Why is superdeterminism not the universally accepted explanation of nonlocality?

In summary, the conversation discusses the concept of nonlocality and entanglement in a deterministic universe, where the information about instantaneous transfer is known to the universe. The conversation also touches upon the idea of superdeterminism, which some people reject due to its conspiratorial nature and lack of a concrete scientific theory. The possibility of interpreting nonlocality as an answer rather than a problem is also mentioned, as well as the importance of keeping beliefs aligned with measured reality. The conversation concludes with the suggestion that it may be better to believe in the existence of random and non-local phenomena rather than inventing longer explanations.
  • #1
jadrian
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0
from my thinking nonlocality and entanglement are never a problem because in a totally determinstic universe, the information about what is going to be instantaneously tranferred from a to b is already known to the universe. we may not be in block time but the universe acts as if it were. this is the first thing I've come across that agrees with my resolution of instantaneous info transfer.

even tho i personally believe that entanglement is basicly a zero sum static, and it is essentually noneffectual on the universe, just something we have to live with, but does not violate relativity because the information does not have any effect on anything anywhere. why is this not mainstream? do most people want to live in an undetermined future, thinking its closer to free will?
 
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  • #2
It is true that Bell's theorem as such does not rule out the possibility local superdeterministic hidden variable theory. But there are solid reasons why people do not rush to embrace a superdeterministic explanation.

First of all, such an explanation would be in some sense "conspiratorial" - it would mean that all the particles in the universe are secretly working together, each particle acting in just the right way as to make it seem as if local realism is false even though it is really true. So for instance, if you decide which way to orient your polarizer based on throwing dice (or some more sophisticated pseudorandom number generator), the motion of the dice in principle can be predicted from the initial conditions of the dice and all the air molecules. So all the air molecules were working together to turn the die in just the right way so that the right number would show up. And the air molecules could be affected by the time a person sneezed, which could be affected by something they ate. So the laws of the universe made the person choose just the right food so as to make him sneeze at the right time to make the air molecules turn the die in just the right way so that the polarizer will be turned to the exact orientation the universe wants. You can see that this sounds less like a scientific theory and more like a religious explanation - you have a God who is controlling all the little details of the universe in order to make the statistics of quantum entanglement experiments come out just right.

Second of all, there's a reason why the Bohmian interpretation, which is a nonlocal realist interpretation, gets respect and superdeterminism does not (even though both are arguably "conspiratorial" to varying degrees). In the case of Bohmian mechanics, we actually have a fully developed mathematical theory which predicts all the phenomena of (nonrelativistic) quantum mechanics. In the case of superdeterminism, however, we just have a vague hope of the possibility of a scientific theory. There are some people like Gerard t'Hooft who have tried to create a "proof of concept" superdeterministic theory, just to show that it is possible for a local realist theory to exploit the superdeterminism loophole to Bell's theorem. But until there's an explanation that actually shows exactly how the particles of the universe are conducting this grand "conspiracy", there will probably be continued skepticism from the scientific community.
 
  • #3
Maybe a bit simple way of putting, but the short answer to your question is that not everyone thinks non-locality needs an explanation! On the contrary, it can rather be considered as an answer. If we ask how can our entangled results be explained, then non-locality is a part of one answer to this.

As for your interpretational arguments, it's hard to say much since you seemed to have formed your view on it already. My personal view on interpreting it all, is that I try to keep my beliefs as close to measured reality as possible. For example, we currently measure both random and non-local phenomena, and even though there may exist explanations to these that are deterministic, we still need to be able to explain the random, non-local measurement results in the end. This means that the possible deterministic background contribute with nothing, and may therefore just as well be omitted from our theory.

To put it shortly, when left with nothing else to go on, it's better to "believe" that the universe is actually as we see it (random and non-local) rather than to invent longer explanations.
 
  • #4
Zarqon said:
Maybe a bit simple way of putting, but the short answer to your question is that not everyone thinks non-locality needs an explanation! On the contrary, it can rather be considered as an answer. If we ask how can our entangled results be explained, then non-locality is a part of one answer to this.

