NYTimes: Demoting the Uncertainty Principle

[zoogs]

http://opinionator.b...inty-principle/

 

“You’ve observed the robbers. They know it. That will change their actions,” says Charlie Eppes, the math savant who helps detectives on television’s “Numbers.” Eppes claims that this insight follows from quantum physics, in particular, Werner Heisenberg’s infamous “uncertainty principle.” Not all mischaracterizations of Heisenberg’s principle are as innocent as Eppes’s. The film “What the Bleep Do We Know!?” uses it to justify many articles of faith in New Age philosophy. Asserting that observing water molecules changes their molecular structure, the film reasons that since we are 90 percent water, physics therefore tells us that we can fundamentally change our nature via mental energy. Fundamentally inaccurate uses of the principle are also common in the academy, especially among social theorists, who often argue that it undermines science’s claims to objectivity and completeness. As Jim Holt has written, “No scientific idea from the last century is more fetishized, abused and misunderstood — by the vulgar and the learned alike — than Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.”

 

There's some mixed reactions to this article so I thought I'd see what Huskerboarders had to say.

[NUance]

 

It's mostly the fault of this high school chemistry teacher.

 

 

But at least more people vaguely know that the HUP involves uncertainty.

[KJ.]

I'm not really sure what point he's trying to make here. Is it that Heisenberg's reasoning behind the uncertainty principle is poorly worded? Redundant?

 

To me, it looks like he's saying:

 

P = f(V)

V = f(P)

 

Where you can't solve instantaneously for either V or P since they are dependent on each other. So he assigned a pre-algebra explanation to something in quantum physics? I'm not really seeing why this deserves an article.

 

But in the end, Nuance is the one with the answer here. Walter White is to blame.

[tschu]

Quantum mechanics is such a mess to try and describe when our mental frameworks are built around a macro world that behaves under relativistic laws rather than the quantum laws.

 

AFAIK, Debroglie-Brohm is pretty widely rejected.

 

Basically, quantum mechanics and specifically the uncertainty principle. I sort of like the many-worlds version of the theory, but maybe this is not necessarily true and is merely a good way to mentally approach the probability aspect of it. I feel largely unqualified to speak much on the topic though. I wish I knew more.

[tschu]

It is kind of interesting to think of all events with probabilistic outcomes as being the result of the uncertainty principle. Everything from the human brain's electrical impulses to the outcome of a football game.