The Fallacy of Sabine HossenfelderThis ends with an appeal to the authority of a philosopher to badmouth superdeterminism.Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder is a popular science communicator, with often controversial views. In this video, I have attempted to take a critical look at the rise of Sabine, her involvement in string theory wars, recent controversy, and expert opinions.
Perhaps in response to this, she dropped this video:
Gerard ‘t Hooft won the Nobel Prize in 1999, and the recent Breakthrough Prize, for his work on the Standard Model of Particle physics. He also thinks that quantum mechanics is nonsense. Indeed, he has an alternative theory for quantum mechanics that he says is how the world really works. This theory has been almost entirely ignored by physicists. Which is unfortunate, because he predicts a limit for what quantum computers can do.He indeed has one of the best Nobel Prizes in theoretical Physics in recent decades, and he wrote a kooky book promoting superdeterminism. So it is not just her opinion; it is he opinion of one of the world's most respected theoretical physicists.Today I want to tell you about ‘t Hooft’s ideas about quantum physics, to the extent that I understand them.
They are entitled to their opinions, and she seems to be accurately quoting his opinions. So I am not objecting to her posting these videos. I just want to make two points.
Superdeterminism is part of the existential crisis iceberg, like the idea that the universe is all part of your imagination. It cannot be proved or disproved, but accepting it requires rejecting nearly all of the last three millennia of science.
The argument that superdeterminism saves locality from the Bell test experiments is entirely fallacious. Mainstream textbook physics accepts locality and rejects superdeterminism, and does not suffer any contradictions.
Update: The craziest thing about tHooft's argument is that the whole purpose of his conjectured model is to preserve locality by saying that the experimenter has no free will, and his design decisions are determined by the Big Bang in order to constrain the results.
Yes, locality usually means that causality acts withing the light cone, and the experimenter is within the light cone of the Big Bang. So the theory is local in that sense. But it is not local in the sense of depending on events that are close in space and time. It depends on events 14 billion years in the past.
Roger,
ReplyDeleteSuperdeterminism is a bullshit idea as far as it goes logically. You CAN'T know ALL the initial states of everything going on right now for anything, MUCH LESS what happened at the so called Big Bang. In addition, you would ALSO be a part of the initial states of the universe if you were there to observe it, so unless you are at least as old as the universe....not going to happen.
This is logically the same argument as saying, "If I was omniscient I could predict everything..." which aren't so you don't. You would also require a computer capable of simulating the entire universe to run the program with your initial state data, so I suppose you could say the universe IS the computer running the universe and will run until it hits its halt state, but that just further pushes out any such 'superdeterminism' fantasies.
If your God himself needs to create a universe to see what would happen, maybe you could take it as a hint that you really CAN'T calculate your way to omniscience. As a creator god who initiated the universe would also be a part of the initial states, I'm curious some piss ant physicists would be able to nail those down in their grand math.
Roger,
ReplyDeleteTo throw even more gasoline on superdeterminism,
To know the initial states of the universe you would also have to determine when that was and how you are going to define that with any certainty, as you can't catch a train if you don't even know when that train is at the station.
Each time they build another telescope capable of looking further back into time, they find that the universe is ever increasingly large. In order to account for this with a 14 billion something year old universe, the speeds at which huge mega structures of countless groups of galaxies would need to travel is becoming ridiculous. At some point this age of the universe is going to have to be revisited simply because the universe will be visibly so vast it would have to have matter traveling near or faster than light to account for the size in the amount of time they estimate. This also doesn't account for two other assumptions that are just as likely with what we know.
1. The universe may not have had a beginning, it might just have internal squeezes and expansions in various places as matter and energy move about.
2. The universe may just be so old, our 14+ billion year estimate might seem as quaint as our believing the entire universe WAS our galaxy back in the early fifties. Its actual size may be just many magnitudes larger than we even can accommodate with present theory.
Superdeterminism to me is about on par with the paradox, "Can Zeus make a rock so heavy he can't pick it up." It sounds like an honest question, but it really doesn't resolve anything and just chases it's own tail.