As for your interpretational arguments, it's hard to say much since you seemed to have formed your view on it already. My personal view on interpreting it all, is that I try to keep my beliefs as close to measured reality as possible. For example, we currently measure both random and non-local phenomena, and even though there may exist explanations to these that are deterministic, we still need to be able to explain the random, non-local measurement results in the end. This means that the possible deterministic background contribute with nothing, and may therefore just as well be omitted from our theory.

To put it shortly, when left with nothing else to go on, it's better to "believe" that the universe is actually as we see it (random and non-local) rather than to invent longer explanations.
If you were a pure pragmatist, then wouldn't you assume that if you measured a particle to have a certain property, that it had that property before you measured it? Like if you see a dollar bill lying on the road, don't you assume that it was lying there before you saw it?

Now that kind of naive noncontextual realism, although as a pragmatist you may be naturally led to it, runs into some difficulties if you apply it to the spin observable, because the Kochen-Specker theorem states roughly that any theory of spin that reproduces the predictions of quantum mechanics must be contextual, i.e. dependent on how you measured it. (Of course, if you're a superdeterminist that doesn't mean much to you, because you don't believe there is any free choice of how you choose to measure, so you would think a Kochen-Specker tests are a fraud for the same reason you would think Bell tests are a fraud.) I wonder, is there an analogous result like Kochen-Specker for the position observable? I suspect it would be problematic for Bohmian mechanics if there was, because part of the reason Bohmians think spin is "fake" is because of the Kochen-Specker theorem. Would they similarly think position is "fake", or is position too foundational for Bohmian mechanics?
 
  • #5
lugita15 said:
It is true that Bell's theorem as such does not rule out the possibility local superdeterministic hidden variable theory. But there are solid reasons why people do not rush to embrace a superdeterministic explanation.

First of all, such an explanation would be in some sense "conspiratorial" - it would mean that all the particles in the universe are secretly working together, each particle acting in just the right way as to make it seem as if local realism is false even though it is really true. So for instance, if you decide which way to orient your polarizer based on throwing dice (or some more sophisticated pseudorandom number generator), the motion of the dice in principle can be predicted from the initial conditions of the dice and all the air molecules. So all the air molecules were working together to turn the die in just the right way so that the right number would show up. And the air molecules could be affected by the time a person sneezed, which could be affected by something they ate. So the laws of the universe made the person choose just the right food so as to make him sneeze at the right time to make the air molecules turn the die in just the right way so that the polarizer will be turned to the exact orientation the universe wants. You can see that this sounds less like a scientific theory and more like a religious explanation - you have a God who is controlling all the little details of the universe in order to make the statistics of quantum entanglement experiments come out just right.

Second of all, there's a reason why the Bohmian interpretation, which is a nonlocal realist interpretation, gets respect and superdeterminism does not (even though both are arguably "conspiratorial" to varying degrees). In the case of Bohmian mechanics, we actually have a fully developed mathematical theory which predicts all the phenomena of (nonrelativistic) quantum mechanics. In the case of superdeterminism, however, we just have a vague hope of the possibility of a scientific theory. There are some people like Gerard t'Hooft who have tried to create a "proof of concept" superdeterministic theory, just to show that it is possible for a local realist theory to exploit the superdeterminism loophole to Bell's theorem. But until there's an explanation that actually shows exactly how the particles of the universe are conducting this grand "conspiracy", there will probably be continued skepticism from the scientific community.

i have no idea what makes you think that superdeterminism is conspiratorial. i don't understand why superdeterminism is not the fundamental pillar that all science is built on. your dice analogy only seems to prove my point.

but when you say your view of superdeterminism as "the laws of the universe made the person choose just the right food so as to make him sneeze at the right time to make the air molecules turn the die in just the right way so that the polarizer will be turned to the exact orientation the universe wants. You can see that this sounds less like a scientific theory and more like a religious explanation - you have a God who is controlling all the little details of the universe in order to make the statistics of quantum entanglement experiments come out just right.", you just seem to be incapable of accepting the possibility that the future is a 100 percent consequence of the events preceding it.

do you believe in free will or something?
 
  • #6
In principle, I don't think superdeterminism is less valid than standard interpretations. One has to realize, that the freedom to chose initial conditions ("free will") is an axiom in QM.

The problem is that if you drop this axiom, I can't think of a way how to apply the scientific method in a meaningful way. Since the mainstream is doing science, I don't think he will ever embrace such an interpretation.

