Superdeterminism
Have not thought of fundamental physics in a while. I’ve discovered a very interesting development: Superdeterminism. “The idea that no two places in the universe are truly independent of each other”, according to Sabine Hossenfelder and Tim Palmer in a readable update from their field. My interest was piqued with the discussion of the wave function collapse. What makes it collapse, when you observe? Why do you need to observe it? Isn’t your observation a physical interaction like any other? Why would your interaction collapse the wave function and other interactions (e.g. with another particle) not? If the cat is both dead and alive, and our observation ‘forces’ on or the other, then why doesn’t any old interaction? I never liked usual interpretation of the cat thought experiment either, but now I finally see a proper phycisist put it into clear words. We’re missing something! Duh!
I’ll not burn myself with a summary of the rest of the article, but the writers conclude: “quantum mechanics is just not a fundamental theory, and its problems are a glimpse of a deeper layer of reality.” Uh-oh! Those are words not uttered out loud very often! Superdeterminism is what might supplement quantum mechanics in order to provide a proper answer to the question of whether or not the cat lives. What’s fun is that Gerard ’t Hooft is very much involved in superdeterminism. Naturally, all his papers are on arxiv, and the latest regarding this topic seems to be this one. Let’s see what I can glean from this paper.