WEBVTT - What is superdeterminism? 0:00:08.480 --> 0:00:11.600 Hey, Orney, what is your go to snack these days? 0:00:12.240 --> 0:00:15.840 Have you met me? Bananas? Of course, I knew you 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:18.920 were going to say that. I knew I was predicted 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:21.800 bulls like. I thought about saying something else, but you didn't. Yeah, 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:24.200 then I figured you were expecting me to say something else, 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:27.240 so saying banana was maybe the real surprise. Well that's 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:31.440 very clever, but I actually predicted that to what impossible? 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:33.680 Did you also predict what I'm gonna say next? Like 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:38.199 weasel or yah my lama ding dong? Totally, that's exactly 0:00:38.280 --> 0:00:41.479 what I predicted. What how is impossible? Well? I wrote 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:43.680 the script for this goal open, Yes, but I always 0:00:43.680 --> 0:01:02.000 go off script. Yes, but you do so very predictably. Hi. 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:04.560 I'm or Hamming, cartoonists and the co author of Frequently 0:01:04.600 --> 0:01:07.679 Asked Questions about the Universe. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:10.760 particle physicist and a professor at U C Irvine, and 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:13.760 I'm also quite predictable. Oh yeah, do you have a 0:01:13.800 --> 0:01:16.640 regular routine that you always stick to? I do two 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:20.160 podcast episodes a week with my friend Jorge. Oh my goodness, 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:23.920 that's a surprise that you're still friends with this horr 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:26.640 guy and that people are still listening. But what do 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:28.800 you mean you did not like surprises? I am a 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:31.200 creature of habit. I like to lay out my schedule 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:33.319 and follow it. My wife, on the other hand, likes 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:37.119 spontaneous adventure, so you know, at least some interesting conversation. 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:38.880 What about like lunch, Do you know what you're gonna 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:41.320 eat for lunch every day? I do? Yeah, I eat 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:44.640 exactly nothing for lunch every day, So it's quite predictable. 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:49.040 That makes choosing easy. You don't have to think about 0:01:49.040 --> 0:01:51.520 it because there's nothing to think about exactly. And you know, 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:53.600 in our family, we used to argue a lot about 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:55.360 what to eat for dinner, and then we hammered it 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:57.520 out into a weekly schedule. So we have you know, 0:01:57.600 --> 0:02:01.240 pasta on Mondays and tacos on two days, cetera, etcetera. Oh, 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:05.240 my goodness, completely predictable then until the end of time. 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:11.440 But what kind of tacos? See, that's a big question, 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:15.120 you know, there's always room for improvisation. Yeah, we have 0:02:15.160 --> 0:02:19.960 to talk about it every time. Yeah, do you have 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:22.720 corn or tias or flower tortillas? Is that in your 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:25.360 schedule too? Oh we make our own tortillas. Yeah, corner 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:28.600 flower combination corn and flour, corner and flower. Yeah, a 0:02:28.600 --> 0:02:32.760 little bit of each. It's like a quantum taco. It's 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:38.360 a superposition. It's super taco and flower. Oh man, that's crazy. 0:02:38.440 --> 0:02:44.400 Is it also chicken and carnitas. It's delicious, is what 0:02:44.440 --> 0:02:46.639 it is. But anyways, welcome to our podcast Daniel and 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:49.560 Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of My Heart Radio, 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:52.520 in which we roll up all the deliciousness of the 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:57.200 universe into a corn and flower and talk tortilla and 0:02:57.360 --> 0:03:00.320 serve it all up to you. We fill that taco 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:03.600 up with the incredible mysteries that are the universe, the 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:07.760 weird quantum effects that seem to govern the microscopic nature 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:12.280 of reality, and the incredible emergent phenomena that we enjoy 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:15.360 and gaze at every night when we look at the stars. 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:17.480 We wonder about all of it. We talk about all 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:19.600 of it, We explain all of it, and we take 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:21.560 a big bite out of all of it with you. 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:24.280 That's right, we talk about it with you because it 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:27.160 is a pretty delicious and amazing universe ready to be 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:31.519 rolled up and sandwich between amazing conversation and that jokes. 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:33.720 Hold on, do we just move from tacos to sandwiches 0:03:33.760 --> 0:03:36.200 because like, not the same thing, man, well kind of. 0:03:36.400 --> 0:03:38.960 I think traditional tacos have two tortillas and then you 0:03:39.040 --> 0:03:41.240 roll them up what or fold them? What are you 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:44.360 talking about? Seriously? You know how to taco from a 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:47.880 taco truck. Yeah, but that's two tortillas underneath the filling, right, 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:49.920 that's not the same as a sandwich and then you 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:53.000 fold them over right. Gosh, so you're sandwiching kind of 0:03:53.080 --> 0:03:55.360 things between them, right, you're seeing a sandwich and a 0:03:55.400 --> 0:03:58.520 taco or topologically equivalent. We are waiting into a big 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:01.040 question here. Pretty you're gonna be saying a hot dog 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:05.440 is a taco? Mathematical food science? Yeah, well, I think 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:10.360 that pizzas and tacos and sandwiches are topologically non identical. Well, 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:13.720 here's a question. Is a cauzone a pizza taco really? 