So philosophically, I think, it stands on equal footing with standard interpretations. But for actually doing science, one has to assume at least some kind of "effective" freedom in choosing initial conditions.
 
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  • #7
lugita15 said:
It is true that Bell's theorem as such does not rule out the possibility local superdeterministic hidden variable theory. But there are solid reasons why people do not rush to embrace a superdeterministic explanation.

First of all, such an explanation would be in some sense "conspiratorial" - it would mean that all the particles in the universe are secretly working together, each particle acting in just the right way as to make it seem as if local realism is false even though it is really true. So for instance, if you decide which way to orient your polarizer based on throwing dice (or some more sophisticated pseudorandom number generator), the motion of the dice in principle can be predicted from the initial conditions of the dice and all the air molecules. So all the air molecules were working together to turn the die in just the right way so that the right number would show up. And the air molecules could be affected by the time a person sneezed, which could be affected by something they ate. So the laws of the universe made the person choose just the right food so as to make him sneeze at the right time to make the air molecules turn the die in just the right way so that the polarizer will be turned to the exact orientation the universe wants. You can see that this sounds less like a scientific theory and more like a religious explanation - you have a God who is controlling all the little details of the universe in order to make the statistics of quantum entanglement experiments come out just right.

Second of all, there's a reason why the Bohmian interpretation, which is a nonlocal realist interpretation, gets respect and superdeterminism does not (even though both are arguably "conspiratorial" to varying degrees). In the case of Bohmian mechanics, we actually have a fully developed mathematical theory which predicts all the phenomena of (nonrelativistic) quantum mechanics. In the case of superdeterminism, however, we just have a vague hope of the possibility of a scientific theory. There are some people like Gerard t'Hooft who have tried to create a "proof of concept" superdeterministic theory, just to show that it is possible for a local realist theory to exploit the superdeterminism loophole to Bell's theorem. But until there's an explanation that actually shows exactly how the particles of the universe are conducting this grand "conspiracy", there will probably be continued skepticism from the scientific community.

also, since entanglement must always originate locally, the info transfer between entangled particles is never going to be faster than c, therefore nonlocality is not an issue in superdeterminism and neither are hidden variables if I am correct. instantaneous info transfer will not violate relativity because of this.
 
  • #8
jadrian said:
also, since entanglement must always originate locally, the info transfer between entangled particles is never going to be faster than c, therefore nonlocality is not an issue in superdeterminism and neither are hidden variables if I am correct. instantaneous info transfer will not violate relativity because of this.

or information theory for that matter
 
  • #9
jadrian said:
i have no idea what makes you think that superdeterminism is conspiratorial. i don't understand why superdeterminism is not the fundamental pillar that all science is built on. your dice analogy only seems to prove my point.

but when you say your view of superdeterminism as "the laws of the universe made the person choose just the right food so as to make him sneeze at the right time to make the air molecules turn the die in just the right way so that the polarizer will be turned to the exact orientation the universe wants. You can see that this sounds less like a scientific theory and more like a religious explanation - you have a God who is controlling all the little details of the universe in order to make the statistics of quantum entanglement experiments come out just right.", you just seem to be incapable of accepting the possibility that the future is a 100 percent consequence of the events preceding it.

do you believe in free will or something?
Jadrian, I think that you have misunderstood what is meant by "superdeterminism" in the context of avoiding nonlocality of QM. In this context, superdeterminism is NOT merely the idea that everything is deterministic, i.e., that future is completely determined by the past. If superdeterminism was only that, then it could not avoid nonlocality. Instead, superdeterminism is much more. It is the idea that
1. Future is completely determined by the past.
AND
2. The past (i.e., initial conditions) is not arbitrary, but is fine tuned so that in the future we see correlations between distant object which never mutually interacted.

Superdeterminism is not popular due to the property 2 (not 1). It is this second property (not the first) which makes it conspiratorial.
 
  • #10
lugita15 said:
If you were a pure pragmatist, then wouldn't you assume that if you measured a particle to have a certain property, that it had that property before you measured it? Like if you see a dollar bill lying on the road, don't you assume that it was lying there before you saw it?

