Doesn't the choice of measurement prove free will

[entropy2information]

I was reading the free will theorem and it basically says that subatomic particles and observers have to have free will because there's nothing prior to measurement that predetermines the outcome. Here's more:

The free will theorem states:

Given the axioms, if the two experimenters in question are free to make choices about what measurements to take, then the results of the measurements cannot be determined by anything previous to the experiments.

It also says:

The proof of the theorem as originally formulated relies on three axioms, which Conway and Kochen call "fin", "spin", and "twin". The spin and twin axioms can be verified experimentally.

1. Fin: There is a maximal speed for propagation of information (not necessarily the speed of light). This assumption rests upon causality.
2. Spin: The squared spin component of certain elementary particles of spin one, taken in three orthogonal directions, will be a permutation of (1,1,0).
3. Twin: It is possible to "entangle" two elementary particles and separate them by a significant distance, so that they have the same squared spin results if measured in parallel directions. This is a consequence of quantum entanglement, but full entanglement is not necessary for the twin axiom to hold (entanglement is sufficient but not necessary).

In their later paper, "The Strong Free Will Theorem",[2] Conway and Kochen replace the Fin axiom by a weaker one called Min, thereby strengthening the theorem. Min asserts only that two experimenters separated in a space-like way can make choices of measurements independently of each other. In particular it is not postulated that the speed of transfer of all information is subject to a maximum limit, but only of the particular information about choices of measurements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem

I think this is pretty profound. The theorem shows the choice of the observer can create reality.

For instance, if a Physicist goes to his/her lab and then decides they want to carry out a measurement, they have the free choice to choose to measure the particles spin, energy or something else. Prior to measurement, there's nothing that determines what choice the Experimenter will make. Doesn't this prove that free will must exist on some level?

The Experimenters choice creates a reality where at 2:35 P.M. He/She made the choice to measure spin and now spin up, which was measured, was created by the free choice of the Experimenter. That measurement becomes part of our history because of the free choice of the Experimenter.

It seems to be the same on a classical level. About a Month ago, I was about to stop at Subway but then I made a choice to go to DiBella's instead. When I got to DiBella's, I bumped into a friend that I haven't seen since High School. Didn't my free choice create a reality where I bumped into my friend at DiBella's?

Doesn't this theorem prove that free will must exist on some level?

 

[phinds]

I think "free will" is a theological argument that is not, and does not need to be, based on The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. BUT ... there is a LOT of argument both ways and no proof either way, just a lot of conjecture and strongly held beliefs often stated as "fact". I think it's a waste of time, but then I'm an engineer, not a philosopher.

 

[entropy2information]

I think "free will" is a theological argument that is not, and does not need to be, based on The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. BUT ... there is a LOT of argument both ways and no proof either way, just a lot of conjecture and strongly held beliefs often stated as "fact". I think it's a waste of time, but then I'm an engineer, not a philosopher.

This has nothing to do with philosophy. Here's Conway and Kochen's published paper.

https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604079

Their theorem is very sound.

 

[stevendaryl]

Here's a picture illustrating the issue of "free will" in Bell's EPR argument. I don't think it's necessary to bring up actual free will. The real issue is that in the EPR experiment, there are two experimenters, call them Alice and Bob, and they make choices about what measurements to perform. The "free will" assumption is that their choices are unpredictable. You don't need any metaphysical assumptions about mind in order to argue why they should be unpredictable.

In the picture below, you can think of it as a graph of spacetime, with just one space dimension, the horizontal direction, and one time dimension, the vertical direction. Alice's measurement takes place in a small region labeled 1. Bob's measurement takes place in a small region labeled 2.

Alice's measurement can potentially, without assuming any "free will" at all, depend on anything in her past light-cone. That's the regions 1&3&5.
Bob's measurement can depend on things in regions 2&4&5. So Bob's result cannot depend on anything in Alice's region 3. But region 3 can affect Alice's choice of what measurement to perform. So in that sense, Alice's measurement choice is unpredictable by whatever mechanism governs Bob's measurement. And vice-versa.

 

[entropy2information]

The "free will" assumption is that their choices are unpredictable. You don't need any metaphysical assumptions about mind in order to argue why they should be unpredictable.

