NickRetallack comments on Explain/Worship/Ignore? - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 September 2007 08:01PM

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Comment author: DSherron 27 June 2013 07:50:25PM 0 points [-]

I'm not a physicist, and I couldn't give a technical explanation of why that won't work (although I feel like I can grasp an intuitive idea based on how the Uncertainty Principle works to begin with). However, remember the Litany of a Bright Dilettante. You're not going to spot a trivial means of bypassing a fundamental theory in a field like physics after thinking for five minutes on a blog.

Incidentally, the Uncertainty Principle doesn't talk about the precision of our possible measurements, per se, but about the actual amplitude distribution for the observable. As you get arbitrarily precise along one of the pair you get arbitrarily spread out along the other, so that the second value is indeterminate even in principle.

Comment author: NickRetallack 29 June 2013 04:12:41AM 1 point [-]

I didn't come up with it. It's called the EPR Paradox.

Comment author: DSherron 29 June 2013 05:19:45AM *  0 points [-]

Neat. Consider my objection retracted. Although I suspect someone with more knowledge of the material could give a better explanation.

Comment author: NickRetallack 29 June 2013 08:45:00AM 1 point [-]

I'm going to read the QM sequence now. I have always been confused by descriptions of QM.