Oxford Philosophy of Physics Seminars, Michaelmas term 2023 9 November - Tim Palmer (Oxford) and Chris Timpson (Oxford) Title: Superdeterminism and No-Conspiracy Revisited: A Debate
Good talk on hidden variables modeling constraints and guidrails. Though quantum eraser delayed choices is another one besides bell. The particle holds a waveform on it. Like Fredric Schuller put it in a lecture. The Schrodinger equation should be seen as a partial or incomplete solution set. It gives probability distribution from a waveform, but no full path. It would be nice to have people look into hidden variables modeling again. Thank you for sharing the video.
I would have liked to be included in this discussion; previous discussions were often discontinued, while still the issues seemed to be not totally clearly exposed. They often have a religious overtone, which I would prefer to avoid. To me, quantum mechanics is a marvellous mathematical scheme to handle fast moving ingredients in nature’s dynamical degrees of freedom, by using Hilbert space, not as a new theory but as an instrument. The system we then describe is totally classical, and, in that sense, you could call it deterministic, or ‘superdeterministic’, as you wish. But no conspiracy, no free will. Exactly like planets moving in ellipses. Are they conspiring? Do they have free will? You tell me ...
Great presentation. I loved the book, Tim. Around minute 57 the assertion that v-independence can be expect to hold via coarse-graining misses the mark for me. It may hold over a desired period of time, but the underlying point of chaos and the sensitivity of initial conditions *sometimes* means that the assumption is somewhat dubious. The assumption requires a teleological goal for the coarse-graining, but the fundamental truth in determinism is such that only the full and exact details of any measurement entail the outcome. As that ability to measure lay beyond human ability, we must coarse-grain; nature has no such limitation. I appreciated the point about probability being problematic in a necessaritarian world-view. Things either happen or they don't. Our ability to predict the future is contingent upon coarse-graining, not caring about the fine details for the sake of the bigger picture, but that only works over a certain amount of time, depending on the particular prediction and subject. Thanks for this. I enjoyed it.
I'm more on Maudlin's side of this discussion, but it's hard to remain silent about Timpson's vendetta against the name "superdeterminism". I can think of no better way to relegate your nascent theories to obscurity than to bannish Bell's memorable catch-phrase in favor of an unpronounceable technical term like "λ-dependence". I really don't understand Timpson's rejection of the Superdeterminism label. After all, you're questioning the otherwise universal assumption of statistical independence, the bedrock of scientific experimentalism. If that's not determinism taken to the extreme, then what is?