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:18.760 Or a pizza sandwich? That's like second root of food 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:21.479 food calculus. There, I think I have to go ask 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:24.039 my friends in the math department about that one. Yes, 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:25.800 I knew you were going to say that. But it 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:28.640 is a wonderful universe full of amazing and incredible things 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:31.880 that sometimes seem kind of unpredictable. And random and chaotic, 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:34.560 But it's amazing that we've sort of looked out into 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:36.640 the universe and figured out that there is a little 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:38.880 bit of order to all of that. There are laws 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:42.080 to the universe. Yeah. The great sweep of philosophy and 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:44.560 science is you try to look out in universe and 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:48.440 to wonder, are there laws that describe the incredible complexity 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:51.440 that we see in the universe. Is that lightning striking 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:54.680 that tree because it's determined by some physical law or 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:57.479 is it just some god up there getting angry and 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:00.880 deciding to smite that tree? And the universe actually be 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:04.279 described in a compact set of mathematical rules which determine 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:07.200 everything that happened, or is there still a little bit 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:09.920 of fuzz left in those rules? Yeah? And if there 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:12.919 are laws that govern how the universe works down to 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:16.039 the atomic and particle level, does that mean that the 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:19.839 universe is totally predictable because if it follows laws, then 0:05:20.080 --> 0:05:22.440 you know what it's going to do. Right, That's exactly right. 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:25.120 And a few hundred years ago there was this growing 0:05:25.120 --> 0:05:28.320 realization that, wow, the universe does seem to be kind 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:31.240 of explainable. And if the universe is explainable, even on 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:34.760 a microscopic scale. Doesn't that mean it's explainable on a 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:37.840 macroscopic scale. If everything is made out of tiny little 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:40.960 billiard balls, and you can describe and predict what happens 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:43.880 when two billiard balls bump into each other, then in principle, 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:46.600 can't you describe and predict what happens when ten to 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:49.920 the twenties six billiard balls bump into each other? Or 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:53.280 even if you can't describe it computationally, doesn't that mean 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:57.120 that it is determined? It's decided in advance. Yeah, it's 0:05:57.160 --> 0:05:59.039 kind of this idea that we sort of started to 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:02.200 realize this we came to understand science and physics a 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:04.599 little bit more. It's kind of this idea that maybe 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:07.040 the universe was kind of like a giant clock, right, 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:09.800 that everything was like clockwork, and that you could totally 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:12.799 maybe predict or at least it seemed possible to predict 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:15.080 what the universe was going to do in the long term, 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:18.000 and sort of mind blowing, right to imagine that these 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:20.560 tiny little brains on this little rock in the corner 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:24.240 of the universe could like derive physical laws, could like 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:29.400 get the universe to reveal its actual underlying mechanism and 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:32.320 that might determine the whole future of the universe. I mean, 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:35.880 like what humors, right, what incredible ego to imagine that 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:38.640 we could understand the universe and predict its future, that 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:42.120 we could like reveal its deepest mechanism, the rules that 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:45.200 like force it to operate in a certain way. There 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:48.720 must have been a mind blowing sort of moment for physicists. Yeah, 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:51.479 it's pretty crazy. It's like a crazy plot twism. I 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:53.760 wonder if the universe predicted that too. And it's sort 0:06:53.760 --> 0:06:57.080 of terrifying and also of relief. You know, Like it's 0:06:57.160 --> 0:07:00.440 terrifying to imagine that the universe is totally pre pdictable 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:02.760 and that we are all sort of like locked into 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:05.919 a future that's determined by the past. But it's also 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:08.840 sort of terrifying to think that the universe like doesn't 0:07:08.880 --> 0:07:11.400 make sense or doesn't follow laws, that there are like 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:14.400 capricious beings up there that could just like decide what 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:17.600 gets that by lightning instead of you know, following some rules. 