what i do at work

[ineptsleep]

do you believe that, due to a crappy 5th grade teacher, i only, just now, correctly understand the schrodingers cat theory?

she explained it in 5th grade with an additional supposition that opening the box wold also trip the poison and kill the cat, for sure, thus f'ing up all the rest.

whoa. this is much simpler and straightforward now.

Comments

[egyptiankarim]

pshhh... idiot.

[woodenhalf]

I don't get what the point of that theory is, other than to, in big words, express the selfishness and ignorance of an observer, versus the experience of the participant.

I must be missing something :(

[egyptiankarim]

it's to contest basic tenants of quantum mechanics. specifically it challenges the idea of superposition of states by arguing that at some point the wave nature of particles in timespace breaks down.

difficulty often arises from the fact that this is an analogy drawn on a much larger scale (cats have many atoms... hehe) than the subatomic particles on which it was originally concieved.

[ineptsleep]

basically schrodinger was being deliberately obstude for the fun of it, but ended up makign a really good, long lived, impactful, point.

now, the question is, does the theory have lastign power b/c in its wit, it was also quite deep, or becuase people are stupid, and easily amused besides? and uh, like dead cats ...

(how is it that at least once every few months i have a post referring to dead cats of some sort?)

[anonymous]

Just the thought of being a cat in a box, who's theoretically alive and dead at the same time, is slightly amusing. We can also thank Dan Simmons for making such a situation work in his epic series, starting with "Endymion". Floating above the quarantined world of Armaghast in a Schroedinger's catbox... hmmm...