The Nonlinear Library LW - Will quantum randomness affect the 2028 election? by Thomas Kwa
Jan 25, 2024
02:32
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Will quantum randomness affect the 2028 election?, published by Thomas Kwa on January 25, 2024 on LessWrong.
This came up as a tangent from @habryka and me discussing whether The Hidden Complexity of Wishes was correct.
Is the result of a US presidential election 4 years from now >0.1% contingent on quantum randomness (i.e. is an otherwise omniscient observer forecasting the 2028 election today capable of >99.9% confidence, or is there >0.1% irreducible uncertainty due to quantum mechanics observer-effects)?
I think the answer is yes, because chaotic systems will quickly amplify this randomness to change many facts about the world on election day.
Quantum randomness causes different radioactive decays, which slightly perturb positions of particles around the world by a few nanometers.
Chaotic systems will quickly amplify these tiny perturbations into macro-scale perturbations:
Weather doubles perturbations every 4 days or so
The genes of ~all babies less than 3 years old will be different
Many events relevant to the election are contingent on these differences
Weather-related natural disasters, other circumstances like pandemics (either mutation or lab leak), political gaffes by candidates, assassinations (historically >0.1% and seem pretty random), cancer deaths, etc.
If even a small proportion of election variance is random, you get more than 0.1% election randomness.
Say humanity's best estimates for the vote margin of the 2028 election have a standard deviation of 76 electoral votes centered on 0. Even if 90% of variance is in theory predictable and only 10% is true randomness (aleatoric), then the nonrandom factors have s.d. 70 and random factors have s.d. 24. If nonrandom factors have 1sd influence, random factors will flip the election with probability well over 0.1%.
In reality it's much worse than this, because we haven't even identified 2 leading candidates.
Oliver thinks the answer is no, because in a system as large and complicated as the world, there should be some macro-scale patterns that survive, and an omniscient observer will pick up on all such patterns. Humans are limited to obvious patterns like economic trends and extrapolating polls, but there are likely way more patterns than this, which a forecaster could use to accurately get over well 99.9% confidence.
Who is right?
Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org
This came up as a tangent from @habryka and me discussing whether The Hidden Complexity of Wishes was correct.
Is the result of a US presidential election 4 years from now >0.1% contingent on quantum randomness (i.e. is an otherwise omniscient observer forecasting the 2028 election today capable of >99.9% confidence, or is there >0.1% irreducible uncertainty due to quantum mechanics observer-effects)?
I think the answer is yes, because chaotic systems will quickly amplify this randomness to change many facts about the world on election day.
Quantum randomness causes different radioactive decays, which slightly perturb positions of particles around the world by a few nanometers.
Chaotic systems will quickly amplify these tiny perturbations into macro-scale perturbations:
Weather doubles perturbations every 4 days or so
The genes of ~all babies less than 3 years old will be different
Many events relevant to the election are contingent on these differences
Weather-related natural disasters, other circumstances like pandemics (either mutation or lab leak), political gaffes by candidates, assassinations (historically >0.1% and seem pretty random), cancer deaths, etc.
If even a small proportion of election variance is random, you get more than 0.1% election randomness.
Say humanity's best estimates for the vote margin of the 2028 election have a standard deviation of 76 electoral votes centered on 0. Even if 90% of variance is in theory predictable and only 10% is true randomness (aleatoric), then the nonrandom factors have s.d. 70 and random factors have s.d. 24. If nonrandom factors have 1sd influence, random factors will flip the election with probability well over 0.1%.
In reality it's much worse than this, because we haven't even identified 2 leading candidates.
Oliver thinks the answer is no, because in a system as large and complicated as the world, there should be some macro-scale patterns that survive, and an omniscient observer will pick up on all such patterns. Humans are limited to obvious patterns like economic trends and extrapolating polls, but there are likely way more patterns than this, which a forecaster could use to accurately get over well 99.9% confidence.
Who is right?
Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org