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:20.400 I don't know which universe is more terrifying. I mean, 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:22.760 I guess the one that's unpredictable. It's more terrifying to 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:28.600 you Danny, all right, yeah, exactly. That was an hard question. 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:32.400 But emotionally it's sort of fascinating, you know, to think 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:35.400 about being locked into these physical laws. Of course, as 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:37.480 a person, as an individual, I want to know what 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:39.800 those laws are and how they work and spend my 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:43.520 life unraveling that mystery. But to imagine that the universe 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:45.920 is locked in, that everything that you do and that 0:07:46.040 --> 0:07:48.679 happens to you is determined by what happened in the past, 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:51.360 that is sort of scary. Yeah. I feel like this 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:54.000 is getting a little psychological here, Daniel. Is physics for 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:56.320 you just one big quest to find order in the 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:59.800 universe and predictability. I do this instead of going to therapy. 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:04.280 It's a lot cheaper to probably I get paid to 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:10.080 do this instead of paying someone to do that to you. No, 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:13.400 I think it's psychological because it's philosophical. And the reason 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:16.880 that we do physics is because there are big consequences 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:18.920 to the answers that we reveal. When we learn the 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:21.320 nature of the universe, it tells us something about what 0:08:21.400 --> 0:08:23.280 it's like to be human and what the rules are 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:25.800 and what the boundaries are for our lives. And so 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:29.720 I think, yeah, there are big psychological imvocations to understanding 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:32.480 how the universe works, and so upen to maybe about 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:34.920 a hundred years ago. We thought that maybe the universe 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:37.199 was like a big clock and that you could predict 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:39.160 what it was going to do like a giant instead 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:44.240 of clockward gears following Uton's laws. But then somebody learned 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:47.440 that things aren't quite that way at the molecular level, 0:08:47.559 --> 0:08:49.760 at the atomic level. That's right. You might be puzzling 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:52.720 over why we're talking about the universe as deterministic, because 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:56.040 quantum mechanics paints a different picture of the universe at 0:08:56.080 --> 0:08:59.040 its very smallest scale. Even though you're made out of 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:01.880 ten to the twenty six little objects, those objects are 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:04.920 quantum objects, and they don't follow the same rules as 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:07.840 billiard balls or baseballs or any other kind of balls. 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:12.040 They might not even be balls. They follow very strange rules, 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:15.320 and their futures are not necessarily determined by their past. 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:18.480 Are we talking about strange balls in this episode? That 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:22.920 I feel like this might be going into not safe 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:26.360 for work territory. But as you said, we learned that 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:28.320 quantum mechanics cells is that there is sort of like 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:33.080 an adherent randomness in the universe. At the very smallest levels, 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:35.840 like there are things we can't possibly ever know, Like 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:39.920 there's a certain uncertainty um at the very smallest levels 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:42.480 of velocity and position. Yeah, it gives you a really 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:45.800 different view of how the universe works, right, like the 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:50.080 fundamental mechanism for how things operated the smallest level and 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:53.000 really fascinating twist. Of course, it doesn't change how things 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:55.320 work at the large level, right, Like you and me 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:59.160 and baseballs and billiard balls can all still be deterministic, 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:02.160 even if we're made out of tiny little things which 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:05.040 are fundamentally fuzzy. I guess you can still predict what 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:09.160 strange police are going to do. You can still predict 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:13.480 that they will make Daniel giggle on the podcast. Yeah, 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:15.640 so that was a big revolution in our thinking, going 0:10:15.679 --> 0:10:17.920 from like things are like clockwork in the universe too, 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:21.760 maybe there's an inherent unpredictability or randomness to the universe 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:24.040 that we can never ever predict, right. Yeah. It was 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:27.440 a big shift and also maybe a bit of a relief, right, Like, oh, 0:10:27.800 --> 0:10:29.840 it turns out that maybe I'm not locked into a 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:32.960 set of consequences that were determined by everything that happened 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:36.360 in my childhood. You know, and there's philosophical consequences there. 