Abstract
Quantum mechanics is generally considered to be the ultimate theory capable of explaining the emergence of randomness by virtue of the quantum measurement process. Therefore, quantum mechanics can be thought of as God’s wonderfully imaginative solution to the problem of providing His creatures with free will in an otherwise well-ordered Universe. Indeed, how could we dream of free will in the purely deterministic Universe envisioned by Laplace if everything ever to happen is predetermined by (and in principle calculable from) the actual conditions or even those existing at the time of the Big Bang?
In this chapter, we share our view that quantum mechanics is in fact deterministic, local and realistic, in complete contradiction with most people’s perception of Bell’s theorem, thanks to our new theory of parallel lives. Accordingly, what we perceive as the so-called “collapse of the wavefunction” is but an illusion. Then we ask the fundamental question: Can a purely deterministic Quantum Theory give rise to the illusion of nondeterminism, randomness, probabilities, and ultimately can free will emerge from such a theory?
What is proved by impossibility proofs is lack of imagination
John Bell
Imagination is more important than knowledge
Albert Einstein
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Notes
- 1.
Nevertheless, we do acknowledge that compatibilists hold the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas, and that it is possible to believe both without being logically inconsistent. See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/, accessed on 29 February 2012.
- 2.
This must be a true random choice, possibly implemented by a quantum-mechanical process; flipping a classical coin would not suffice here.
- 3.
A much more remarkable example of cheating is possible for a Daemon who would be “paid” to produce randomly chosen Bell states. It could produce instead pairs of purely classical uncorrelated random bits. These mixtures being identical in terms of density matrices, such cheating would be strictly undetectable by the user. This is profitable for the Daemon because classical bits are so much easier to produce than Bell states!
- 4.
Of course, we must account for all the nonclassical correlations that violate various forms of Bell inequalities, not only for the (classically explicable) fact that two particles in the singlet state will always give opposite answers when subjected to the same measurement. This paragraph can be adapted mutatis mutandis to any pair of measurements, including POVMs, on an arbitrary bipartite entangled state, as well as to similar scenarios for multipartite entanglement.
- 5.
http://www.cheapuniverses.com, accessed on 29 February 2012.
- 6.
Specifically, cheap universes uses a commercial device called QUANTIS, available from ID Quantique, in which “photons are sent one by one onto a semi-transparent mirror and detected; the exclusive events (reflection/transmission) are associated to ‘0’/‘1’ bit values”. See http://www.idquantique.com/true-random-number-generator/products-overview.html, accessed on 29 February 2012. According to our example, we would associate outcome 0 with “I shall go on a hike” and outcome 1 with “I shall take a nice hot bath”.
- 7.
To be historically more accurate, Bell’s original 1964 paper was concerned with strong realism only, but it can be strengthened to take account of weak realism.
- 8.
To be technically exact and much more general, there must exist at least one ontic state compatible with both epistemic beliefs, unless we are ready to accept that there is no underlying reality at all [Pusey et al., 2012].
- 9.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant, accessed on 29 February 2012.
- 10.
We are implicitly ruling out the local realistic theory of superdeterminism here, according to which there is no way to prevent the boxes from knowing which button is pressed on the other box, not because a signal travels quickly enough between the boxes, but because everything being deterministic, each box knows everything about the future, including which buttons will be pushed anywhere in the Universe. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism, accessed on 29 February 2012.
- 11.
Remember Everett’s analogy with medieval criticism of the Copernican theory concerning the fact that we cannot feel the Earth move under our feet.
- 12.
Remember Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”!
- 13.
Specifically, E(A, B) + E(A, B′) + E(A′, B) − E(A′, B′); for detail, please see Eqs. (1) and (2) from Popescu and Rohrlich [1994].
- 14.
Seriously, we would not want to live in the Matrix imagined by the Wachowski siblings, no matter how perfect is the simulation. So, perhaps we do care after all!
- 15.
http://www.socialtrendsinstitute.org/Activities/Bioethics/Is-Science-Compatible-with-Our-Desire-for-Freedom.axd, accessed 29 February 2012.
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Acknowledgements
G. B. expresses his unbounded gratitude to Charles H. Bennett, who introduced him to the wonders of quantum mechanics more than 30 years ago. In a very real sense, he can trace back most of his beliefs to Bennett’s patient preaching. He is also deeply grateful to Christopher Fuchs, his malt brother, with whom he has had most fascinating discussions concerning the foundations of quantum mechanics. The above acknowledgements should not be construed into saying that Bennett and Fuchs would agree with all that has been written here!
We also benefitted from several crucial discussions with too many wonderful people to list them here even though they all helped shape our beliefs, but we must mention at least Jeffrey Bub, Claude Crépeau, Patrick Hayden, Nicolas Gisin, Adrian Kent, Nathaniel David Mermin, the late Asher Peres, and Alain Tapp. Even though G. B. has lived with these ideas for several decades, and many people throughout the years have asked him if he had anything written about it, who knows how much longer it would have been before he wrote them down, if ever, without the opportunity and motivation provided by Antoine Suarez and his 2010 meeting in Barcelona on Is Science Compatible with Our Desire for Freedom? Footnote 15
G. B. is supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canada Research Chair program and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.
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Brassard, G., Raymond-Robichaud, P. (2013). Can Free Will Emerge from Determinism in Quantum Theory?. In: Suarez, A., Adams, P. (eds) Is Science Compatible with Free Will?. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5212-6_4
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