A local deterministic theory that violates Bell's inequaities

[DrChinese]

I disagree that having determined experimenters undermines Bell's tests though. Even if tests are determined, they should still respect macroscopic statistical rules. I don't think there is an assumption of an experimenter's free choice. That assumption would be one way to rule out conspiracy loopholes, but it's not the only way, and it's not required.

I concur. I do not think that the question of the free will of experimenters in any ways affects the Bell test results or otherwise provides an "escape" from Bell's argument.

There are those that say the Earth is 4,000 years old, and that fossil evidence to the contrary was placed there by God but is not actually proof. Well, this is the same argument as free will of the experimenters as far as I am concerned: it is possible, but is this science or religion?

 

[ueit]

Hmmm, that chapter is 4 pages long and ends with this:

A theory may appear in which such conspiracies inevitably occur, and these conspiracies may then seem more digestible than the non-localities of other theories. When that theory is announced I will not refuse to listen, either on methodological or other grounds. But I will not myself try to make such a theory.

I would say my point of view quite agrees with Bell here

Your point of view (at least until now) is nothing like Bell's. You have claimed that either local deterministic theories are unscientific, just like religion or impossible altogether. Bell didn't make such a strong claim. He said that he doesn't know how to develop such a theory and he wasn't interested in trying (a reason being its affinity for the non-local path).

a) if a theory appears, I will listen;

This is strange. Why would you loose your time with non-scientific, religious stuff? Would you also listen to projects of perpetual-motion machines (another "analogy" made by you earlier)?

b) there is no theory to consider at this time.

Nobody said there is. You are fighting a straw-man.

Certainly 't Hooft's is not even close to being a theory (more of an idea for an abstract), and I seriously doubt there EVER will be. Why would I make such a "bold" statement? Because there is a monumental leap required for such a theory as I have previously pointed out.

An attempt to quantify that leap is detailed in this paper: http://paterek.info/physics/pra_freedom.pdf by Kofler, Paterek and Brukner (2005). They conclude:

"The violation of Bell’s inequalities is an experimental fact. Within a local realistic program this fact can only be explained if the experimenter’s freedom in choosing between different measurement settings is denied modulo known loopholes, considered by most scientists to be of technical nature. For a local realist our results show that both the number of settings in which the freedom is abandoned grows exponentially and the degree of this abandonment saturates exponentially fast with the number of parties. For the present authors, however, these results are rather an indication of the absurdity of the program itself."

Elsewhere, Brukner refers to the superdeterministic concept as "grotesque" and uses an idea loosely akin to my counterexample involving radioactive samples:

"Grotesque: The experimenters‘ choice could be generated by the parity of the number of cars passing the laboratory within n seconds, where n is given by the fourth decimal of the cube of the actual temperature in degrees Fahrenheit …"

I see no argument here that has anything to do with science. It is an appeal to emotion, nothing more. It is also interesting to note that Brukner states the right implication of Bell's theorem (similar with the one proposed by me earlier):

Bell’s theorem states that no local realistic explanation of quantum mechanical predictions is possible, in which the experimenter has a freedom to choose between different measurement settings.

Brukner may agree with you in its personal believes, but does not make the claim that local determinism is religion. It would be stupid of him to publish religious stuff and it would be stupid for a peer reviewed magazine to accept such an article.

I don't think either of us will change the other's mind at this point.

I do not intend, nor do I see any benefit in doing that.

I think your posts would work better if you identified the non-standard science as being your opinion, rather than trying to trick others who don't know any better.

We are not discussing my opinion but a proposal of a Nobel laureate in particle physics. You should have a little respect for someone orders of magnitude more knowledgeable than you and restrain from promoting falsehoods (like local-realistic hvt being religion) to those "who don't know any better".

 

[DrChinese]

You should have a little respect for someone orders of magnitude more knowledgeable than you and restrain from promoting falsehoods (like local-realistic hvt being religion) to those "who don't know any better".