0:10:36.360 --> 0:10:38.800 People wonder if it means there might be free will 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:41.960 because our actions are not predetermined. So this question of 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:46.319 quantum mechanical randomness and free will and like human autonomy 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:48.960 and the soul and all this kind of stuff. There's 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:51.240 been a lot of discussion about what it means for 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:54.080 the universe to be fundamentally random, right, because I guess 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:56.840 if tiny little particles are sort of random, right, or 0:10:56.880 --> 0:11:00.120 they act in random ways, then that means that you 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:02.599 add them up, then maybe like people are random to 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:05.599 or like unpredictable. At least there's a whole field of 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:08.880 people trying to understand whether quantum particles and their randomness 0:11:09.080 --> 0:11:13.160 actually do add up to unpredictability for larger objects like 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:16.280 me and you and hippos, or if it's more like baseballs, 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:18.760 where the quantum randomness sort of like averages out and 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:21.320 doesn't affect the path of a baseball. So that's been 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:23.560 kind of our thinking for the last hundred years, that 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:27.680 things are random at a fundamental level, But maybe things 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:31.400 are starting to come back around from that today. That's right. 0:11:31.440 --> 0:11:33.160 There are a series of experiments in the last few 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:37.360 decades which seem to conclusively prove that the universe is 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:40.840 fundamentally quantum mechanical, that it is not deterministic at the 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:43.920 smallest scale. But there's a lot of controversy about those 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:47.320 experiments and exactly what they mean and what the loopholes 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:51.280 are in those experiments, and there's some really fun ideas 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:55.840 that might be able to recover deterministic thinking about our universe. 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:58.400 So today on the podcast, we'll be asking the question 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:06.760 what is super determinism. I thought you were going to 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:08.840 say that in a sort of like a Superman voice. 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:14.319 Super determinism is that like the alter ego of mild 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:18.760 Manner determinism? Exactly? Determinism just works in the local newspaper 0:12:19.080 --> 0:12:22.440 and wears glasses. Did it escape from a dying planet 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:26.720 in a pod? Yeah, it must have a fatal flaw. 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:29.240 So what is the fatal flaw of super determinism. I 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:34.120 think it's quantum mechanic paps, it's physics site kryptonite quantum mechanics. 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:36.160 But this is an interesting idea. I feel like we've 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:38.400 we're sort of swinging back and forth like a pendulum, 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:41.240 like we thought we were like clockwork and deterministic, but 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:44.280 then then quantum mechanics came around and we realized things, 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:46.559 we're actually kind of random, but now it's kind of 0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:49.200 swinging all the other way around. That says that maybe 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:51.800 quantum mechanics is not totally random. Yeah, and I think 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:55.040 it's because it's hard to grapple with the consequences of 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:58.240 these experiments. If you accept that the universe is fundamentally random, 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:00.920 like that is weird man in even if it gives 0:13:00.960 --> 0:13:03.480 you an opportunity to not be predictable and you like that, 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:07.319 it is strange to think about the universe picking numbers 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:10.240 at random, deciding for every electron, so it's going to 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:12.040 go left or oh, it's going to go right. That 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:15.599 is really funky and it really counter to our intuitive 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:18.240 understanding of how the universe works. And so that's been 0:13:18.320 --> 0:13:22.920 very difficult for people, including physicists right like Einstein, to swallow. 0:13:23.200 --> 0:13:25.200 And so it makes people think creatively and try to 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:28.000 like find ways around it, like are you really sure 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:30.359 that it has to be that way? Couldn't it possibly 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:32.920 actually still be deterministic? Yeah, But it's always good to 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:35.040 ask these questions because you never know maybe what do 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:37.679 you think is true is actually not true. You just 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:39.720 have to ask the question and come up with the experiment. 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:41.959 I remember, it's the experiments that really tell us what 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:45.160 we know. It's thought about these theoretical constructs. It's about 0:13:45.200 --> 0:13:48.360 what the experiments have said, and so it's really crucial 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:51.280 to understand what are the loopholes in those experiments, what 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:54.120 did they really measure, and what did that actually tell 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:58.040 us about the universe, because sometimes all the interesting stuff 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:00.480 is in the loopholes. So as usually are wondering how 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:02.800 many people out there had heard of this theory of 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:06.160 super determinism, So Daniel went out there into the wild 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:08.680 of the internet. I think right, yep. These come from 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:11.520 