Heisenberg’s Uncertainty?

A footnote in a book alerted me that uncertainty may be better translated from German in Heisenberg’s Principle.

Should it be Stock Market Indeterminacy? Or Stock Market Indeterminability?

Let’s look at Stock Market Uncertainty and see if it, accidentally instead, is indeterminacy or indeterminability.

Stock Market Indeterminacy

Indeterminacy refers to a fundamental inability to determine or specify an outcome, often because the system lacks a fixed or definite state or the rules don’t yield a single solution. It’s less about our knowledge and more about the intrinsic nature of the thing being studied.

There is a fundamental inability to determine or specify an outcome, often because the system lacks a fixed or definite state or the rules governing it don’t specify an outcome. It’s less about our knowledge and more about the system’s intrinsic nature.

Sounds like the stock market. The rules don’t yield a single solution.

Uncertainty often implies a range of possible outcomes, which we can sometimes quantify (probabilities, graphs or confidence intervals). Indeterminacy points to an inherent ambiguity or lack of fixedness, not just a gap in our understanding.

Our understanding of what the market will do in the next X months is ambiguous, lacking fixedness, and gaping.

Stock Market Indeterminability

Indeterminability means something cannot be determined, not just now, but in principle. It’s the quality of being inherently impossible to resolve or specify, regardless of effort or information.

This is absolute and intrinsic—it’s not about our limitations but about a fundamental barrier to determination. It often relates to theoretical or logical impossibility, not just a random walk.

Indeterminability suggests a hard limit—no tool, knowledge, or method can crack it. This is why Schrotinger’s Cat is both/and alive and dead.

And the chance you can predict the stock market. Uncertainty is a hurdle we might jump; indeterminability is a locked door with no key.

Heisenberg on Stock Market Uncertainty

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle should have been called his Indeterminacy or Indeterminability principle. Is it market uncertainty or indeterminacy that has you spooked? Or indeterminability?

For sure it is uncertain or worse.