Speaker 1: Hey, Orney, what is your go to snack these days?
Speaker 1: Have you met me? Bananas? Of course, I knew you
Speaker 1: were going to say that. I knew I was predicted
Speaker 1: bulls like. I thought about saying something else, but you didn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then I figured you were expecting me to say something else,
Speaker 1: so saying banana was maybe the real surprise. Well that's
Speaker 1: very clever, but I actually predicted that to what impossible?
Speaker 1: Did you also predict what I'm gonna say next? Like
Speaker 1: weasel or yah my lama ding dong? Totally, that's exactly
Speaker 1: what I predicted. What how is impossible? Well? I wrote
Speaker 1: the script for this goal open, Yes, but I always
Speaker 1: go off script. Yes, but you do so very predictably. Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm or Hamming, cartoonists and the co author of Frequently
Speaker 1: Asked Questions about the Universe. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a
Speaker 1: particle physicist and a professor at U C Irvine, and
Speaker 1: I'm also quite predictable. Oh yeah, do you have a
Speaker 1: regular routine that you always stick to? I do two
Speaker 1: podcast episodes a week with my friend Jorge. Oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: that's a surprise that you're still friends with this horr
Speaker 1: guy and that people are still listening. But what do
Speaker 1: you mean you did not like surprises? I am a
Speaker 1: creature of habit. I like to lay out my schedule
Speaker 1: and follow it. My wife, on the other hand, likes
Speaker 1: spontaneous adventure, so you know, at least some interesting conversation.
Speaker 1: What about like lunch, Do you know what you're gonna
Speaker 1: eat for lunch every day? I do? Yeah, I eat
Speaker 1: exactly nothing for lunch every day, So it's quite predictable.
Speaker 1: That makes choosing easy. You don't have to think about
Speaker 1: it because there's nothing to think about exactly. And you know,
Speaker 1: in our family, we used to argue a lot about
Speaker 1: what to eat for dinner, and then we hammered it
Speaker 1: out into a weekly schedule. So we have you know,
Speaker 1: pasta on Mondays and tacos on two days, cetera, etcetera. Oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness, completely predictable then until the end of time.
Speaker 1: But what kind of tacos? See, that's a big question,
Speaker 1: you know, there's always room for improvisation. Yeah, we have
Speaker 1: to talk about it every time. Yeah, do you have
Speaker 1: corn or tias or flower tortillas? Is that in your
Speaker 1: schedule too? Oh we make our own tortillas. Yeah, corner
Speaker 1: flower combination corn and flour, corner and flower. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: little bit of each. It's like a quantum taco. It's
Speaker 1: a superposition. It's super taco and flower. Oh man, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: Is it also chicken and carnitas. It's delicious, is what
Speaker 1: it is. But anyways, welcome to our podcast Daniel and
Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of My Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: in which we roll up all the deliciousness of the
Speaker 1: universe into a corn and flower and talk tortilla and
Speaker 1: serve it all up to you. We fill that taco
Speaker 1: up with the incredible mysteries that are the universe, the
Speaker 1: weird quantum effects that seem to govern the microscopic nature
Speaker 1: of reality, and the incredible emergent phenomena that we enjoy
Speaker 1: and gaze at every night when we look at the stars.
Speaker 1: We wonder about all of it. We talk about all
Speaker 1: of it, We explain all of it, and we take
Speaker 1: a big bite out of all of it with you.
Speaker 1: That's right, we talk about it with you because it
Speaker 1: is a pretty delicious and amazing universe ready to be
Speaker 1: rolled up and sandwich between amazing conversation and that jokes.
Speaker 1: Hold on, do we just move from tacos to sandwiches
Speaker 1: because like, not the same thing, man, well kind of.
Speaker 1: I think traditional tacos have two tortillas and then you
Speaker 1: roll them up what or fold them? What are you
Speaker 1: talking about? Seriously? You know how to taco from a
Speaker 1: taco truck. Yeah, but that's two tortillas underneath the filling, right,
Speaker 1: that's not the same as a sandwich and then you
Speaker 1: fold them over right. Gosh, so you're sandwiching kind of
Speaker 1: things between them, right, you're seeing a sandwich and a
Speaker 1: taco or topologically equivalent. We are waiting into a big
Speaker 1: question here. Pretty you're gonna be saying a hot dog
Speaker 1: is a taco? Mathematical food science? Yeah, well, I think
Speaker 1: that pizzas and tacos and sandwiches are topologically non identical. Well,
Speaker 1: here's a question. Is a cauzone a pizza taco really?
Speaker 1: Or a pizza sandwich? That's like second root of food
Speaker 1: food calculus. There, I think I have to go ask
Speaker 1: my friends in the math department about that one. Yes,
Speaker 1: I knew you were going to say that. But it
Speaker 1: is a wonderful universe full of amazing and incredible things
Speaker 1: that sometimes seem kind of unpredictable. And random and chaotic,
Speaker 1: But it's amazing that we've sort of looked out into
Speaker 1: the universe and figured out that there is a little
Speaker 1: bit of order to all of that. There are laws
Speaker 1: to the universe. Yeah. The great sweep of philosophy and
Speaker 1: science is you try to look out in universe and
Speaker 1: to wonder, are there laws that describe the incredible complexity
Speaker 1: that we see in the universe. Is that lightning striking
Speaker 1: that tree because it's determined by some physical law or
Speaker 1: is it just some god up there getting angry and
Speaker 1: deciding to smite that tree? And the universe actually be
Speaker 1: described in a compact set of mathematical rules which determine
Speaker 1: everything that happened, or is there still a little bit
Speaker 1: of fuzz left in those rules? Yeah? And if there
Speaker 1: are laws that govern how the universe works down to
Speaker 1: the atomic and particle level, does that mean that the
Speaker 1: universe is totally predictable because if it follows laws, then
Speaker 1: you know what it's going to do. Right, That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And a few hundred years ago there was this growing
Speaker 1: realization that, wow, the universe does seem to be kind
Speaker 1: of explainable. And if the universe is explainable, even on
Speaker 1: a microscopic scale. Doesn't that mean it's explainable on a
Speaker 1: macroscopic scale. If everything is made out of tiny little
Speaker 1: billiard balls, and you can describe and predict what happens
Speaker 1: when two billiard balls bump into each other, then in principle,
Speaker 1: can't you describe and predict what happens when ten to
Speaker 1: the twenties six billiard balls bump into each other? Or
Speaker 1: even if you can't describe it computationally, doesn't that mean
Speaker 1: that it is determined? It's decided in advance. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of this idea that we sort of started to
Speaker 1: realize this we came to understand science and physics a
Speaker 1: little bit more. It's kind of this idea that maybe
Speaker 1: the universe was kind of like a giant clock, right,
Speaker 1: that everything was like clockwork, and that you could totally
Speaker 1: maybe predict or at least it seemed possible to predict
Speaker 1: what the universe was going to do in the long term,
Speaker 1: and sort of mind blowing, right to imagine that these
Speaker 1: tiny little brains on this little rock in the corner
Speaker 1: of the universe could like derive physical laws, could like
Speaker 1: get the universe to reveal its actual underlying mechanism and
Speaker 1: that might determine the whole future of the universe. I mean,
Speaker 1: like what humors, right, what incredible ego to imagine that
Speaker 1: we could understand the universe and predict its future, that
Speaker 1: we could like reveal its deepest mechanism, the rules that
Speaker 1: like force it to operate in a certain way. There
Speaker 1: must have been a mind blowing sort of moment for physicists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty crazy. It's like a crazy plot twism. I
Speaker 1: wonder if the universe predicted that too. And it's sort
Speaker 1: of terrifying and also of relief. You know, Like it's
Speaker 1: terrifying to imagine that the universe is totally pre pdictable
Speaker 1: and that we are all sort of like locked into
Speaker 1: a future that's determined by the past. But it's also
Speaker 1: sort of terrifying to think that the universe like doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense or doesn't follow laws, that there are like
Speaker 1: capricious beings up there that could just like decide what
Speaker 1: gets that by lightning instead of you know, following some rules.
