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@wasolili: While there is a joke-like quality to this thought experiment, it is far from 'a joke to catch those who think they understand quantum mechanics'! Quite the opposite -- it will catch those who insist that the universe is locally real.
Superposition, at the root of this paradox, is a basic concept in most interpretations of quantum mechanics. A particle may simultaneously exist in multiple states until there is an observable consequence, at which point it assumes a single state. The cat, attached by causality to a particle, is just a funny way to show that the universe is not locally real.
Here things go sideways, mostly because people misinterpret "observer" to mean "a person", or worse yet, "a conscious person", leading to all kinds of hippie quantum mumbo-jumbo that always makes me angry. By introducing an observer, the theory simply implies that there is a some consequence to the current state of a particle -- if not, it is simultaneously in all possible states.
Niels Bohr's interpretation is an attempt to keep the reality, at the expense of introducing an additional rule: an "irreversible" process (such as possible death of a living macro object attached to the causality chain) triggers an immediate collapse to a single state. Clearly this is a copout.
For over 100 years now quantum mechanics points to the universe working in a truly bizzare way, which lacks an intuitive explanation. Humans cling to the "reality" of observable universe, even though the obvious truth is that our intuition completely fails in the realm of atoms and subatomic particles.
Schroedinger's cat is an illustration of that. We intuitively know that the cat cannot be both dead and alive in an isolated box, and we could not construct an experiment to that effect (because we cannot isolate cats from the rest of the universe with any known technology without some causality leak). And yet, the 100+ year-old theory that is the foundation of our physics -- proven many times, and yielding amazing technologies that work -- dictates that the cat is indeed in a superposition of life and death, for as long as it is in complete isolation.
P.S. I've muted the idiocy of the Atheism group, which is why I am posting here.
Oct 31 · 7 weeks ago · 👍 yingfan
🐦 wasolili [...] · Nov 01 at 01:28:
it is far from 'a joke to catch those who think they understand quantum mechanics'!
I didn't really mean to imply that the intent of the story is to trap people like that. meant more that it's funny that it the popular understanding of the thought experiment is more or less what schrodinger was criticizing
I've muted the idiocy of the Atheism group, which is why I am posting here.
good call
@wasolili The thought experiment has grown beyond Schrodinger's cricicism though. Ironically, copenhagen interpratation is the commonly known.
PS: We probably want a science/physics subspace
🚀 stack [OP/mod] · Nov 01 at 02:05:
@wasolili - understood.
@yingfan: Physic subspace created. I thought it would be wise to do it fast before some idiot takes over!