Well [-l + come]; one of your comments was erroneous, as you said yourself (the one you retracted), another comment reads like a restatement of a popular comment predating yours by a over year (which you acknowledged yourself), and the third makes a pretty sweeping claim about superdeterminism not being Turing computable. Unfortunately, the proof you provide seems flawed on a couple of counts.* However, even if the proof did turn out to stand, people frown upon comments which do not give more explanations and context to sweeping statements that seemingly come out of thin air (even if they did turn out to be correct). FYI, I didn’t read (until now) or vote on any of your comments.
That makes 3 plausible downvote explanations for 3 comments, two of which you mentioned yourself. I’m surprised about your surprise.
* (Superdeterminism doesn’t require that part of the overall program can be perfectly predicted by a much smaller program in advance, nor that the outcome of the smaller program can then be used to change the overall outcome. At least two reasons: 1) Not being able to verify complete correspondence (except by fiat), given all hidden variables and their potentially unknowable context (unknowable from within the program, and the context may encompass the entire universe); 2) superdeterminism can in principle be saved simply by saying that the agent isn’t able to show a contradiction; i.o.w. in a superdeterminist universe, a perfect prediction-machine conditional on which a contradiction can be derived cannot exist, by definition of what “superdeterminism” means. Your thought experiment would be inapplicable in a superdeterminist universe, strange as it sounds. In that light, your proof reads similar to the one that shows that a Halting problem decider cannot exist. Alternatively, the agent would be unable to use the result to show a contradiction. While such an inability would indeed seem strange, from the universe’s point of view, every facet of that inability would have been predetermined anyways.)
You’re basically saying that superdeterminism doesn’t require Turing computability, not that it is in principle Turing computable. Anyway, my point was that superdeterminism predicts that we will never find a practical way to compute the observed answer to a simple quantum superposition, because that would imply that we could change it.
And I guess I did make a “sweeping claim”, but I was still annoyed that I just got down-voted without a reply. If I had a “sweeping claim” to discuss, how should I have posted it?
The AIbox one I had thought of before seeing that comment, and it’s (in my opinion) stronger than the other one. (And the replies to it didn’t apply to mine fully). As an aside, would I in general be expected to read all 300+ comments on a post before commenting?
If I had a “sweeping claim” to discuss, how should I have posted it?
See “give more explanations and context”. If you’re concerned with “never find a practical way”, that’s an entirely different discussion than “isn’t Turing-computable” (in this community, if something has a strictly technical interpretation, that’s what is defaulted to). Give enough context so that a reader knows what you’re concerned with (practical applications, apparently, see I wasn’t aware of that), instead of a somewhat theoretical sounding claim (which you apparently meant in a more practical way) with a proof that turns out to be wrong, given that strictly theoretical claim. Also, I was only pointing out shortcomings of your proof, to do so no stance regarding Turing computability is required. However, there is no reason to assume that superdeterminism would require incomputability, on the contrary, as long as the true determinist laws of physics are computable, the universe would be as well, no?
As an aside, would I in general be expected to read all 300+ comments on a post before commenting?
Well, at least the top level comments with a couple of upvotes, so you don’t repeat one of the main responses? That boils it down to 35-ish comments.
Turing computability is a technical concept first. You don’t “need” to be strictly technical (obviously), but talking about Turing computability and giving a proof-by-contradiction kind of sends off the vibes of a technical/theoretical point, don’t you think? I was making an observation about how I interpreted your comment, and why, I wasn’t telling you what you need to write about.
Well [-l + come]; one of your comments was erroneous, as you said yourself (the one you retracted), another comment reads like a restatement of a popular comment predating yours by a over year (which you acknowledged yourself), and the third makes a pretty sweeping claim about superdeterminism not being Turing computable. Unfortunately, the proof you provide seems flawed on a couple of counts.* However, even if the proof did turn out to stand, people frown upon comments which do not give more explanations and context to sweeping statements that seemingly come out of thin air (even if they did turn out to be correct). FYI, I didn’t read (until now) or vote on any of your comments.
That makes 3 plausible downvote explanations for 3 comments, two of which you mentioned yourself. I’m surprised about your surprise.
* (Superdeterminism doesn’t require that part of the overall program can be perfectly predicted by a much smaller program in advance, nor that the outcome of the smaller program can then be used to change the overall outcome. At least two reasons: 1) Not being able to verify complete correspondence (except by fiat), given all hidden variables and their potentially unknowable context (unknowable from within the program, and the context may encompass the entire universe); 2) superdeterminism can in principle be saved simply by saying that the agent isn’t able to show a contradiction; i.o.w. in a superdeterminist universe, a perfect prediction-machine conditional on which a contradiction can be derived cannot exist, by definition of what “superdeterminism” means. Your thought experiment would be inapplicable in a superdeterminist universe, strange as it sounds. In that light, your proof reads similar to the one that shows that a Halting problem decider cannot exist. Alternatively, the agent would be unable to use the result to show a contradiction. While such an inability would indeed seem strange, from the universe’s point of view, every facet of that inability would have been predetermined anyways.)
You’re basically saying that superdeterminism doesn’t require Turing computability, not that it is in principle Turing computable. Anyway, my point was that superdeterminism predicts that we will never find a practical way to compute the observed answer to a simple quantum superposition, because that would imply that we could change it.
And I guess I did make a “sweeping claim”, but I was still annoyed that I just got down-voted without a reply. If I had a “sweeping claim” to discuss, how should I have posted it?
The AIbox one I had thought of before seeing that comment, and it’s (in my opinion) stronger than the other one. (And the replies to it didn’t apply to mine fully). As an aside, would I in general be expected to read all 300+ comments on a post before commenting?
See “give more explanations and context”. If you’re concerned with “never find a practical way”, that’s an entirely different discussion than “isn’t Turing-computable” (in this community, if something has a strictly technical interpretation, that’s what is defaulted to). Give enough context so that a reader knows what you’re concerned with (practical applications, apparently, see I wasn’t aware of that), instead of a somewhat theoretical sounding claim (which you apparently meant in a more practical way) with a proof that turns out to be wrong, given that strictly theoretical claim. Also, I was only pointing out shortcomings of your proof, to do so no stance regarding Turing computability is required. However, there is no reason to assume that superdeterminism would require incomputability, on the contrary, as long as the true determinist laws of physics are computable, the universe would be as well, no?
Well, at least the top level comments with a couple of upvotes, so you don’t repeat one of the main responses? That boils it down to 35-ish comments.
Oh. I need to be “strictly technical”? I’ll go back to the one about Turing computability and edit it to reflect a “strictly technical” comment.
Turing computability is a technical concept first. You don’t “need” to be strictly technical (obviously), but talking about Turing computability and giving a proof-by-contradiction kind of sends off the vibes of a technical/theoretical point, don’t you think? I was making an observation about how I interpreted your comment, and why, I wasn’t telling you what you need to write about.