our cadre of Internet volunteers who are willing to answer 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:16.000 weird philosophical questions about tricky physics topics without any chance 0:14:16.080 --> 0:14:18.240 to look things up. So thank you very much to 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:21.080 everybody who participated. If you enjoy hearing these and you'd 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:23.800 like to hear your voice on the podcast, please don't 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:26.200 be shy. Right to us. Two questions at Daniel and 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:28.440 Jorge dot com. To think about it for a second, 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:32.360 what do you think super determinism is? Here's what people 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:35.240 have to say. It sounds like a made up word. Um, 0:14:35.320 --> 0:14:37.200 so I'm going to say it's the kind of intense 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:41.400 determination than has exhibited when obtaining the infinity stones. I 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:43.360 have absolutely no idea. I'm going to say it has 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:48.040 something to do with um, the fact that I've heard 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:50.640 it said we actually have no free will and cause 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:53.120 an effect stems from entropy or something like that. I 0:14:53.160 --> 0:14:56.120 don't know. I guess that super determinism means that the 0:14:56.200 --> 0:15:00.480 universe at the macroscopic level is predictable. It does indeed 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:04.640 act like clockwork because of the quantum effects being statistically 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:07.920 averaged away on a large scale. So perhaps at the 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:12.320 macroscopic level, God doesn't play dice. Well. I don't know exactly, 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:18.560 but it must be something, something interesting because starts with 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:21.960 super I think it has to do with determinism, with 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:27.040 the fact that knowing a particles position and velocity at 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:30.760 any given time, you could determine the position and velocity 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:34.640 of that particle at any other point in time, so 0:15:35.640 --> 0:15:40.600 you could say that the future is fixed. I say 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:44.680 it has something to do with that super determinism is 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:49.320 something that only philosophers worry about at night or particle physicists, 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:53.240 and it must have to do with fate destiny. If 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:58.240 determinism is just things being very determined. Super determinism would 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:02.680 be things being very much very determined. So I guess 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:08.880 like that everything is very much predetermined, so like extreme 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:12.080 cause and effect of things and particles. I don't know. 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:16.280 I'm just gonna guess on this one. Also, I think, 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:19.000 you know, determinism is the fact that there's no such 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:23.440 thing as free will, So maybe super determinism is the 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:27.640 opposite that there is a way to find free will 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:34.160 in the world. All right, very determined answers, very very determined, 0:16:36.280 --> 0:16:38.560 a little predictable. Though I knew that were going to 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:41.880 say this exactly. Some people here confused it with the 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:45.040 idea of being determined, like having a lot of purpose 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:48.560 and will power. Yeah, I think my teenagers are super deterministic. 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:54.720 Sometimes they're determined to be undetermined. They determined not to 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:58.040 listen to me. So let's dive into this, Daniel, super determinism. 0:16:58.040 --> 0:17:00.440 I guess determinism wasn't doing it, so they have to 0:17:00.480 --> 0:17:04.920 call in superdeterminism, you know, as reinforcements. But then, who knows, 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:11.560 maybe the next episode will cover ultra quantum mechanics. Quantum 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:14.120 you knock it down, We just come back with something stronger. 0:17:14.200 --> 0:17:16.120 So maybe it's start with the basics. Here is there 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:19.880 sort of like a physical or mathematical definition of determinism. 0:17:20.160 --> 0:17:22.720 So a deterministic view of the universe is one in 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:26.800 which the future is completely determined by the past. So 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:29.320 you have a set of initial conditions, meaning like you 0:17:29.359 --> 0:17:32.320 know the location and the velocity of every object in 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:34.840 the universe, and you have rules for what's going to 0:17:34.920 --> 0:17:38.119 happen to those next, including like collisions or near misses. 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:41.639 Then you can predict exactly what's going to happen. So 0:17:41.680 --> 0:17:45.480 the future is determined by the past. The initial conditions 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:48.680 and the rules of the universe determine exactly what will happen. 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:51.080 It's a deterministic set of laws, right, Like if you 0:17:51.080 --> 0:17:53.159 have a little ball, strange or not, and you have 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:54.560 a little ball and you know where it is and 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:57.159 what velocity it's going at, you can sort of know 0:17:57.320 --> 0:17:59.920 the future, right Like you know the trajectory that bought 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:01.560 gonna take through the air, and you know where it's 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:03.239 going to land and soil you can go there and 0:18:03.280 --> 0:18:05.639 catch it. That's really like predicting the future, right, It 0:18:05.760 --> 0:18:07.720 really is predicting the future. And when I was a 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:10.040 high school or first taking physics. That's the thing that 0:18:10.200 --> 0:18:12.040 attracted me to it the most. I was like, oh 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:15.439 my gosh, you can actually predict the future with physics. 