I have great respect for 't Hooft and I agree that he is certainly orders of magnitude more knowledgeable than myself. If Einstein - a well known local realist and one of my heroes - were alive today, and he were the one writing the paper... I would be equally critical. (Of course Einstein never knew about Bell or Aspect, 't Hooft does.) 't Hooft doesn't need me to tell him where his time is best spent. If he wants to create a superdeterministic theory that follows QM, let him try. I don't consider his current paper an advance as I think it should be obvious that you could get some appearance of "entanglement" using software (my background is computer programming so I think I am on safe ground here).

As to hvt promoters having a religious air: I am still waiting for the science behind the position. I would say the same to those promoting anti-gravity boots and perpetual motion machines. Claims without a shred of science, in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary (including a no-go by Brukner), shift things into the area of faith. So no, I won't stop comparing superdeterminism to religion. I freely acknowledge that the universe *could* be superdeterministic and there *could* be a god. So the comparison seems fairly apt.

I think our fellow readers here deserve to know that superdeterminism is not taken seriously by most scientists in the field - 't Hooft notwithstanding. Anyone who follows my posts knows I try to sort out the generally accepted from the speculative. I stand by my comments and characterization of 't Hooft's paper. If 't Hooft were sitting here with me now, I would ask him: "what were you thinking?" (After telling him what an honor it was to meet him, of course. )

 

[nikman]

I have great respect for 't Hooft and I agree that he is certainly orders of magnitude more knowledgeable than myself. If Einstein - a well known local realist and one of my heroes - were alive today, and he were the one writing the paper... I would be equally critical. ...

Anyway 't Hooft is a particle physicist, not a quantum mechanic. You don't do Bell experiments inside colliders. Would I let a brain surgeon give me a heart transplant? Not if I had any choice. Here we do have choices.

The idea that there's a deterministic pseudo-randomness lurking somewhere down at the Planck length feeding us an appearance of quantum stochasticity is pure metaphysical speculation. Yes, it is, sorry about that. Blame it on 't Hooft's Calvinist background perhaps. He simply likes the feel of superdeterminism. That's his right.

Speaking of CAs and QM, Ed Fredkin's website (digitalphysics.org) where Plamen Petrov's Mermin paper used to reside is no longer with us, replaced now by something called Digital Philosophy. I understand Petrov has become the disciple of a charismatic Siberian mystic, hopefully not any latter day Rasputin.

 

[DrChinese]

Anyway 't Hooft is a particle physicist, not a quantum mechanic. You don't do Bell experiments inside colliders. Would I let a brain surgeon give me a heart transplant? Not if I had any choice. Here we do have choices.

The idea that there's a deterministic pseudo-randomness lurking somewhere down at the Planck length feeding us an appearance of quantum stochasticity is pure metaphysical speculation. Yes, it is, sorry about that. Blame it on 't Hooft's Calvinist background perhaps. He simply likes the feel of superdeterminism. That's his right.

Thanks for speaking up on this, nikman. After I read your post, I decided to google "superdeterminism religion". I was not surprised to find that a lot of folks out there feel much the same as we do, but I was surprised at how many have expressed this in various posts and articles.

 

[nikman]

Thanks for speaking up on this, nikman. After I read your post, I decided to google "superdeterminism religion". I was not surprised to find that a lot of folks out there feel much the same as we do, but I was surprised at how many have expressed this in various posts and articles.

We shall overcome. Yes we can.

 

[kote]

Thanks for speaking up on this, nikman. After I read your post, I decided to google "superdeterminism religion". I was not surprised to find that a lot of folks out there feel much the same as we do, but I was surprised at how many have expressed this in various posts and articles.

Generally it's called metaphysics and not religion, though there are definitely similarities . Determinism as an assumption is one of the core foundational issues in (the philosophy of) science. To the Bohmian's and others here it seems that denying determinism is unscientifically religious (Bohr for Pope?). "QM is complete and reality is random" is just as metaphysical a claim as "everything has a cause." It's too bad that some questions are beyond the scope of scientific exploration. Luckily we have thousands of years of philosophical literature regarding causation/determinism/superdeterminism etc. I don't know of any good links focused on pure causation. I think more of the literature there is still copyrighted. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwIntroIndex.htm has some great stuff on general determinism despite its focus on free will.