Now that kind of naive noncontextual realism, although as a pragmatist you may be naturally led to it, runs into some difficulties if you apply it to the spin observable, because the Kochen-Specker theorem states roughly that any theory of spin that reproduces the predictions of quantum mechanics must be contextual, i.e. dependent on how you measured it. (Of course, if you're a superdeterminist that doesn't mean much to you, because you don't believe there is any free choice of how you choose to measure, so you would think a Kochen-Specker tests are a fraud for the same reason you would think Bell tests are a fraud.) I wonder, is there an analogous result like Kochen-Specker for the position observable? I suspect it would be problematic for Bohmian mechanics if there was, because part of the reason Bohmians think spin is "fake" is because of the Kochen-Specker theorem. Would they similarly think position is "fake", or is position too foundational for Bohmian mechanics?

It's important to make a distinction between a measurement result and what is "really" there. Just because a measured result is clearly contextual does not mean we can exclude realism!

This is because your measurement apparatus changes the "real" state. To follow up on your dollar bill analogy, if you used a paper shredder as a measurement tool for detecting the bill and watch the output of it, then you could state that there must have been some form of dollar bill before but you don't necessarily see it as "really" was when it was lying on the road. But that does not mean it wasn't "really" there, it only means you have limited your range of answers to how you ask questions/what measurement you do. i.e. you measurements are contextual, but realism might still be valid.

Similarly, in quantum mechanics, your output answers are often very limited. For example, measuring a superposition state in the computational basis (0 and 1), you can only get 0 or 1 as answer, and even measuring multiple times will not allow you to ascertain the "real" underlying state. Nevertheless, a superposition state can be said to be a "real" state, because it is even possible to draw a figure of the electron distribution of that particular superposition state! (or whatever system you used). That electron distribution will be different from both the 0 and the 1 state's distributions, and smarter measuring devices can allow you to determine it more precisely (don't shred you dollar).
 
  • #11
lugita15 said:
If you were a pure pragmatist, then wouldn't you assume that if you measured a particle to have a certain property, that it had that property before you measured it? Like if you see a dollar bill lying on the road, don't you assume that it was lying there before you saw it?

Now that kind of naive noncontextual realism, although as a pragmatist you may be naturally led to it, runs into some difficulties if you apply it to the spin observable, because the Kochen-Specker theorem states roughly that any theory of spin that reproduces the predictions of quantum mechanics must be contextual, i.e. dependent on how you measured it. (Of course, if you're a superdeterminist that doesn't mean much to you, because you don't believe there is any free choice of how you choose to measure, so you would think a Kochen-Specker tests are a fraud for the same reason you would think Bell tests are a fraud.) I wonder, is there an analogous result like Kochen-Specker for the position observable? I suspect it would be problematic for Bohmian mechanics if there was, because part of the reason Bohmians think spin is "fake" is because of the Kochen-Specker theorem. Would they similarly think position is "fake", or is position too foundational for Bohmian mechanics?
There is one big difference between spin and position. Spin consists of 3 observables (corresponding to 3 directions in space) which do NOT commute with each other, while position consists of 3 observables which DO commute with each other. The Kochen-Specker theorem applies to any observables which do not commute with each other, so it doesn't apply to the position observable.
 
  • #12
jadrian said:
i have no idea what makes you think that superdeterminism is conspiratorial. i don't understand why superdeterminism is not the fundamental pillar that all science is built on. your dice analogy only seems to prove my point.

but when you say your view of superdeterminism as "the laws of the universe made the person choose just the right food so as to make him sneeze at the right time to make the air molecules turn the die in just the right way so that the polarizer will be turned to the exact orientation the universe wants. You can see that this sounds less like a scientific theory and more like a religious explanation - you have a God who is controlling all the little details of the universe in order to make the statistics of quantum entanglement experiments come out just right.", you just seem to be incapable of accepting the possibility that the future is a 100 percent consequence of the events preceding it.

do you believe in free will or something?
I'm not talking about free will and I'm not rejecting determinism out of hand. All I'm saying is that in order for a local deterministic theory to exploit the superdeterminism loophole to Bell's theorem, it seems that it has to possesses some properties that many would consider to be strange for a scientific theory to have. The conspiratorial nature is one of them: you have to assume that all the particles in the universe are doing just the right actions which will make local determinism seem false even though it is really true. And it seems pretty hard to come up with a theory that assigns to these particles exactly these "right actions", although as I mentioned earlier there has been some promising work in this direction by Nobel prize-winner Gerard t'Hooft and others.
 