Speaker 1: I don't know which universe is more terrifying. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess the one that's unpredictable. It's more terrifying to
Speaker 1: you Danny, all right, yeah, exactly. That was an hard question.
Speaker 1: But emotionally it's sort of fascinating, you know, to think
Speaker 1: about being locked into these physical laws. Of course, as
Speaker 1: a person, as an individual, I want to know what
Speaker 1: those laws are and how they work and spend my
Speaker 1: life unraveling that mystery. But to imagine that the universe
Speaker 1: is locked in, that everything that you do and that
Speaker 1: happens to you is determined by what happened in the past,
Speaker 1: that is sort of scary. Yeah. I feel like this
Speaker 1: is getting a little psychological here, Daniel. Is physics for
Speaker 1: you just one big quest to find order in the
Speaker 1: universe and predictability. I do this instead of going to therapy.
Speaker 1: It's a lot cheaper to probably I get paid to
Speaker 1: do this instead of paying someone to do that to you. No,
Speaker 1: I think it's psychological because it's philosophical. And the reason
Speaker 1: that we do physics is because there are big consequences
Speaker 1: to the answers that we reveal. When we learn the
Speaker 1: nature of the universe, it tells us something about what
Speaker 1: it's like to be human and what the rules are
Speaker 1: and what the boundaries are for our lives. And so
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, there are big psychological imvocations to understanding
Speaker 1: how the universe works, and so upen to maybe about
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago. We thought that maybe the universe
Speaker 1: was like a big clock and that you could predict
Speaker 1: what it was going to do like a giant instead
Speaker 1: of clockward gears following Uton's laws. But then somebody learned
Speaker 1: that things aren't quite that way at the molecular level,
Speaker 1: at the atomic level. That's right. You might be puzzling
Speaker 1: over why we're talking about the universe as deterministic, because
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics paints a different picture of the universe at
Speaker 1: its very smallest scale. Even though you're made out of
Speaker 1: ten to the twenty six little objects, those objects are
Speaker 1: quantum objects, and they don't follow the same rules as
Speaker 1: billiard balls or baseballs or any other kind of balls.
Speaker 1: They might not even be balls. They follow very strange rules,
Speaker 1: and their futures are not necessarily determined by their past.
Speaker 1: Are we talking about strange balls in this episode? That
Speaker 1: I feel like this might be going into not safe
Speaker 1: for work territory. But as you said, we learned that
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics cells is that there is sort of like
Speaker 1: an adherent randomness in the universe. At the very smallest levels,
Speaker 1: like there are things we can't possibly ever know, Like
Speaker 1: there's a certain uncertainty um at the very smallest levels
Speaker 1: of velocity and position. Yeah, it gives you a really
Speaker 1: different view of how the universe works, right, like the
Speaker 1: fundamental mechanism for how things operated the smallest level and
Speaker 1: really fascinating twist. Of course, it doesn't change how things
Speaker 1: work at the large level, right, Like you and me
Speaker 1: and baseballs and billiard balls can all still be deterministic,
Speaker 1: even if we're made out of tiny little things which
Speaker 1: are fundamentally fuzzy. I guess you can still predict what
Speaker 1: strange police are going to do. You can still predict
Speaker 1: that they will make Daniel giggle on the podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was a big revolution in our thinking, going
Speaker 1: from like things are like clockwork in the universe too,
Speaker 1: maybe there's an inherent unpredictability or randomness to the universe
Speaker 1: that we can never ever predict, right. Yeah. It was
Speaker 1: a big shift and also maybe a bit of a relief, right, Like, oh,
Speaker 1: it turns out that maybe I'm not locked into a
Speaker 1: set of consequences that were determined by everything that happened
Speaker 1: in my childhood. You know, and there's philosophical consequences there.
Speaker 1: People wonder if it means there might be free will
Speaker 1: because our actions are not predetermined. So this question of
Speaker 1: quantum mechanical randomness and free will and like human autonomy
Speaker 1: and the soul and all this kind of stuff. There's
Speaker 1: been a lot of discussion about what it means for
Speaker 1: the universe to be fundamentally random, right, because I guess
Speaker 1: if tiny little particles are sort of random, right, or
Speaker 1: they act in random ways, then that means that you
Speaker 1: add them up, then maybe like people are random to
Speaker 1: or like unpredictable. At least there's a whole field of
Speaker 1: people trying to understand whether quantum particles and their randomness
Speaker 1: actually do add up to unpredictability for larger objects like
Speaker 1: me and you and hippos, or if it's more like baseballs,
Speaker 1: where the quantum randomness sort of like averages out and
Speaker 1: doesn't affect the path of a baseball. So that's been
Speaker 1: kind of our thinking for the last hundred years, that
Speaker 1: things are random at a fundamental level, But maybe things
Speaker 1: are starting to come back around from that today. That's right.
Speaker 1: There are a series of experiments in the last few
Speaker 1: decades which seem to conclusively prove that the universe is
Speaker 1: fundamentally quantum mechanical, that it is not deterministic at the
Speaker 1: smallest scale. But there's a lot of controversy about those
Speaker 1: experiments and exactly what they mean and what the loopholes
Speaker 1: are in those experiments, and there's some really fun ideas
Speaker 1: that might be able to recover deterministic thinking about our universe.
Speaker 1: So today on the podcast, we'll be asking the question
Speaker 1: what is super determinism. I thought you were going to
Speaker 1: say that in a sort of like a Superman voice.
Speaker 1: Super determinism is that like the alter ego of mild
Speaker 1: Manner determinism? Exactly? Determinism just works in the local newspaper
Speaker 1: and wears glasses. Did it escape from a dying planet
Speaker 1: in a pod? Yeah, it must have a fatal flaw.
Speaker 1: So what is the fatal flaw of super determinism. I
Speaker 1: think it's quantum mechanic paps, it's physics site kryptonite quantum mechanics.
Speaker 1: But this is an interesting idea. I feel like we've
Speaker 1: we're sort of swinging back and forth like a pendulum,
Speaker 1: like we thought we were like clockwork and deterministic, but
Speaker 1: then then quantum mechanics came around and we realized things,
Speaker 1: we're actually kind of random, but now it's kind of
Speaker 1: swinging all the other way around. That says that maybe
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics is not totally random. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: it's because it's hard to grapple with the consequences of
Speaker 1: these experiments. If you accept that the universe is fundamentally random,
Speaker 1: like that is weird man in even if it gives
Speaker 1: you an opportunity to not be predictable and you like that,
Speaker 1: it is strange to think about the universe picking numbers
Speaker 1: at random, deciding for every electron, so it's going to
Speaker 1: go left or oh, it's going to go right. That
Speaker 1: is really funky and it really counter to our intuitive
Speaker 1: understanding of how the universe works. And so that's been
Speaker 1: very difficult for people, including physicists right like Einstein, to swallow.
