thomas

My little non-physicist mind is being blown right now as I burrow deeper into the superdeterminism rabbit hole, guided by t' Hooft's writings, a bunch of YouTube videos, and ChatGPT 4o in the role of the ever-patient tutor.

It feels to me like superdeterminism is to physics what solipsism is to metaphysics: arguably the most important question, because everything is downstream from it; and yet the most pointless, because it is untestable and (assuming it is true) does not really change anything (except perhaps drive us all to nihilism).

My little non-physicist mind is being blown right now as I burrow deeper into the superdeterminism rabbit hole, guided by t' Hooft's writings, a bunch of YouTube videos, and ChatGPT 4o in the role of the ever-patient tutor.

It feels to me like superdeterminism is to physics what solipsism is to metaphysics: arguably the most important question, because everything is downstream from it; and yet the most pointless, because it is untestable and (assuming it is true) does not really change anything (except perhaps drive us all to nihilism).

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-319-41285-6.pdf

Science

Imagine the entire universe as a 3D lattice, like a Minecraft world,  where each block is a point the size of one Planck length (1.6 x 10^-35 meters). Each point follows a few simple, local rules and can only interact with its immediate neighbors. 1/

Aviator, diver, Etherean, nexialist, PhD in aviation and climate science, host of /diving /ethfinance /forteantimes /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas

(Background for this cast) https://warpcast.com/aviationdoctor.eth/0xb7838b65

Nihilism ain't all bad!

"However, this view of nihilism gives an entirely new viewpoint. People who call themselves “nihilists” often consider themselves pessimistic. But that is not inherent to nihilism, the universe is indifferent and this is merely a reality. Trying to seek for a greater meaning in something superstitious or beyond us is a failure to understand the only and actual foundation of meaning as the mind itself.

Thus, Nietzsche’s teachings are not to be used to fight against nihilism, but rather to embrace it as our reality, and then to strive for self-overcoming and acceptance through the concept of the Overman, the Will to Power, and the Eternal Recurrence.

It is us, our minds, that create our meaning and value."

Complexity explorer. Residing in the liminal.

And in response to that person, it could be that consciousness is illusory (just like our sensory perception or reality, which is a map but not the territory).

Or, said differently, that we’re truly aware, but not able to see the “rails” which guide our awareness and qualia.

Just like we can’t picture higher-dimensional hyperobjects in our minds, maybe we just can’t see the strings and puppetmaster (the deterministic hidden variables at the quantum / subatomic scale).

Oh I agree. Nihilism (just like cynicism, by the way) gets a reflexive bad rap. In this specific context, I’m referring to what happens if we all agree that the world is superdeterministic.

In physics, it means that experimenters are not free to perform whatever experiment they like; both those experiments and their outcomes are predetermined since the Big Bang, and physicists are more akin to readers of a book written by someone else.

In everyday life, it means we’re all mesoscopic cellular automata going through preordained motions. I was just listening to a podcast with Roger Penrose and one of the guests was challenging superdeterminism on the basis that consciousness is pointless if we have no free will. That’s where my nihilism comment comes from — it’s hard for people to embrace the idea that they are just passive spectators of a the movie of their life being projected onto their mental screen. There’s cognitive resistance to accepting that their decisions are already made for them

Nihilism ain't all bad!

"However, this view of nihilism gives an entirely new viewpoint. People who call themselves “nihilists” often consider themselves pessimistic. But that is not inherent to nihilism, the universe is indifferent and this is merely a reality. Trying to seek for a greater meaning in something superstitious or beyond us is a failure to understand the only and actual foundation of meaning as the mind itself.

Thus, Nietzsche’s teachings are not to be used to fight against nihilism, but rather to embrace it as our reality, and then to strive for self-overcoming and acceptance through the concept of the Overman, the Will to Power, and the Eternal Recurrence.

It is us, our minds, that create our meaning and value."

https://eternalisedofficial.com/2020/12/15/misunderstanding-nihilism/