Quantum mechanics has an already-existing—and quite general and powerful—formalism for dealing with cases when we have at the same time quantum uncertainty about the results of measurements done on a quantum state, and ordinary non-quantum uncertainty about which quantum state we have. This seems to be what you are talking about, am I right? Keywords: “mixed state”, “density matrix”, “quantum statistical mechanics”.
That does seem to be the more formal version of the idea I tried to describe.
One of my assumptions going into this is that human brains find it easier to add than to multiply, and easier to multiply than deal with vectors; and that the easier it can be made for a brain to handle the math involved, the more likely that brain will be able to develop accurate intuitions. I’m not going to try to turn the complete formalism of quantum statistical mechanics into language—I want something that’s just slightly more useful than a placeholder word for “insert math I don’t understand here”.
Eg, with bei’e, the numbers can be added and subtracted to give useful confidence numbers; I wouldn’t mind a similar word with attached fractions that could be added to each other. (And then, possibly, multiplied by relevant confidence probabilities, but at this point that’s counting unhatched chickens.)
Quantum mechanics has an already-existing—and quite general and powerful—formalism for dealing with cases when we have at the same time quantum uncertainty about the results of measurements done on a quantum state, and ordinary non-quantum uncertainty about which quantum state we have. This seems to be what you are talking about, am I right? Keywords: “mixed state”, “density matrix”, “quantum statistical mechanics”.
That does seem to be the more formal version of the idea I tried to describe.
One of my assumptions going into this is that human brains find it easier to add than to multiply, and easier to multiply than deal with vectors; and that the easier it can be made for a brain to handle the math involved, the more likely that brain will be able to develop accurate intuitions. I’m not going to try to turn the complete formalism of quantum statistical mechanics into language—I want something that’s just slightly more useful than a placeholder word for “insert math I don’t understand here”.
Eg, with bei’e, the numbers can be added and subtracted to give useful confidence numbers; I wouldn’t mind a similar word with attached fractions that could be added to each other. (And then, possibly, multiplied by relevant confidence probabilities, but at this point that’s counting unhatched chickens.)