I never mentioned anything about mind or metaphysics and neither did Conway and Kochen. I think people hear "free will" and instantly think it has to do with religion. Conway and Kochen are talking about something very specific and as far as I know there theorem hasn't been refuted. Like I said, read the published paper.

https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604079

 

[stevendaryl]

I never mentioned anything about mind or metaphysics and neither did Conway and Kochen. I think people hear "free will" and instantly think it has to do with religion. Conway and Kochen are talking about something very specific and as far as I know there theorem hasn't been refuted. Like I said, read the published paper.

https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604079

I'm just saying that they shouldn't use the phrase "free will" at all. It's misleading.

 

[entropy2information]

I'm just saying that they shouldn't use the phrase "free will" at all. It's misleading.

No it's not. If it was misleading why did the paper get accepted to Foundations of Physics?

There theorem has been around since 2006 and hasn't been refuted. I think you might be applying your own bias that's triggered when you hear the term free will. Like I said, read the paper before you judge it with any biases.

 

[stevendaryl]

No it's not.

Well, I disagree. Using the term "free will" brings connotations that are irrelevant to their conclusions. So it's a bad choice.

If it was misleading why did the paper get accepted to Foundations of Physics?

Authors are always given a lot of leeway as to what terms they use.

There theorem has been around since 2006 and hasn't been refuted. I think you might be applying your own bias that's triggered when you hear the term free will.

Exactly. That's why it's a bad choice of terminology.

Like I said, read the paper before you judge it with any biases.

I read that paper several years ago.

 

[PeterDonis]

There theorem has been around since 2006 and hasn't been refuted.

You can't refute a choice of terminology. But that doesn't mean it's a good choice of terminology.

 

[entropy2information]

Well, I disagree. Using the term "free will" brings connotations that are irrelevant to their conclusions. So it's a bad choice.

How are you going to say what's irrelevant to their conclusions? If I'm not mistaken the Authors of the published paper are Conway and Kochen.

The paper spells out why they use the term free will. This has been a debate in the Scientific community for years. The debate about free will vs. determinism is not just one of philosophy. Why wouldn't they use the term free will, which is a familiar term in this debate?

They tell you why they use the word free will towards the end of the article.

It is hard to take science seriously in a universe that in fact controls all the choices experimenters think they make. Nature could be in an insidious conspiracy to “confirm” laws by denying us the freedom to make the tests that would refute them. Physical induction, the primary tool of science, disappears if we are denied access to random samples. It is also hard to take seriously the arguments of those who according to their own beliefs are deterministic automata!

We have defined “free will” to be the opposite of “determinism” despite the fact that since Hume some philosophers have tried to reconcile the two notions – a position called compatibilism. In our view this position arose only because all the physics known in Hume’s day was deterministic, and it has now been outmoded for almost a century by the development of quantum mechanics.

Again, they're talking about how Science drives the free will vs. determinism debate. Here's Dr. Kaku talking about the same thing.



It's a debate that has been talked about in Science for years. What word should they use?

 

[entropy2information]

You can't refute a choice of terminology. But that doesn't mean it's a good choice of terminology.

What terminology should they use? What's more familiar than the free will vs. determinism debate that's truly a Science driven debate.

 

[PeterDonis]

What terminology should they use?

I don't know. I'm not advocating any particular terminology, I'm just pointing out that your argument that "because nobody has refuted the paper, every single thing in it must be right" is not valid. If you want to argue that their terminology is justified, argue it on the merits.

 

[entropy2information]

I don't know. I'm not advocating any particular terminology, I'm just pointing out that your argument that "because nobody has refuted the paper, every single thing in it must be right" is not valid. If you want to argue that their terminology is justified, argue it on the merits.

I have and that's why I linked to and quoted the paper. They explain why they use the term free will. They use it as the opposite of determinism. This isn't free will in the context of a religious or metaphysical debate but explicitly a scientific one. For instance Einstein was a determinist. Everyone knows what this means. So Conway and Kochen use the term free will as opposed to scientific determinism. What's wrong with that?

When I said, nobody has refuted the paper, I'm talking about it's conclusions. For instance, the debate so far has been about semantics not the actual paper.

Again, if they don't use free will as opposed to determinism, what word or words should they use? The free will vs. determinism debate has been going on for years in scientific circles so why would they use some unfamiliar term?

Also, here's a link to their Strong Free Will Theorem.
http://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200226p.pdf

 

[PeterDonis]

I have and that's why I linked to and quoted the paper.

