Link to Column: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_122.html
So, the cat is neither/both alive or dead at the same time, until it is observed, at which time it “switches” to one or the other. My idear about that is that the essential clue lies in “until it is observed”. An observation is a statement about a thing. Statements about things are made based on the feelings “hunches” of the observer. We already know that we really don’t know about the external world, because if we did, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. If you really know about something, there is a discussion. You say, pass the controller…and your friend passes it to you. There is no discussion about “What is a controller?”, it is understood what a controller is. There was an equation devised by some big physicist in the Carl Sagan book “Cosmos” that states that there is at least a 98% probability that there are in and around 10,000 or so planets just in our galaxy that have sophisticated intelligent life that could interpret our language and math…in other words, that have the same ability to decern and interpret that we do. This does not of course factor in the intelligent life in all the other myriad galaxies in our known universe. Perhaps reality is indeed consensus. If there were only one thing, and it we called the universe, there would be nothing outside it. In order for size and distance and time to exist, there has to be at least two things. The only way to tell if time elapses is by the movement of things relative to each other. If there where only one thing, there would be nothing relative to it to know that it was moving. If there where only one thing, there would be nothing to compare it to, so you would not be able to tell what size it was. As a matter of fact, it would have no size and could not move because without anything else, there is no size or movement. So now allow me to dip into a philisophical assumption. Let us say that there is “a god”. Lut us say that this god is defined as omnicient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. If something is everywhere, it cannot go anywhere, because it is already there. If something knows everything, it cannot *learn * anything, because it already knows it. If something can do anything, than there is no point in doing anything. So, this god would be bored of it’s rocker. Now, let us define this god as everything, and everything at the point before the big bang was one thing that for all intents and purposes does not exist. So, at the point that god is the one thing before the big bang, because there is nothing that exists relative to it, it is bored and alone. So, if the one thing (god), splits itself up into pieces (big bang), small pieces of it would be able to go places, learn things, and do stuff. So, if you take all those civilizations that are probably in all those galaxies that are at the stage like our own where they can measure (observe), then it is up to the consensus of such consciousness (the sum total of which would be the consciousness of the universe, i.e. god) whether the particle in the cat box decays or not. God reflects upon itself and observes what it decides it is observing. You can think of it like this, the idea of manifestation is the idea that thought is action. If you are in an empty room, and you throw a ball at the wall, it is pretty probable that the ball will hit the wall. If you fill that room with a whole bunch of other balls bouncing around, and then throw the ball at the wall, the probability is that the ball will eventually hit the wall, but may be interuppted indefinitley by collision with the other balls in the room. So, since the big bang, energy has been colloiding into particle type things. Where there are denser patches of particles, it takes more time for thought to turn into action, just like it takes more time for the ball to hit the wall when there are so many things to impede it. So, in the beginning, when all consciousness (thought) was one, the thought was thought and then it commenced to happen. In a way, Einstein was right to say that god does not play dice, but Schrodinger was right in that it does play marbles. When you think of the parallel universe thing, like how the cat is both dead and alive, you can solve the argument between fate and free will. If every outcome (possibility) exists, happening in it’s own parallel universe, then fate exists because no matter what everything will end up either of any way that it does which it would have to if the cat is both alive and dead. So, it is only up to the circumstances (what the god/total consciousness of this parallel universe decides/observes) that defines the particular fate of said universe. So, individually, we have a hand in this particular fate…in a manner of speaking we can guide our own destiny (vote), and one can only choose to guide by one’s own free will. Since I am only a small piece of it, obviously I can only elucidate so much on the subject, but this is the core of my contrabution. I would like to here arguments/thoughts concerning it all. Very intereseting stuff. Thank you for posting.
Cgo.
That’s what I’ve been saying all along!
Citing the original column is always useful for those playing along at home:
The story of Schroedinger’s cat (an epic poem)
>http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_122.html
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Yes, Larry, I should explain that CGO stands for “Crashing Glimpse of the Obvious”, and was an abbreviation beloved of an old English teacher.
And, no, he didn’t put it in the margin of my essays - only other people’s.
Well, it’s not all obvious, but (to paraphrase Einstein), to the extent that it’s correct it’s obvious and to the extent that it’s not obvious, it’s incorrect.
I am glad there are people who agree. I liked this chat thing and the fact that people are talking about science. I am very interested in Schrodinger and recently in fifth dimensional ideas and dark matter. Maybe if anybody wants to throw some theories out here, we could bounce them around a little bit? -Eilunid
You agree that your post consisted of various parts, each of which was either obvious or wrong?
