myotherself
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Jeffff
At a time when Einstein had gained international recognition, quantum theory culminated in the late 1920’s statement of the Uncertainty Principle, which says that the more precisely the position of a particle is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa. The above phrasing of the principle is a succinct version of the mathematically precise uncertainty relation that Heisenberg published in 1927. Since the momentum of a particle is the product of its mass and velocity, the principle is sometimes stated differently, however, its meaning remains the same: The act of measuring one magnitude of a particle, be it its mass, its velocity, or its position, causes the other magnitudes to blur. This is not due to imprecise measurements. Technology is advanced enough to hypothetically yield correct measurements. The blurring of these magnitudes is a fundamental property of nature
Gross mistatement?..... really? More of a paraphrase. Of course I am sure that along with economics your field of study is also Quantum Physics.
Jeff
Thanks Jeff for your clarification 
As Jeff said, it's not a gross mis-statement in any way, shape or form. It was perhaps a little clumsy and imprecise, but not wrong. I am a physicist and mathematician, and spent quite some time working with quantum particles and, in particular, looking at the impact of measurement on quantum states (among other stuff)
I tend to liken it to measuring how fast water is flowing in a pipe by sticking in a measuring probe. The larger the probe, the more precise your measurement BUT the more you are impacting the flow of the water. So what you are measuring is the flow of the water in the presence of the probe, not just the flow of the water. You could, of course, use a smaller probe but this is likely to be less precise than a larger probe, so although you are reducing the impact of the probe you are reducing the accuracy of your measurement too.
At a quantum level the probes (for want of a better word) that measure the quantum states, spins, etc would have to introduce an effect into the system which is (preferably) negligible compared to what is being measured. Not an easy task, although every year technology improves so, in time, who knows?
And of course, there's the quantum effect that Jeff mentioned - you look too hard at one parameter and everything else blurs around it. You can measure spin, but not energy, for example. If you focus on energy, then spin becomes impossible to measure accurately.
If there is a god, then s/he's got one HELL of a sense of humour!
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