Nothing that you quoted from the paper addresses the argument @stevendaryl makes in post #4. Your only response to that has been that, since the paper hasn't been refuted and it says "free will", and the authors are really smart people, that terminology must be right. That's not a valid argument; it's just an argument from authority.

 

[entropy2information]

Nothing that you quoted from the paper addresses the argument @stevendaryl makes in post #4. Your only response to that has been that, since the paper hasn't been refuted and it says "free will", and the authors are really smart people, that terminology must be right. That's not a valid argument; it's just an argument from authority.

I did respond.

I said that his posts talked about the metaphysics of mind but nobody said anything about that. I didn't mention the metaphysics of mind in any of my posts and neither did Conway and Kochen.

He talked about the difference between actual free will and the free will assumption. What's actual free will? What does that mean? In the paper, they talk about the free will assumption.

It is possible to actually do such experiments on Earth if the human choices are replaced by computer decisions using a pseudo–random generator, as has already been done for the EPR spin experiment [WJSWZ] and suggested for the GHZ experiment by [PBDWZ]. Some other recent experiments along these lines are described in [SZGS],[GBTZ],[ZBGT].

This delegation of the experimenter’s free choice to a computer program, still leads to a Free Will theorem if we add the assumption that the particles are not privy to the details of the computer program chosen. Note however that replacing the human choice by a pseudo–random number generator does not allow us to dispense with the Free Will assumption since free will is used in choosing this generator! The necessity for the Free Will assumption is evident, since a determined determinist could maintain that the experimenters were forced to choose the computer programs they did because these were predetermined at the dawn of time.

This isn't just about the choice of the experimenter being unpredictable. This is about the choice of the experimenter being fundamental. This is why they say if we have free will then the subatomic particles that's being measured must have free will.

To be more precise, what we shall show is that the particles’ response∗ to a certain type of experiment is not determined by the entire previous history of that part of the universe accessible to them. The free will we assume is just that the experimenter can freely choose to make anyone of a small number of observations. In addition, we make three physical assumptions in the form of three simple axioms.

The fact that they cannot always predict the results of future experiments has sometimes been described just as a defect of theories extending quantum mechanics. However, if our physical axioms are even approximately true, the free will assumption implies the stronger result, that no theory, whether it extends quantum mechanics or not, can correctly predict the results of future

If the choice of directions in which to perform spin 1 experiments is not a function of the information accessible to the experimenters, then the responses of the particles are equally not functions of the information accessible to them.

Why do we call this result the Free Will theorem? It is usually tacitly assumed that experimenters have sufficient free will to choose the settings of their apparatus in a way that is not determined by past history. We make this assumption explicit precisely because our theorem deduces from it the more surprising fact that the particles’ responses are also not determined by past history.

This is very important and this is why his post talks about the metaphysics of the mind and actual free will whatever that means. Conway and Kochen's Strong Free Will Theorem makes this point even more clearer. It's not about measurements being unpredictable but the free will assumption being fundamental based on the three Axioms spin, twin and min.

 

[PeterDonis]

It's not about measurements being unpredictable but the free will assumption being fundamental based on the three Axioms spin, twin and min.

As I understand post #4, it is basically saying that the model described in that post, which is deterministic, satisfies those three axioms. So those three axioms, by themselves, can't establish anything about "free will" if "free will" is not compatible with determinism.

 

[entropy2information]

As I understand post #4, it is basically saying that the model described in that post, which is deterministic, satisfies those three axioms. So those three axioms, by themselves, can't establish anything about "free will" if "free will" is not compatible with determinism.

No, post 4 has nothing to do with the Axioms in the free will theorem. The Axioms make determinism practically impossible.

He's saying Alice's measurement can't be determined by whatever mechanism determines Bob's measurement because it's not in Alice's past light cone therefore it's unpredictable by Bob but it isn't unpredictable to Alice's future measurement.

This has nothing to do with the Axioms of the free will theorem.

It's saying, that if the Experimenter, let's call her Stacy to switch things up, goes into her lab and makes a choice to measure spin, this choice has to be free. If this choice is determined, then this has to be a hidden variable that also restricts the particle to a singular history. They clearly show that this is as good as it gets when it comes to something being impossible.

