[extropy-chat] still no biscuit!

[Jeff Medina]

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:43:29 -0600, Damien Broderick
<thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> At 05:56 PM 1/19/2005 -0500, Jeff Medina wrote:
> 
> >Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle does not conflict with conservation
> >of momentum. It is a limit on measurement capabilities, not an
> >indicator that momentum goes "all over the ship" when position is
> >measured.
> 
> This is simply wrong (as I understand it). It seems to imply that with
> finer or smarter measuring instruments, we could home in on both properties
> simultaneously; this seems to be incorrect.

Your claim about what it implies is incorrect. The limit on
measurement has nothing to do with what measurement instrument used --
'finer or smarter' instruments do nothing to alleviate the problem.
Google Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

> What's more, if one knows
> position perfectly, momentum can be *anything at all*, and vice versa. It
> probably won't be, for stochastic reasons, but it could be.

Sure. But you're confusing two meanings of "could be" -- the relevant
"could be" is "for all we know, it could be anything at all, because
the act of measuring position changes the momentum and vice versa" and
not "the momentum vector takes on a random/nonsensical value due to a
fundamental indeterminism, and so could be anything at all, with utter
disregard for conservation of momentum".