As an (self-styled) Epicurean-Spinozist, ergo compatibilist, I'm not troubled by "superdeterminism". Maybe this article, TiredThinker, you'll find useful:

Does Quantum Mechanics Rule Out Free Will?
Superdeterminism, a radical quantum hypothesis, says our “choices” are illusory

March 10, 2022

A conjecture called superdeterminism, outlined decades ago, is a response to several peculiarities of quantum mechanics: the apparent randomness of quantum events; their apparent dependence on human observation, or measurement; and the apparent ability of a measurement in one place to determine, instantly, the outcome of a measurement elsewhere, an effect called nonlocality.

Einstein, who derided nonlocality as “spooky action at a distance,” insisted that quantum mechanics must be incomplete; there must be hidden variables that the theory overlooks. Superdeterminism is a radical hidden-variables theory proposed by physicist John Bell. He is renowned for a 1964 theorem, now named after him, that dramatically exposes the nonlocality of quantum mechanics.

Bell said in a BBC interview in 1985 that the puzzle of nonlocality vanishes if you assume that “the world is superdeterministic, with not just inanimate nature running on behind-the-scenes clockwork, but with our behavior, including our belief that we are free to choose to do one experiment rather than another, absolutely predetermined.”

[ ... ] — John Horgan, SciAm_Opinion

And the rest of the article is here:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-quantum-mechanics-rule-out-free-will/

Good article, thanks for sharing. :up:



It's another variety of determinism. The difference being that this "superdeterminism" claims to show that even QM is deterministic in some sense.

I think appealing to physics for human choices is to fantastically stretch the scope of physics. By this logic, these people should be psychologists and solve all people's problems.

I think appealing to physics for human choices is to fantastically stretch the scope of physics. — Manuel

:up:

It says Einstein didn't believe in free will or at least had doubts? I thought he was a religion person talking about "God not playing dice" and what not. Isn't it a main tenant of Abraham religions that everyone chooses and thus can be reasonably punished or rewarded?

It says superdeterminism assumes variables that will make it make sense as deterministic, but hasn't specified what those variables could possibly be?

Maybe this article, TiredThinker, you'll find useful: — 180 Proof

Or maybe not. I might question some of it.

their apparent dependence on human observation — John Horgan, SciAm_Opinion

This has never been demonstrated. No experiment behaves differently with a human observer than the same experiment without one. In fact, almost all quantum experiments are performed without human observation, and it is only well after the fact that the humans become aware of the results in analysis of the data.

or measurement; and the apparent ability of a measurement in one place to determine, instantly, the outcome of a measurement elsewhere, an effect called nonlocality.

This nonlocality also has never been demonstrated, else all the local interpretations (about half of the interpretations) would have been falsified.

Superdeterminism is a radical hidden-variables theory proposed by physicist John Bell. He is renowned for a 1964 theorem, now named after him, that dramatically exposes the nonlocality of quantum mechanics.

This totally misrepresents Bell's theorem, which proves that locality and counterfactual definiteness cannot both be true. It does not demonstrate that either is false, Superdeterminism is a loophole in the proof, suggesting that there are very much experiments that would show both to be true, but we (and any device) lack the free will (or even randomness) to perform them.
Bell does not suggest a preference for superdeterminism, only that it cannot be eliminated as a possibility. There are plenty of perfectly sane interpretations that preserve locality and also free will.

:ok:

As I understand it, from the Wikipedia article, superdeterminism is simply the position that a hidden-variable theory is viable if there's no free will, free will as indicated by the experimenters' liberty to choose what to measure, which experiments to perform. I'm fuzzy on the details though; rather unfortunate.

Bell said in a BBC interview in 1985 that the puzzle of nonlocality vanishes if you assume that “the world is superdeterministic, with not just inanimate nature running on behind-the-scenes clockwork, but with our behavior, including our belief that we are free to choose to do one experiment rather than another, absolutely predetermined.” — John Horgan, SciAm_Opinion

I just read, in Stephen Nadler's A Book Forged in Hell, about Spinoza's concept of divine determinism, as evidenced by reliable (consistent ; unvarying) natural laws. "Spinoza's cosmos is, in other words, a strictly deterministic, even necessitarian one. Everything, without exception, is causally determined to be such as it is . . . " To me, that sounds like "superdeterminism", or perhaps super-natural-determinism. But since Spinoza's day, empirical Science has found that, ironically, on the most fundamental scale, nature seems to be random & acausal*1. Fortunately, on the macro level of reality, the aimless vectors of quantum chaos cancel-out to present the superficial appearance of an unbroken chain of cause & effect*2. Which allows us to predict future events, at least statistically & locally.

