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by green_on_black 1271 days ago
Bypass the limit? No. Partially because you need to propagate that measurement somehow to your brain. But assuming that we have the "pin down perfectly" part (idk how that would even be possible): Mostly because the position/momentum of the measured particle would immediately become uncertain right after the measurement (it becomes a cloud of probabilities again).

The total uncertainty in the system would likely decrease, since you can think of it like wavefunction collapse. Of course, everything depends on how exactly the situation works mathematically, which we haven't actually defined yet.

To be clear, it is very well known that it isn't a measurement limitation. It's similar to asking "what the length of an oval" is, since there are many ways to measure an oval. It's not a "well-defined" question, and in fact, quantum mechanics requires it to be not-well-defined.

For more info, check out the fourier transform and how that necessitates the heisenberg uncertainty principle.

I (and many other physics people) find that people have a very hard time even trying to accept the nature of reality when it comes with uncertainty, and I think that's very normal. But according to our best known models, uncertainty is the nature of reality, and not because we can't measure enough.

2 comments

Thanks. Yes, I get the Fourier transform thing (and Bell's theorem etc.), but imagine asking Newton the consequences of finite-speed gravity. He could either imagine how to reconcile that with his theory and hypothesize what the outcome might be (e.g., he might say if the sun exploded then you'd find out 8 minutes later), or he could tell you it's intrinsically infinite and that your question is like asking "what the length of an oval" is. I find one of these answers more satisfactory than the other.

Now, in this particular case: I understand superdeterminism would mean the entire world could be deterministic and yet consistent with QM, correct? And I understand a reason why the world might be superdeterministic is that everything is already correlated/entangled together (say, from the big bang), thus making this in fact inherently a "measurement problem" in that we don't have any unentangled measurement particles available... right?

If you buy that so far, then here's where I'm trying to go with this: if QM's response to this is "well, if you did obtain such an unentangled particle, you could use it to reduce the uncertainty in your next measurement beyond your current limits", then it seems to me QM is in favor of the world being superdeterministic, and the uncertainty we face is more coincidental than fundamental. Whereas if QM's response was "well, even if you had such a particle, you couldn't use it to reduce the uncertainty in your next measurement", then it seems to me QM believes the measurement limit is more fundamental than coincidental. Given the situation seems like the former to me, is there any reason to bet against the world being superdeterministic? If anything, it seems to me that superdeterminism has the big bang going for it, no?

Don't bring a classical knife to a quantum mechanical gun fight!
Could you use other words for uncertainty? Say randomness or is random something different, more chaotic perhaps.