Particles have to be free to have any history until measured and it can't be determined by any mechanism that determines the choice of the Experimenter. They say:

But in this case the universe has taken a free decision at time t0, because the information about it after t0 is, by definition, not a function of the information available before t0! So if a’s response really depends on any such spontaneous information-bit, it is not a function of the triple x, y, z and the state of the universe before the choice of that triple.

This completes the proof of the Free Will theorem, except for our ascription of the free decision to the particles rather than to the universe as a whole.

Again, the Axioms clearly show that Stacy's choice has to be free because if it isn't free then the mechanism that determines Stacy's choice is determining the history of the particle being measured prior to a measurement occurring. So determinism is as close to impossible as it gets because of the free will theorem.

This would have to be some superluminal mechanism that not only determines Stacy's choice but it signal's to the particles that it'd history is also predetermined by this mechanism.

 

[StevieTNZ]

Could discussion of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism fit within the scope of this thread? Given it is about whether free will exists or not (and I've yet to read the publication)

 

[PeterDonis]

It's saying, that if the Experimenter, let's call her Stacy to switch things up, goes into her lab and makes a choice to measure spin, this choice has to be free.

No, it doesn't say her choice has to be free. It just says that if it is free, the "choice" of the measurement result by the particle is also free. And "free" here just means "not determined by what's in the past light cone".

 

[bhobba]

How are you going to say what's irrelevant to their conclusions?

Have a look at the theorem (I give the link again for easy reference):
https://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200226p.pdf

It uses some axioms that may or may not be true. But worse those axioms use terminology that have connotations that can be rejected eg 'It is the experimenter's free will that allows the free and independent choices of x, y, z, and w' . To speak about free will you first have to show such exists - you will get an augment about that one from many philosophers - it's not really physics - its philosophy.

We have many theorems in QM like that (ie have assumptions that may or may not be true they crucially depend on) eg PBR, but for some reason that is sometimes forgotten.

It's a debate that has been talked about in Science for years. What word should they use?

Speculative philosophy is probably the best term IMHO - but choose any you like it doesn't really change anything. Now if like Bell's Theorem you can connect it to experiment, then there is something to talk about.

My guess is it's just another what is probability thing taken over to QM at a more sophisticated level than usual - but I haven't investigated that aspect.

Thanks
Bill

 

[stevendaryl]

A quote from the paper:

If the choice of directions in which to perform spin 1 experiments is not a function of the information accessible to the experimenters, then the responses of the particles are equally not functions of the information accessible to them.

Why do we call this result the Free Will theorem? It is usually tacitly assumed that experimenters have sufficient free will to choose the settings of their apparatus in a way that is not determined by past history. We make this assumption explicit precisely because our theorem deduces from it the more surprising fact that the particles’ responses are also not determined by past history.

To me, this illustrates exactly why the phrase "free will" is inappropriate for this paper. The first sentence of the last paragraph is

"It is usually tacitly assumed that experimenters have sufficient free will to choose the settings of their apparatus in a way that is not determined by past history"

My point is that for the purpose of Bell's proof the use of the word "free will" is a shorthand for unpredictability. If there is some predictable pattern to Alice's and Bob's choices, then the theorem doesn't go through. It is possible to come up with a deterministic hidden-variable model that agrees with the predictions of quantum mechanics if that model takes into account Alice's and Bob's future choices. So the "no free will" assumption just means that it is not possible for a local hidden variable to predict their choices. The picture that I showed explained why it's extremely implausible that Alice's and Bob's choices are predictable, even if their choices are deterministic. So "free will" is not really involved in this assumption.

The second second sentence is:

"We make this assumption explicit precisely because our theorem deduces from it the more surprising fact that the particles’ responses are also not determined by past history."

That explanation for using the word "free will" is just bizarre. To me, it seems to be saying that if Alice and Bob are granted free will, then we must also grant the particles free will. If they aren't saying that, then I don't know why the particle is relevant to whether the phrase "free will" is a good choice. If they are saying that, then that really makes the use of "free will" ridiculous. Particles don't have free will. They might be inherently nondeterministic, but that doesn't mean they are making choices. You need a mind to make a choice.

Anyway, this is all about terminology. You can call a property anything you like. We assume that experimenters Alice and Bob have farfegnugen. I guess I don't really care, but I think it doesn't serve any purpose to use the phrase "free will". It brings up issues that aren't actually relevant to the paper.