So, the universe appears to unfold in an orderly manner, but with some room for creative disorder. If so, the "behind-the scenes clock" may not be absolutely deterministic, but occasionally skips a beat, -- allowing for the obvious creativity of Evolution. If Change was rigidly regular, nothing new (random mutations) would ever emerge from the chaotic swirling of atoms. In fact, the result of haphazard mutation & systematic selection is the syncopated rhythm of reality. This emergent order from random events permits us to depend on stable locality at the human eye-level, even though the underlying quantum field is non-local.

Hence, the symphony of nature has many parts. In the quantum section, causality is randomized, allowing for jazz-like free-style within the limits of Probability. Meanwhile, the macro instruments follow the causal conductor to play a harmonious melody, that appeals to our sense of order. Translated into philosophical jargon, such freedom within determinism is "compatible". Such flexibility is the only way to have both determined Destiny, and freedom of choice, resulting in Order within Chaos*3. As an example, imagine mountain climbers planning to ascend to the top of Mt. Everest, The ultimate goal is predetermined as the highest point. But there are many alternative paths to the top, hence options to choose from. The end of the world may be determined, but there are many ways to get there. :smile:


*1. Acausal :
Albert Einstein, also a founder of quantum physics, strenuously objected to the notion of acausality in the theory. He famously argued that “God does not play dice.” Einstein felt that if something in the universe appears to act randomly, it’s only because our understanding of it is not deep enough. He felt that there is always a cause.
http://www.quantumphysicslady.org/glossary/acausal/
Note -- Einstein's "God" is the First & Final Cause, but in-between there is freedom of choice for sentient & rational agents

*2. Quantum Mischief Rewrites the Laws of Cause and Effect :
Spurred on by quantum experiments that scramble the ordering of causes and their effects, some physicists are figuring out how to abandon causality altogether.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-mischief-rewrites-the-laws-of-cause-and-effect-20210311/

*3. The Order in Chaos Theory :
Freud believed that human experiences emerge from past experiences based on linear cause and effect. The Chaos Theory negates this belief as it dictates that nature is created out of a sum of many tiny pulsating objects that we now know as patterns. . . . This is justified by the Uncertainty Principle, which rejects accuracy in all its form. This is the reason why systems are called complex because they are unsolvable by either the human mind or any super computer.
https://medium.com/@universalintelligencespace/the-order-in-chaos-theory-192e2d67154a

Freedom within Determinism :
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwTerminology.html

ONE OF MANY PATHS TO THE DESTINATION

IIRC, Spinoza points out in Ethica that attributions of chance (or "free will") are a result / symptom of inadequate knowledge of causes. Classical observations are limited with respect to quantum phenomena, no? Einstein contends that QT is incomplete – Rovelli, Smolin, Bohm et al concur (though, as it turns out, so is GR). "Superdeterminism" is merely a proposed speculative fix. The jury is still out (and may never come in). Btw, Spinoza's metaphysical understanding, I think, only pertains to the non-planck scale nature – physical laws – of Newton-Einstein.

Stephen Nadler's A Book Forged in Hell

Excellent book on Spinoza's first (minor) masterwork. :fire:

In fact, almost all quantum experiments are performed without human observation, and it is only well after the fact that the humans become aware of the results in analysis of the data. — noAxioms

Wouldn't that just mean the results could be in a superpositioned state until some human makes an observation? That's the basis of Schrodinger's criticism of the Copenhagen Interpretation, but how would we rule it out?

Wouldn't that just mean the results could be in a superpositioned state until some human makes an observation? — Marchesk

Sure. This is the basis for the Wigner interpretation, which Wigner himself abandoned because it necessarily leads to solipsism.
If you read my entire comment, I said that human observation being the thing that causes collapse "has never been demonstrated". I didn't say it has been demonstrated to be false. The Wigner interpretation remains valid despite the solipsism. It has to be one specific human causing the collapses, and not any other.

That's the basis of Schrodinger's criticism of the Copenhagen Interpretation, but how would we rule it out?

Sort of I guess. Superposition by definition means that the two states measurably interfere with each other, but there's no way you're going to get a live-cat system to interfere with a dead-cat system. They've done it with macroscopic objects (large enough to see unaided), but there's no way to prevent decoherence of a cat in a box no matter how technologically advanced your box is.

