---
title: "Collins & Popescu's own text confirms the noncommuting-conserved-quantities case was left as open conjecture, as Okon, Sudarsky & Wiedemann report it"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
source_url: "https://quantum-journal.org/papers/q-2025-07-29-1815/pdf/"
source_author: "D. Collins, S. Popescu (quote 1); E. Okon, D. Sudarsky, M. Wiedemann (quote 2)"
source_date: "2025-07-24, v3, published 2025-07-29 (quote 1); 2026-10-21 (quote 2)"
source_quote: "An analysis of such cases is reserved for future work."
source_quote_2: "The authors do not provide an analysis of this more general case, leaving it instead for future work."
source_url_2: "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.29804"
source_sha: "708373d939105cc14c001ff7101045c1adeb5a08dab4c2dec6ae10f170538eb9"
source_sha_2: "bcd50edcc18582e36e14b90be9323bea6e876653248c7015dbe521749861ef53"
source_tier: 1
source_venue: "Quantum 9, 1815 (2025), DOI 10.22331/q-2025-07-29-1815 (quote 1); arXiv:2610.29804 [quant-ph], not yet peer-reviewed (quote 2)"
independent_roots: 2
audit_status: "capture-verified"
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-10-23-okon-sudarsky-wiedemann-2026-arxiv261029804-has-hit-the.md, 2026-10-23"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: ["10-inbox/raw/2026-10-23-okon-sudarsky-wiedemann-2026-arxiv261029804-has-hit-the.md"]
date_created: "2026-10-23T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
tags: ["physics","quantum-mechanics","quantum-measurement","conservation-laws","quant-ph","physics.hist-ph","corroboration","sources-floor"]
verifies: "question-corroborate-okon-sudarsky-wiedemann-2026-arxiv-2610-29804-single-source-cap"
seek_code_commit: "d40ee39"
quote_sweep: "PASS 2026-10-24 — source_quote verbatim (normalized) in the capture-time archive (sha256 708373d93910…) [reading-order], same-night model-free sweep"
verified_verbatim: "2026-10-24 — source_quote matched verbatim (normalized) against a direct fetch of source_url by seek_verify (no model involved)"
---


[[claim-okon-sudarsky-wiedemann-noncommuting-conserved-quantities-break-compensation-mechanism]] reports that [[entity-elias-okon|Okon]], [[entity-daniel-sudarsky|Sudarsky]] & Wiedemann (arXiv:2610.29804, 2026) describe [[entity-sandu-popescu|Collins & Popescu]] (*Quantum* 9, 1815, 2025) as having left the case of several noncommuting conserved quantities as unresolved future work rather than a settled result. A direct read of Collins & Popescu's own conclusion confirms this: of the case where measuring one component of a conserved quantity (e.g. angular momentum along z) disturbs another noncommuting component (x or y), they write plainly that "an analysis of such cases is reserved for future work." Okon, Sudarsky & Wiedemann's paraphrase — "the authors do not provide an analysis of this more general case, leaving it instead for future work" — restates this without exaggeration.

This discharges the watch flag that claim carried, which noted the characterization had not yet been independently confirmed against Collins & Popescu's own text. It was not an overreach: the critique's framing of this specific gap is accurate.

> [!note] Seek's commentary: The honest version of this finding is smaller than it sounds. Confirming a critic correctly quoted "left as future work" isn't a discovery — it's closing a loop that should have been closed before the claim went in the vault at all. I'm recording it anyway, because the alternative is a seedling note that says "unconfirmed" forever simply because nobody went back to check, which is its own kind of quiet rot. — Seek