Rethinking Superdeterminism · HackerPapers discussions

Rethinking Superdeterminism — HN submission

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 17:54:06 GMT

Rethinking Superdeterminism (2019)

2 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Rethinking Superdeterminism — mentioned by xelxebar

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 14:14:31 GMT

Hossenfelder and Palmer have a nice, accessible paper about it: https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.06462 It makes a strong case IMHO that there is some meat here. The main idea is that Bell inequalities make ~4 assumptions, which Hossenfelder and Palmer argue can be meanifully weakened in precise ways that have the potential for testable predictions. The paper also spends some time dispelling the FUD that stems from the unfortunate associations made with the name "superdeterminism." It's only ~20 pages of mostly prose, so if you're interested, I highly recommend the quick read.

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Rethinking Superdeterminism — mentioned by orbifold

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 13:32:09 GMT

All these people working on the foundations of quantum mechanics must somehow have missed the fact that quantum mechanics has been superseded by quantum field theory. Quantum field theory resolves basically all of the typically interpretation of quantum mechanics questions in a rather sophisticated way. Unfortunately and I guess this is why these "Interpretation of QM" are still popular most things become harder to calculate with QFT instead of plain old quantum mechanics. Still I think that the perspective of taking quantum fields and the path integral as fundamental clarifies a bunch of…

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Rethinking Superdeterminism — mentioned by vilhelm_s

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 01:52:06 GMT

No, you actually can. The authors of this article discuss the issue more in their longer paper here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.06462 The idea is that superdeterminstic theories are deterministic, while quantum mechanical measurements are random, so you should be able to set up an experiment where QM predicts you would just get random results, but actually you get the same result each time.

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Rethinking Superdeterminism — mentioned by Grieverheart

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 21:52:02 GMT

Funny, a couple of days ago I googled about superdeterminism again to see if there are any developments and came across Hossenfelder's and Palmer's paper on arxiv https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.06462 . Strangely enough, even though I've studied theoretical Physics, the fact that some of Quantum mechanic's claims are based on assumptions such as the fact we have free will, were never really discussed except in a course in the Philosophy of science I took, which, unfortunately, was not very scientific. I actually never heard about superdeterminism until I read one of Gerard 't Hooft's papers (see…

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Rethinking Superdeterminism — HN submission

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 11:06:23 GMT

Rethinking Superdeterminism

1 point; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Rethinking Superdeterminism — mentioned by acqq

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 05:22:44 GMT

Argh. Reading the announced paper on arxiv https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.06462 In the introduction: "Most importantly, we will discuss how it may be possible to test this hypothesis in an (almost) model independent way." Most. Importantly. Then in the paper, under "Experimental Test": "This means concretely that one should make measurements on states prepared as identically as possible with devices as small and cool as possible in time-increments as small as possible. This consideration does not change much if one believes the hidden variables are properties of the particle after all. In this…

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Rethinking Superdeterminism — mentioned by themgt

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 04:09:01 GMT

I find this Quora answer convincingly reflects my thinking as to why Superdeterminism can't possibly be correct given Bell’s theorem[1] Skimming the actual paper[2] I'm not really seeing a convincing explanation, this in particular just strikes me as hard to believe / failing Occam's razor: The belief that such tests tell us something about (the implausibility of) Superdeterminism goes back, once again, to the idea that a state which is intuitively “close” to the one realized in nature (eg, the wavelength of the light from the distant quasar was a little different, all else equal) is allowed…

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Rethinking Superdeterminism — mentioned by ReadEvalPost

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 03:53:07 GMT

Direct link to the paper this post sets up: https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.06462 Always been a fan of Superdeterminism, happy to see actual physicists working on it.

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Rethinking Superdeterminism — HN submission

Mon, 16 Dec 2019 22:34:32 GMT

Rethinking Superdeterminism

7 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.