Superposition by definition means that the two states measurably interfere with each other . . . — noAxioms

It doesn't seem so outlandish if one sticks to the mathematics: solutions of Schrodinger's equations are linear combinations of one another. One of these crops up upon measurement.

Einstein didn't believe in free will or at least had doubts? I thought he was a religion person talking about "God not playing dice" and what not. — TiredThinker

Einstein's God was Nature, or the logical creator of nature, like Plato's God was the god of logic Zeus.

free will as indicated by the experimenters' liberty to choose what to measure, which experiments to perform — Agent Smith

That sounds about right to me. Scientists freely determine the bounds and setup of controlled observation and analysis. In between, the experiment proceeds in the physical world in real time independent of humans. Experimental details are indeterminate to start until analysis succeeds in sifting planned or fortuitous often statistical information from the data. So the simplified question becomes what small part of nature can be described by any logic.

What would nature do in our absence, could there possibly be any conditions for either determinism or free will?

If time doesn't flow and the future already happened, is reality superdeterministic?

That sounds about right to me. Scientists freely determine the bounds and setup of controlled observation and analysis. In between, the experiment proceeds in the physical world in real time independent of humans. Experimental details are indeterminate to start until analysis succeeds in sifting planned or fortuitous often statistical information from the data. So the simplified question becomes what small part of nature can be described by any logic.

What would nature do in our absence, could there possibly be any conditions for either determinism or free will? — magritte

In this case I merely paraphrased Wikipedia! :lol:

What would nature do in our absence, could there possibly be any conditions for either determinism or free will? — magritte
In this case I merely paraphrased Wikipedia! :lol: — Agent Smith

No matter. :cool: I just posed a question to think about. Philosophy is all about missing questions not 'truth'. It's aporia.

No matter. :cool: I just posed a question to think about. Philosophy is all about missing questions not 'truth'. It's aporia. — magritte

Aporia is somehow supposed to induce/lead up to ataraxia. No clues as to how and why (Wikipedia's not helpful on that front).

If time doesn't flow and the future already happened, is reality superdeterministic? — litewave

This a very good philosophical question indeed.

This a very good philosophical question indeed. — javi2541997

It's not actually, since makes several incorrect assumptions.

If time doesn't flow and the future already happened, is reality superdeterministic? — litewave

1) In an interpretation where time doesn't flow, the concept of an event having 'happened' is meaningless.

2) Determinism for the most part isn't a function of one's interpretation of time. You can have both deterministic and non-deterministic physics in both flowing time physics and in block physics.

3) You are also seemingly confusing superdeterminsim with plain old determinism. The latter means that the entire subsequent history of everything can be determined from any given state. It requires that the system (nature) is causally closed, and that there is no fundamental randomness going on (dice rolling as Einstein put it).

Determinism doesn't mean that a future measurement is guaranteed from any given state. For instance, under the MWI interpretation, not even an omniscient entity can tell you when the radioactive atom before you will decay, and yet MWI is a completely deterministic interpretation. It posits no randomness.
A person still has free choice (physics definition) under determinism.

Superdeterminism goes well beyond determinism, and it suggests that not only determinsim, but that choices at every step prevent one from empirically measuring anything that would contradict the physics we teach. So say your cup rises from the table, but only when you're not looking. You're lack the free will (physics definition again) to choose to look at the cup while it is levitating that way, so we incorrectly believe that the laws of gravity and such prevent that sort of thing. Induction completely fails as a scientific tool, and all of science is currently based on it.

Read Dr. Johan Hansson’s proof that the universe is superdeterministic. See Physics Essays Vol. 33, No. 2 (June 2020).

I've been reading up on this for the past few days or so because it came up in other conversations.

Superdeterminism is hands-down the *worst* possible take on quantum mechanics. Basically the overall narrative goes like this, as far as I can tell:

Quantum Mechanics comes and makes a bunch of predictions. Einstein (EPR) says "yeah well quantum mechanics is dumb and I don't think the world really works like that, I think it works like normal classical physics". John Bell comes in many years later and says "Hey guys, I figured out a way to test if QM or Einstein is right! If we do this experiment, then if we get these particular results, Einstein can't possibly have been right."

Well we do the experiments, Einstein was wrong, classical physics is wrong, QM was right.

Then Superdeterminists say "yeah but maybe it still works classically, but the reason we're getting the experimental result we're seeing is because *everything in the universe has conspired to trick us into thinking QM is true instead of some type of classical physics*."

That's more or less the philosophy of superdeterminism - that we should ignore all quantum experiments because any test result we get is the result of a universal conspiracy.

