This unfortunately means that copies could never be absolutely exact as a consequence of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle
The uncertainty principle doesn’t mean what you think: to replicate a person exactly, you just need to replicate exactly the values of each classical field at each point of space occupied by the person (the world is made of fields, not particles). You probably can’t do that, but it’s not the uncertainty principle that says you can’t do that.
What the uncertainty principle says is more like this: there are no wave functions in the phase space of a quantum system evolving according to a Schrödinger equation such that the density given by the Born rule is concentrated on one value of a variable while simultaneously being concentrated on one value of another variable when the two variables are a pair of conjugate variables, because in that case for the density to be concentrated on one value of one of the variables automatically implies a combination of amplitudes for the values of the other variable with which the density is not concentrated on a single value.
The uncertainty principle is about what’s mathematically possible, rather than about what you can know. You can know what the wave function is and that’s really all there is to know. It’s just that the wave function isn’t going to have definite values simultaneously for both of a pair of conjugate variables.
It’s the mainstream view, but not the only one and not necessarily quite correct. The Standard Model is a quantum field theory incorporating special relativity and the particles are thought of as being quanta of fields. Regardless of whether the particles are entirely reducible to fields, fields are clearly more important overall than particles.
Thank you. Can you devise an organic way to work this information into the article while keeping it approachable to an audience of mostly laypersons, who will understand what particles are but not the importance of fields?
I don’t know what purpose it serves in the post. There are more significant reasons why copies of deceased persons would never be exact anyway, without needing to go into anything beyond classical physics.
The uncertainty principle doesn’t mean what you think: to replicate a person exactly, you just need to replicate exactly the values of each classical field at each point of space occupied by the person (the world is made of fields, not particles). You probably can’t do that, but it’s not the uncertainty principle that says you can’t do that.
What the uncertainty principle says is more like this: there are no wave functions in the phase space of a quantum system evolving according to a Schrödinger equation such that the density given by the Born rule is concentrated on one value of a variable while simultaneously being concentrated on one value of another variable when the two variables are a pair of conjugate variables, because in that case for the density to be concentrated on one value of one of the variables automatically implies a combination of amplitudes for the values of the other variable with which the density is not concentrated on a single value.
The uncertainty principle is about what’s mathematically possible, rather than about what you can know. You can know what the wave function is and that’s really all there is to know. It’s just that the wave function isn’t going to have definite values simultaneously for both of a pair of conjugate variables.
>”the world is made of fields, not particles”
Is this the mainstream view? It’s the first time I’m hearing this. Thank you for the insights btw
It’s the mainstream view, but not the only one and not necessarily quite correct. The Standard Model is a quantum field theory incorporating special relativity and the particles are thought of as being quanta of fields. Regardless of whether the particles are entirely reducible to fields, fields are clearly more important overall than particles.
Thank you. Can you devise an organic way to work this information into the article while keeping it approachable to an audience of mostly laypersons, who will understand what particles are but not the importance of fields?
I don’t know what purpose it serves in the post. There are more significant reasons why copies of deceased persons would never be exact anyway, without needing to go into anything beyond classical physics.