[ExI] Google’s Willow Quantum Chip: Proof of the Multiverse?

[Adrian Tymes]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2025, 1:26 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Superdeterminism is a hidden variables theory. One where the hidden
> variables are assigned their values at the time the particles are created.
> Do you agree with this much of the standard definition of superdeterminism?
>

Yes, except for "are assigned" and possibly the time aspect.

They have values when created, but "assigned" may imply that someone does
the assigning.  "One where the hidden variables have their values at the
time..." would be more accurate.

As to the time aspect: at least some particles appear to have at least some
values depending on properties from before they existed.  For example, when
an electron changes energy state around an atom and emits a photon, that
photon's energy will depend on the difference between the states that
electron is transitioning from and to.  Likewise, when a proton and an
electron smash into each other resulting in a neutron, that neutron's
initial position and velocity are highly dependent on that proton's and
electron's.  Similar to the lack of data about interstellar matter giving
rise to descriptions of "dark matter", we have not yet mapped subatomic
forces well enough to know for sure that it is all such properties, but
that would be consistent with the evidence thus far.  (Unlike with dark
matter, it is not yet known if this mapping is theoretically possible.  The
debate between superdetermination, MWI, et al may turn out to be
unprovable.)

Thus: at least some of the properties depend on things from before particle
creation - sometimes, ultimately, very far before.

If so, then I would pose this challenge: by what mechanism are they
> assigned?
>

In at least some cases, possibly all: pre-existing, all the way back to the
Big Bang.  We do not know what happened before the Big Bang, and that would
include how this state of things came to be.

I say "at least some" because some at-the-time generation mechanisms have
yet to be ruled out.  But even in these cases, once the particle exists it
has its values.

How come they are assigned in a way that will anticipate the manner in
> which they will later be measured, when that decision may be made in a way
> seemingly causally disconnected from the assignment of the hidden variables?
>

They are not.  Again: in every specific instance I have examined where
someone claimed that an a priori distribution was modified by subsequent
actions (as opposed to e.g. filtering out some particles so as to change
the nature of the distribution after it was generated), it turned out to
not be the case - if one accepts that the a priori distribution fully
existed, even if hidden, before the alleged modification.

It is, however, fully within the capability of observers to see this
distribution and convince themselves there is a causal link.

(One might wonder, if possibly all values go back to at least the Big Bang,
if the decision to measure a thing in a certain way thus effectively
predates the particle's creation.  Whether or not that's possible, it does
not seem necessary to explain this.)

For example, with a distribution (evenly distributed on average) of a
certain property of 1 1 0 1 0 0 - if you take every third particle and
measure just the first two third particles that one time, you'll get 0 0.
This does not mean that you set the original distribution to 0 0 0 0 0 0,
nor that it somehow anticipated that you'd do that and set up so you'd get
0 0, no matter how stridently you insist it did.  Try again with another
distribution and you'll have equal odds of 0 0, 1 0, 0 1, or 1 1.
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