Dear [or in the Californian / American way of saying it] ``Hi'' Roger , [or in the Californian / American way ``:'']
ReplyDeleteYou said:
``Mainstream textbook physics accepts locality and rejects superdeterminism, and does not suffer any contradictions.''
There are three parts to it:
(i) Mainstream textbook physics accepts locality:
Cite any five good QM/RQM/QFT books any one of which manages to actually to bring itself to say it, without also contradicting its own content elsewhere, especially the maths part of it, within the *same* volume. The choice is entirely yours.
[Helpful hint: Don't rely too much on the opinions of my some time part-time ``Guru'' viz. Dr. Lubos(h) Motl. Or, for that matter, for the more recent times,the ``physicist of physicists,'' viz. Professor Sydney Coleman. [Truth matters.]]
(ii) ``and rejects superdeterminism''
Both of us know that there isn't a single UG text-book that even takes cognizance of that non-science. [I won't add, the way the Convent-educated / IABrats very well settled in your country *by* you Americans were driven to say, back then when they were in India, and in such a context: ``And we all know it.'' I have always suspected whether they might not be ``thinking'' in terms of reproducing complete sentences.]
(iii) ``does not suffer any contradictions.''
Tch. Your faith --- blind faith, I must add --- in the ``physics'' developed in the West in the QFT times, including by your country-men [and mine too], is touching, in a way. ``Touche''. Is that what your better learned friends and colleagues say while being in such a [``delicate'' etc.] context?
Naiveté. Is it? The maths kind of a naiveté? In any case, the sort of maths that actually is detached from reality.
[Since I mentioned Lubos[h]: Ask him about the diagram which Feynman painted / had painted on his Californian / American van: How about those very heavy atoms? And, in any case: Is there a chance that Feynman's mathematical theory might Break Down? *Provably* so? Despite his Nobel? And work with the ``Challenger'' disaster, etc.? What is Lubos[h]'s or other's answer(s)? That this question is ``philosophy''?]
iqWaves!
--Ajit
Pretty much all science books implicitly assume locality, and experimenter free will.
ReplyDelete``Pretty much all science books implicitly assume locality,''
ReplyDeleteWho are you?
1. D.W. in disguise? A.S. (AICTE)? or Ray T. [[May be] Born in Alabama American]?
Note, I said: ``Cite any five good QM/RQM/QFT books any one of which manages to actually to bring itself to say it,...''
And you have *this* reply to post? At your own blog? Without your wanting ever to delete it?
Two sub-points, in *continuation* of the above:
1. And, without citing a single book? What happened to your American ``pride'' that Indians like me couldn't simply be *buying* your *American* authors' books? In *the* *market*?
2. Or is it Einstein? Or ``Geometry?'' ``Symmetry?'' ``Princeton?'' ``Berkeley?'' ``Geometry [again]?'' ``Friend from MIT?''
Or, Einstein?
iqWaves!
--Ajit
[
PS: Now I know how you post your posts and all. In case you ever feel that you are being treated in any unjust manner for whatever reasons --- mathematical, imagined, or real --- you know at least one man (his email ID) where you can write.
iqWaves!
]
If you think I am wrong, then go ahead and give an example.
ReplyDeleteAn example, of what? What does South African Grok3 suggest to you?
DeleteiqWaves!
--Ajit
Roger,
ReplyDeleteI watched Sabine's video twice. While Sabine has said she believes in superdeterminism, she did not say she thinks T'hooft's ideas really change anything useful, but his ideas were interesting. She didn't say she thought QM was wrong, but she did say there may be a better way that explains more looking forward. I don't think that is a very controversial opinion. The universe isn't calculating probability waves for what happens, It is we humans who are using them describe the universe.
My guess is that Sabine has been stung by criticism that experts say she is wrong, so this time she stuck to quoting an expert. She has advocated superdeterminism in the past, although not necessarily tHooft's version of it.
ReplyDelete