Speaker 1: And so it makes people think creatively and try to
Speaker 1: like find ways around it, like are you really sure
Speaker 1: that it has to be that way? Couldn't it possibly
Speaker 1: actually still be deterministic? Yeah, But it's always good to
Speaker 1: ask these questions because you never know maybe what do
Speaker 1: you think is true is actually not true. You just
Speaker 1: have to ask the question and come up with the experiment.
Speaker 1: I remember, it's the experiments that really tell us what
Speaker 1: we know. It's thought about these theoretical constructs. It's about
Speaker 1: what the experiments have said, and so it's really crucial
Speaker 1: to understand what are the loopholes in those experiments, what
Speaker 1: did they really measure, and what did that actually tell
Speaker 1: us about the universe, because sometimes all the interesting stuff
Speaker 1: is in the loopholes. So as usually are wondering how
Speaker 1: many people out there had heard of this theory of
Speaker 1: super determinism, So Daniel went out there into the wild
Speaker 1: of the internet. I think right, yep. These come from
Speaker 1: our cadre of Internet volunteers who are willing to answer
Speaker 1: weird philosophical questions about tricky physics topics without any chance
Speaker 1: to look things up. So thank you very much to
Speaker 1: everybody who participated. If you enjoy hearing these and you'd
Speaker 1: like to hear your voice on the podcast, please don't
Speaker 1: be shy. Right to us. Two questions at Daniel and
Speaker 1: Jorge dot com. To think about it for a second,
Speaker 1: what do you think super determinism is? Here's what people
Speaker 1: have to say. It sounds like a made up word. Um,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to say it's the kind of intense
Speaker 1: determination than has exhibited when obtaining the infinity stones. I
Speaker 1: have absolutely no idea. I'm going to say it has
Speaker 1: something to do with um, the fact that I've heard
Speaker 1: it said we actually have no free will and cause
Speaker 1: an effect stems from entropy or something like that. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I guess that super determinism means that the
Speaker 1: universe at the macroscopic level is predictable. It does indeed
Speaker 1: act like clockwork because of the quantum effects being statistically
Speaker 1: averaged away on a large scale. So perhaps at the
Speaker 1: macroscopic level, God doesn't play dice. Well. I don't know exactly,
Speaker 1: but it must be something, something interesting because starts with
Speaker 1: super I think it has to do with determinism, with
Speaker 1: the fact that knowing a particles position and velocity at
Speaker 1: any given time, you could determine the position and velocity
Speaker 1: of that particle at any other point in time, so
Speaker 1: you could say that the future is fixed. I say
Speaker 1: it has something to do with that super determinism is
Speaker 1: something that only philosophers worry about at night or particle physicists,
Speaker 1: and it must have to do with fate destiny. If
Speaker 1: determinism is just things being very determined. Super determinism would
Speaker 1: be things being very much very determined. So I guess
Speaker 1: like that everything is very much predetermined, so like extreme
Speaker 1: cause and effect of things and particles. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna guess on this one. Also, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, determinism is the fact that there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as free will, So maybe super determinism is the
Speaker 1: opposite that there is a way to find free will
Speaker 1: in the world. All right, very determined answers, very very determined,
Speaker 1: a little predictable. Though I knew that were going to
Speaker 1: say this exactly. Some people here confused it with the
Speaker 1: idea of being determined, like having a lot of purpose
Speaker 1: and will power. Yeah, I think my teenagers are super deterministic.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're determined to be undetermined. They determined not to
Speaker 1: listen to me. So let's dive into this, Daniel, super determinism.
Speaker 1: I guess determinism wasn't doing it, so they have to
Speaker 1: call in superdeterminism, you know, as reinforcements. But then, who knows,
Speaker 1: maybe the next episode will cover ultra quantum mechanics. Quantum
Speaker 1: you knock it down, We just come back with something stronger.
Speaker 1: So maybe it's start with the basics. Here is there
Speaker 1: sort of like a physical or mathematical definition of determinism.
Speaker 1: So a deterministic view of the universe is one in
Speaker 1: which the future is completely determined by the past. So
Speaker 1: you have a set of initial conditions, meaning like you
Speaker 1: know the location and the velocity of every object in
Speaker 1: the universe, and you have rules for what's going to
Speaker 1: happen to those next, including like collisions or near misses.
Speaker 1: Then you can predict exactly what's going to happen. So
Speaker 1: the future is determined by the past. The initial conditions
Speaker 1: and the rules of the universe determine exactly what will happen.
Speaker 1: It's a deterministic set of laws, right, Like if you
Speaker 1: have a little ball, strange or not, and you have
Speaker 1: a little ball and you know where it is and
Speaker 1: what velocity it's going at, you can sort of know
Speaker 1: the future, right Like you know the trajectory that bought
Speaker 1: gonna take through the air, and you know where it's
Speaker 1: going to land and soil you can go there and
Speaker 1: catch it. That's really like predicting the future, right, It
Speaker 1: really is predicting the future. And when I was a
Speaker 1: high school or first taking physics. That's the thing that
Speaker 1: attracted me to it the most. I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, you can actually predict the future with physics.
Speaker 1: It's sort of incredible. It's an amazing power, and it's
Speaker 1: something that you also sort of know intuitively. Right, if
Speaker 1: you're throwing the ball to somebody who's running with your
Speaker 1: fast you know sort of how to throw so that
Speaker 1: it gets to them at the right moment. You know,
Speaker 1: you factor in their velocity, in their direction, and all
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. You don't expect that when you
Speaker 1: throw the ball it's going to take like a random
Speaker 1: left turn or a random right turn. You think that
Speaker 1: mostly it follows the same rules. And that's why we
Speaker 1: practice sports, right, pictures practice pitching because they can throw
Speaker 1: the ball the same way over and over again and
Speaker 1: get it into the captures Mith right, right. Unless you're
Speaker 1: using strange balls, then who knows what they thought? We
Speaker 1: were staying away from that joke, man. Predictably, I cannot
Speaker 1: strange balls and strange strikes in this case. So that's
Speaker 1: the deterministic university idea that, like, you know, if you
Speaker 1: can predict where a ball is gonna allod mebe you
Speaker 1: can predict everything down to like planets and galaxies, and
Speaker 1: also down to the small levels, like you know, it's
Speaker 1: tiny little particles if they move like little balls, and
Speaker 1: you can sort of predict what they're gonna do, and
Speaker 1: you can maybe predict the entire universe exactly. So that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: But then, of course quantum mechanics sort of up ends that, right.
Speaker 1: Quantum mechanics says that things are not determined. Things are
Speaker 1: sort of random at a very basic level, like you
Speaker 1: can't know something's position of velocity perfectly. And it's important
Speaker 1: to understand what quantum mechanics sort of does and doesn't
Speaker 1: say about the universe. It doesn't say that like things
Speaker 1: are totally random, that electrons just like do whatever they want.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no like brain in their deciding. There's
Speaker 1: just going to cruise over here and cruise over there. Right,
Speaker 1: Quantum mechanics is still deterministic in one way, it's just
Speaker 1: not deterministic about specific outcomes. Instead, it's deterministic about probabilities.