It has always been my expierience that those who have no input but slants and slurs are really not contributing to the overall understanding, but are really just throwing poo like a primate. I don’t know where you stand in life, but my “obvious and wrong” ideas got a completely different response from the Head of the Environmental Science Department from the University of South Florida. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Chemistry. I believe he said that I was a “Cherished Student”, and then he invited me to a limited course in chemical history. Maybe you could tell me your credentials? I have won calculus related tests for my whole college campus, I am a National Science Foundation Scholar, I attended the enhanced learning program for gifted children, and slept through Physics 1 and 2 and still maintained honor grades…but that is a little too much primate chest puffing. Until this point, I was being polite, and have been confronted by childishness. I am really trying to understand this world that I live in, so perhaps you could tell me WHY it is obvious and wrong, and then I could apply your lucidity to my theories, so that they can be less wrong and less obvious.
Eliunid,
If I may give some unsolicited advice.
- Try to organize your thoughts into paragraphs, and use indentation to indicate same.
- I realize this a comment on a column but for in depth discussions of this sort of topic perhaps Great Debates or General Questions might be a better forum.
- Hi Opal!
This is a big one. Whatever awards Eilunid may have won, none of them were for writing. It’s mostly disorganized rambling, with such tautological kernels of philosophy as, “If something is everywhere, it cannot go anywhere, because it is already there.”
Overall, it really reads like a mass of chewed pulp from such awful books as The Tao of Physics and The Dancing Wu Li Masters, which were more interested in pushing some philosophy with the “imprimatur” of physics. There’s a lot of air blowing around, but if there is any substance it’s completely buried in the monolithic text.
As for credentials, I’m a mathematician by vocation and a physicist by avocation. On quantum philosophy, I’ve had a number of very fruitful exchanges with Jeffrey Bub (of Bohm-Bub hidden variables theories). Of course, you have as much reason to believe that as I do your awards.
Oh, and I wouldn’t brag too much about winning calculus contests. Next you’ll be telling me about your spelling bees.
[QUOTE=Mathochist]
Yeah maybe, but are you now or have you ever been a “Cherished Student”?
I once lived next door to a guy whose cousin could force milk from his oropharynx, up his nasolacrimal ducts, thus emerging through the conjunctival puncta. It looked like he was crying milk tears. Nobody has ever referred to me as a “Cherished Student” though. 
Possibly. I don’t really go asking about such things. It’s not like I could put it on my curriculum vitæ.
You know, Mary Kay Letourneau referred to Vili Fualaau as a “Cherished Student”. 
/hijack and happy holidays.
Hi, welcome to the Straight Dope, Eilunid. Let me give you a pointer.
Bragging about your credentials around here is a Bad Idea. The SDMB is full of very, very smart people. Some of them are smarter than you. (Shocking, isn’t it?) Nobody here cares that you’re an honors student. What matters is the quality of your ideas and how well you express them. You may have some good ideas here – I can’t really tell because I find the style of the OP practically unreadable. (Just out of curiousity, is English your first language?)
Hang around for a while and try to get the feel of the place before you start picking fights, OK?
I’m afraid it’s half-digested pabulum viewed from the religious side, as well.
For me, this OP falls apart right at the beginning, and the style merely discourages one from continuing on to see if it begins to make any sense:
The problem here is that Eilunid is equating two different meanings of the word “observation”. The implication in the Schrodinger’s Cat scenario is not that the fate of the cat is indeterminate until someone begins to comment upon it from their own point of view, but that its fate is indeterminate until some sort of concrete information about the state of affairs in the closed container makes its way in some perceivable form to the outside world.
Schrodinger was trying to point out that at the quantum level, merely the act of bouncing a photon off a quantum event in order to observe it will in fact have an effect on the outcome observed.
Would the OP care to offer backup as to why anyone should consider another meaning of the word “observe” to apply in this situation? Without such a reason, there’s no purpose in pushing though the dense layout of the rest of the OP.
Careful, there. You sound dangerously close to confounding this with the standard presentation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. SC is a gedankenexperiment designed to blow the philosophical “measurement problem” (particularly its solution by Dirac, which is used in the Copenhagen interpretation) up to the scale of classical physics to show how silly it seems to be.
Also, what does the OP mean by this? did Schroedinger say such a thing? I know when Einstein said God does not play dice he was complaining about the probabilistic, non-deterministic nature of QM. But what does it mean to say God plays marbles. From the little physics I know I understand it’s sometimes useful to model particles as little inelastic spheres, like when your explaining conservation of momentum, but I can’t see viewing the whole universe as a game of marbles.