Is super determinism related to the idea that the universe is a simulation? People seem to get very heated about the simulation idea but I've never really understood why. Do they expect we'll somehow crack the code and get to peek into the future? Seems unlikely to me. Talking of never understanding,,I've been subscribed to that PBS channel for ages now and love and hate it in equal measure. Love because I'm fascinated with the ideas. Hate because virtually every video published makes me feel dumb. I'll follow the first half of the video and then miss all the meat in the second half - not having the background or not being able to follow the ideas introduced.
Superdeterminism and the simulation idea are both hypotheses that are currently unfalsifiable, not mutually exclusive, nor mutually reinforcing. Testing either will at bare minimum require particle colliders that run at higher energies than the LHC, but even then, I’m not sure it’ll ever be possible to know for certain. I think The Matrix kinda ruined the simulation interpretation in popular culture. It's really weird, like imagine intubating cows because you wanted to harvest their warmth. The physics and chemistry of it don't make sense. Surely we (or sentient AI in the future) could design a chemical engine more efficient than a cow or human. Or use alternate energy sources entirely. Whatever. Anyway, if this is all simulation, one way that’d be possible is if our three spatial dimensions were embedded inside of a higher-dimensional universe, where presumably the higher-dimensional beings live, who kicked off the simulation. LOL yeah, I noticed the video had 700k views and was wondering if there’s really an audience for this. That’s where the “dead relatives, give us money” joke comes from in another comment of mine on this post. Although it's firmly rooted in accepted physics, much of it probably sounds like hippy babble. To be fair, both are attempts at metaphysics. And yeah, if I didn’t have a physics background, I'm not sure how much I would get out of the PBS Space Time channel. I probably need Devac to vet and/or refute the first paragraph, especially. If he wants to, of course. We need to import even more physicists around here, what's the exchange rate?
I'm gonna level with you here: this is far out my zone. Currently reading through this article and sources/followups to get more up to speed, but doubt you'll get much from me. The topic itself is kinda like solving Riemann's conjecture -- I obviously tried, but don't really have an opinion or profound (for a mathematician, at least) grasp of implications? As far as I see it, the real problem is that, as with Bohmian mechanics and many similar hidden-variable theories, we can absolutely postulate it as valid but decisively testable only under the assumption we can achieve an infinitely-precise time resolution of the measurement... which we obviously can't do so the topic itself is moot at best, faff at worst. Especially in a world with better, more general and easier-to-use theories. Dunno, but it introduces you to related vocab and concepts (or even points to a discipline, which is not always a trivial thing to determine), often accompanied with some intuitive animation/diagram, which alone honesty kicks the everloving shit out of many popsci books, picture being worth a thousand words and all that.I probably need Devac to vet and/or refute the first paragraph, especially. If he wants to, of course.
And yeah, if I didn’t have a physics background, I'm not sure how much I would get out of the PBS Space Time channel.