Speaker 1: Like quantum mechanics, there are laws and it says the
Speaker 1: electron has a certain probability to be here in a
Speaker 1: certain probability to be there that's fixed based on the
Speaker 1: previous data, Like what happened to the electron in the
Speaker 1: past determines the probabilities for its future. It just doesn't
Speaker 1: determine the actual outcome. When it comes to like measuring
Speaker 1: where the electron is, the universe then decides, well, is
Speaker 1: it actually over here or is it actually over there?
Speaker 1: Is it's beIN up or is it spin down? So
Speaker 1: the actual specific outcome for a quantum object isn't determined
Speaker 1: until you measure it, but the probabilities are determined in advance. Right,
Speaker 1: Although in quantum mechanics, isn't it sort of impossible to
Speaker 1: know the initial conditions of something of like an electron
Speaker 1: or a particle that you can't ever know where it
Speaker 1: is and where it's going, right, You're exactly right. You
Speaker 1: can't know all of the information about its specific location
Speaker 1: and its velocity. Here, what we mean is you know
Speaker 1: it's quantum state, which includes all of that fuzz So
Speaker 1: if you know the quantum state of the electron, it's
Speaker 1: probability for where it is right now, then you can
Speaker 1: predict its quantum state in the future. It's probabilities for
Speaker 1: where it's going to be in the future. So you
Speaker 1: have an electron over here and it's doing something. You
Speaker 1: don't know exactly where it is, but it has some
Speaker 1: probabilities to be here there, and you do something out
Speaker 1: of like you fire a photon at it, then you
Speaker 1: can predict what its new probabilities are, So you don't
Speaker 1: have to know exactly where it was, but you can
Speaker 1: predict how it's probabilities will evolve with time. Right, it's
Speaker 1: almost like if you throw a ball, you don't know
Speaker 1: if it's going to be a right or left, but
Speaker 1: you know that half of the time maybe it's gonna
Speaker 1: veer right and half of the time it's gonna bear
Speaker 1: to the left, but you know you don't know in
Speaker 1: any particular throw which way it's going to hear exactly.
Speaker 1: Or if you roll to dice, then you know what
Speaker 1: the distribution of outcomes are, even though you don't know
Speaker 1: what any individual outcome are. Now that's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a tricky analogy because dice actually are deterministic, and
Speaker 1: the reason you don't know the outcome is not because
Speaker 1: they're truly quantum mechanical and random. They're actually just chaotic,
Speaker 1: so it's approximately random. The universe we think is actually random,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of in the same way that it
Speaker 1: describes the probabilities of various outcomes very specifically, but doesn't
Speaker 1: actually pick which outcome until you collapse the wave function.
Speaker 1: For those of you who wonder, like, well, how does
Speaker 1: that happen? Does it mean to collapse the wave function?
Speaker 1: What's going on there? Check out our episode about wave
Speaker 1: functions and collapse with Adam Becker. Cool. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of the prevailing view of the universe, that it's quantum
Speaker 1: mechanical and that it's random at a very fundamental level,
Speaker 1: that it's not deterministic. But maybe there's something wrong with
Speaker 1: the experiments that natives think that way. So let's get
Speaker 1: into what those experiments are and what is superdeterminism. But
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. Alright, we're talking about superdeterminism,
Speaker 1: which is I guess it's superpower determinism, Like it can
Speaker 1: run faster than a speeding prediction. Yeah, exactly, it's a
Speaker 1: souped up version. It's got like, you know, extra exhaust,
Speaker 1: and it's a low rider. It's a shiny paint. Should
Speaker 1: have gone with turbot determinism. That would have been a
Speaker 1: more fun name. So there's this idea that quantum mechanics
Speaker 1: tells us that the universe is random and a pretty ball,
Speaker 1: and you can actually sort of test this, right, Like
Speaker 1: you can do an experiment that tells you if something
Speaker 1: truly is random or not, or maybe like it's actually
Speaker 1: not random, but you just think it's random. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: when this whole idea came out, people were skeptical because
Speaker 1: you don't see this process, right. You can never like
Speaker 1: see the universe going from fuzzy to specific, going from
Speaker 1: like the electron has a probability to do this to
Speaker 1: the electron is actually here. You can't observe that process
Speaker 1: because of course any observation collapses the way function. So
Speaker 1: people were wondering, like, how do we know this is real?
Speaker 1: How do we know that the path the electron isn't
Speaker 1: actually just determined? But there's some like information we're missing,
Speaker 1: you know, like the electron was going to go that
Speaker 1: way the whole time, we just didn't know it. You're
Speaker 1: not comfortable thinking about electrons, you know, think about scenario
Speaker 1: where you have, for example, two balls, a red one
Speaker 1: and a blue one, and you put one red ball
Speaker 1: in a bag and the blue ball in another bag.
Speaker 1: So you can't see them, and then you and your
Speaker 1: friend just like randomly picked bags. You look in your bag,
Speaker 1: You're gonna have either a red ball or a blue ball, right,
Speaker 1: And you might say, oh, well, it was determined the
Speaker 1: whole time, Like the ball is either red or blue
Speaker 1: the whole time. Right. It's not like magic that I
Speaker 1: have a red ball or a blue ball. And so
Speaker 1: people are wondering, like if the same thing holds for
Speaker 1: quantum particles, like are they actually determined in advance? How
Speaker 1: can we tell the difference between they're being really random
Speaker 1: until the moment you check for them having been determined
Speaker 1: the whole time. Right. That's kind of the basis of
Speaker 1: this famous experiment that sort of proves the randomness of
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics called Bell's experiment, Right. It it's sort of
Speaker 1: like if you take, as you say, at a red
Speaker 1: ball and a blue ball, and you put them each
Speaker 1: into bags so you can't see their color, and then
Speaker 1: I guess, what do you do? You like hide them
Speaker 1: behind your back and makes them up, and then you
Speaker 1: give one to one person and they know they want
Speaker 1: to the other person. It's not like the ball suddenly
Speaker 1: lose their color or they're both colors at the same time.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, one of them clearly has the
Speaker 1: red ball and the other one clearly has the blue wall.
Speaker 1: We just don't know what it is. And so that's
Speaker 1: kind of the alternative to the idea of randomness and
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics. It's like, well, that's not like the balls
Speaker 1: like do something magical. We just don't know which balls
Speaker 1: in which back exact. And the philosophically that goes by
Speaker 1: the name of hidden variables. People think, well, maybe there's
Speaker 1: just some information we don't have access to, so it
Speaker 1: seems random to us, but it's not actually random, right,
Speaker 1: there's some hidden variables, some details, some information that's being
Speaker 1: carried along with the ball or the electron whatever that's
Speaker 1: determining the actual outcome, and you can't actually change it.