QM (unfortunately?) really hasn't done much to shed light on the issue except to show how one easy to understand mode of physical determinism isn't basic.

 

[DrChinese]

Generally it's called metaphysics and not religion, though there are definitely similarities . Determinism as an assumption is one of the core foundational issues in (the philosophy of) science. To the Bohmian's and others here it seems that denying determinism is unscientifically religious (Bohr for Pope?). "QM is complete and reality is random" is just as metaphysical a claim as "everything has a cause." It's too bad that some questions are beyond the scope of scientific exploration. Luckily we have thousands of years of philosophical literature regarding causation/determinism/superdeterminism etc. I don't know of any good links focused on pure causation. I think more of the literature there is still copyrighted. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwIntroIndex.htm has some great stuff on general determinism despite its focus on free will.

Thanks for the link to this site, I bookmarked it.

And I am not against determinism, merely that other nasty thing that is either "metaphysical" or "religion-like" - depending on who you ask.

(By the way, google had more hits for superdeterminism & religion than it did for superdeterminism & metaphysics. )

 

[kote]

(By the way, google had more hits for superdeterminism & religion than it did for superdeterminism & metaphysics. )

I did notice the same thing . I've actually had a hard time finding what exactly superdeterminism is even supposed to mean. It's not a technical metaphysical term. The closest philosophical term I can think of is "supervenient causation," which may or may not be what is meant by superdeterminism in any particular case.

http://www.stanford.edu/~lmaguire/phil186/kim2.htm has a quick overview and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supervenience/ has more detail about general supervenience. Supervenience is also related to emergence (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/), and it's all related to micro-macro issues.

Not so surprisingly, the Niels Bohr Institute also has some publications on emergent causation: http://www.nbi.dk/~emmeche/p.emercau.html. The downward causation paper talks about different possible types of macro to micro causation.

 

[DrChinese]

I did notice the same thing . I've actually had a hard time finding what exactly superdeterminism is even supposed to mean.

Folks have been trying to locate hidden assumptions in Bell's Theorem for a long time. The idea is that one of these hypotheically hidden assumptions is actually false, thereby rendering the theorem itself false. I see this as sad desperation for the bygone pre-quantum era. (Of course, I don't actually know what drives it.)

So superdeterminism is ultimately an attempt to wrangle a concession that, gee, there are loopholes in Bell after all. Like any ad hoc theory, superdeterminism changes as needed to avoid any critique. In one version, the conspiracy extends to the weak force (since all forces are part of a greater strong-electroweak). In another, the initial conditions of the big bang holds the key to correlations we see in Bell tests. But it really isn't a theory at all, more of an idea for a theory, as ad hoc theories usually are.

 

[nikman]

Generally you can say that all religion has some metaphysical component (if only the basic belief that a spirit animates the body) but not all metaphysics is religious. Hume, for example, explored causality at length from a metaphysical standpoint (one not dissimilar to Bohr's) yet no more coherent atheist has ever graced a civilization.

For religion you need a symbol, a totem, a defined supernatural entity with a name (even if you're not supposed to speak it) to invest belief in. That's why Shirley MacLaine, for example, can claim she's "spiritual" (because she's been reincarnated n times) but not religious, because she doesn't believe in any specific deity. She also calls her belief system "my metaphysics" which is guaranteed to make professional philosophers feel unwell, but just try to stop her.

The picture is complicated by the fact that metaphysical beliefs can achieve an intensity comparable to religious ones, which happens if the believer attains an emotional state in which the need to establish a conjecture based on subjective perception as something objectively true threatens to overwhelm scientific caution. Genuine professionals seem to know how to spot the dynamic in themselves and sit on it so you never can tell for sure if they're in danger of overstepping the line.

Unless of course the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences employs hit persons to deal with the nuttiness problem forthrightly yet undetectably whenever it manifests in Nobel laureates, as used to be the policy, we're told, in the case of the Curia and Renaissance popes in their decline.