It would be nice to know whether or not QM is actually deterministic, but it has no bearing on the question of free will.

Randomness in mental processes does not make a will truly free. What would matter is whether or not there is a non-physical aspect to mental processes, that would set it apart from the physical universe.

What would matter is whether or not there is a non-physical aspect to mental processes, that would set it apart from the physical universe. — Relativist

Personally, I don't see why that would matter either.

But none of those things has much to do with superdetermism imo. Superdetermism is a very unique idea (uniquely stupid, in my opinion) about how to approach bells theorem. Some type of determinism could be true without it being superdetermism.

Superdeterminism is hands-down the *worst* possible take on quantum mechanics. — flannel jesus

Agree with all that you posted. It isn't even listed among the interpretations of quantum mechanics. It's significance is not in it being anything plausible, but rather it being a loophole in what otherwise counts as Bells 'theorem', which implies a proof.

[/quote]everything in the universe has conspired to trick us into thinking QM is true[/quote]Very similar to the BiV argument actually. There are monsters around every corner but the universe conspires to never let you look where there is one.

It would be nice to know whether or not QM is actually deterministic — Relativist

As flannel jesus points out, determinism and superdeterminism are very different things. Not sure how knowing about determinism would help anything, except of course to falsify all the views where it isn't.

I mean, if presentism is not the case (an interpretation of time for which there is no evidence at all), then determinism is true regardless of one's choice of quantum interpretation.

How does superdeterminism differ from the Bohmiam interpretation of QM?

Then Superdeterminists say "yeah but maybe it still works classically, but the reason we're getting the experimental result we're seeing is because *everything in the universe has conspired to trick us into thinking QM is true instead of some type of classical physics*."

:up:, although sometimes the term gets applied to less spurious theories.

One way I've seen it framed is this:

Lots of experiments, particularly modified Wigner's Friend experiments done with photons, seem to suggest that one of:
Locality;
Free Choice; and
The existence of a single set of observations all can agree upon

...must go.

But likely, two of them need to go, or perhaps all three. "Free choice" sounds like the easy one to get rid of. "Ok, but we don't believe in some sort of uncaused free will, easy choice." Except that's not what free choice is. It just refers to the experimenters' choice in making measurements, which can be perfectly "deterministic." To reject this is to say "somehow, through some mysterious mechanism, the universe is set up 'just-so' so that our measurements and observations always correspond to what appears to be non-locality. But really it's because what happens inside an experimenter is somehow causally related (in a directly relevant sense) to whatever their measuring, before they measure anything.

For instance, the spin of a photon you want to measure remotely in a lab 300 miles away, which you didn't even know existed a second ago, is going to determine which property you choose to measure.

Superdeterminism isn't really an interpretation in quantum foundations, like Pilot-Wave or multiple worlds is. Some interpretations are sometimes said to be superdeterministic (e.g. retro-causality, Many Worlds, etc., depends on how you define things though) but the term more often refers to a "theory without a theory," i.e., explaining different sorts of experiments related to entanglement without positing any overarching interpretation of QM.

The benefit here, if you want to champion "common sense" views is that many theories that might fix your "non-conmmmon sense problems," also say some pretty wild things. And you don't want that if you're a champion of common sense, so you remove the part you want and reject the rest.

The difficulty here is that this is not really an explanation or interpretation, so much as a premise just being asserted because it is "more common sense." Of course, what is often meant by this "closer to the classical picture," and we should also question if a view that took so long to emerge is really common sense or not.

In superdeterminism, you get non-local correlations because a common cause in the past affecting both particles through chains of local events tracing back to that common cause, and so don't require faster than light communication.

In Bohm, you don't need a common cause in the past, particles communicate faster than light across space directly.

Thanks

How does superdeterminism differ from the Bohmiam interpretation of QM? — Relativist

SD is a local "interpretation". BM is not since it requires FTL causation.
Under BM, one can consider empirical measurements as evidence. Under SD, one cannot, which is why 'interpretation' is in scare quotes above.

Lots of experiments, particularly modified Wigner's Friend experiments done with photons, seem to suggest that one of:
Locality;
Free Choice; and
The existence of a single set of observations all can agree upon

...must go. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Keep in mind that free choice in physics is a different definition than what is typically meant in philosophy of mind. The physics definition is closer to how a compatibilist would define free choice.

But yes, per Bell's theorem, either locality or scientific realism must go. The loophole is superdeterminism where statistical measurements cannot be taken due to the lack of 'free choice' to measure anything that the conspiracy wants to be kept hidden.