Superdeterminism

[Richard Gill]



Dear friends

Has anyone seen Sabine Hossenfelders’ latest YouTube production, https://youtu.be/ytyjgIyegDI ? “Does superdeterminism save quantum mechanics? Or does it kill free will and destroy science?” A glance at her Google Scholar page will show that she has a recent huge production of papers on this theme many with co-authors Jonte Hance (Bristol) and Tim Palmer (Oxford). 

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=NaQZcyYAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&alert_preview_top_rm=2&sortby=pubdate

The papers with Tim Palmer are often long and mathematically very complex. Clance is more a ‘foundations of QM’ person. I recommend their joint paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.02676 The wave-function as a true ensemble J.R. Hance, S. Hossenfelder

“Recommend” is not quite the right word. I think it is confusing and confused. I think its arguments are circular (if not completely illogical) and really that both this paper and Sabine’s video shows that she just doesn’t understand the arguments. Instead she’s on a crusade especially directed at influential older male physicists.

Her fans love this work: Quantum mysteries explained and resolved! It’s all a big hoax!

My opinion on the science: I think she is simply promoting non local deterministic models. The free will business is a red herring. Hance has some weird ontology to do this, Palmer has chaos theory and weird topologies. Both are smoke screens to hide from themselves as well as from us that the emperor (their actual arguments) actually has no clothes.

Comments?

Yours

Richard

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Abstract: In quantum mechanics, the wave-function only predicts probabilities of measurement outcomes, not individual outcomes. This suggests that it describes an ensemble of states with different values of a hidden variable. Here, we analyse this idea with reference to currently known theorems and experiments. We argue that the ψ-ontic/epistemic distinction fails to properly identify ensemble interpretations and propose a more useful definition. We then show that all ψ-ensemble interpretations which reproduce quantum mechanics violate Statistical Independence. Finally, we explain how this interpretation helps make sense of some otherwise puzzling phenomena in quantum mechanics, such as the delayed choice experiment, the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb detector, and the Extended Wigner's Friends Scenario.

[Inge Svein Helland]

Dear Richard, dear all.

From a mathematical point of view, superdeterminism seems to be a possible position. But if you also believe in some form of religion, which also is possible, I think it implies a God which is perfect and perfectly realistic in all respects. And that does destroy our free will, and makes superdeterminism a very strange position to take.

I think that it is much better to believe that God is limited by what Niels Bohr called complementarity, and that this also makes us limited in many cases when we are to make decisions. In a Bell experiment setting I argue for the latter view in my recent paper 'The Bell experiment and the limitation of actors'. Those who want to have a look at the manuscript - this is a free choice - can contact me on in...@math.uio.no .

With wishes of a nice Christmas Holiday to all of you.

Inge

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From: bell_quantum...@googlegroups.com <bell_quantum...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Richard Gill <gill...@gmail.com>
Sent: 22 December 2021 05:52:39
To: Bell inequalities and quantum foundations
Subject: [Bell_quantum_foundations] Superdeterminism

 

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[Indrajit Sen]

Dear all,

I spent several years during my PhD trying to understand superdeterminism better. I think Richard is basically right in his assessment of Sabine and co's work on superdeterminism. If anyone wants to understand Palmer's complicated superdeterministic proposal better (and how it fails), one can have a look at my latest paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.04761 (accepted in Proc. R. Soc. A).

Regards,

Indrajit

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Bell_quantum_foundations/690b484866c649d28a79c72009a456ea%40math.uio.no.

[Richard Gill]

Thanks Indrajit! I had indeed seen your paper but not read it yet. I’m very glad that some people a bit younger than me are also taking the time to fight this kind f nonsense. Somebody has to do it. But it is ungrateful work!