 

[kote]

Generally you can say that all religion has some metaphysical component (if only the basic belief that a spirit animates the body) but not all metaphysics is religious.

I wouldn't even say that a spirit is required. Spinoza had Deus sive Natura, God or (better yet) Nature. Leibniz' metaphysics was based on God, as was Berkeley's empirical idealism. Descartes included God in his metaphysics, although I guess he was also all for the immaterial spirit.

 

[Count Iblis]

Anyway 't Hooft is a particle physicist, not a quantum mechanic.

That's not really true. 't Hooft is not really a typical "particle physicist". He is a theoretical physicists with an extraordinary physics/mathematical insight.

The dispute about superdeterminism is, as I wrote earlier, one has to dismiss it using proper mathematical arguments. Of course, one then has to make aditional assumptions and then one can debate those assumptions. But as long as there is no bona fide no-go theorem against local deterministic models, one cannot blame 't Hooft for exploring these theories.

You can compare a no-go theorem by John von Neumann a long time ago, which was later shown to be faulty. But the point he made was later shown to be correct. So, I'm not saying that 't Hooft is correct, rather that one has to argue on the basis of more mathematically rigorous arguments.

 

[DrChinese]

The dispute about superdeterminism is, as I wrote earlier, one has to dismiss it using proper mathematical arguments. Of course, one then has to make aditional assumptions and then one can debate those assumptions. But as long as there is no bona fide no-go theorem against local deterministic models, one cannot blame 't Hooft for exploring these theories.

Argue on rigorous mathematical terms? You have it backwards, as 't Hooft is not rigorous but Brukner is.

No one is questioning whether 't Hooft can write a computer program that DOES NOT model Bell's Inequality, per his paper. When 't Hooft comes up with a program that CAN express relevant entanglement, then there will be something to discuss - and not before. There is nothing of his to disprove at this point! As he concedes, this program is not even rotationally invariant which is no small issue in considering spin statistics.

Yet on the other hand, Brukner et al have clearly provided a specific no-go and who is disputing that? They prove that any superdeterminisitic theory grows in complexity at an exponential rate and without bound.

And Bell is already one of a number of no-gos for local determinism, joined by GHZ and others. (Of course, I suppose the superdeterministic "argument" somehow applies to those too. )

 

[nikman]

I wouldn't even say that a spirit is required. Spinoza had Deus sive Natura, God or (better yet) Nature. Leibniz' metaphysics was based on God, as was Berkeley's empirical idealism. Descartes included God in his metaphysics, although I guess he was also all for the immaterial spirit.

I was trying to say that you can have metaphysics without any deist, theist, animist, "spiritual" or whatever assumptions. De Rerum Natura might be Exhibit "A" (the gods are metaphors for human aspiration, not anything literal). But the common belief that when a person dies "something leaves" the physical body is metaphysics too: it's an attempt to explain an observed phenomenon (death) by positing an existent (spirit) which is not, however, subject to experimental verification. You don't need to subscribe to any religious system to believe that, or something not entirely unlike that. I imagine vitalism had its share of atheists and agnostics.

Most if not all religions expand and build on the basic metaphysical concept of "spirit". They'd be pretty much dead in the water without it. Anyway if you were living in a preliterate culture and someone close to you died it'd seem like common sense. Clearly Grandmother's very different now from what she was like a minute ago. Something's definitely missing that used to be there.

 

[ueit]

I did notice the same thing . I've actually had a hard time finding what exactly superdeterminism is even supposed to mean. It's not a technical metaphysical term. The closest philosophical term I can think of is "supervenient causation," which may or may not be what is meant by superdeterminism in any particular case.

Superdeterminism (SD) is a particular case of determinism. Just like determinism, SD means that the future state of a system is determined entirely by its past state. The particularity consists in the fact that SD does not allow one to separate a larger system into independent parts.

