I can try for grandparent. In physics all equations including quantum mechanics are deterministic in the sense that if one knows the initial state of the universe then one knows evolution of the universe after and before. Moreover, in classical physics the assumption was that if one knows the state of some local patch of the universe at some moment, then one in principle can tell the near future and past of that local patch without knowing the state of the rest of the universe.
Experimental observations of violations of Bell equations tell that no, one cannot tell the evolution of the local patch from the patch alone. Standard interpretation of quantum mechanics and physical super-determinism are just different ways to explain this.
In particular the standard quantum mechanics assumes that things are still local, but the wave function is not observable in principle so we can only talk about statistical properties. Super-determinisme assumes that things are not local and tries to explain how.
In philosophy determinism is essentially the opposite of free will. It implies that what people perceive as personal free will is an illusion. But this has nothing to do with the determinism of physical models. In particular, free will is compatible with physical determinism of what one perceives as an external world. One possible explanation of how this is possible is that the act of free will changes both future and past. So it looks like the future state reflecting the choice of will is deterministically follows from the past. It is just the past is different from what would be if the choice would be different. Stanford encyclopedia entry on free will has more splendid explanations.
Thanks, this was very clearly written, though I'm already familiar with it. If I got it right, you're saying that the levels of determinism refer to the difference between physical determinism and metaphysical ideas (of which the idea that a conscious being's will influences both the past and the future is an example)?
> But this has nothing to do with the determinism of physical models.
It seems rather confusing to state it has nothing to do with determinism of physical models. More accurately, it does have to do with determinism of physical models if you assume a physicalist perspective, but it might not, though then you have to resort to much more involved and comprehensive models of what consciousness and will are (like changing both the future and past).
Physics cannot address the question of free will at all, as all our experiences tell that at least globally universe is 100% deterministic. So one need to go beyond physics to address that.
This is similar with the notion of time. A typical perception is that only now exists. Yet according to physics there is no now. All our physical models based on experience imply that the universe is 4-dimensional static something. There is no now and all points across the time dimension have same properties just as points across space.
One needs metaphysics to try to explain this discrepancy between perception and very successful physical models.
> as all our experiences tell that at least globally universe is 100% deterministic.
I'm not sure what you mean by this so I'm also not sure how to address it, but it does seem reasonable to assume free will simply does not exist exactly because phenomena is either deterministic or stochastic, not some third option which would allow free will. This view is informed by physics.
> There is no now and all points across the time dimension have same properties just as points across space.
This is a much more interesting problem and one that has kept me up many times.
I meant all our fundamental physical models are fully-deterministic globally. The only exceptions are singularities of General Relativity, but even for those the believe is that a proper accounting of quantum effects should resolve this. We build those models based on experience. So here is comes the contradiction with personal perception. One can always say that it just implies that free will is an illusion. But as there are other ways to resolve this that keeps free will and are compatible with apparent determinism of external world, the inevitable conclusion is that physics cannot resolve the issue of the free will.
As for the problem of now, for me it is similar to the problem of free will. Starting from Parmenides and Buddha one way to resolve this was to declare that the perception of now and movement is an illusion similar to the notion of free will. And as with free will, that will be compatible with physical models and the opposite cannot be expressed within physical models.
Evolution of the local patch is predictable from the patch alone. Violation of inequation is when this evolution has correlation with a distant patch. Copenhagen interprets this correlation as causation, hence FTL.
> Evolution of the local patch is predictable from the patch alone.
How do you know, that there is no non-local influence, that makes your predictions "from the patch alone" incorrect? I don't think this can be easily excluded as a possibility.
We can assume that there is no non-local influence and try to make progress from there, but we might be wrong about it, which is what the article is getting at, if I understand it correctly.
> Evolution of the local patch is predictable from the patch alone.
Only if you take the experimenter and his decision as part of the local patch, and take the decision to be determined by the same state which also determines the experiment's outcome, which is essentially what superdeterminism is, no?
Every time I search for it, I seem to need to go through many websites with wishy-washy explanations. Then I found: http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam051/2004045179.pdf where it lists 4 types in the table of contents (just search for "determinism" in the document). However, some other websites list more types, where some of them imply the others. For example: https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_determinism.html Recently I had an interesting discussion with a coworker, but I cannot find the website we shared to clarify, what I meant by "deterministic".
Basically the metaphysical determinism says, that everything is predetermined and if something seems random, it is simply because of something we do not know yet or something that is too complex to be calculated, so that we cannot predict the event that seems random. Whatever physicists come up with, for example quantum whatever, one can always say: Well, it seems random, but I believe, that there is something we have not yet discovered or don't yet know about, which makes things behave exactly as they are, completely deterministic.
At that point it becomes a believe, not a science. You can always add an unknown (or "hidden variable"). Personally, I do not think this believe is in any way worse, than the believe, that something "simply happens at random" with "no theoretical way of explaining why". Probably metaphysical determinism in one way or another has always been a big motivator for scientists to continue research.
