Given these three assumptions, the theorem concludes that there exists an experiment—namely, the standard Bell experiment—whose outcomes are also not predetermined by the history of the universe. Why is this true? Basically, because supposing that the two outcomes were predetermined by the history of the universe, you could get a local hidden-variable model, in contradiction to Bell’s Theorem. You can think of this theorem as a slight generalization of Bell’s Theorem: one that rules out not only local hidden-variable theories, but also hidden-variable theories that obey the postulates of special relativity. Even if there were some non-local communication between Alice and Bob in their different galaxies, as long as there are two reference frames such that Alice measures first in one and Bob measures first in the other, you can get the same inequality. The measurement outcomes can’t have been determined in advance, even probabilistically; the universe must “make them up on the fly” after seeing how Alice and Bob set their detectors. I wrote a review of Steven Wolfram’s book a while ago where I mentioned this, as a basic consequence of Bell’s Theorem that ruled out the sort of deterministic model of physics that Wolfram was trying to construct.
That seems to be a silly argument. The outcome is determined by the history of the multiverse. We don’t know what that history is, but our ignorance is not a form of indeterminism—and it most certainly does not rule out deterministic models of physics.
That seems to be a silly argument. The outcome is determined by the history of the multiverse. We don’t know what that history is, but our ignorance is not a form of indeterminism—and it most certainly does not rule out deterministic models of physics.