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:18.320 It's sort of incredible. It's an amazing power, and it's 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:21.680 something that you also sort of know intuitively. Right, if 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:24.000 you're throwing the ball to somebody who's running with your 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:26.320 fast you know sort of how to throw so that 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:28.199 it gets to them at the right moment. You know, 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:30.560 you factor in their velocity, in their direction, and all 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:32.520 this kind of stuff. You don't expect that when you 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:34.520 throw the ball it's going to take like a random 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:37.000 left turn or a random right turn. You think that 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:39.199 mostly it follows the same rules. And that's why we 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:43.000 practice sports, right, pictures practice pitching because they can throw 0:18:43.040 --> 0:18:44.840 the ball the same way over and over again and 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:47.240 get it into the captures Mith right, right. Unless you're 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:50.959 using strange balls, then who knows what they thought? We 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:56.719 were staying away from that joke, man. Predictably, I cannot 0:18:56.960 --> 0:18:59.840 strange balls and strange strikes in this case. So that's 0:18:59.840 --> 0:19:02.440 the deterministic university idea that, like, you know, if you 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:04.119 can predict where a ball is gonna allod mebe you 0:19:04.160 --> 0:19:07.240 can predict everything down to like planets and galaxies, and 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:09.920 also down to the small levels, like you know, it's 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:13.359 tiny little particles if they move like little balls, and 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:15.200 you can sort of predict what they're gonna do, and 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:19.520 you can maybe predict the entire universe exactly. So that's fascinating. 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:22.320 But then, of course quantum mechanics sort of up ends that, right. 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:26.560 Quantum mechanics says that things are not determined. Things are 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:28.879 sort of random at a very basic level, like you 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:33.399 can't know something's position of velocity perfectly. And it's important 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:36.000 to understand what quantum mechanics sort of does and doesn't 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:38.600 say about the universe. It doesn't say that like things 0:19:38.600 --> 0:19:41.600 are totally random, that electrons just like do whatever they want. 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.360 You know, there's no like brain in their deciding. There's 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:47.199 just going to cruise over here and cruise over there. Right, 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:50.000 Quantum mechanics is still deterministic in one way, it's just 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:55.160 not deterministic about specific outcomes. Instead, it's deterministic about probabilities. 0:19:55.440 --> 0:19:57.919 Like quantum mechanics, there are laws and it says the 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:00.240 electron has a certain probability to be here in a 0:20:00.240 --> 0:20:03.479 certain probability to be there that's fixed based on the 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:05.760 previous data, Like what happened to the electron in the 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:08.920 past determines the probabilities for its future. It just doesn't 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:12.800 determine the actual outcome. When it comes to like measuring 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:15.800 where the electron is, the universe then decides, well, is 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:18.200 it actually over here or is it actually over there? 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:20.840 Is it's beIN up or is it spin down? So 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:24.560 the actual specific outcome for a quantum object isn't determined 0:20:24.640 --> 0:20:28.800 until you measure it, but the probabilities are determined in advance. Right, 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:31.320 Although in quantum mechanics, isn't it sort of impossible to 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:34.360 know the initial conditions of something of like an electron 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:36.639 or a particle that you can't ever know where it 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:39.080 is and where it's going, right, You're exactly right. You 0:20:39.119 --> 0:20:42.080 can't know all of the information about its specific location 0:20:42.160 --> 0:20:44.280 and its velocity. Here, what we mean is you know 0:20:44.359 --> 0:20:48.080 it's quantum state, which includes all of that fuzz So 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:50.280 if you know the quantum state of the electron, it's 0:20:50.280 --> 0:20:52.600 probability for where it is right now, then you can 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:55.639 predict its quantum state in the future. It's probabilities for 0:20:55.720 --> 0:20:57.679 where it's going to be in the future. So you 0:20:57.680 --> 0:20:59.600 have an electron over here and it's doing something. You 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:01.600 don't know exactly where it is, but it has some 0:21:01.720 --> 0:21:04.400 probabilities to be here there, and you do something out 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:06.199 of like you fire a photon at it, then you 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:09.680 can predict what its new probabilities are, So you don't 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:11.640 have to know exactly where it was, but you can 0:21:11.680 --> 0:21:15.479 predict how it's probabilities will evolve with time. Right, it's 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:17.639 almost like if you throw a ball, you don't know 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:19.159 if it's going to be a right or left, but 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:21.560