Can we have a General Uncertainty Principle?

Question

When we talk about the result of a particular event, we only put forward our opinion on the possibility of the most probable result. But we are never exactly 100% sure on the occurrence of our opinion, are we? For example, if we agree with the statement, “A dog will NEVER be able to learn physics”, we are only posting our opinion on it, about which we are 99.95 % certain (say), but not 100% certain. In fact, I don’t think it will ever be possible for us to be absolutely 100% certain about the occurrence of a particular event, because the Theory of Everything, as it is (or rather, would be) called, which, if stated, would take care of ALL the Sciences, has not been formulated yet.

As another ‘physical’ example, we can also never be 100% sure when we say, “The velocity of this body is 43.784 m/s”; we can only be sure to a certain extent, say 99.998%, beyond which it is not possible to ascertain the velocity. And this is not because of experimental errors, or errors in measurement, etc; in fact, this is an inherent property of ANY event that we can never predict or measure it with exactly 100% accuracy. So, words like “exact, “precise”, absolute”, etc lose their significance in the realm of this thought & discussion. In that case, can we postulate a General Principle of Uncertainty, which would say, “It is impossible to determine the occurrence of any event with absolute certainty, unless it is a definition.” ? I use the word ‘definition’ ‘coz if we define an event, it has got to be 100% certain. For example, when we say, “A meter has 100 centimeters”, we are exactly 100% certain about its validity, as a meter is defined that way. But we are not 100% sure about the validity of the statement, “He has walked 100 meters today.”

Hope you understand what I mean? Any comment(s), criticism & correction (in case I’m wrong somewhere) are welcome.

This principle would not be the same as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Pinciple because Heisenberg's Principle talked about the uncertainty between the simultaneous measurement of two events, whereas the General Principle would talk of an inherent uncertainty in any isolated measurement, & even regarding the possibility of occurence of events. Just to let you know the immense possibilities & areas of application of this principle, in light of the General Principle, we could also say that "Every image is blurred SOMEWHAT", because we can say that edges will not be 'perfect' edges then. This would, to some extent, lead to decrease in the cases of forgery (for example), because if we are able to construct a machine whose inherent uncertainty in measurement is less than that in the forgering machine, then we can know that some of the notes are fake. Hope you understand what I mean..........

Answer 1

Another way to explain this is if you use fuzzy logic instead of crisp logic. In fuzzy logic, you can have partial truths, and 2 contradictory statements can be partially true at the same time. If you describe an event with 99.9% certainty, you can say that it has a .995 truth value. Without realizing it, we deal with fuzzy variables all the time--we just round off uncertainty and make decisions by treating the variables as crisp ones. But with fuzzy variables, we can add up the certainty and uncertainty and use them as part of our aggregate decisions.

If this intrigues you, you may want to look into machine learning or artificial intelligence--these problems come up all the time.

Answer 2

Uncertainty relationship is a bit of a misnomer for Heisenberg, and it is causing you to conflate two ideas. Everything you talk about falls into the realm of what would be called experimental or observational error. That is, there may well be an underlying value but the accuracy with which it can be determined is practically limited.

The Heisenberg relation does not say this. It says that there is a fundamental limit on the information that can be extracted from a system. But this limit occurs only with paris of values of what are called conjugate variables. The Heisenberg relation says that conjugate variables do not commute, while classical physics says they do. The difference is of order 10^-34 - so absolutely minute and beyond any typical measureing error classically.

Answer 3

As I understand the principle of uncertainty, we can never be 100% certain of the position of any electron in an atom, because no sooner have you located it, it will have moved. Thus, the universe is an open system, and an open system allows for the possibility of miracles.

Answer 4

Whatever you've been smoking, I *do* hope you brought enough to share ☺

There is a whole branch of Engineering called 'metrology' which deals with just exactly this subject. You might trouble yourself to become familiar with it.


Doug

Answer 5

you are absolutely right. but i could also never be 100% about this

Answer 6

maybe, maybe not... I am unsure.

Answer 7

i don't know