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Comment by tps5 | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is this: Hooft is an "instrumentalist" as described in this article. He does not believe that quantum mechanics describes "what's really going on" and is interested in classical models that explain why QM makes such good predictions.

"Superdeterminism" is a very interesting perspective that Hooft feels could resolve this dilemma. Others feel that superdeterminism is not falsifiable, so there's no point in discussing it.

I came across this interesting article on stackexchange from a few years ago: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/34217/why-do-peop...

The first response is from Peter Shor, presumably the discoverer of Shor's algoithm. Kinda cool that such intelligent people with the highest academic credentials use a public forum.

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Actually the kind of superdeterministic theories proposed by t'Hooft are falsifiable. From [0] "If engineers ever succeed in making such quantum computers, it seems to me that the CAT is falsified; no classical theory can explain quantum mechanics." By "such quantum computers" he means computers that can run Shor's algorithm. "...but factoring a number with millions of digits into its prime factors will not be possible – unless fundamentally improved classical algorithms turn out to exist."

[0] - https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548

't Hooft's approach is the only superdeterministic theory I've heard of, so it's worthwhile for the novelty alone.

I've never been pursuaded by arguments that science is impossible in a superdeterministic world though. The fact that all current observations are consistent with a superdeterministic world and yet we still came up with a viable theory already proves that science is possible in such a world.

The physics stack exchange has basically two populations: people learning physics and asking introductory questions, and experts gathering to discuss detailed questions. It's really an example of a great egalitarian online community.

I think most people are "realists" as Weinberg mentions in his article. A lot of people (including myself) have bashed on so-called "instrumentalists" like Hooft, but after reading this Weinberg article, I am grateful for people like Hooft who are not here to "give up" and accept that there are necessary unknowns, and that there might be something going on underneath it all -- the Einstein way.

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