"Shut up and calculate"

[javisot]

Although true, what is the point being made here? This seems to be pointing out an issue with the frequentist view of probability.

No Bell test has ever produced an infinite number of samples. No experiment has ever produced an infinite-sigma result.

All I wanted to say is that the coin example doesn't seem like the best example.

 

[PeterDonis]

it implies that every decision we have ever made, from what pie you ate a year ago to which shoe to tie first on your birthday next year, was determined before our Grandparents were born.

You're ignoring the key point: what determines these things?

For you to have any kind of meaningful free will, the world needs to be deterministic enough that you can predict what will happen if you choose one thing or another. Free will does not require that your "choice" has any fundamental randomness. All it requires is that your choices, meaning the processes in your brain that take as input what you perceive, what you know, what you believe, and what you want, and output what you choose to do, determine (note the word) what you do--as opposed to something else other than your choice determining what you do. Whether the fundamental physics is completely deterministic at bottom, or only "deterministic enough", is irrelevant to that.

 

[Matterwave]

All I wanted to say is that the coin example doesn't seem like the best example.

I see.

I believe @Demystifier was making a rhetorical point (an analogy, which he enjoys) in response to post #11.

The idea is that there is apparent randomness in the coin example even if it is symmetric between heads or tails. There, the indeterminism comes from small variations in initial conditions which is quite similar to where indeterminism comes from in Bohmian mechanics (via the quantum equilibrium condition). So it is one way randomness comes into a deterministic theory.

 

[PeterDonis]

no existing coin offers a 50%-50% split with infinite precision

Neither does any existing photon in the experimental setup that was described in the post @Demystifier was responding to.

 

[Demystifier]

Where could the asymmetric result in a spatial symmetric 1 photon double-slit experiment come from, without real randomness?

If the measurement is cause of the apparent randomness, then an obvious place to look for asymmetry is in the fine details of the measuring apparatus.

 

[Demystifier]

But random processes can also be described eith a deterministic time-evolution so I don't think the fact Schrodinger evolution is deterministic necessarily indicates anything.

By random, do you mean pseudo-random?

 

[Demystifier]

No, no existing coin offers a 50%-50% split with infinite precision.

If you’re talking about a theoretical coin, then yes. But even then, you would have to flip the coin an infinite number of times to confirm that it landed on heads 50% of the time and on tails 50% of the time, in accordance with the law of large numbers.

And how is that different from quantum mechanics?

 

[javisot]

And how is that different from quantum mechanics?

In the coin example, the randomness is only apparent due to lack of information. In quantum mechanics, is the randomness only apparent to you?

 

[Demystifier]

In the coin example, the randomness is only apparent. In quantum mechanics, is the randomness only apparent to you?

No, it's apparent to anyone who cannot observe and compute all fine details of the huge number of degrees of freedom of the macroscopic measuring apparatus.

 

[javisot]

No, it's apparent to anyone who cannot observe and compute all fine details of the huge number of degrees of freedom of the macroscopic measuring apparatus.

We are not using the term "apparent" in the same way. In the case of a coin toss, the randomness is apparent (not real), due to the lack of information that exists. In quantum mechanics, the randomness is not apparent; it is fundamental.

 

[PeroK]

He believes that everything we do, in fact everything that happens anywhere, has been determined by the past.

Bell's Theorem is violated in tests that get random inputs (he would argue they are not random) from star systems many lightyears apart. I find it hard to believe that random sequences from opposite sides of the galaxy are correlated in a devious way. And I think that either source is a sequence without strong time correlations.
If that is his strongest argument, I am not convinced.

It's worse than that! Superdeterminism demands that the correlations are such as to always appear to support QM! It's not just any correlations - but correlations that lead us astray into thinking that QM is a correct description of nature. See Scott Aaronson's blog, who says it better than I can:

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6215

 

[Demystifier]

In quantum mechanics, the randomness is not apparent; it is fundamental.

We don't know that. That's an assumption, which may be true, or may be wrong.