No conspiracy and superdeterminism

[JuneSpring25]

TL;DR Summary

A new model for deterministic QM without conspiracy

Hello,

I found this paper by Tim Palmer really interesting, about trying to develop a determinist, hidden variables model that doesn't need 'conspiracy' to explain away experimental results around entanglement

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377513673_Superdeterminism_without_Conspiracy

Can anyone explain in more simple terms how Tim Palmer deals with the entanglement problem wtihout needing there to be some bizarre way of correlating the measurement device settings?

 

[pines-demon]

TL;DR Summary: A new model for deterministic QM without conspiracy

Hello,

I found this paper by Tim Palmer really interesting, about trying to develop a determinist, hidden variables model that doesn't need 'conspiracy' to explain away experimental results around entanglement

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377513673_Superdeterminism_without_Conspiracy

Can anyone explain in more simple terms how Tim Palmer deals with the entanglement problem wtihout needing there to be some bizarre way of correlating the measurement device settings?

From what I have seen from him on YouTube, it could be different on paper, Palmer does not seem to understand hidden variables. Tim Maudlin criticizes him in this video and his comebacks are not very convincing:

 

[.Scott]

I haven't read through that paper fully, but superdeterminism does not need the kind of explanation that Tim Palmer pines for. Superdeterminism is one interpretation of the physics behind the Bell inequality. There is no need for it to make "mechanical sense" beyond being consistent with observations.

 

[pines-demon]

I haven't read through that paper fully, but superdeterminism does not need the kind of explanation that Tim Palmer pines for. Superdeterminism is one interpretation of the physics behind the Bell inequality. There is no need for it to make "mechanical sense" beyond being consistent with observations.

The usual claim is that statistical independence is an assumption of Bell's theorem. Removing that assumption allows you to have violations of Bell's inequalities and keep "locality and determinism". However that also means that everything (including quantum states) is distinct in some hidden ways and it is hard to say anything about the world as no experimental results can be reproduced (conspiracy). Palmer says that this is not the case, there is no conspiracy. If that's the case he has to explain why (he uses some elaborate chaos theory to explain such a thing).

 

[msumm21]

I watched it, but couldn't determine what Palmer was arguing for. In the example Maudlin gave, Alice and Bob share 10^6 entangled electron pairs and "randomly" choose about 1/4 to be measured on XX, 1/4 on XY, 1/4 on YX and 1/4 on YY.

What exactly is Palmer saying could have caused Alice & Bob to rig their decisions so that e.g. the ones chosen for XX have a significantly different probability distribution of states, compared to e.g. the ones chosen for XY?

 

[pines-demon]

I watched it, but couldn't determine what Palmer was arguing for. In the example Maudlin gave, Alice and Bob share 10^6 entangled electron pairs and "randomly" choose about 1/4 to be measured on XX, 1/4 on XY, 1/4 on YX and 1/4 on YY.

What exactly is Palmer saying could have caused Alice & Bob to rig their decisions so that e.g. the ones chosen for XX have a significantly different probability distribution of states, compared to e.g. the ones chosen for XY?

chaos $\rightarrow$ magic $\rightarrow$ Bell correlations

 

[Demystifier]

TL;DR Summary: A new model for deterministic QM without conspiracy

Can anyone explain in more simple terms how Tim Palmer deals with the entanglement problem wtihout needing there to be some bizarre way of correlating the measurement device settings?

The theory is bizarre in the sense that it is not formulated in spacetime, so the claim that it is "locally causal" is unjustified. The theory does not contain things that Bell calls local beables, and without local beables the theory cannot be local in any serious Bell-like sense. The author draws some space-time diagrams when he claims that his theory is locally causal, but, as far as I can see, these space-time diagrams do not correspond to any formal part of the theory which, as I said, is not formulated in spacetime.

 

[Fra]

I personally find it difficult to see how Palmers way of reasoning will produce predictive or explanatory value.
It seems more like he is considering theoretically possible, but not very probable mechanisms. IMO a good explanation must have some naturalness to me. Explanations is about arguing about what is plausible, not what is possible.

So, not for me.

/Fredrik

 

[pines-demon]

It seems more like he is considering theoretically possible, but not very probable mechanisms.

I do not even see this. So not for me either.