  • #13
kith said:
In principle, I don't think superdeterminism is less valid than standard interpretations. One has to realize, that the freedom to chose initial conditions ("free will") is an axiom in QM.

The problem is that if you drop this axiom, I can't think of a way how to apply the scientific method in a meaningful way. Since the mainstream is doing science, I don't think he will ever embrace such an interpretation.

So philosophically, I think, it stands on equal footing with standard interpretations. But for actually doing science, one has to assume at least some kind of "effective" freedom in choosing initial conditions.
Free will is not an axiom of quantum mechanics; where did you get that idea? But it is true that the Copenhagen interpretation is compatible with the idea that the experimenter has free will (although it is also compatible with radical rejections of counterfactual definiteness where it becomes meaningless to even consider the possibility that the experimenter could have done something other than what they actually did).

As for your second point, that "effective" freedom of initial conditions is necessary for science, yes, it's difficult to see how the scientific method can proceed if the initial conditions of all experiments have such large systematic biases as required by superdeterminism.
 
  • #14
jadrian said:
also, since entanglement must always originate locally, the info transfer between entangled particles is never going to be faster than c, therefore nonlocality is not an issue in superdeterminism and neither are hidden variables if I am correct. instantaneous info transfer will not violate relativity because of this.
I never said that nonlocality or violations of relativity are issues for superdeterminism.
 
  • #15
Demystifier said:
There is one big difference between spin and position. Spin consists of 3 observables (corresponding to 3 directions in space) which do NOT commute with each other, while position consists of 3 observables which DO commute with each other. The Kochen-Specker theorem applies to any observables which do not commute with each other, so it doesn't apply to the position observable.
Demystifier, let's call the conclusion of the Kochen-Specker theorem "fakeness". If you have a set of noncommuting observables, does Kochen-Specker state that all of them are fake, or just that just at least one of them must be fake? The reason I'm asking is that position and momentum are non-commuting.

On an unrelated note, doesn't Bohmian mechanics suffer from its own fine-tuning problems, namely that the universe got into just the right state that comports with the Born rule? I think this is a somewhat odd issue for BM, because decoherence can easily explain why the Born rule seems correct in practice. Why can't this explanation be carried over into BM, which anyway utilizes decoherence in its reduction of quantum uncertainty to classical uncertainty?
 
  • #16
Demystifier said:
Jadrian, I think that you have misunderstood what is meant by "superdeterminism" in the context of avoiding nonlocality of QM. In this context, superdeterminism is NOT merely the idea that everything is deterministic, i.e., that future is completely determined by the past. If superdeterminism was only that, then it could not avoid nonlocality. Instead, superdeterminism is much more. It is the idea that
1. Future is completely determined by the past.
AND
2. The past (i.e., initial conditions) is not arbitrary, but is fine tuned so that in the future we see correlations between distant object which never mutually interacted.

Superdeterminism is not popular due to the property 2 (not 1). It is this second property (not the first) which makes it conspiratorial.

why is 2 even necessary
and initial conditions should have interacted at some point correct?
i don't see any problem with nonlocality because it can never beat c to the finish
 
  • #17
Zarqon said:
It's important to make a distinction between a measurement result and what is "really" there. Just because a measured result is clearly contextual does not mean we can exclude realism!

This is because your measurement apparatus changes the "real" state. To follow up on your dollar bill analogy, if you used a paper shredder as a measurement tool for detecting the bill and watch the output of it, then you could state that there must have been some form of dollar bill before but you don't necessarily see it as "really" was when it was lying on the road. But that does not mean it wasn't "really" there, it only means you have limited your range of answers to how you ask questions/what measurement you do. i.e. you measurements are contextual, but realism might still be valid.

Similarly, in quantum mechanics, your output answers are often very limited. For example, measuring a superposition state in the computational basis (0 and 1), you can only get 0 or 1 as answer, and even measuring multiple times will not allow you to ascertain the "real" underlying state. Nevertheless, a superposition state can be said to be a "real" state, because it is even possible to draw a figure of the electron distribution of that particular superposition state! (or whatever system you used). That electron distribution will be different from both the 0 and the 1 state's distributions, and smarter measuring devices can allow you to determine it more precisely (don't shred you dollar).

could you give a simpler explanation of the superposition?
 
