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The universe is deterministic. Quantum Mechanics doesn't really disagree with this, it's just not as popular an interpretation as the other ones. Even if deterministic QM interpretations eventually end up being ruled out rigorously, maybe we could someday "poke through" to the underlying substrate, like a video game character figuring out the seed for the RNG that determines their universe.
Strong agree. What requires a larger logical leap: that everything is random and quantum states can propagate instantaneously across any distance regardless of the speed of light and without any theoretical mechanism beyond math, or that time is an illusion and the universe has hidden non-local variables?
No idea how particle physicists can sleep at night just accepting the Copenhagen Hypothesis because the math works and it says not to worry about how.
There's also superdeterminism.
I don't really understand QM. At a human level, does this affect free will?
IMO free will is commonly misunderstood. It's not an absolute property, it's a relative statement. In other words, something doesn't "have" free will, the term is merely shorthand for "behavior that can't be predicted". To me, a rock doesn't have free will because I can use relatively simple physics to predict its behavior perfectly. Other humans have much more free will because it's much harder to predict their behavior. A bug is somewhere in the middle. To a superhuman intelligence (supercomputer, aliens, deity, take your pick), humans don't have free will, because our behavior can be perfectly predicted.
That squares with my opinion on QM in that even if deterministic interpretations of QM are eventually rigorously ruled out, I would still be of the opinion that if we could poke through the underlying substrate and query an intelligence there, our behavior would be perfectly predictable. Much like a video game character discovering the math behind the RNG that controls their universe. So they're kind of orthogonal concepts, but somewhat related.
Quantum mechanics is made up because physicist can't figure out math.
Everything in science is made up, including math. Then it is tested if it passes scrutiny.