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My debate with YouTuber physicist Sabine Hossenfelder is now available in video format:

This was originally motivated by an essay I wrote a couple of weeks ago criticizing Hossenfelder's 'hidden variables' theory as fantasy. Since then, I offered further criticism in parts of a more recent essay.

As such, the point of the present post is not to rehash arguments already presented, but to tackle one specific part of the debate: at one point, I claim that Hossenfelder has never precisely specified what the 'hidden variables' are supposed to be. I was referring to a 2019 draft paper in which Hossenfelder makes an experiment proposal to substantiate hidden variables, even without specifying what they're supposed to be. The reason the proposed experiment is so vague and cumbersome is precisely because it tries to control for the initial state ofundefined hidden variables.

But during the debate, as you can see in the video above, Hossenfelder claimed unambiguously that she had in fact defined what the hidden variables are supposed to be (see the video from this point, where she says, "you are asking, did I define the variables? I've defined them"); and that she had done that all the way back in 2011. This would be a case in which her earlier literature would have been more complete than her output of ten years later, which was confusing to me. Why propose an experiment, in 2019, that is so cumbersome precisely because Hossenfelder didn't know what she was supposed to control for, if she actually had this knowledge ten years earlier?

After the debate, I received a number of links from her by email. Two were meant to address the point mentioned above—namely, the specification of what the hidden variables are supposed to be: this and this paper. The former is a small subset of the latter, so I'll limit my commentary to this latter one.

The paper is an experiment proposal largely identical to the 2019 one, just with some more introductory discussion. But it, too, explicitly acknowledges lack of knowledge of what the hidden variables are supposed to be. Indeed, the thrust of the paper is precisely to propose an experiment that is somehow meaningful while not specifying the hidden variables. Consider this passage, for instance, in which the experimental conditions are discussed step by step:

1. Instead of measuring a sequence of individually prepared states, chose a setting in which the state (at least with some probability) is returned into the initial state and repeated measurements on the same state can be performed.

2. The experimental setup itself and the detector should be as small as possible to minimize the number of hidden variables (i.e. N should be small).

3. The repetition of measurements should be as fast as possible so any changes to the hidden variables of the detector in between measurements are minimized (i.e. κ < τ).

These proposals are meant precisely to circumvent lack of understanding of what the hidden variables are supposed to be. It is for this reason that one needs to avoid "a sequence of individually prepared states" (so not to reset the hidden variables, whatever they may be), make the detector "as small as possible to minimize the number of hidden variables" (whatever they may be), and repeat the measurements "as fast as possible so any changes to the hidden variables [whatever they may be] in between measurements are minimized." Throughout the text, the paper implicitly acknowledges that the authors do not know what the hidden variables are supposed to be; they just make assumptions about some boundary constraints. For instance, in this passage:

Most crucially, we have made the minimalist assumption that the hidden variables stem from the correlation with the detector and possibly other parts of the experimental setup. (emphasis added)

If they knew what the hidden variables were supposed to be, there would have been no need for such an assumption; they would know, not assume.

I am not sure, therefore, why Hossenfelder felt that this, in any way, addresses my point of criticism; if anything, it seems to reconfirm it. Perhaps she felt that the extended introductory discussion provides some more definition. She talks, for instance, of "Corr(ν, κ)," the correlation that one expects to observe if hidden variables are true. But this just formalizes, mathematically, what the 2019 paper proposed; it doesn't provide any additional clarity about what the hidden variables are supposed to be. It is also true that this earlier paper provides some more discussion about some boundary conditions of the experiment, but that doesn't entail or imply any precise definition of the supposed hidden variables.

In the spirit of being as charitable as possible towards her position, I perused the other links she sent. The paper that seems to come the closest to defining what the hidden variables are supposed to be is this one, seemingly yet to be peer-reviewed and published, from 2020.

While this later paper makes an attempt to be more specific about the nature of the hidden variables, it is based on a toy model. As a matter of fact, the title of the paper is 'A Toy Model for Local and Deterministic Wave-function Collapse.' The model is not meant to be realistic at all; it's just an exercise in imagination to make some abstract mathematical points; it's not applicable to reality, but just to a much simplified, imaginary universe based on arbitrary assumptions known to be untrue in the real universe. It's a valid exercise, but it doesn't do anything about providing clarity regarding what real hidden variables are supposed to be. And this is not just my interpretation, it is acknowledged in the paper itself:

One should not think of this model as a viable description of nature because the way that the random variables enter the dynamics has no good motivation. ... This toy model avoids non-local interactions by hard-coding the dependence on the detector settings into the evolution law. This is another reason why one should not take this model too seriously: A good, fundamental, model should allow us to derive that the effective law for the prepared state depends on the detector settings. (original emphasis)

In conclusion, the papers referenced as answers to my criticism during the debate not only fail to refute my criticism, they appear to validate it. Hossenfelder's citation of these papers during the debate was a misleading—even flat-out false —rhetorical tool of deflection: it sought to convey the impression that I was fatally ignorant of her work (an impression casual viewers are bound to walk away with) while my points were spot-on. This kind of misleading, hollow, but self-confident, assertive rhetoric seems, unfortunately, to be characteristic of Hossenfelder's videos and—as I now know from experience—her defence of criticisms. Her rhetorical assertiveness is, at least sometimes, a facade that hides a surprising lack of actual substance. She doesn't debate, she deflects. These are very different things.

(Since publication, Hossenfelder has replied to this post and I offered a rejoinder here)

huntleyquould.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2022/02/sabine-hossenfelders-bluf-called.html

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