The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism

"The Facts" basically say that among the statements, "Your experiment design isn't predestined by the universe to make it accidentally seem like quantum mechanics is true," "the state of the universe today is all you need to know to predict the state of the universe tomorrow," and "an experiment only has one outcome," there is at least one lie. If the first one is a lie that's superdeterminism, the second one the Copenhagen interpretation and the last one Many Worlds. What bothers me about getting philosophical is, philosophers will attempt to choose one or more based on intellectual aesthetic criteria that we developed from the womb onwards in the macroscopic world, while in reality the only legitimate answer is "we don't know." I think that is broadly speaking a problem that hampers the effectiveness of philosophy, there is not enough willingness to say "the present information does not permit a conclusion."

I don&#x27;t think the problem with superdeterminism is the lack of free will, but with the way it doesn&#x27;t really give you anything mentally to work with. It posits some early state from which everything could be deterministically extrapolated... except that state is both very complicated and completely hidden. It takes all of the probabilities and shoves them in a black box and says, &quot;The answers exist, and they&#x27;re in there. But you can&#x27;t actually look in the box for the answers. You have to go do the experiment and wait for the speed of light to propagate the answer to you.&quot;<p>Like all interpretations, it&#x27;s mathematically equivalent to any other. It&#x27;s just a question of what helps you think about the problem, and I don&#x27;t think many people find it very edifying. You can replace the box with a random number generator, which is at least small enough to fit in your pocket. The superdeterminism box appears to have been crammed full of untold centillions of answers... none of which are accessible beforehand.<p>If there were reason to think that the superdeterminism box were somehow smaller -- if it all really came down to just one random bit, say, that had been magnified by chaotic interactions to appear like more -- that would attract some attention. And I suppose it would be conceptually testable, by running Laplace&#x27;s demon in reverse, except that that&#x27;s not possible either from inside the universe.<p>So it doesn&#x27;t really come as a surprise that superdeterminism falls behind MWI or Copenhagen or even pilot wave, because each of those hands you something that you can use to mentally organize the world. Superdeterminism just seems to hand you a catchprase, &quot;As it was foretold in the Long Ago -- but which I just found out about&quot;.

The thing about superdeterminism is that it&#x27;s only interesting if you want to argue philosophy. If you&#x27;re dealing with hidden variables (or even measurement errors) the only practical tool in your box for handling them is probability distributions.<p>So either way, you&#x27;ve got a probability distribution. And at this point people just apply Occam&#x27;s Razor and get on with their lives. You can theorize an infinite number of systems that work exactly like the real world. The question is whether they&#x27;re useful.

In Superdeterminism each time a particle has to collapse, instead of rolling a dice it looks into a secret table of hidden variables that was calculated at the beginning of the universe. The table was calculated carefully so the apparent random choices follow all the laws of quantum mechanics, and the results are equivalent to what you would expect if any of the other interpretations where correct.<p>To calculate this secret table you must simulate all the interactions and path in the universe until it ends, because you must know which particles will be entangled, which result will have the &quot;random&quot; generator in the experiments, ...<p>So the universe is only a movie that follows the random choices made at the beginning of the universe. But the choices are not arbitrary, they have the correct values so when the events really happen they follow the laws of physics. For example, the random choices at the beginning of the universe make it look that you can&#x27;t transmit information faster than light.<p>Physics study the laws of the real universe, but we can redefine Physics as the study of the laws that study the random number generator. Both real-Physics and initial-rng-Physics follow special relativity. Bot agree about QM. Both agree about the Bell inequality.<p>So with Superdeterminism we solve the problem of QM in the real word, because everything we is already determined. Now the problem is how the RNG at the beginning of the universe work to simulate QM and all the other effects. Let&#x27;s call the study of the RNG Physics. Now the problem is as hard as before Superdeterminism.

I&#x27;m not fond of superdeterminism since it&#x27;s not that useful for making predictions. Any purely deterministic model has implications for free will, so that doesn&#x27;t seem to be a legitimate criticism.<p>Actually I would like to know more about provable violations if Bell&#x27;s theorem as I am somewhat attached to local determinism and haven&#x27;t seen an experiment that I would consider convincing. I mean the theories behind the experiments are sound, but I&#x27;m not sure they&#x27;re actually measuring what they think they are measuring due to limitations in the experiment setup -- in order to prove a violation of locality your system cannot be in a cyclostationary equilibrium.<p>In such an equilibrium the system state effectively becomes a standing wave so you risk measuring an effect that was actually a result of a previous cycle and mistakenly interpret it as being a result of the current cycle -- implying a violation in locality because the &quot;cause&quot; was outside of the light cone of the effect. Note that this is analogous to confusing the group and phase velocities of a radio wave (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;What-is-the-difference-between-phase-velocity-and-group-velocity" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;What-is-the-difference-between-phase-v...</a>).

There is something very Taoistic about superdeterminism.<p>And there is something very Taoistic about homotopy type theory too.<p>Also, I feel that both superdeterminism and homotopy type theory have traces of the holographic principle in them in a somewhat conceptual or abstract way.<p>Perhaps there exists a nice correspondence between superdeterminism and homotopy type theory that can be used to extend (in a purely functional and categorical way) the simulation hypothesis into a full-fledged theory (and perhaps with its own nice little axiomatic system) to make sense of reality.

The problem is that superdeterminism contains a principle of explosion:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Principle_of_explosion" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Principle_of_explosion</a><p>If superdeterminism explains quantum mechanics, why not cosmic inflation? Why not matter asymmetry? Why not abiogenesis? Why not Brexit? Superdeterminism, by construction, can explain <i>everything</i> — and all there’s left to do is pray to God.

Can someone explain more clearly how being in a deterministic universe resolves the “problem” of Bell inequalities? It seems like even if the universe were deterministic it would not cause the classic polarizing-filters Bell inequality to seem “reasonable”. In fact it makes it seem less reasonable to me!

There was something formless and perfect before the universe was born.<p>It is serene. Empty.<p>Solitary. Unchanging.<p>Infinite. Eternally present.<p>It is the mother of the universe.<p>For lack of a better name,<p>I call it the Tao. It flows through all things,<p>inside and outside, and returns<p>to the origin of all things. The Tao is great.<p>The universe is great.<p>Earth is great.<p>Man is great.<p>These are the four great powers. Man follows the earth.<p>Earth follows the universe.<p>The universe follows the Tao.<p>The Tao follows only itself.

If Superdeterminism means that the initial state of the universe is such that the universe <i>appears</i> to follow quantum mechanics... why? Why would every single decision have its resolution set in a manner that appears to follow QM?

Superdeterminism is a self-defeating philosophy. In essence, it cedes everything to random chance, and makes all scientific inquiry meaningless. There is no longer any &quot;why&quot; or &quot;how.&quot; There is merely, &quot;That&#x27;s just the way it is.&quot; Any apparent order or structure which might be observed is exactly that: merely apparent. Therefore any attempt to understand the universe is vain.<p>It is little better than the presumption that planets move because a prime mover moves them. It is, in essence, to give as the final answer: &quot;Planets move as they do because they cannot do anything else.&quot;