by Laura Carter.
In quantum mechanics, we cannot know both the position and the momentum of a particle as accurately as we want. “The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known, and conversely.”
This doesn’t usually matter for people. A person is made up of a lot of particles. Somewhere around 1028, give or take a factor of 10. The uncertainties about position and/or momentum don’t matter so much at that scale.
On a quantum scale, people are big.
What about data about people?
Data about people is multidimensional. Imagine a dataset where each data point is about a person. Each data point might include values for hundreds of variables.
In a census, the variables might include: date of birth, country of origin, ethnicity, gender, religion. In a customer database, the variables might include: contact phone number, address, number of previous purchases.
Including more and more variables might make the owner of the dataset feel like they have a more precise understanding of that person.
But a datapoint with hundreds of variables is still a single datapoint.
Even in hundreds of dimensions, a point is still a single point.
On a quantum scale, people are big. But points are small.
So maybe a dataset can try to precisely identify the position of a person, along hundreds of axes for every variable.
But quantum mechanics tells us that for very small things, more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum can be known.
The more data about you in someone’s dataset, the less they can know about where you are heading, and how fast you are going.
Embrace the uncertainty.