Speaker 1: The quantum mechanics is a very different view, right, And
Speaker 1: the analogy of the balls, it would be like, you know,
Speaker 1: the ball has not always been read or always been
Speaker 1: blued the whole time. It has a probability to be either,
Speaker 1: and it's in some weird quantum mechanical mixture state that
Speaker 1: you can never see. But once you look at it
Speaker 1: and boom, it collapses into red or blue. And the
Speaker 1: craziest thing about the quantum mechanical interpretation is that this
Speaker 1: can happen even if you're really far apart, Like you know,
Speaker 1: if I take one bag and you take the other bag,
Speaker 1: and we got on spaceships and go ten light years
Speaker 1: in opposite directions and then look at our bags simultaneously,
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics says that those balls are not determined until
Speaker 1: one of us looks. If I look at my bag
Speaker 1: and I see red, then your bag instantaneously is from
Speaker 1: undetermined to blue, even if you're ten light years away
Speaker 1: from me. So that's the part that really got people confused,
Speaker 1: especially Einstein and his collaborators, and made him think like
Speaker 1: this can't be true because it would mean that the
Speaker 1: universe is like non local, that this is like instantaneous
Speaker 1: effect that happens across space time, which really bothered folks
Speaker 1: like Einstein, right, because as soon as you open one bag,
Speaker 1: you're sort of like you're determining what the other bag
Speaker 1: is gonna be, even though it's really far away, exactly right,
Speaker 1: And I guess the interesting thing is that the universe
Speaker 1: or quantum mechanics seems to have these bags in them, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's some something about the universe sort of obscures
Speaker 1: things or hides them from us until we actually look
Speaker 1: at them. Right. That's a weird thing about the universe. Right,
Speaker 1: It's a very weird thing about the universe. And it
Speaker 1: relies on this interpretation or quantum mechanics called the Copenhagen interpretation.
Speaker 1: Says that quantum objects or quantum objects and they like,
Speaker 1: have weird fuzziness to them, and that's cool, except when
Speaker 1: a classical object like a person, looks at them, that
Speaker 1: all of a sudden they collapse and they can only
Speaker 1: have one possible result instead of having probabilities of multiple results.
Speaker 1: And as we've talked about the podcast a lot, that's
Speaker 1: really problematic because we don't know what we mean by
Speaker 1: classical object. We talked about this in the quantum eraser experiment.
Speaker 1: It's really weird and fuzzy. And so there are other
Speaker 1: views of quantum mechanics that try to avoid this, like
Speaker 1: bowl mean mechanics that says that there are these weird
Speaker 1: initial conditions. But all this weird quantum behavior was described
Speaker 1: by Einstein as spooky action at a distance, like he
Speaker 1: couldn't imagine a way for the universe to do that
Speaker 1: if I look at my ball and it goes from
Speaker 1: like undetermined to red, that somehow that's going to make
Speaker 1: your ball go from undetermined to blue. He couldn't imagine
Speaker 1: that happening. He proposes as a thought experiment. He was like,
Speaker 1: isn't this ridiculous. Here's an example of what your quantum
Speaker 1: mechanics would have to do for it to work. So
Speaker 1: then John Bell came up with a series of experiments,
Speaker 1: try to see if we could tell the difference. Can
Speaker 1: you tell the difference between those balls being actually determined
Speaker 1: the whole time or them being undetermined until the moment
Speaker 1: you look at them and those wave functions sort of
Speaker 1: sign multaneously collapsing across space time, right, And I think
Speaker 1: the idea is that, you know, if you do this
Speaker 1: experiment or this like hiding balls and put them in
Speaker 1: bags and take them far apart with like actual physical
Speaker 1: billiard balls, like a red Billard ball and a blue
Speaker 1: Buildard ball, then there's no question, like there's no randomness
Speaker 1: in there, right, Like there is an actual blue ball
Speaker 1: in my bag and an actual red ball in your bag.
Speaker 1: There's no randoms there. But the I think the idea
Speaker 1: is that if you do it with electrons or something
Speaker 1: really really small, where you maybe have with some experiment
Speaker 1: that takes an electron and splits it into two, like
Speaker 1: a red electron and a blue electron, and it's a
Speaker 1: quantum mechanical process, then that's when things start to get weird, right,
Speaker 1: that's when things sort of become spooky. Yeah, exactly. Nobody
Speaker 1: thinks that that ball is actually red and blue simultaneously,
Speaker 1: because it's not a quantum object. We're just using that
Speaker 1: as a way for you to sort of grapple with
Speaker 1: these things because it's hard to think about electrons. But
Speaker 1: now let's think about electrons. Let's think about a quantum object.
Speaker 1: As you say, electrons have these weird properties, and so
Speaker 1: the key is that those two things are somehow constrained. Right.
Speaker 1: We used red ball and blue ball because implicitly we
Speaker 1: were saying they could only be one red ball and
Speaker 1: only one blue ball. So if mine is red, yours
Speaker 1: has to be blue. The constraints for the quantum objects
Speaker 1: is things like spin. You create two electrons together or
Speaker 1: electron depositron or whatever so that their total spin is zero,
Speaker 1: and if I measure mind to be spin up, then
Speaker 1: yours has to be spinned down, even if you're ten
Speaker 1: light years away from each other. Now, the cool thing
Speaker 1: about this, the reason that it's different for electrons and
Speaker 1: for balls, is not just because they're tiny quantum objects,
Speaker 1: but because they can have multiple versions of these properties. Like,
Speaker 1: when I measure the spin of the electron, I can
Speaker 1: choose what direction to measure the spin around right like
Speaker 1: the top when you spin it, it spins around in access.
Speaker 1: So when I measured the spin of the electron, I
Speaker 1: can choose like some direction and measure the electron spin,
Speaker 1: and the other electron ten light years away has to
Speaker 1: have the opposite spin along the same axis. The crazy
Speaker 1: thing about electron spin is that you can't measure its
Speaker 1: spin simultaneously multiple directions. You measure it one direction that
Speaker 1: fuzzes the spin in the other direction, sort of like
Speaker 1: momentum and position. John Bell was able to take advantage
Speaker 1: of this and came up with this crazy set of experiments.
Speaker 1: We take our electrons far apart, we agree randomly on
Speaker 1: three directions that we can measure the electron on three axes,
Speaker 1: and then we do a bunch of measurements. And he
Speaker 1: showed that in the quantum mechanical case, where these things
Speaker 1: are not determined and they sort of like measurement along
Speaker 1: one axis fuzzes the measurement along the other axis, then
Speaker 1: in that case you'll get a different set of statistical
Speaker 1: correlations between your measurement, and in the classical case where
Speaker 1: it's hidden variables, where things are like determined in advance.