 

[stevendaryl]

It's a debate that has been talked about in Science for years. What word should they use?

Nonpredictability.

 

[bhobba]

Again, the Axioms clearly show that Stacy's choice has to be free because if it isn't free then the mechanism that determines Stacy's choice is determining the history of the particle being measured prior to a measurement occurring. So determinism is as close to impossible as it gets because of the free will theorem.

What is a free choice - be rigorous in defining it and make sure all philosophers agree with you. As Wittgenstein said - Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

One reason Bell became an actual advance in QM foundations is he replaced the vague concept of objective reality with counterfactual definiteness - for this 'theorem' to be meaningful I suspect something similar needs to happen.

Thanks
Bill

 

[stevendaryl]

It's saying, that if the Experimenter, let's call her Stacy to switch things up, goes into her lab and makes a choice to measure spin, this choice has to be free. If this choice is determined, then this has to be a hidden variable that also restricts the particle to a singular history. They clearly show that this is as good as it gets when it comes to something being impossible.

That makes no sense to me. Whether Stacy's choice is predetermined or not is up to Stacy. She can decide to always measure along the z-axis. So it makes no sense to me to say that her choice has to be free. No, it doesn't.

 

[bhobba]

This has been a debate in the Scientific community for years. The debate about free will vs. determinism is not just one of philosophy.

Really? Many would say it's philosophy pure and simple. Some just want to infect QM with it for reasons I have never actually understood. That's fine - its a legitimate academic enterprise - but if its science is very debatable. As a number of posts have suggested the issue is very laden with semantics which is something science doesn't usually worry about.

Thanks
Bill

 

[bhobba]

That makes no sense to me. Whether Stacy's choice is predetermined or not is up to Stacy. She can decide to always measure along the z-axis. So it makes no sense to me to say that her choice has to be free. No, it doesn't.

It's more than up to Stacy - we have zero idea if its up to anyone - for that to be the case your are assuming free will. Of course like most people I believe in free will - but a belief is not a scientific fact.

Thanks
Bill

 

[bhobba]

Nonpredictability.

Of course predictability is a much more verifiable term than free will which I have zero idea how to determine one way or the other. If we take what Peter said as determinism is you can predict it from what occurred in the past light cone then predictability would seem by far the preferable terminology.

Thanks
Bill

 

[stevendaryl]

I thought I had read the Conway/Kochen paper https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0604079.pdf, but on re-reading it, it did not seem familiar, so either I'm misremembering, or confusing it with another paper, or I remember a summary rather than the actual paper.

Reading it, I find it a little bizarre. I'm no more convinced of the appropriateness of the term "free will" than I was beforehand, but I do see that they anticipated one of my objections.

It seemed to me that calling the result of a particle measurement as being an instance of the particle's "free will" was ridiculous, because in the twin-pair experiment, the two particles have to make the SAME choice for the same axis direction. The author's give a toy model (the Janus model) for how perfect correlations of distant particles is compatible with their notion of "free will": Basically, the free choice is made for one particle, and that determines the result for the other particle. That model is explicitly not relativistic, since there is a notion of ordering of spacelike separated events. However, even though the "implementation" of the Janus model violates relativity, there is no preferred frame that is detectable via experiments, because any results are compatible with any frame being the preferred frame.

At first, I was slightly annoyed by the authors' "triple experiment", because it seemed a lot more complicated than the more common description of EPR in terms of single spin measurements performed by Alice and Bob. However, it dawned on me (and I don't know why the authors didn't explain this at the beginning) that the advantage to their approach is that there is no statistics in their description of the remote correlations. In the usual description of the twin-pair experiment, you describe the perfect correlation or anti-correlation. But the perfect correlation or anti-correlation is not sufficient to rule out hidden variables. To do that, you have to give the probabilities for Alice's and Bob's measurements when they aren't using the same axis for measurements. So that involves numbers other than 0 or 1, and there is some mathematical analysis required to see what these imperfect correlations imply about hidden-variables.

In contrast, the Kochen-Conway measurements don't involve probabilities at all. They use a black-and-white, 0-1 fact about triples of spin measurements. That's kind of nice. However, I really don't see how their discussion depends on this reformulation.

