Where's Schrödinger When You Need Him?
Back in 1935 a man by the name of Schrödinger made a breakthrough in quantum physics simply by thinking really hard. Using mind-bullets, if you will.
What he came up with was this: If you put a cat into a large lead box and then close the box, you know that the cat is alive. Basically, it was alive when you put it in and there's nothing in there that can harm it (assuming that cats aren't masochistic and the box isn't air tight). No, the cat is not going to lick the lead box and die of lead poisoning.
OR IS HE?
What Schrödinger proposed is this: We put the cat in the box, we know he's alive. What if we put the cat in the box with a very fragile (he said glass) tablet of cyanide? Or if you want something more believable for ingestion reasons, you can say there's a button on the bottom of the box that fills it with carbon monoxide. Whatever. There's some way that this cat can bring about its own demise without you seeing anything.
You have no idea what's going on in the box, therefore there are two possibilities: The cat is alive, or the cat is dead.
Because you know that the cat exists and that the cat is in the box, but that it must be alive or dead, it now exists both alive and dead simultaneously.
Seems kind of obvious to me, but some people don't get it even after you explain it numerous times in a great many fashions.
Isn't quantum physics great? I think it's swell! No really...I like it...stop making fun of me...
One of the things Schrödinger said toward the end of his life was, "I wish I'd never met that fucking cat." Okay, so he didn't say "fucking," but he was probably thinking it. Think of it...how infinitely more difficult making even the simplest of decisions becomes when you apply the Schrödinger's Cat principle. It's not a factor of situations where probability is an issue. You can say you either will or will not die by a lightning strike. It's much more realistic if you apply it to legitimate situations.
If I don't get my cholesterol down, I will or will not die of a heart attack in the next two years.
See.
Of course, it doesn't have to be anything life threatening. I just happen to have an example from not half an hour ago that made me think of Schrödinger to start with (you didn't think this was all going nowhere did you?).
I made it onto a list. Again. What this list had to say about me was this:
"Red: Last but not least in the slightest. I have more words to say to you than I can type right now. But later tonight I will be back to post a letter that I've written to you but didn't know where to send it. It's a good 3 pages hand written, it will take me some time. Look me up later and you'll find the words I should have told you 3 years ago."
I don't know what it's going to say. It's 10pm now, so chances are it's not going to say anything at all tonight. But when it does say something I'll probably just feel depressed, hurt, angry, trampled, sold out, worthless, and old. Really old. Like in the ballpark of 5765 years old.
On the other hand, there's the pretty equal possibility that it will make me feel good, proud, accomplished, worthwhile, energized.
But calling it an equal possibility is kind of a stretch. A while back I saw a t-shirt that brought me a little laugh. What it said was simply, "Schrödinger's cat is dead."
I may or may not be hurt by words intended to be kind. I guess, from the philosopher's view, I should say that they are kind, and the intent behind them is to be just. So to combine philosophy and quantum physics, I have to decide if being hurt is just, and if I will be hurt.
But wait, that's the sort of everyday decision people make all the time.
Gotcha. I told you quantum physics was easy.
It's being decisive that's hard!
What he came up with was this: If you put a cat into a large lead box and then close the box, you know that the cat is alive. Basically, it was alive when you put it in and there's nothing in there that can harm it (assuming that cats aren't masochistic and the box isn't air tight). No, the cat is not going to lick the lead box and die of lead poisoning.
OR IS HE?
What Schrödinger proposed is this: We put the cat in the box, we know he's alive. What if we put the cat in the box with a very fragile (he said glass) tablet of cyanide? Or if you want something more believable for ingestion reasons, you can say there's a button on the bottom of the box that fills it with carbon monoxide. Whatever. There's some way that this cat can bring about its own demise without you seeing anything.
You have no idea what's going on in the box, therefore there are two possibilities: The cat is alive, or the cat is dead.
Because you know that the cat exists and that the cat is in the box, but that it must be alive or dead, it now exists both alive and dead simultaneously.