Bell's theorem is based on the assumption that the various experimental parts evolve independently of one another (freedom assumption). This might be or might not be true, depending on the mathematical formulation of the theory. For a theory like Newtonian mechanics of the rigid body, the freedom assumption holds because distant bodies do not interact. For a theory like general relativity (in a system described completely by it) the freedom assumption does not hold because the trajectory of each massive body is determined by all massive bodies in the universe, regardless of the distance. Both theories are deterministic but GR is also superdeterministic.

DrChinese's claims about superdeterministic theories being unscientific are therefore ridiculous, as a theory like GR, if found to be fundamental, should be rejected as religious crap.

 

[DrChinese]

Superdeterminism (SD) is a particular case of determinism. Just like determinism, SD means that the future state of a system is determined entirely by its past state. The particularity consists in the fact that SD does not allow one to separate a larger system into independent parts.

Bell's theorem is based on the assumption that the various experimental parts evolve independently of one another (freedom assumption). This might be or might not be true, depending on the mathematical formulation of the theory. For a theory like Newtonian mechanics of the rigid body, the freedom assumption holds because distant bodies do not interact. For a theory like general relativity (in a system described completely by it) the freedom assumption does not hold because the trajectory of each massive body is determined by all massive bodies in the universe, regardless of the distance. Both theories are deterministic but GR is also superdeterministic.

DrChinese's claims about superdeterministic theories being unscientific are therefore ridiculous, as a theory like GR, if found to be fundamental, should be rejected as religious crap.

Superdeterminism is NOT determinism, and has nothing whatsoever to do with GR. GR, being deterministic, postulates that initial conditions control the effect of gravity. This was a refinement on Newtonian gravity, and made testable predictions (as scientific theories usually do). GR is the essence of a great scientific theory.

Superdeterminism is certainly not an actual theory. It is an ad hoc hypothesis that is equivalent to saying "God did it". Discussing it is like nailing jelly to a wall. The *only* purpose of the hypothesis is to overcome Bell's Theorem. It has no other purpose, as superdeterminism is elsewhere invisible. Superdeterminism predicts nothing and explains nothing. Superdeterminism is as scientific as voodoo.

P.S. ueit: Are you actually a believer in superdeterminism? Or do you push this to further your local realistic agenda?

 

[ThomasT]

The particularity consists in the fact that SD does not allow one to separate a larger system into independent parts.

How might the assumption of locality be modeled then, because this is the problem: how do you formally represent locality in a way that doesn't include statistical independence?

 

[ThomasT]

I agree with Dr. Chinese and others who say that Bell's (and others') analyses of the formal requirements of entangled states have effectively ruled out lhv models of entangled states. This seems to be the generally accepted position, despite the confusion surrounding the physical meaning of violations of Bell inequalities.

It doesn't seem that t'Hooft has solved the problem.

As for superdeterminism, I'm with those who say that they still don't know what that term is supposed to refer to.

 

[Count Iblis]

't Hooft has not (yet) solved the problem, but he has pointed out a flaw in the argument that lhv is ruled out, by arguing that superdeterminism cannot be dismissed as it is usually done. If lhv is still ruled out, then the usual proof found in textbooks is still wrong.

It is similar to the usual textbook "proof" that entropy can only increase based on Boltzmann's H-theorem being wrong. This doesn't mean that the Second Law is false, just that it doesn't follow from the flawed reasoning presented in most textbooks.

 

[WaveJumper]

P.S. ueit: Are you actually a believer in superdeterminism? Or do you push this to further your local realistic agenda?

If we don't have free will, how are we to ascertain that the universe is really local realistic? Superdeterminism is such a dead-end that it ruins itself on the spot. All consequences and outcomes ascribed to it, fall apart due its inability to ascertain anything that has a hint of truth value. "Nature is how it is, because no other way was possible" does not reveal what nature is, does it? Sure, we can try to infer that the universe is local and realistic, but with no free will, the validity of that inference is severly undermined by the the lack of reliable ways to know anything about anything in a superdeterministic universe.