  • #18
lugita15 said:
Free will is not an axiom of quantum mechanics; where did you get that idea?
My bad, I intended to write "the Copenhagen interpretation".
lugita15 said:
But it is true that the Copenhagen interpretation is compatible with the idea that the experimenter has free will (although it is also compatible with radical rejections of counterfactual definiteness where it becomes meaningless to even consider the possibility that the experimenter could have done something other than what they actually did).
In the CI, measurements involve the freedom to choose what's being measured. If the measurements themselfs are to be explained by (quantum mechanical) laws, I think we let go of the CI.
 
  • #19
how about nonlocal superdeterminism? is that falsifiable?
i really don't see why part 2 is necessary at all
 
  • #20
kith said:
My bad, I intended to write "the Copenhagen interpretation".

In the CI, measurements involve the freedom to choose what's being measured. If the measurements themselfs are to be explained by (quantum mechanical) laws, I think we let go of the CI.

imo we have the illusion that we are choosing, i don't know how anybody could embrace ci. do they think they could have done measurements any differently than they did them? lol
 
  • #21
jadrian said:
how about nonlocal superdeterminism? is that falsifiable?
i really don't see why part 2 is necessary at all

couldnt you view nonlocality as shortcutting the universe/ wormholing it through entanglement?

nonlocality does not violate relativity because entanglement has to start at a local level, so why is nonlocality such an issue?
 
  • #22
jadrian said:
imo we have the illusion that we are choosing, i don't know how anybody could embrace ci. do they think they could have done measurements any differently than they did them? lol
Just out of curiosity: how do you decide what to do in a given situation? ;-)
 
  • #23
jadrian said:
why is this not mainstream?

Because it is not a theory, it is more akin to a religious concept. No different than saying God waits for us to do Bell tests, and then makes the results look like QM is nonlocal.

An actual superdeterministic theory, on the other hand, would feature elements which are (easily) falsifiable. For example: if particles are to have certain correlations, the elements for determining those correlations are present in every particle everywhere. There are other requirements as well.

Further: superdeterminism equally explains the results of all experiments everywhere, such as gravity, electromagnetism, etc. Why pull it out for Bell tests only?

I personally do not believe there is any element of this concept, in its current form, which belongs under the heading of science.
 
  • #24
kith said:
Just out of curiosity: how do you decide what to do in a given situation? ;-)

everything that occurs in my body is a chemical reaction. all the chemical reactions are mediated/controlled via enzymes which are produced in quantities resulting in positive and negative feedback chemical reactions which ultimately react with dna as the homeostatic instruction manual.

my brain has developed partly through instinctual developments from my dna ie arachnophobia, and partly as a response to my environment, always ultimately controlled by dna which grows our brain into a tool to cope with a complex environment, always looking out for its survival, and eventual reproduction, not because the genes goal is reproduction, but because our genes are replications of genes that had a proclivity to reproduce. do you know why jealosy is one of the strongest and most violence producing emotion? its because our dna has strongly embedded in our brains development a defense against somebody else impregnating your reproductive partner with other than your genes, resulting in your genetic death if you do not reproduce because of foreign adultery.

my choices are the end result of a causal continuum of millions of neural interactions, ultimately leading me to make the best decision in the interest of my genes. why does a male preying mantis let itself get eaten by the female after mating? because the added nutrition to the female will result in a more favorable genetic outcome (more eggs with its genes inside) than running away.

we are exercising our brains on a website because of complex psychological reasons that ultimately benefit our many aspects that could be considered in the genes interest.

why am i writing this post? because my self sustaining chemical reaction has effectively directed me to do it for reasons you can ask an evolutionary minded psychologist.

the chemical reactions that occur in my body and brrain are fundamentally indistinguishable from a burning flame or pouring acid into a buffer solution.

so to think that there is somebody behind the wheel in my brain calling the shots is an infantile notion. i have no more choice than any other chemical reaction that we would regard as nonliving.

let me ask you a question. Do you think you are alive?
 
  • #25
jadrian said:
why is 2 even necessary
Because if you do not include 2 then your deterministic theory will contradict the results of Bell test experiments.
and initial conditions should have interacted at some point correct?
i don't see any problem with nonlocality because it can never beat c to the finish
Yes, no one is suggesting that nonlocality is a problem for superdeterminism.
 
