Aspects of Superdeterminism Made Intuitive

Giacomo Andreoletti, Louis Vervoort

Gabriele Cafiero, Luca Molinari, Jonte R. Hance

Sergey B. Yurchenko

Manuel S. Morales

Sabine Hossenfelder, T. N. Palmer

Quantum mechanics has irked physicists ever since its conception more than 100 years ago. While some of the misgivings, such as it being unintuitive, are merely aesthetic, quantum mechanics has one serious shortcoming: it lacks a physical description of the measurement process. This ``measurement problem'' indicates that quantum mechanics is at least an incomplete theory -- good as far as it goes, but missing a piece -- or, more radically, is in need of complete overhaul. Here we describe an approach which may provide this sought-for completion or replacement: Superdeterminism. A superdeterministic theory is one which violates the assumption of Statistical Independence (that distributions of hidden variables are independent of measurement settings). Intuition suggests that Statistical Independence is an essential ingredient of any theory of science (never mind physics), and for this reason Superdeterminism is typically discarded swiftly in any discussion of quantum foundations. The purpose of this paper is to explain why the existing objections to Superdeterminism are based on experience with classical physics and linear systems, but that this experience misleads us. Superdeterminism is a promising approach not only to solve the measurement problem, but also to understand the apparent nonlocality of quantum physics. Most importantly, we will discuss how it may be possible to test this hypothesis in an (almost) model independent way.

Gordon Watson

Commonsense local realism (CLR) is the fusion of local-causality (no causal influence propagates superluminally) and physical-realism (some physical properties change interactively). Advancing our case for a wholly CLR-based quantum mechanics, we use undergraduate maths and logic to factor the quantum entanglements in EPRB and Aspect (2002). Such factors (one factor relating to beables in Alice's domain, the other to beables in Bob's), refute Bell's theorem and eliminate the need for ‘t Hooft's superdeterminism. An obvious unifying algorithm (based on spin-s particles in a single thought-experiment) is foreshadowed and left as an exercise. That is, to emphasise the physical significance of our results, we here factor EPRB and Aspect (2002) separately and in detail.