Comment by trevyn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by trevyn | Hacker News Reader

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Bell:

There is a way to escape the inference of superluminal speeds and spooky action at a distance. But it involves absolute determinism in the universe, the complete absence of free will. Suppose the world is super-deterministic, 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, including the "decision" by the experimenter to carry out one set of measurements rather than another, the difficulty disappears. There is no need for a faster than light signal to tell particle A what measurement has been carried out on particle B, because the universe, including particle A, already "knows" what that measurement, and its outcome, will be.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism

I think it’s useful to be clear about the dividing line between demonstrated scientific results and our scientific intuitions, even when those intuitions are driven by observed patterns that have been reliable in the past. Intuitions are excellent drivers for formulating new theories and experiments, but it is epistemically dangerous to conflate beliefs and knowledge in our minds.

> Suppose the world is super-deterministic, 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, including the "decision" by the experimenter to carry out one set of measurements rather than another, the difficulty disappears.

You see, I think Bell is kind of obfuscating here: this is just normal determinism and it seems to me like Lagrange would have been perfectly fine with this. Causality only, even for the atoms that happen to reside in a human brain.

Edit: what do you mean with your last paragraph? Because I interpret it like this: the belief that interferes is that we have free will and can choose and basically change the past (counterfactuals). But I have a hunch that you mean it like: QM is weird, be careful.

My understanding is that the “super” in superdeterminism is just making clear that we are considering the experimenter completely determined as well, but yes, they are essentially the same thing.

Last paragraph I mean what you interpret — our everyday experience of “free will” may blind us to certain possibilities that we have no strong evidence for or against, just as our everyday experience of a classical world makes QM seem “weird” and unintuitive, even when the experimental evidence is well-established.

There’s a particular curiosity when the possibility of a world without free will calls into question the extent of the power of science itself. Are there other techniques that can provide satisfying arguments about the potential nature of reality in a world where we cannot rely on the power of experiment to reveal this nature?

I think it does call into question the power of science, but also: assuming non-determinism does not give us this power back! If materials (atoms / humans) can arbitrarily disregard the laws of nature by making choices (however that would be implemented), what does an experiment even mean?

Edit:

This is a relevant theorem, that nicely complements Bell:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem

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