In quantum mechanics, superdeterminism is a loophole in Bell's theorem, that allows one to evade it by postulating that all systems being measured are causally correlated with the choices of which measurements to make on them.[1] It is conceivable that someone could exploit this loophole to construct a local hidden variable theory that reproduces the predictions of quantum mechanics. Superdeterminists do not recognize the existence of genuine chances or possibilities anywhere in the cosmos.
Bell's theorem assumes that the measurements performed at each detector can be chosen independently of each other and of the hidden variable being measured. But in a superdeterministic theory this is not true, they are necessarily correlated. Since the choice of measurements and the hidden variable are predetermined, the results at one detector can depend on which measurement is done at the other without any need for information to travel faster than the speed of light.
Thus, it is conceivable that freedom of choice has been restricted since the beginning of the universe in the Big Bang, with every future measurement predetermined by correlations established at the Big Bang . This would make superdeterminism untestable , since experimenters would never be able to eliminate correlations that were created at the beginning of the universe: the freedom-of-choice loophole could never be completely eliminated.[2]
A hypothetical depiction of superdeterminism in which photons from the distant galaxies Sb and Sc are used to control the orientation of the polarization detectors α and β just prior to the arrival of entangled photons Alice and Bob.
In the 1980s, John Bell discussed superdeterminism in a BBC interview:[3][4]
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.
Although he acknowledged the loophole, he also argued that it was implausible. Even if the measurements performed are chosen by deterministic random number generators, the choices can be assumed to be "effectively free for the purpose at hand," because the machine's choice is altered by a large number of very small effects. It is unlikely for the hidden variable to be sensitive to all of the same small influences that the random number generator was.[5]
Nobel Prize winner Gerard 't Hooft discussed this loophole with John Bell in the early '80s. "I raised the question: Suppose that also Alice’s and Bob’s decisions have to be seen as not coming out of free will, but being determined by everything in the theory. John said, well, you know, that I have to exclude. If it’s possible, then what I said doesn’t apply. I said, Alice and Bob are making a decision out of a cause. A cause lies in their past and has to be included in the picture."[6]
The implications of superdeterminism, if it is true, would bring into question the value of science itself by destroying falsifiability, as Anton Zeilinger has commented:
[W]e always implicitly assume the freedom of the experimentalist... This fundamental assumption is essential to doing science. If this were not true, then, I suggest, it would make no sense at all to ask nature questions in an experiment, since then nature could determine what our questions are, and that could guide our questions such that we arrive at a false picture of nature.[7]
See also
Hard determinism
Necessitarianism
Bell's theorem
Chaos theory
De Broglie–Bohm theory
Digital physics
Falsifiability
Many-worlds
Pre-established harmony
Static interpretation of time
References
Larsson, Jan-Åke (2014). "Loopholes in Bell inequality tests of local realism". Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical. 47 (42): 16. arXiv:1407.0363. doi:10.1088/1751-8113/47/42/424003.
Wolchover, Natalie. "The Universe Is as Spooky as Einstein Thought". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
BBC Radio interview with Paul Davies, 1985
The quotation is an adaptation from the edited transcript of the radio interview with John Bell of 1985. See The Ghost in the Atom: A Discussion of the Mysteries of Quantum Physics, by Paul C. W. Davies and Julian R. Brown, 1986/1993, pp. 45-46
J. S. Bell, Free variables and local causality, Epistemological Letters, Feb. 1977. Reprinted as Chapter 12 of J. S. Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge University Press 1987)
Musser, George. "Does Some Deeper Level of Physics Underlie Quantum Mechanics? An Interview with Nobelist Gerard 't Hooft".
A. Zeilinger, Dance of the Photons, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2010, p. 266. Abner Shimony, Michael Horne and John Clauser made a similar comment in replying to John Bell in their discussions in the Epistemological Letters: "In any scientific experiment in which two or more variables are supposed to be randomly selected, one can always conjecture that some factor in the overlap of the backward light cones has controlled the presumably random choices. But, we maintain, skepticism of this sort will essentially dismiss all results of scientific experimentation. Unless we proceed under the assumption that hidden conspiracies of this sort do not occur, we have abandoned in advance the whole enterprise of discovering the laws of nature by experimentation." (Shimony A, Horne M A and Clauser J F, "Comment on the theory of local beables", Epistemological Letters, 13 1 (1976), as quoted in Jan-Åke Larsson, "Loopholes in Bell inequality tests of local realism", J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 47 (2014))
External links
Reality, locality, and "free will". Quote: He [Michael J. W. Hall] shows that locality and reality can be retained with a 14% reduction of the experimenters’ "free will".
Hellenica World - Scientific Library
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/"
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
