P

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The free will argument is meaningless at some point. What would be the practical implications either way? If a person said, "I committed a crime because I was destined to do that." The response would be, "Well, I'm putting you in jail because I was destined to do that." It all works out the same.

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Also, I don't think that free will is a product of quantum indeterminacy. That all happens at the noise level, like the video mentioned. Free will seems to be unique to sentient beings. If it came from quantum processes, then we would see imamate objects have free will, because they are also subject to the same quantum processes.

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@Brony Number 42 The concept of free will makes no logical sense to me anyway. It's just a "mental shortcut" that we use to think about ourselves, but when you think about it more deeply, it stops making sense altogether. Basically, all things that happen, including the decisions we make in our brains, must be deterministic and/or random, there is no other option.

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What are the rules for the double-slit experiment to not creating the interference pattern?

 

I would really like to see actual proof of the case that people find to be odd. I don't find the interference pattern to be odd. I find the result after the measurement to be odd, but that is only ever explained by word of mouth. I want to see the result of a measurement when the double-slit experiment doesn't show the interference pattern.

Too bad the interference pattern isn't considered an measurement, or having an observer. :yeahno:

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I think I might have misunderstood the whole double-slit experiment because of many YouTubers copy pasting things rather than providing the real data.

 

I don't think something can move faster than light, but moving is such a "Newton's laws of motion" thing :mlp_icwudt:

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On 2022-02-06 at 12:41 AM, PawelS said:

@Brony Number 42 The concept of free will makes no logical sense to me anyway. It's just a "mental shortcut" that we use to think about ourselves, but when you think about it more deeply, it stops making sense altogether. Basically, all things that happen, including the decisions we make in our brains, must be deterministic and/or random, there is no other option.

If you think of it clearly... There is no such thing as random as well. Even chaos has order.

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@Kujamih "Deterministic chaos" is a thing, it means that even if a system is theoretically deterministic, it can be so sensitive to initial conditions that in practice it's impossible to predict its behavior (it's also known as the "butterfly effect").

But the existence of "true random" is another thing, in the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics it does exist, which means some processes (for example radioactive decay) are really random, not because of being complicated or chaotic, but because of the fundamental laws of physics.

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6 hours ago, PawelS said:

@Kujamih "Deterministic chaos" is a thing, it means that even if a system is theoretically deterministic, it can be so sensitive to initial conditions that in practice it's impossible to predict its behavior (it's also known as the "butterfly effect").

But the existence of "true random" is another thing, in the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics it does exist, which means some processes (for example radioactive decay) are really random, not because of being complicated or chaotic, but because of the fundamental laws of physics.

I see... Just like kids today....:okiedokieloki:

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