 

[entropy2information]

To me, this illustrates exactly why the phrase "free will" is inappropriate for this paper. The first sentence of the last paragraph is

Again, I don't know what else you think they should call it. I asked you this earlier. They published the paper. They came up with the theorem and they explain exactly why they use the term free will. Free will as opposed to determinism. Again, this is a familiar debate that the Authors say illuminates the meaning of their theorem. This is from the paper:

It is hard to take science seriously in a universe that in fact controls all the choices experimenters think they make. Nature could be in an insidious conspiracy to “confirm” laws by denying us the freedom to make the tests that would refute them. Physical induction, the primary tool of science, disappears if we are denied access to random samples. It is also hard to take seriously the arguments of those who according to their own beliefs are deterministic automata!

We have defined “free will” to be the opposite of “determinism” despite the fact that since Hume some philosophers have tried to reconcile the two notions – a position called compatibilism. In our view this position arose only because all the physics known in Hume’s day was deterministic, and it has now been outmoded for almost a century by the development of quantum mechanics.

As Conway said in a Lecture, it's not his job to disprove determinism. It's the job of Determinist to prove that determinism is valid especially in light of the Axioms Spin, Twin and Min in the free will theorem.

Experimenter Stacy goes into her lab to carry out a measurement on a particle. As Conway said, there can't be any information in the entire history of the universe that determines the choice of measurement of the Experimenter and this mechanism would also know which history the particle will be in prior to measurement. I have never seen any evidence of such a mechanism.

They said this to Princeton.

“You want to know how the world works -- there’s this sense that the present state is somehow derived from the moment before it,” said Conway, an extrovert’s extrovert who, in addition to studying fundamental mathematical subjects like symmetry, excels in card tricks and memory games. “We were trying to understand how it happens, and we suddenly realized there was no way of explaining successive states because the previous state could give rise to two different positions.”

By saying “two different positions,” Conway means that a particle is free to zip one way or another as he is equally unbound in deciding whether or not to drop a cup he is clasping.

“It’s not about theories anymore -- it’s about what the universe does,” said Kochen, a professor of mathematics and the associate chair of the Department of Mathematics. “And we’ve found that, from moment to moment, nature doesn’t know what it’s going to do. A particle has a choice.”

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2009/03/23/high-powered-mathematicians-take-free-will

The free will theorem is an extension of the Kochen Specker theorem.

In quantum mechanics, the Kochen–Specker (KS) theorem,[1] also known as the Bell–Kochen–Specker theorem,[2] is a "no-go" theorem[3] proved by John S. Bell in 1966 and by Simon B. Kochen and Ernst Specker in 1967. It places certain constraints on the permissible types of hidden-variable theories, which try to explain the predictions of quantum mechanics in a context-independent way. The version of the theorem proved by Kochen and Specker also gave an explicit example for this constraint in terms of a finite number of state vectors. The theorem is a complement to Bell's theorem (to be distinguished from the (Bell–)Kochen–Specker theorem of this article).

The theorem proves that there is a contradiction between two basic assumptions of the hidden-variable theories intended to reproduce the results of quantum mechanics: that all hidden variables corresponding to quantum-mechanical observables have definite values at any given time, and that the values of those variables are intrinsic and independent of the device used to measure them. The contradiction is caused by the fact that quantum-mechanical observables need not be commutative. It turns out to be impossible to simultaneously embed all the commuting subalgebras of the algebra of these observables in one commutative algebra, assumed to represent the classical structure of the hidden-variables theory, if the Hilbert space dimension is at least three.

The Kochen–Specker proof demonstrates the impossibility that quantum-mechanical observables represent "elements of physical reality". More specifically, the theorem excludes hidden-variable theories that require elements of physical reality to be non-contextual (i.e. independent of the measurement arrangement). As succinctly worded by Isham and Butterfield,[4] the Kochen–Specker theorem "asserts the impossibility of assigning values to all physical quantities whilst, at the same time, preserving the functional relations between them".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochen–Specker_theorem

Again, any proponent of determinism would have to provide a mechanism that's part of physical reality that has information of the Experimenters choice and the history the particle will be in prior to measurement. What the free will theorem shows is that this information doesn't become an element of physical reality until a measurement occurs. So it's not the job of anyone who supports the free will theorem to disprove determinism. It's on the shoulders of those who support determinism to show how determinism is compatible with things like the Kochen Specker theorem and the free will theorem.

 

[stevendaryl]

Again, I don't know what else you think they should call it.