Speaker 1: So sort of mind blowing that he came up with
Speaker 1: this crazies beautiful, elegant set of experiments to force the
Speaker 1: universe to reveal the fact that it was making these
Speaker 1: decisions on the fly, that these things were really collapsing
Speaker 1: at the last moment, not in advance, that there's no
Speaker 1: information going with these electrons. It's helping you determine where
Speaker 1: their spin is, right, because I guess the you know,
Speaker 1: the counter the theory or the counter proposition is that
Speaker 1: you know, you took this electron, you split it into
Speaker 1: a spin up and a spin down, you put him
Speaker 1: into different bags. He took him far apart, and so
Speaker 1: you could say that, well, you know, we don't know
Speaker 1: whether the electrons are spin up and down, but the
Speaker 1: electron sort of know, like just like the red ball
Speaker 1: and the blue ball, like obviously one of them has
Speaker 1: spin up and the other one's spin down. We just
Speaker 1: don't know what it is. And then when you open
Speaker 1: it you might be surprised. But you know, somebody who
Speaker 1: is tracking these electrons all along and totally knew which
Speaker 1: one was up and which one's down. But I think
Speaker 1: the kind of the power of the Bell's experiment is
Speaker 1: that it somehow, through you know, complicated probabilities and scenarios,
Speaker 1: it sort of proves that no, like not nobody knew
Speaker 1: knows what these electrons were the whole time, like nobody,
Speaker 1: not even like whoever is making the universe or running
Speaker 1: the universe exactly, It's not determined. And the important thing
Speaker 1: to understand here is that it's not a single measurement.
Speaker 1: It's not like I measure spin up and you measure
Speaker 1: spin down and then we say, aha, it wasn't determined.
Speaker 1: You can't decide that from one measurement, right because that
Speaker 1: could have been determined. And if we're measuring along the
Speaker 1: same axis, like I'm always going to get the opposite
Speaker 1: answer as you. The genius of Bell's experiment is that
Speaker 1: it's statistical, is that I'm measuring a bunch of different directions.
Speaker 1: You're measuring a bunch of different directions, and the quantum
Speaker 1: mechanics comes in with a correlation of our multiple measurements.
Speaker 1: It's very subtle effect. You can't see it from just
Speaker 1: one measurement. You can do multiple measurements and study their correlations.
Speaker 1: So it's not like super smoking gun, but it's very
Speaker 1: clear evidence because the correlations you get from quantum mechanics
Speaker 1: are very different from the correlations you expect in the
Speaker 1: case you describe where it's like all secretly determined in advance,
Speaker 1: and when we do these measurements and people have actually
Speaker 1: done these experiments, they get the numbers that agree with
Speaker 1: a quantum mechanical prediction, not the hidden variable prediction. Right.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like you can't tell if a coin
Speaker 1: is like a fake coin or a bias coin, but
Speaker 1: with one flip of the coin, you need to like
Speaker 1: flip it a lot of times, you know, like, oh wait,
Speaker 1: actually it's heads, you know, fifty one of the time
Speaker 1: this is a theater's coin. Right. That's kind of like
Speaker 1: the YEA behind builds experiment is that you run this
Speaker 1: experiment where you split the electrons a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: times and somehow you know the probabilities, the way you
Speaker 1: set up the experiment, it tells you that the universe
Speaker 1: is actually random. Yeah, And it's more than just that
Speaker 1: it's random, right, It's more than just that it's not
Speaker 1: determined until the moment you look at the electron. It's
Speaker 1: also that it's weirdly nonlocal. And these effects are somehow
Speaker 1: happening across great distances in space time. And they've done
Speaker 1: these experiments, you know, where things are close to each
Speaker 1: other because they're complicated, and then they've managed to do
Speaker 1: them further apart and further apart and further apart. And
Speaker 1: now we've done them so far apart that there's no
Speaker 1: possible way information can travel from one of the electrons
Speaker 1: to the other. Not like you're looking at one electron
Speaker 1: and then zoom at the speed of light. It tells
Speaker 1: thegether electron what to be, you know, I'm red, quick
Speaker 1: be blue. There's no time for that to happen. These
Speaker 1: experiments have been done so far apart with synchronized clocks
Speaker 1: and everything, so there's no time for that to happen.
Speaker 1: And yet they still see these results, which means that
Speaker 1: the universe must be non local. Right, that like the
Speaker 1: is happening in one place can instantaneously affect things happening
Speaker 1: somewhere else. That's like really hard to swallow, right, And
Speaker 1: here I thought we were supposed to shop local environment. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the point is that, you know, we thought
Speaker 1: that maybe quantum mechanics meant that the universe was random,
Speaker 1: and we've actually proved it with Bell's experiments, and we're
Speaker 1: actually going to dive into or at least trying to
Speaker 1: dive into Bell's experiment in a later episode. But I
Speaker 1: think the main point is that, you know, at least
Speaker 1: until a few years ago, Bell's experiments sort put the
Speaker 1: nail on the coffin that said that quantum mechanics is right,
Speaker 1: things are sort of unknowable and truly random at their court.
Speaker 1: And so Bell's experiment shows that there can't be any
Speaker 1: local hidden variables, right, that there's no information being carried
Speaker 1: along with the electron that secretly determines in advance the
Speaker 1: outcome of all of those experiments. And so now there's
Speaker 1: a theory that says that maybe the Bell's experiments are
Speaker 1: not all they're supposed to be, or maybe they're not
Speaker 1: set up right, or maybe there are things actually in
Speaker 1: the universe that we're not seeing that maybe do make
Speaker 1: the universe totally deterministic or at least super deterministic. So
Speaker 1: let's get into that. But first let's take another quick break. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're talking about super determinism, which is um pretty super
Speaker 1: I guess at least super recent. Right, it's sort of
Speaker 1: a new idea that maybe Bell's experiments are not quite
Speaker 1: properly set up, right. I think super determinism maybe oversells it,
Speaker 1: you know, I would call it like bonkers determinism. It's
Speaker 1: like deterministic determinism. It's like people who are really determined
Speaker 1: to find deterministic loopholes, you know. I think most people
Speaker 1: are convinced by Bell's experiments and the way they've been done.
Speaker 1: It's really impressive to or to force experimentally. I think
Speaker 1: people are pushing hard to find loopholes, to say, like,
Speaker 1: are we absolutely sure is there a way you can
Speaker 1: interpret these experiments and still have the universe b deterministic.
Speaker 1: Not like we want to reject Bell or anything. It's
Speaker 1: just like, let's just make absolutely sure is no other interpretation.
Speaker 1: So this is sort of like an exercise in philosophical
Speaker 1: thorough nous, So it's more philosophical, it's not physics, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like, are you looking for loopholes
Speaker 1: in like the arguments of Bell's experiment, or looking for
Speaker 1: loopholes in like the mechanics, or like the details of
Speaker 1: how it's carried out? Well, I think it's all connected, right.
Speaker 1: The details of how it's carried out tell us exactly
Speaker 1: what we can and can't conclude. The first iterations of
Speaker 1: Bell's experiments they did them sort of close by, because
Speaker 1: it's hard to have quantum particles that are entangled survive
Speaker 1: travels long distances without getting perturbed by other stuff. To
Speaker 1: preserve that entanglement over distances is challenging. So the first
Speaker 1: iterations of Bell's experiments were sort of nearby, and there
Speaker 1: weren't that precise. People thought, well, you know, these electrons
Speaker 1: could still be communicating. There's still time for them to
Speaker 1: send messages back and forth somehow. So then they did
Speaker 1: them further and further apart, which is harder and harder,
Speaker 1: and now we're sure that they can't be communicating. So
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing we're doing, is like looking
Speaker 1: for those loopholes and then trying to close them wondering,
Speaker 1: is there a way we could do this experiment in
Speaker 1: a way that proves that that crazy alternative interpretation of
Speaker 1: Bell's experiment can't be the case? So super determinism is
Speaker 1: in that category. It's like, well, are you sure it's
Speaker 1: not this crazy other bonker's idea? How do you actually know?
