[ExI] teachers

Tue Aug 29 20:09:24 UTC 2023

On Tue, Aug 29, 2023, 3:32 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 29, 2023 at 12:11 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Aug 29, 2023, 2:21 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 29, 2023 at 12:58 AM efc--- via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Which interpretation do you subscribe to, or find most likely?
>>>>
>>>
>>> A version of superdeterminism.  The objections to it seem to be mostly
>>> of distaste, not any actual disproof other than via moral or subjective
>>> qualities.  (Such as, "Obviously we have free will, and superdeterminism
>>> says there's no free will," which has problems with both the claim of an
>>> undefined "free will" and that superdeterminism is necessarily opposed to
>>> it.)  These do not constitute actual disproof when it comes to objective
>>> reality.
>>>
>>
>> You seem to be describing regular determinism here, not superdeterminism,
>> which is something quite different from determinism. MW is deterministic,
>> for example.
>>
>
> According to superdeterminism, when there are two entangled photons or
> particles, it is not that measuring one of them suddenly causes the other
> to collapse into a certain state.  Rather, it was always in that state all
> along.  The only thing that travels at the speed of light to the other
> particle is the result of any actions the observer of the first particle
> takes.  Likewise, all other observations are the result of finding out how
> the universe always was.
>
> This, I am told, is not regular determinism.
>

I think you may not appreciate the Bell inequalities and how they threw a
wrench into the above description, which on the surface, seems completely
normal and ordinary and not at all fantastic.

The Bell inequalities show that the quantum correlations cannot be
determined in advance unless they know exactly in what way they will be
measured in the future.

So then, the deterministic process that chooses these particle properties
in advance, must know which strategy we will use to decide how to measure
the particles, it will know even if we use a random lottery to choose a
person in the audience to ask how to measure the particles, the process
that determined the particle state knew which person would be selected and
know what strategy they would use. Okay perhaps physics is that weird that
it knows how things will unfold and don't chooses particle properties in
advance such that when we measure them, we will always be fooled into
wrongly concluding they violate the Bell inequalities and make us think
they couldn't possibly be hidden variables.

But it gets stranger: it is one thing to assume laws of physics might
determine both particle properties and link them with lotteries and human
thought processes, but can physics determine math? Did the process that
sets particle properties also pick the digits of Pi? This is what we have
to believe under superdeterminism, because instead of using a random
process to decide how to measure the particles we might use the digits of
Pi. But even then, somehow, the particles knew to demonstrate correlations
that fool us into believing they violate the Bell inequality, by chosing
properties that are in accordance with the digits of Pi.

You don't think physics determined the digits of Pi, do you? What about the
digits of SQRT(2)?

> Technically this is not incompatible with multi-worlds.  Is there another
> world, identical in every way until one photon spun up instead of down?
> Superdeterminism is silent about that, because we would have no way to
> know.  It's only talking about our world.  Occam's Razor suggests there
> probably is not, though.
>
> It is possible there are actual scientific objections to it, but if so
>>> they've gotten lost in the noise.
>>>
>>
>> The objection to superdeterminism, as I see it, is that it's not a
>> scientific theory. It says no matter how nature really is, nature is
>> conspiring to bring us to a false conclusion. Science cannot operate under
>> such conditions and any fantasy can be entertained under such a a belief,
>> like there being unicorns everywhere that disappear whenever we turn our
>> heads to see them or point a camera in their direction.
>>
>
> Nature is not "conspiring" at all.  Nature is inanimate, so far as we can
> tell.  Things happen to be certain ways; what we conclude from it is up to
> us.  Nature did not "conspire" to make leading scientists in the 19th
> century to believe in aether theories.  It is the same deal here.
>

If think to say this, you must not fully grasp what the Bell's inequalities
imply for what superdeterminism is doing. It implies nature (or something)
is actively working against us in order to lead us astray and falsely
conclude that hidden variables weren't possible, when there are hidden
variables, but they're chosen in such a way to mislead us (always and
regardless of what process we turn to to use).

This video is a good introduction to the Bell inequality:
https://youtu.be/0RiAxvb_qI4?si=yE7fYafmxYGnsk-E

> But interpreting that to mean that superdeterminism is unfalsifiable - the
> same can, as I understand it, be said of any of the common interpretations
> of quantum mechanics at this time.
>

I think superdeterminism is much worse than not being falsifiable. It's a
retreat to say methods of science and falsifiability aren't even
applicable, because nature isn't reliable or orderly, but rather is
unreliable in a way that is adversarial and working against us.

  This is why I'm picking, elsewhere in this thread, on the specifics of
> wave function collapse determination not confirming or denying the
> multi-world hypothesis.
>

Wave function collapse is the difference between CI and MW. MW is simply
the Shrodinger equation holds always (It is QM without the collapse
postulate).

  There are versions of multi-world that include collapse and there are
> versions that deny collapse,
>

Which ones? I am not familiar with these.

so proving or disproving collapse does not prove or disprove multi-world.
>

I disagree.

So far as I know, multi-world is likewise presently unfalsifiable.
>

In practice or in principle?

I think it is in principle falsifiable, and in practice it is so far
confirmed, given that quantum computers have been built and they work.

If quantum computers get large enough to run mind simulations on, that
provides a direct confirmation of many worlds (at least MW would be true
for such simulated minds).

Jason
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