pnrjulius comments on Think Like Reality - Less Wrong

49 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 May 2007 06:36AM

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Comment author: pnrjulius 05 June 2012 05:07:24PM 1 point [-]

Presumably the actual property is the state of the wavefunction.

So for instance we could have a Gaussian wavefunction... and that would be the determinate physical variable. It has no particular position or momentum, because there are nonzero amplitudes for various different positions and momenta. We could choose a different wavefunction to get a more determinate position, but then because it's a Fourier transform the momentum would grow ever more indeterminate.

Interestingly, there are apparently ways of working around this, by carefully choosing your observables to be operators that commute. http://arstechnica.com/science/2010/08/quantum-memory-may-topple-heisenbergs-uncertainty-principle/