Superdeterminism is a term introduced in the 1980's by
John Bell to explain the mysterious correlation of results for spacelike-separated measurements in the
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiments.
During an interview by BBC Radio 3, Bell proposed the idea of a "
superdeterminism" that could explain the correlation of results in spacelike-separated two-particle experiments without the need for faster-than-light signaling. The two experiments need only have been
pre-determined by causes reaching both experiments from an earlier time.
I was going to ask whether it is still possible to maintain, in the
light of experimental experience, the idea of a deterministic universe?
You know, one of the ways of understanding this business is to
say that the world is super-deterministic. That not only is inanimate
nature deterministic, but we, the experimenters who
imagine we can choose to do one experiment rather than another,
are also determined. If so, the difficulty which this experimental
result creates disappears.
Free will is an illusion - that gets us out of the crisis, does it?
That's correct. In the analysis it is assumed that free will is
genuine, and as a result of that one finds that the intervention of
the experimenter at one point has to have consequences at a
remote point, in a way that influences restricted by the finite
velocity of light would not permit. If the experimenter is not free
to make this intervention, if that also is determined in advance,
the difficulty disappears.
(The Ghost in the Atom, P.C.W. Davies and J. Brown, ch.3, p.47)
Superdeterminism would deny the important "
free choice" of the experimenter (originally suggested by
Niels Bohr and
Werner Heisenberg) and later explored by
John Conway and
Simon Kochen. Conway and Kochen claim that the experimenters' free choice requires that atoms must have
free will, something they call their
Free Will Theorem.
Following John Bell,
Nicholas Gisin and
Antoine Suarez argue that something might be coming from "outside space and time" to correlate results in their own experimental tests of
Bell's Theorem.
In his 1996 book,
Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point,
Huw Price proposes an Archimedean point "outside space and time" as a solution to the problem of nonlocality in the Bell experiments in the form of an "advanced action."
Rather than a "superdeterministic" common cause coming from "outside space and time" (as proposed by Bell, Gisin, Suarez, and others), Price argues that there might be a cause coming backwards in time from some interaction in the future.
Roger Penrose and
Stuart Hameroff have also promoted this idea of "backward causation," sending information backward in time in the
EPR experiments.
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