The problem is that quanum mechanics can either be interpreted as ‘Schrodinger’s cat has experienced something I don’t’, or ‘I experience something the CAT don’t’, take your pick. PROVE that the experience is “bullshit” BY THE CAT’S POINT OF VIEW. Since you CANNOT prove or disprove my experience, SHOW me why your experience is more valid than mine… This is an appeal to epistomology, but even THAT can’t validate my experience, SO why should I accept that YOUR experience is more valid than mine?. The entire argument is solely to justify one person’s “so-called” “superior intellect” over yours. In other words, when people are advancing arguments like this, the proper response is not to question the argument, but rather to call “bullshit” on the entire line of argument. E PUR, SE MOUVE.
Arguments like what?
I don’t know where you got this (unless it WAS Shcrodinger,), but this is a much better translation of Schrodinger’s work than I could have come up with, myself, or have ever seen. Yes, I agree. On THIS we will argue, or we won’t argue at all…
Precisely. Arguments like WHAT? E pur se mouve…?
Nice, that. A little presumptuous, but what the hell, why not.
On the other hand, I can’t figure out what it’s significance is supposed to be in this discussion.
Hey, man, I knew this cat, see, who was a real cool cat, y’dig? Like Coltrane, like…played live jazz all night, but was dead by the time the sun came up. His name was Schrod…Schroed…Shro…Shraeder! That’s it! Hey, man, want a toke of this dynamite shit?
If |Alive> and |Dead> were really pure quantum states and you could really and truly have a cat that was in the state |Alive> + |Dead>, then it would be correct to say “The cat is in a state in which a measurement of its aliveness has a 50% chance of finding that it is alive, and a 50% chance of finding that it is dead.” But before the measurement is made it is not in a state of definite aliveness, so the question “Is this cat alive or dead” is not a meaningful one. Likewise, a wave can occupy lots of points at once – so it doesn’t make much sense to point at two of those points and say “Is the wave at this point or that one?” Much (not all) of the confusion in quantum mechanics comes from imagining that something is a classical particle with a single definite position and momentum, when in fact it isn’t . . . likewise Schrrödinger’s cat isn’t a classical cat with a single definite aliveness, even if, in fact, all real cats you’re ever likely to encounter are for all intents and purposes classical.
For me, it seems a logical outcome from the fact that we are all composed of quantum particles, hence subject to quantum mechanics. The cite below is from Relational Quantum Mechanics at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It says it’s copyright the Metaphysics Research Lab, so I’d like to find a better cite, especially one that isn’t for a single interpretation of QM, but no luck so far. On the other hand, I also haven’t found any cite to the contrary. If anyone knows of a rigorous cite either way, let me know.
Google “Galileo”. The quote itself (it’s actual dictionary meaning) is meaningless in this discussion. My using it was a(n) historical reference to the entire “Galileo vs. THE CHURCH” episode. I don’t speak/read/understand middle-ages Italian, and so assume the translations of it I’ve seen are reasonable, but my use of it, here, was NOT to mean literally what he meant when he said it, but to express the same “I don’t give a crap what you think about what I said. The damn Earth still moves!” attitude (or CATtitude, given the “Schrodinger’s Cat” point of this thread) that he meant when he said it.
Go look at all the posts after mine. Some people got it…
Indistinguishable said:
Very few people understand math by itself, can grasp what it means and all the ramifications. Examples are used to translate results into meanings - concepts, illustrations, demonstrations, etc. Of course, these can easily be flawed.
I wonder if someone an answer this without doing my head in.
and what was wrong with using guinea pigs again?
I think you have a vested interest though.
I am not a particle physicist, but here is a summary (as I see it) …
Schrödinger saw a problem with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, as applied to macroscopic objects. The Cat thought experiment was intended to illustrate this problem. Schrödinger felt that it had to be obvious to everyone that at the end of the experiment, the cat was either alive or dead, and could not be in a superposition <alive|dead> - it was a macroscopic object, and could not be in a superposition.
The Copenhagen interpretation indicates that the superposition collapses on observation (whatever observation means).
The Many Worlds theory believes that the universe splits in two, one stream where the collapse goes one way, and one where it goes the other. We just exist in one of those streams and there is no way to connect with the other stream, and history is consistent.
The Ensemble interpretation indicates that there is no isolation in the state of the experiment - the final collapse is governed by a larger state function
that we cannot determine.
The Relational interpretation allows that different observers can give different accounts of the same series of events, depending on the information they have about the system - the cat observes the event (and lives or dies) but the human only observes the cat+box system, whose state does not collapse until they observe the state of the cat.
Finally, in the Objective Collapse theories, superpositions are destroyed spontaneously (irrespective of external observation) when some objective physical threshold (of time, mass, temperature, irreversibility, etc.) is reached - the environment observes the cat (or the cat observes itself).
The situation (illustrated by the recently designed oscillator) is that the macroscopic limits of what we can determine to be in a quantum state is slowly increasing. A subatomic particle is easy to imagine as having a quantum state that can collapse (as observed via the double-slit experiment, for photons, electrons and neutrons). However, a buckyball (fullerene, C[sub]60[/sub]) is a much more massive object than a subatomic particle, and can be made to interfere via the double slit experiment. The new oscillator is almost naked eye visible (i.e. macroscopic) but still can exhibit superposition (not while being observed, but it does exhibit the appropriate behaviour). All this challenges the assumptions about what constitutes observation and allows probing of the nature of how and when the quantum collapse happens. Researchers will continue to build quantum machines that push this limit - both for research into quantum mechanics and to further quantum computing.
Si
I think you missed the part in my post about “without doing my head in”.
I’m not even certain in what language you composed your reply 
Kiwi 
bloody aussies.
Si
Bloody dumb Aussie if you must.
Here is a link that may help :- I haven’t had time to review this, so YMMV…
Now, my attempt…
The Double-Slit experiment illustrated the problem that had arisen for early physicists - namely, was a photon a particle or an electromagnetic wave. If you have a light source and a single slit, you get a diffraction pattern, as if there was a wave. With two slits you get an interference pattern, again consistent with a wave. However, if you just send a single photon (a quantum particle) through the experiment, and repeat it several times, you still see the interference pattern - the single particle somehow interferes with itself. This dual nature of quantum particles was confusing, and the Copenhagen Interpretation gained credence - the particle had a probability of being in one of two quantum states (superposition), but any attempt to observe the state caused it to collapse into the final state.
Schrödinger felt that this could not be so in the case of macroscopic objects (real physical objects, not quantum particles), so he challenged it with his thought experiment. A quantum event (the possibility of the decay of a radioactive atom) controls a macroscopic object (the life of a cat) - since we know in the real world that the cat has to be either alive or dead (i.e. not in an <alive|dead> superposition), the Copenhagen interpretation has to be wrong at some level.
Other people have come up with alternative approaches to the Copenhagen Interpretation to avoid these problems, as I mentioned earlier.
Does this help (at least initially)?
Si
I’ve an issue with that. Let’s suppose you replace the cat by me. As an observer, and a lucky one, I happen to note that the atom didn’t decay and that I’m still alive.
But at the same moment, for you, I’m still in superposition. You then (say, two seconds later) open the box to collapse the function and notice that I’m in fact dead.
So, am I dead or alive, and when does the function collapse? At different times for you and me? Do I keep going in a world where I’m alive while you’re attending my funerals in your own world?