Speaker 1: All right, Well, then what are the sort of the
Speaker 1: arguments of super determinism. What are they saying about Bell's experiments?
Speaker 1: So super determinism and this is going to sound sort
Speaker 1: of nutty, says that, like the whole universe has basically
Speaker 1: been contrived to trick us into thinking that the universe
Speaker 1: is random and quantum mechanical, but actually the whole thing
Speaker 1: is just like a setup. You're right, it does sound bonker. Wait,
Speaker 1: you're saying the idea is that the universe is not random,
Speaker 1: it's just sort of built in a way to make
Speaker 1: it look random. Maybe everything really is determined, and it's
Speaker 1: like determined all the way back to the Big Bang,
Speaker 1: you know, like things back in the very early times
Speaker 1: in the universe determine things that happen now, including things
Speaker 1: that seem to be usually separated in a way that
Speaker 1: you couldn't coordinate them. Maybe if you just go like
Speaker 1: far enough back in time and hatch your plot, you
Speaker 1: can arrange things so that they look random, but they're
Speaker 1: actually determined. I guess, how do you make something look random?
Speaker 1: And what's the difference between something looking random and actually
Speaker 1: being random. Well, let's take your example of a coin. Right.
Speaker 1: Let's say I give you a coin and I wanted
Speaker 1: you to test to see if it's fair. What are
Speaker 1: you gonna do. You're gonna flip it a thousand times
Speaker 1: or a million times. You'll measure the fraction of times
Speaker 1: that you get heads or tails. Right now, what if
Speaker 1: I give you a biased coin, one that gives you
Speaker 1: heads seventy of the time, but I somehow arranged to
Speaker 1: influence you and the way that you do your experiment.
Speaker 1: I distract you with bananas or you know, I do
Speaker 1: a silly dance because I know how you flip the coin,
Speaker 1: and I know how to affect you and bias your
Speaker 1: experiment so that it looks like it's fifty percent of
Speaker 1: the time. Then you're going to measure the coin to
Speaker 1: be fifty percent of time heads. You're going to declare
Speaker 1: that it's a fair coin. Even though it's not. So
Speaker 1: if I can somehow interfere with the way you do
Speaker 1: your experiment because I know you and I know how
Speaker 1: to manipulate you, then maybe I can affect your conclusions
Speaker 1: of that experiment. Whoa, whoa, Wait a minute. Okay, So
Speaker 1: here's the set up, the setup. As you gave me
Speaker 1: biased coin, like a cheater's coin that's actually gonna give
Speaker 1: me heads seventy of the time. But you're saying that somehow,
Speaker 1: when I go to flip my coin a thousand times,
Speaker 1: you're somehow going to you know, blow some air or
Speaker 1: something so that it lands heads fifty percent of the
Speaker 1: time during my experiments. But then when I go place
Speaker 1: a big bed, then you don't do that. Is that
Speaker 1: what you're saying? Yeah, something like that. And it's not
Speaker 1: even as involved as I'm gonna blow some air. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna specifically interfere with the experiment. I'm gonna let you
Speaker 1: do your experiment, but i'm gonna manipulate you somehow into
Speaker 1: thinking you've done it randomly, because when you flip a coin,
Speaker 1: you know it's not actually truly random, right, Like you
Speaker 1: flip a coin the same way twice, you're gonna get
Speaker 1: the same answer. It's just sort of very difficult to
Speaker 1: do that. So imagine I'm some super powerful demon and
Speaker 1: I know exactly how to make you flip a coin
Speaker 1: just the right way to get heads or tails, And
Speaker 1: I'm some super powerful mind controller guy, and I can
Speaker 1: make you do that somehow. This is a very ridiculous, obviously,
Speaker 1: but it is a possible interpretation of the experiment, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's absurd and outlandish, but it's sort of possible.
Speaker 1: But I guess my question is, how exactly are you
Speaker 1: manipulating me? Like somehow you know how I'm holding the
Speaker 1: coin or somehow you know, like if I start with
Speaker 1: my coin one way in my palm before I toss it,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna do something so that it actually I
Speaker 1: read it as heads or tails later on? Does that
Speaker 1: what you mean? I'm not going to change how you
Speaker 1: read the coin. I'm not going to change how the
Speaker 1: coin flies through the air. I'm just gonna change how
Speaker 1: you throw the coin, because how you throw the coin
Speaker 1: determines actually what happens. So if I can get you
Speaker 1: to throw it in a certain way, then I can
Speaker 1: change the outcome of the experiment. Oh, I see, like
Speaker 1: somehow this cheater's coin. If you throw it a certain way,
Speaker 1: you'll get heads tails, but if you throw it maybe
Speaker 1: a regular way, then you get heads tails. You're sort
Speaker 1: of controlling how I throw it either way way or
Speaker 1: the seventy percent way. And when I do the experiments,
Speaker 1: you're controlling me to do it, to toss it the way.
Speaker 1: But when you when I go to place the bed
Speaker 1: like for real, then you you have me through it
Speaker 1: the other way way. And so that sounds ridiculous and
Speaker 1: contrived and implausible to you. Then getting ready for Bell's
Speaker 1: experiment and the effects of superdeterminism, that says that maybe
Speaker 1: the whole universe is set up in a way so
Speaker 1: that the people who have been doing these experiments, which
Speaker 1: requires some randomness, right, because they're choosing these axes on
Speaker 1: which to make these electron spin measurements. What if those
Speaker 1: aren't actually random? What if that's been sort of like
Speaker 1: contrived throughout the history of the universe, including like how
Speaker 1: these people grew up, how they designed their experiments, how
Speaker 1: they chose to try to find random information to conduct
Speaker 1: their experiments. All of that has been controlled since the
Speaker 1: beginning of time, such that these experiments would look like
Speaker 1: the random even though they're not. That's super determinism. You're
Speaker 1: saying that, like in in Bell's experiments, you know, um,
Speaker 1: it's an experiment and it's random, And so even if
Speaker 1: you like do the experiment perfectly, there is a possibility,
Speaker 1: because it is sort of an experiment, that it might
Speaker 1: tell you that the coin is fair even though it's
Speaker 1: not right, because it's still a coin. Like even if
Speaker 1: I take a fake bias coin, you know, and I
Speaker 1: tossed it a thousand times, it's still technically possible for
Speaker 1: me to get fifty heads tail. And so I think
Speaker 1: you're saying that somehow my coincidence, Um, the universe since
Speaker 1: the beginning of time has been set up in a
Speaker 1: way so that every time somebody runs Bill's experiments, somehow
Speaker 1: they always pick the direction that tells me that the
Speaker 1: coin is fifty, when actually it's exactly because there's this
Speaker 1: step in these experiments when you have to pick what
Speaker 1: access I'm not going to measure my electron on. You
Speaker 1: have one electron over here and one electron over there,
Speaker 1: and each electron you need to pick one of three
Speaker 1: ACTSI and then Bell's experiment tells you how often you'll
Speaker 1: get the same result and how often you'll get opposite spins.
