pnrjulius comments on Think Like Reality - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (64)
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/