Seems kind of obvious to me, but some people don't get it even after you explain it numerous times in a great many fashions.
Isn't quantum physics great? I think it's swell! No really...I like it...stop making fun of me...
One of the things Schrödinger said toward the end of his life was, "I wish I'd never met that fucking cat." Okay, so he didn't say "fucking," but he was probably thinking it. Think of it...how infinitely more difficult making even the simplest of decisions becomes when you apply the Schrödinger's Cat principle. It's not a factor of situations where probability is an issue. You can say you either will or will not die by a lightning strike. It's much more realistic if you apply it to legitimate situations.
If I don't get my cholesterol down, I will or will not die of a heart attack in the next two years.
See.
Of course, it doesn't have to be anything life threatening. I just happen to have an example from not half an hour ago that made me think of Schrödinger to start with (you didn't think this was all going nowhere did you?).
I made it onto a list. Again. What this list had to say about me was this:
"Red: Last but not least in the slightest. I have more words to say to you than I can type right now. But later tonight I will be back to post a letter that I've written to you but didn't know where to send it. It's a good 3 pages hand written, it will take me some time. Look me up later and you'll find the words I should have told you 3 years ago."
I don't know what it's going to say. It's 10pm now, so chances are it's not going to say anything at all tonight. But when it does say something I'll probably just feel depressed, hurt, angry, trampled, sold out, worthless, and old. Really old. Like in the ballpark of 5765 years old.
On the other hand, there's the pretty equal possibility that it will make me feel good, proud, accomplished, worthwhile, energized.
But calling it an equal possibility is kind of a stretch. A while back I saw a t-shirt that brought me a little laugh. What it said was simply, "Schrödinger's cat is dead."
I may or may not be hurt by words intended to be kind. I guess, from the philosopher's view, I should say that they are kind, and the intent behind them is to be just. So to combine philosophy and quantum physics, I have to decide if being hurt is just, and if I will be hurt.
But wait, that's the sort of everyday decision people make all the time.
Gotcha. I told you quantum physics was easy.
It's being decisive that's hard!
posted by red at 19:24
1 Comments:
It's sort of dealing with relative truth, as it's dealing with relative fact.
"Because you know that the cat exists and that the cat is in the box, but that it must be alive or dead, it now exists both alive and dead simultaneously."
This is because until you open the box, there is no proof either way. There is cause to believe it is alive (it was alive when you put it in the box) but there is equal cause to believe it was dead (it has the means to easily accidentally kill itself). Because there's an equal probability of it being alive or dead, nothing conclusive can be determined, therefore it is equally alive and dead until the box is opened.
A cat in a world without sentience is able to be debated a couple different ways. The way you'd probably like, being the animal rights activist you are, is that if the cat is the only form of intelligence, and it registers itself, it's just whether the cat believes it's alive or not, which it probably does (I haven't heard of a nihilistic cat). You could also argue that if there's no sentience, it doesn't matter anyway because even if it can register that it's alive, it can't understand that it's alive. Though in that case, and many would disagree with me, I'd claim that the register is enough to prove that it's alive.
Ever see a cat look over a really steep drop-off and decide not to jump? I don't know just how high they are on the intelligence ladder, but I know something's telling them hopping out of a second story window is a bad idea. That's smart enough for me.
But on track, because there are two opposing outcomes of equal probability, no fact exists. In the philosophy point of view. Quantum Physics argues that yes, in fact twice as many facts exist. Whereas our first inclination (and yours as a philosophy student) are to say that it has to be one or the other, and indeed physics agrees, physics goes past this to say that it's not one or the other until it is, without a doubt, one or the other.
It either has or has not stepped on the tablet (button, whatever) and therefore both has and has not stepped on the tablet (button, whatever). Thus he is and is not alive.
Whether that means you can make your cat a zombie by putting it in a lead box is your decision. I say yes.
This does, of course, naturally lead to talk of sentient life elsewhere in the universe, and if one sentient creature puts another sentient creature in the box, and so on. I'll let you mull over those on your own, though.
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