Speaker 1: But you need to pick the axti randomly so that
Speaker 1: you add up to the right correlations. And so if
Speaker 1: you're not picking those randomly, if you're like contriving those
Speaker 1: to always be the same direction, for example, then you're
Speaker 1: not going to get one third. You're gonna get this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And so it's possible to manipulate these
Speaker 1: experiments in theory to make that happen. Now in practice,
Speaker 1: the folks that do these experiments, they're very careful about this.
Speaker 1: They don't just like use some random number generator off
Speaker 1: the internet, like. They have developed these hilarious efforts to
Speaker 1: make their experiments like really random and impossible to manipulate.
Speaker 1: In the case of these experiments I was reading about
Speaker 1: in two thousand and fifteen, the measurement decisions were determined
Speaker 1: by applying some operation to three bits of information from
Speaker 1: three independent sources, one of which was random digits of pie,
Speaker 1: another was binary strings derived from Monty Python and the
Speaker 1: Holy Grail transformed into a bit sequence, another from episodes
Speaker 1: of Saved by the Bell, which I love because you know,
Speaker 1: this is Bell's experiment, and so they're using episodes of
Speaker 1: Saved by the Bell, converting that script into a series
Speaker 1: of numbers, and using that to generate part of their input.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure they're making the experiment more legit, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like, I'm listening to this and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking it's less legit. So these crazy antics, Now
Speaker 1: you know how television production works. In order to manipulate
Speaker 1: Bell's experiment, Not only do you have to manipulate all
Speaker 1: these experiments across space and time, you also have to
Speaker 1: somehow manipulate these meetings where they talk about the script
Speaker 1: for these television episodes in a way that determines the
Speaker 1: outcome of these experiments. Like it's ridiculous. You know how
Speaker 1: impossible it is to get that through network executives. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it is that, you know, when you run
Speaker 1: Bell's experiment, and again we'll get into more details of
Speaker 1: it in a later episode, but I think the it
Speaker 1: is that there's some choice in the experiments, Like you say, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll measure along this access, and it is technically possible
Speaker 1: to pick an access that tells you that the coin
Speaker 1: is fair, right, Like, technically it's possible, And so the
Speaker 1: it is that you know, maybe every time they've run
Speaker 1: this experiment and they've picked a random direction, they've somehow
Speaker 1: picked the direction that tells you that the coin is fair,
Speaker 1: meaning like it's some strange, super weird coincidence that someone
Speaker 1: we think the universe is random, but really we just
Speaker 1: lived in this crazy universe where every time we run
Speaker 1: Bell's experiments, we've always somehow chosen the direction that makes
Speaker 1: it look Yeah, maybe these electrons really are determined by
Speaker 1: local information that's not available to us, and we do
Speaker 1: these experiments to try to suss that out. But the
Speaker 1: experiments have a bit of a random element to them,
Speaker 1: and if it's not actually random, and we think it's
Speaker 1: random but were being tricked and manipulated, and then we
Speaker 1: could conclude that the universe has this random element, that
Speaker 1: there is this non local random thing happening, when in
Speaker 1: reality it's not, And so that sounds ridiculous and unlikely,
Speaker 1: and it is. You know, it's the state we're at
Speaker 1: where we're like trying to swallow the weirdness of quantum
Speaker 1: mechanics and just trying to make sure before we accept
Speaker 1: the universe is this weird way that there is no
Speaker 1: other possible explanation, and so again this is like an
Speaker 1: exercise and philosophical thoroughness, just to make sure we thought
Speaker 1: about all the other possibilities. Well, I guess you know,
Speaker 1: it could be like, um, maybe we live in some
Speaker 1: kind of multiverse and we just happen to live in
Speaker 1: the multiverse where every time we run Bell's experiments we
Speaker 1: think it's a fair coin, But really we're just somehow
Speaker 1: fooling ourselves into thinking the coin is fair. Yeah, it's possible, right,
Speaker 1: It seems really unlikely because there's been so many iterations
Speaker 1: in these experiments in different conditions, and so it just
Speaker 1: gets more and more implausible the more times we tested,
Speaker 1: and the more times it comes out like bang on
Speaker 1: exactly what quantum mechanics predicts. So it's not something anybody
Speaker 1: should take seriously as anything other than like an interesting
Speaker 1: thought experiment, like how far do you have to go
Speaker 1: to rescue determinism? How ridiculous do you have to imagine
Speaker 1: the universe is in order for it to not be
Speaker 1: quantum mechanical in this way that we are slowly coming
Speaker 1: to grips with. I see, so when you say super determinism,
Speaker 1: it's really more like super stubborn determinism, Like it's not
Speaker 1: actually like likely that it's true, but it's you're still
Speaker 1: clinging to the idea that maybe the universe is determined.
Speaker 1: It's like super desperate is um. People are desperate not
Speaker 1: to give up on determinism. Super desperate determinism. It's like
Speaker 1: the bizarro superman. All right, well, what what does it
Speaker 1: all mean? Doesn't mean that there that we're increasingly thinking
Speaker 1: that there is free will or unpredictability in the universe,
Speaker 1: right that we've now maybe are getting closer to leaving
Speaker 1: behind this idea that the universe is determined. Well, we
Speaker 1: are definitely coming to grips with and accepting this consequence
Speaker 1: that the universe is nonlocal that they have to somehow
Speaker 1: make this collapse decision off space in no time, which
Speaker 1: is sort of amazing. And you know, another interesting loophole
Speaker 1: or wrinkle to this interpretation of Bell's experiment is that
Speaker 1: we have to remember that Bell's experiment just tells us
Speaker 1: that there are no local hidden variables. It's possible for
Speaker 1: them to be global hidden variables. Maybe there's like some
Speaker 1: bank somewhere that keeps all this information and is arranging
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. And can transmit it across space
Speaker 1: and time instantaneously. That's basically bow Mean mechanics. We had
Speaker 1: an episode about that last year, so check that out
Speaker 1: if you're curious about that interpretation of Belle's experiment, which
Speaker 1: is actually one of Bell himself's favorite interpretations. But I
Speaker 1: think that most people understand it to mean that the
Speaker 1: universe is fundamentally random, that there are these decisions being
Speaker 1: made sort of at the last minute by the universe
Speaker 1: when the wave function collapses. What that means for free
Speaker 1: will is a question for philosophers. All right, well, I
Speaker 1: guess um, maybe we should change their name to sad determinism.
Speaker 1: But do you know, I thought maybe in our last
Speaker 1: episode we talked about how there is no simultaneity in
Speaker 1: the universe, right, this idea that there's no real sort
Speaker 1: of like fixed time in the universe. Could there be
Speaker 1: some sort of loophole there? That's a good point, right,
Speaker 1: how can you even talk about simultonay across space and time?
Speaker 1: There isn't a loophole there because they've separated them so
Speaker 1: far apart that we know that these things cannot be
Speaker 1: costly linked to each other. So while we can't say
Speaker 1: exactly which one happens first, this electron measurement or that
Speaker 1: electron measurement. We do know that they can't be costly
Speaker 1: linked because they're so far apart in space. All right, well,
Speaker 1: then I guess maybe the universe is really is random
Speaker 1: and unpredictable. Um, let's test this right now. Daniel, what
Speaker 1: am I going to say next? It's gonna be some
Speaker 1: joke about strange balls. Wrong. I was gonna say, thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. We hope you enjoyed that. See you
Speaker 1: next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that. Daniel and
Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio.
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