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Comment by tritium | Hacker News Reader

The "randomness" of QM is merely an aspect of the discipline humans have designed, in order to digest the predictable parts of the systems examined.

We know, that due to differences of scale, and due to the fact that we must make predictions about systems in motion, as they exist, we must divorce ourselves from the concept of control.

But, the "randomness" is not assuredly an innate component of reality. It is simply how we deal with the circumstances as they have happened to confront us.

We have a tool that we use, in order to inspect reality. The information that the tool provides to us is practical and useful, but still represents only an estimate of unknowable facts.

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You seem to be expounding the idea of local realism a la Albert Einstein

> "God does not play dice with the universe."

So you're in good company. However, it's more complicated than it appears and most physicists do not agree.

The randomness in QM is different and deeper than that which appears classically. For example, a coin flip isn't really random: if we can measure the coin's weight and the imparted momentum precisely enough we can predict the result. In QM this is fundamentally impossible, a measurement of a superposition state produces a random outcome. It's not merely and expression of our lack of knowledge of the underlying facts. Experimental violations of Bell's inequality demonstrate that there are no underlying facts in QM (called 'hidden variables'). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem

Unless you accept one of:

A) There is no free will: we are all enacting a clockwork fate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism

B) Non-locality (faster than light interactions between distant systems)

It sound like you may already accept A, in which case fair enough!

My statement was written in such a way, so as to deliberately avoid this part of the conversation, forcing you're use of the word "seem" to be injected into your conclusion.

I am aware of the charged concepts of Bell's Theorem, Fate and Determinism and the interplay of Quantum Entanglement and that unique quirk of particle spins seeming to solidify into concrete realities, only after observation.

Basically, I'm taking the position of the agnostic, and concluding nothing. I am aware of the conflicts and debates you've enumerated, and eliciting no opinion or stance.

What I am saying, is that all of these things I've avoided are human interpretations of observed realities for now, and remain mostly unresolved, with neither side really giving in, regardless of numbers and head count on either side.

I think you make an important point, which if I understand correctly is that it's easy for lay persons to overlook the interpretive nature of QM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mec...). Do most people know that QM or new theories that describe nature more comprehensively may not even require randomness at all? I know this starts to stray off the mainstream path but the point is nothing is set in stone and in fact, we can already be certain there's more to the story.

I think pop science is so important when done well, not withstanding the problems and pitfalls that come with it. But it seems damn hard to get across some of these subtleties in an easy to understand but still meaningful way. Maybe when the next generation of science does a better job of unifying things it will be somehow easier to grok for all of us.

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