  • #26
kith said:
If the measurements themselfs are to be explained by (quantum mechanical) laws, I think we let go of the CI.
It's true, if measurement decisions were based on the quantum state of the experimenter, that would be decoherence, not Copenhagen. But you can have a view where the wavefunctions of the particles under observation collapse probabilistically, but where the experimenter and his measuring device are governed by classical, deterministic laws. This sharp division of the classical world and the quantum world was at the heart of the historical Copenhagen interpretation, even though modern Copenhagen people aren't quite so bold.
 
  • #27
lugita15 said:
Because if you do not include 2 then your deterministic theory will contradict the results of Bell test experiments.
Exactly!
 
  • #28
lugita15 said:
Demystifier, let's call the conclusion of the Kochen-Specker theorem "fakeness". If you have a set of noncommuting observables, does Kochen-Specker state that all of them are fake, or just that just at least one of them must be fake? The reason I'm asking is that position and momentum are non-commuting.
KC theorem says that, if you have a set of noncommuting observables, then at most one of them can be genuine (i.e., not fake).

lugita15 said:
On an unrelated note, doesn't Bohmian mechanics suffer from its own fine-tuning problems, namely that the universe got into just the right state that comports with the Born rule? I think this is a somewhat odd issue for BM, because decoherence can easily explain why the Born rule seems correct in practice. Why can't this explanation be carried over into BM, which anyway utilizes decoherence in its reduction of quantum uncertainty to classical uncertainty?
First, I don't see how decoherence explain the Born rule, and I would be very happy if you could explain it to me or give a reference where it is explained.

Second, BM can explain the Born rule for positions, without postulating it and without using decoherence. See e.g.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/0403034
and Ref. [16] therein.

Third, BM can explain the Born rule for other observables by combining the Born rule for positions with the theory of decoherence.
 
  • #29
lugita15 said:
Because if you do not include 2 then your deterministic theory will contradict the results of Bell test experiments.
Yes, no one is suggesting that nonlocality is a problem for superdeterminism.

well wouldn't non arbitrary initial conditions be consistent with a determinist view? i don't see how the initial conditions need to be special, as their evolution can be traced back intuitively through determinism.

in simple terms what is so special about the initial conditions?
 
  • #30
jadrian said:
well wouldn't non arbitrary initial conditions be consistent with a determinist view?
They would, but they would not be consistent with predictions of quantum mechanics.
 
  • #31
jadrian said:
in simple terms what is so special about the initial conditions?
The correct question is what is so special about the predictions of quantum mechanics. Loosely speaking, the answer is that the predictions are such that they cannot be explained by a local deterministic theory, except for special initial conditions.
 
  • #32
I'll play devil's advocate:

Regarding point 2 (initial conditions conspiring to make Bell experiment to come out true), there is another possible view of it: imagine a frozen block universe where everything - past present and future - is predetermined. Presumably laws of physics constrain it to be a solution of some fancy PDE. Lets' say some symmetry condition in this galactic equation implies that Bell results for entangled particles come out as they do. So the rest of the universe would just have to "bend around" it. The effect would propagate from the point outwards in all directions - left, right, past, future - so when we look at it from our "arrow of time" point of view it would look as if initial conditions have been fine-tuned to achieve the results.

Of course all of the above is just wishful thinking. There is not a shred of evidence to support this point of view.
 
  • #33
Delta Kilo said:
I'll play devil's advocate:

Regarding point 2 (initial conditions conspiring to make Bell experiment to come out true), there is another possible view of it: imagine a frozen block universe where everything - past present and future - is predetermined. Presumably laws of physics constrain it to be a solution of some fancy PDE. Lets' say some symmetry condition in this galactic equation implies that Bell results for entangled particles come out as they do. So the rest of the universe would just have to "bend around" it. The effect would propagate from the point outwards in all directions - left, right, past, future - so when we look at it from our "arrow of time" point of view it would look as if initial conditions have been fine-tuned to achieve the results.