Nonpredictability or nondeterminism. It has nothing to do with "will".

 

[entropy2information]

Nonpredictability or nondeterminism. It has nothing to do with "will".

I disagree and so does Conway and Kochen. There not just talking about the appearance of choice as you are. They're saying that the Experimenters choice is determined by his/her will alone and there can't be any mechanism that's an element of physical reality that can determine what the Experimenter chooses to measure.

There's a way out of this but Determinist will not like it. They can say the wave function is real but non physical.

The wave-function is real but nonphysical: A view from counterfactual quantum cryptography

Counterfactual quantum cryptography (CQC) is used here as a tool to assess the status of the quantum state: Is it real/ontic (an objective state of Nature) or epistemic (a state of the observer's knowledge)? In contrast to recent approaches to wave function ontology, that are based on realist models of quantum theory, here we recast the question as a problem of communication between a sender (Bob), who uses interaction-free measurements, and a receiver (Alice), who observes an interference pattern in a Mach-Zehnder set-up. An advantage of our approach is that it allows us to define the concept of "physical", apart from "real". In instances of counterfactual quantum communication, reality is ascribed to the interaction-freely measured wave function (ψ) because Alice deterministically infers Bob's measurement. On the other hand, ψ does not correspond to the physical transmission of a particle because it produced no detection on Bob's apparatus. We therefore conclude that the wave function in this case (and by extension, generally) is real, but not physical. Characteristically for classical phenomena, the reality and physicality of objects are equivalent, whereas for quantum phenomena, the former is strictly weaker. As a concrete application of this idea, the nonphysical reality of the wavefunction is shown to be the basic nonclassical phenomenon that underlies the security of CQC.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.7127

Most Determist are Materialist though and this sounds to much like God. Something that's real but non physical that knows and detrmines all things.

So you have the imaginary part of the wave function that's real and non physical and it's encoded with real information. This information becomes an element of physical reality when a measurement occurs.

This is the only way I see out of the conundrum that is determinism. As Kochen Specker theorem and the free will theorem show, the information that includes the choice of the Experimenter and the history of the particle can't be an element of physical reality prior to measurement, therefore the deterministic mechanism can't be physical.

 

[bhobba]

Again, I don't know what else you think they should call it. I asked you this earlier. They published the paper. They came up with the theorem and they explain exactly why they use the term free will. Free will as opposed to determinism.

Free will as the opposite of determinism? Determinism is the idea from things in the past you can, in principle, know things in the future. Chaos theory tells us that in practice, even if true, you can't do it, but we have that in principle here. The opposite of deterministic is not predictable. Now in QM it is a deep question depending on what you mean by predictable if QM is deterministic or not - you will find threads about it on this forum. This shows the whole issue, like many fundamental things, carries a lot of semantic baggage. But the word 'will' used in this context - I just do not get it.

Basically from what I can see the theorem is trivial - if human beings are deterministic then so are quantum objects, and conversely if they are not deterministic then so are quantum objects. That's not really saying anything because human beings are quantum objects.

Thanks
Bill

 

[bhobba]

So you have the imaginary part of the wave function that's real and non physical and it's encoded with real information. This information becomes an element of physical reality when a measurement occurs. This is the only way I see out of the conundrum that is determinism. As Kochen Specker theorem and the free will theorem show, the information that includes the choice of the Experimenter and the history of the particle can't be an element of physical reality prior to measurement, therefore the deterministic mechanism can't be physical.

Physical reality - what's that?

As to the wave function I think you should become acquainted with Gleason's Theroem:
http://kiko.fysik.su.se/en/thesis/helena-master.pdf

The Kochen-Specker theorem is a simple corollary to Gleason which is the more powerful result. What it basically says is proving existence of a state (slightly loosely speaking the same as a wave function but the technical differences are not relevant here), and the Born rule itself, depends on this thing called non-contextuality (there are some other assumptions as well such as the principle of strong superposition - but its the main one). I utterly fail to see how any probability assigned to a state must be basis independent (which is what non-contexctuality is) has anything to do with free will.

Gleason's theorem proves a state must exist but what it means is another matter. It could be simple a calculational device to help a theorist determine probabilities or it could be objectively real - we simply do not know - and nobody as yet has figured an experiment to determine such one way or the other.