 

[Count Iblis]

If we don't have free will, how are we to ascertain that the universe is really local realistic? Superdeterminism is such a dead-end that it ruins itself on the spot. All consequences and outcomes ascribed to it, fall apart due its inability to ascertain anything that has a hint of truth value. "Nature is how it is, because no other way was possible" does not reveal what nature is, does it? Sure, we can try to infer that the universe is local and realistic, but with no free will, the validity of that inference is severly undermined by the the lack of reliable ways to know anything about anything in a superdeterministic universe.

A similar problem also arises when you try to be rigorous about causality. What seems to be a rather trivial matter is not so simple at all, again due to determinism, see e.g. here:

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0107091

 

[ueit]

Superdeterminism is NOT determinism, and has nothing whatsoever to do with GR.

This tells me that you didn't understand what SD means and you are fighting a straw-man. I have explained in my previous post what a SD theory is (a particular case of deterministic theory where a separation of a large system into independent subsystems is not possible). This is the SD I defend here.

GR, being deterministic, postulates that initial conditions control the effect of gravity. This was a refinement on Newtonian gravity, and made testable predictions (as scientific theories usually do). GR is the essence of a great scientific theory.

And GR is also SD because it does not allow the separation of a large system into independent subsystems.

Superdeterminism is certainly not an actual theory.

Sure it's not, just like "locality" or "realism" is not a theory. It is a property a theory might or might not have.

It is an ad hoc hypothesis that is equivalent to saying "God did it".

It is not a hypothesis either. As I said above, it is a property of a theory that can be evaluated from its mathematical structure.

Newtonian mechanics is a local, non-SD theory.
Newtonian gravity is a non-local, SD theory.
GR is a local, SD theory
Classical electrodynamics is a local, SD theory, and so on.

Discussing it is like nailing jelly to a wall...

This is because you clearly have a wrong idea of what SD means. I will happily join you in killing that straw-man.

P.S. ueit: Are you actually a believer in superdeterminism?

I am not a believer of anything. I only think that local-realistic theories are the most "scientific" type of theories and this path should not be dismissed so easily, based on misconceptions and philosophically bankrupt ideas.

Or do you push this to further your local realistic agenda?

I have no agenda. I do not make money from this field. I like to ponder these things as a hobby.

 

[ueit]

How might the assumption of locality be modeled then, because this is the problem: how do you formally represent locality in a way that doesn't include statistical independence?

Locality means that the evolution of a system only depends on the physical variables in its proximity. Earth's trajectory only depends on the local space curvature. This does not mean that Earth's motion and Pluto's motion are independent. They are not, because the two objects are also part of the same star system so they evolve around its center. SD has nothing to do with locality or the lack of it.

 

[ueit]

If we don't have free will, how are we to ascertain that the universe is really local realistic? Superdeterminism is such a dead-end that it ruins itself on the spot. All consequences and outcomes ascribed to it, fall apart due its inability to ascertain anything that has a hint of truth value. "Nature is how it is, because no other way was possible" does not reveal what nature is, does it? Sure, we can try to infer that the universe is local and realistic, but with no free will, the validity of that inference is severly undermined by the the lack of reliable ways to know anything about anything in a superdeterministic universe.

The hypothesis of free will is incompatible with all physical theories and has also been experimentally falsified. Whatever the consequences, we have to live with them.

 

[DrChinese]

This tells me that you didn't understand what SD means and you are fighting a straw-man. I have explained in my previous post what a SD theory is (a particular case of deterministic theory where a separation of a large system into independent subsystems is not possible). This is the SD I defend here.

And GR is also SD because it does not allow the separation of a large system into independent subsystems.

Sure it's not, just like "locality" or "realism" is not a theory. It is a property a theory might or might not have.

It is not a hypothesis either. As I said above, it is a property of a theory that can be evaluated from its mathematical structure.

Newtonian mechanics is a local, non-SD theory.
Newtonian gravity is a non-local, SD theory.
GR is a local, SD theory
Classical electrodynamics is a local, SD theory, and so on.

This is because you clearly have a wrong idea of what SD means. I will happily join you in killing that straw-man.

Fair enough. I see we in fact have different definitions of SD.

