The thing is I agree with nearly every premise of superdeterminism. But the conclusions seem stretched.
I love the idea of not abiding to the strict assumptions set forth by Bell’s theorem. The idea that determinism doesn’t have to hide within the simple hidden variable model bell’s theorem disproves to be true. The idea that we are essentially always part of the experimental system. The questioning of the objective rational experimenter with free will ideal.
Yet I haven’t seen any serious mechanism explaining how the required correlations between experimenter choices and particle states could have been embedded in the universe’s initial conditions in such a finely tuned manner, given that experimentally, the outcomes are indistinguishable from standard quantum mechanics… I just can’t imagine how this could likely be the case without adding quasi-conspiratorial assumption.
I mean, effectively superdeterminism’s natural conclusion is that time is an illusion. Everything that will be was already fixed at the start of the universe.
But turning this back on itself, what’s the proposed mechanism for quantum wave collapse at superluminal speeds?
Our understanding is fundamentally flawed, but thankfully the math works!
My impression from the literature is that superdeterminism is not the position of rejecting an asymmetrical arrow of time. In fact, it tries to build a model that can explain violations of Bell inequalities completely from the initial conditions evolved forwards in time exclusively.
Let’s imagine you draw a coin from box A and it’s random, and you draw coins from box B and it’s random, but you find a peculiar feature where if you switch from A to B, the first coin you draw from B is always the last you drew from A, and then it goes back to being random. You repeat this many times and it always seems to hold. How is that possible if they’re independent of each other?
Technically, no matter how many coins you draw, the probability of it occurring just by random chance is never zero. It might get really really low, but it’s not zero. A very specific initial configuration of the coins could reproduce that.
Superdeterminism is just the idea that there are certain laws of physics that restrict the initial configurations of particles at the very beginning of the universe, the Big Bang, to guarantee their evolution would always maintain certain correlations that allow them to violate Bell inequalities. The laws don’t continue to apply moment-by-moment, they just apply once when the universe “decides” its initial conditions, by restricting certain possible configurations.
It’s not really an interpretation because it requires you to posit these laws and restrictions, and so it really becomes a new theory since you have to introduce new postulates, but such a theory would in principle then allow you to evolve the system forwards from its initial conditions in time to explain every experimental outcome.
As a side note, you can trivially explain violations of Bell inequalities in local realist terms without even introducing anything new to quantum theory just by abandoning the assumption of time-asymmetry. This is called the Two-State Vector Formalism and it’s been well-established in the literature for decades. If A causes B and B causes C, in the time-reverse, C causes B and B causes A. if you treat both as physically real, then B would have enough constraints placed upon it by A and C taken together (by evolving the wave function from both ends to where they meet at B) to violate Bell inequalities.
That’s already pretty much a feature built-in to quantum theory and allows you to interpret it in local realist terms if you’d like, but it requires you to accept that the microscopic world is genuinely indifferent to the arrow-of-time and the time-forwards and the time-reversed evolution of a system are both physically real.
However, this time-symmetric view is not superdeterminism. Superdeterminism is time-asymmetric just like most every other viewpoint (Copenhagen, MWI, pilot wave, objective collapse, etc). Causality goes in one temporal direction and not the other. The time-symmetric interpretation is its own thing and is mathematically equivalent to quantum mechanics so it is an actual interpretation and not another theory.
The thing is I agree with nearly every premise of superdeterminism. But the conclusions seem stretched.
I love the idea of not abiding to the strict assumptions set forth by Bell’s theorem. The idea that determinism doesn’t have to hide within the simple hidden variable model bell’s theorem disproves to be true. The idea that we are essentially always part of the experimental system. The questioning of the objective rational experimenter with free will ideal.
Yet I haven’t seen any serious mechanism explaining how the required correlations between experimenter choices and particle states could have been embedded in the universe’s initial conditions in such a finely tuned manner, given that experimentally, the outcomes are indistinguishable from standard quantum mechanics… I just can’t imagine how this could likely be the case without adding quasi-conspiratorial assumption.
I mean, effectively superdeterminism’s natural conclusion is that time is an illusion. Everything that will be was already fixed at the start of the universe.
But turning this back on itself, what’s the proposed mechanism for quantum wave collapse at superluminal speeds?
Our understanding is fundamentally flawed, but thankfully the math works!
My impression from the literature is that superdeterminism is not the position of rejecting an asymmetrical arrow of time. In fact, it tries to build a model that can explain violations of Bell inequalities completely from the initial conditions evolved forwards in time exclusively.
Let’s imagine you draw a coin from box A and it’s random, and you draw coins from box B and it’s random, but you find a peculiar feature where if you switch from A to B, the first coin you draw from B is always the last you drew from A, and then it goes back to being random. You repeat this many times and it always seems to hold. How is that possible if they’re independent of each other?
Technically, no matter how many coins you draw, the probability of it occurring just by random chance is never zero. It might get really really low, but it’s not zero. A very specific initial configuration of the coins could reproduce that.
Superdeterminism is just the idea that there are certain laws of physics that restrict the initial configurations of particles at the very beginning of the universe, the Big Bang, to guarantee their evolution would always maintain certain correlations that allow them to violate Bell inequalities. The laws don’t continue to apply moment-by-moment, they just apply once when the universe “decides” its initial conditions, by restricting certain possible configurations.
It’s not really an interpretation because it requires you to posit these laws and restrictions, and so it really becomes a new theory since you have to introduce new postulates, but such a theory would in principle then allow you to evolve the system forwards from its initial conditions in time to explain every experimental outcome.
As a side note, you can trivially explain violations of Bell inequalities in local realist terms without even introducing anything new to quantum theory just by abandoning the assumption of time-asymmetry. This is called the Two-State Vector Formalism and it’s been well-established in the literature for decades. If A causes B and B causes C, in the time-reverse, C causes B and B causes A. if you treat both as physically real, then B would have enough constraints placed upon it by A and C taken together (by evolving the wave function from both ends to where they meet at B) to violate Bell inequalities.
That’s already pretty much a feature built-in to quantum theory and allows you to interpret it in local realist terms if you’d like, but it requires you to accept that the microscopic world is genuinely indifferent to the arrow-of-time and the time-forwards and the time-reversed evolution of a system are both physically real.
However, this time-symmetric view is not superdeterminism. Superdeterminism is time-asymmetric just like most every other viewpoint (Copenhagen, MWI, pilot wave, objective collapse, etc). Causality goes in one temporal direction and not the other. The time-symmetric interpretation is its own thing and is mathematically equivalent to quantum mechanics so it is an actual interpretation and not another theory.