It is hard to take science seriously in a universe that in fact controls all the choices experimenters think they make. Nature could be in an insidious conspiracy to “confirm” laws by denying us the freedom to make the tests that would refute them. Physical induction, the primary tool of science, disappears if we are denied access to random samples. It is also hard to take seriously the arguments of those who according to their own beliefs are deterministic automata!

We have defined “free will” to be the opposite of “determinism” despite the fact that since Hume some philosophers have tried to reconcile the two notions – a position called compatibilism. In our view this position arose only because all the physics known in Hume’s day was deterministic, and it has now been outmoded for almost a century by the development of quantum mechanics.

To me this is mumbo jumbo - it may be philosophy but it isn't physics.

I think you have been caught up too much in philosophical discussion about this stuff. The physics however is not really that complicated - the philosophy however is - but that's something we do not discuss on this forum because we do not have people knowledgeable enough in the philosophy of science to moderate such. We did once and they kept such discussions in check, but when they left it got out of hand and the forum now has the rule we do not discuss philosophy except maybe in passing.

Thanks
Bill

 

[entropy2information]

To me this is mumbo jumbo - it may be philosophy but it isn't physics.

This is far from mumbo jumbo. Conway and Kochen have rigorously went through the results in their published paper on the free will theorem and the strong free will theorem. After it was published, they haven't backed down from their results. They have done lectures, interviews, answered questions and more.

I don't think it's right to try and reduce their very powerful results to mumbo jumbo or just philosophy. I understand why it's done because the result can't be refuted so they must be marginalized as not really science but philosophy.

This is selective reasoning guided by a personal bias. We all have them. You tie Kochen Specker to Gleason but you minimize the fact that Kochen tied his Kochen Specker theorem to the free will theorem. The only thing that makes this any less powerful is your subjective bias. Again, we all have them but they can't stop a rigorous result like the free will theorem and it doesn't matter if we personally like the result or not.

This debate is a scientific one and Conway and Kochen's theory severely restrains determinism. They lay out their results in the paper and why they call it the free will theorem. Again, this debate about free will has been going on for years. Here's Einstein talking about this.

Human beings, in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free agents but are as causally bound as the stars in their motion.

I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.

I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will...Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.

https://www.azquotes.com/author/4399-Albert_Einstein/tag/free-will

This debate is a scientific one. Einstein was a Determinist not because of Philosophy but because of Science. When Conway and Kochen talk about free will, it's as opposed to determinism. This isn't anything new in scientific circles.

The free will theorem shows that humans are not causally bound but have free choice when the Experimenter is choosing which measurement they will carry out. They talk about this in their paper and things like Einstein's block universe. If the Experimenters measurement is causally bound then so is the history of the particle that's being measured. They say:

One advantage of the Free Will theorem is that by making explicit the necessary Free Will assumption, it replaces all these dubious ideas by a simple consequence, FIN, of relativity. A greater one is that it applies directly to the real world rather than just to theories. It is this that prevents the existence of local mechanisms for reduction.

The world it presents us with is a fascinating one, in which fundamental particles are continually making their own decisions. No theory can predict exactly what these particles will do in the future for the very good reason that they may not yet have decided what this will be! Most of their decisions, of course, will not greatly affect things — we can describe them as mere ineffectual flutterings, which on a large scale almost cancel each other out, and so can be ignored. The authors strongly believe, however, that there is a way our brains prevent some of this cancellation, so allowing us to integrate what remains and producing our own free will.

Einstein could not bring himself to believe that “God plays dice with the world,” but perhaps we could reconcile him to the idea that“God let's the world run free.”

Very important because the free will theorem puts a restraint on any future theories that try to predict what particles will do in the future with any certainty and this includes the free choice of the Experimenter because if you say a physical mechanism determines their choice then it must also determine the choice of the particle before a measurement occurs.

 

[PeterDonis]

Conway and Kochen have rigorously went through the results in their published paper on the free will theorem and the strong free will theorem. After it was published, they haven't backed down from their results. They have done lectures, interviews, answered questions and more.

As I have already pointed out, this is just an argument from authority. It's out of bounds here. To put it bluntly, we don't care about any of these things. If you want to defend their arguments, you need to defend their arguments on the merits, as you have done in some of your previous posts by giving actual quotes from the paper and explaining why you think they support your position. You should keep doing that, not keep reiterating how they've published and haven't backed down, etc., etc.