1. I don't consider GR to be superdeterministic. It would take a theory of everything (TOE) to contain superdeterminism, by definition. (Because there are unexplained variables acting that are not part of GR.)2. A TOE *could* be deterministic. That would assume that a complete specification of the system is possible. (Otherwise a TOE would be maximally complete.) 3. Assuming the DOE is deterministic, you might say that the initial conditions of the universe (ICU) plus the TOE determines what happens for all time. One of those LaPlacian devil kind of things. But that is still just determinism, not superdeterminism.4. To get superdeterminism, you need to add 2 more things (and I think at least the first will be present in all definitions):

a) Each local volume must have access to sufficient information such that any possible experiment "there" will have results that can be predicted "here".

b) Experimental settings are constrained - despite the appearance of free will - to such settings that experiments "here" and experiments "there" yield results that might otherwise appear to violate the TOE itself.

The a) part is the "super" part of superdeterminism. The b) part is the part that leads to the hypothetical "loophole" in Bell's Theorem. In that argument, the TOE must be local as well. The b) part is where the "conspiracy" part comes in. That is the part I object to as non-scientific and bordering on the religious. That is strictly what is intended by 't Hooft's paper - superdeterministic - and local - entanglement.

The a) part borders on science, but requires an actual theory to allow it to be falsified. Clearly, there are plenty of requirements in that alone. In 't Hooft's paper, this is part of the hypothesis but he skips over that to focus on b).We wouldn't be having this discussion if it were not for the idea that superdeterminism allows a violation of the Bell Inequality. There would be no reason to suppose superdetermism over garden-variety determinism otherwise. So you must have both a) and b) above as part of superdeterminism. Determinism is not equal to superdeterminism, and superdeterminism is not an inevitable result from a good TOE.

 

[WaveJumper]

The hypothesis of free will is incompatible with all physical theories and has also been experimentally falsified. Whatever the consequences, we have to live with them.

Physical theories do not address consciouness. When you throw a dead bird into the air, it falls down to the ground according to Newton's laws in a predictable fashion.. Throw a live bird, and it will take off wherever it sees fit. I would not bet more than 50 cents that scientists will ever be able to calculate where the bird will head off, the next second of its flight. I think the gentic makeup and the neurogical states of the bird influence its behaviour, but do not determine it. I say that because we are actually often opposing certain heredetary predespositions, so the "I" must be real as an emergent phenomenon.

I think most people here are opposing SD on esthetic grounds, because SD is the 'darkest' possible model of a universe like ours(though it's impossible reject the idea as a real possibility). I think people would rather give up both locality and realism but hold on to free will(I know I do - in fact we don't have anything else besides the "I"). I think i know the name of a non-local deterministic universe.

 

[WaveJumper]

The a) part is the "super" part of superdeterminism. The b) part is the part that leads to the hypothetical "loophole" in Bell's Theorem. In that argument, the TOE must be local as well. The b) part is where the "conspiracy" part comes in. That is the part I object to as non-scientific and bordering on the religious. That is strictly what is intended by 't Hooft's paper - superdeterministic - and local - entanglement.

God is having a laugh by trying to confuse us. That's what i make of the theory of SD. This is not science but philosophy, a simple model of how the universe might work that does no better job at explaining entanglement than solipsism.

 

[DrChinese]

The hypothesis of free will is incompatible with all physical theories and has also been experimentally falsified.

It is NOT generally agreed that free will is incompatible with all physical theories. And it certainly has not been falsified. Do you have a reference? (Please tell me it's not Kochen's Free Will Theorem.)

 

[Demystifier]

It is NOT generally agreed that free will is incompatible with all physical theories.

DrChinese, I think it would be really interesting if you could outline a concrete proposal explaining how known physical theories might be compatible with free will. Of course, I do not ask you to say how free will really works (nobody knows that), but how it MIGHT work. It may be a pure speculation, but it should be compatible with the physical laws we know. I am not saying that it is not possible, I'm sure it is, but I'm just curious to see how YOU imagine that free will might work.