Of course all of the above is just wishful thinking. There is not a shred of evidence to support this point of view.

im not sure whether your defending or attacking determinism.

but block time is more of a model to represent all the past and all the future together.

but since space and time were created in an evolving fashiion, its obvious that we cannot reverse time. however, hypothetically if our brains operated at the speed of light, (you would have to ignore relativity i know) then you would see the universe as frozen. and since time can't really be viewed as moving at a constant speed, you can just as well regard a picosecond as lasting trillions of years, when intuitively viewed from the human perception of time.

this is why a fly is so hard to catch, and why to a rock, time passes incredibly fast if you think of it as having a lifespan.
 
  • #34
Demystifier said:
except for special initial conditions.

that was my question what are special initial conditions?
 
  • #35
Demystifier said:
They would, but they would not be consistent with predictions of quantum mechanics.

but isn't superdeterminism unfalsified by qm predictions?
 
<h2>1. Why is superdeterminism not the universally accepted explanation of nonlocality?</h2><p>Superdeterminism is not the universally accepted explanation of nonlocality because it goes against the widely accepted principle of free will. Superdeterminism suggests that all events, including human decisions, are predetermined and therefore there is no true randomness or free will in the universe. This goes against our understanding of human agency and the ability to make choices.</p><h2>2. What evidence supports the rejection of superdeterminism as an explanation for nonlocality?</h2><p>One of the main pieces of evidence against superdeterminism is the violation of Bell's inequality, which suggests that there is a limit to how much information can be hidden from an observer. If superdeterminism were true, this limit would not exist and the observed correlations in nonlocal systems would not be possible.</p><h2>3. Are there alternative explanations for nonlocality other than superdeterminism?</h2><p>Yes, there are alternative explanations for nonlocality that do not rely on the concept of superdeterminism. Some theories suggest that there are hidden variables or hidden information that can explain the observed correlations in nonlocal systems without resorting to predetermined events.</p><h2>4. What implications would accepting superdeterminism have on our understanding of the universe?</h2><p>If superdeterminism were to be accepted as the explanation for nonlocality, it would have significant implications on our understanding of the universe. It would mean that all events, including our thoughts and actions, are predetermined and there is no true randomness or free will. This would challenge our understanding of causality and the role of human agency in shaping our reality.</p><h2>5. Is there ongoing research and debate surrounding the concept of superdeterminism and its relation to nonlocality?</h2><p>Yes, there is ongoing research and debate surrounding the concept of superdeterminism and its relation to nonlocality. Scientists continue to explore alternative explanations for nonlocality and gather evidence to support or refute the concept of superdeterminism. This is an active area of study in the field of quantum mechanics and there is no consensus yet on the ultimate explanation for nonlocality.</p>

1. Why is superdeterminism not the universally accepted explanation of nonlocality?

Superdeterminism is not the universally accepted explanation of nonlocality because it goes against the widely accepted principle of free will. Superdeterminism suggests that all events, including human decisions, are predetermined and therefore there is no true randomness or free will in the universe. This goes against our understanding of human agency and the ability to make choices.

2. What evidence supports the rejection of superdeterminism as an explanation for nonlocality?

One of the main pieces of evidence against superdeterminism is the violation of Bell's inequality, which suggests that there is a limit to how much information can be hidden from an observer. If superdeterminism were true, this limit would not exist and the observed correlations in nonlocal systems would not be possible.

3. Are there alternative explanations for nonlocality other than superdeterminism?

Yes, there are alternative explanations for nonlocality that do not rely on the concept of superdeterminism. Some theories suggest that there are hidden variables or hidden information that can explain the observed correlations in nonlocal systems without resorting to predetermined events.

4. What implications would accepting superdeterminism have on our understanding of the universe?

If superdeterminism were to be accepted as the explanation for nonlocality, it would have significant implications on our understanding of the universe. It would mean that all events, including our thoughts and actions, are predetermined and there is no true randomness or free will. This would challenge our understanding of causality and the role of human agency in shaping our reality.

5. Is there ongoing research and debate surrounding the concept of superdeterminism and its relation to nonlocality?

Yes, there is ongoing research and debate surrounding the concept of superdeterminism and its relation to nonlocality. Scientists continue to explore alternative explanations for nonlocality and gather evidence to support or refute the concept of superdeterminism. This is an active area of study in the field of quantum mechanics and there is no consensus yet on the ultimate explanation for nonlocality.

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