philosophy of schrodinger's cat

[Anonymous No.3886536]

I have a more.... philosophical.. argument about the result of Schrodinger's Cat ordeal that I've been thinking about...

OK. So as we all know, the cat is said to be "simultaneously alive and dead" prior to observation. But is this really the case? I argue that it is not. (Granted, i'm a philosopher, not a quantum physicist, so enlighten me if i may be missing some crucial info.)

If the state of the cat is undetermined a priori, then to me it simply shows not that the cat is both dead and alive simultaneously, but rather that the cat's state of existence is based entirely on observation... on knowledge.
After the atom decays, etc. and before the box is opened, one outcome, despite being random, has already taken place, thus the final state of the cat has already been determined by fate. We just don't know it yet. So it seems to me all that is being said by this experiment is that "the cat is both alive and dead because we don't know yet", when in reality, it should be saying "the cat is *either* dead or alive".

Knowlege, or the lack of knowledge of a particular result or outcome can not determine the state of something like in this example. Call me a causal determinist or whatever, but idk. Maybe i misunderstand quantum physics?

[Anonymous No.3886547]

>Knowlege, or the lack of knowledge of a particular result or outcome can not determine the state of something like in this example.

Wrong, it does. The "state of something" is only meaningful insofar an observation has been made.

[Anonymous No.3886594]

>>3886536
Nah, bro, you're missing the point of the thought experiment.

Experiments have shown that subatomic particles are in multiple states until they are observed. There's no guarantee that these experiments are "correct" or that the experimenters didn't interpret the results incorrectly.

So, Schrodinger's cat is a thought experiment that was proposed to illustrate how nonsensical those results are. If a particle can be in multiple states, then so can a cat, using the apparatus described in the experiment: particle -> particle detector -> hammer -> vial of poison -> cat. It was meant to show that the whole "multiple states" thing is bogus. Some people say that the cat really would end up in multiple states until it was observed.

The obvious flaw with trying to do a "real life" version of the thought experiment is that the cat would count as an observer, and the radiation detector probably would, as well.

[Anonymous No.3886595]

>>3886547
But in a case like this, before you open the box, the only 2 things you know is that A. either the decay happened, killing the cat, or B. the decay didn't happen, and the cat is alive.

It doesn't make sense to simply say that "because I won't know for sure until i observe, the cat is in both states of existence"

[Anonymous No.3886616]

>>3886595
>It doesn't make sense to simply say that "because I won't know for sure until i observe, the cat is in both states of existence"

Yes it does, because that's exactly how things are. The system evolves unperturbed until a measure is done. While the system evolves it is in a superposition of states.

>>3886594
>The obvious flaw with trying to do a "real life" version of the thought experiment is that the cat would count as an observer

No, read up on Wigner's Friend experiment. Even another person doesn't count as an observer, from your point of view.

[TN5 !/sci/TN5.. No.3886629]

>>3886536
OP, you should really watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc
You'll have a better understanding on why we (or actually, they, I'm clearly not a quantum physicist) say that a particle, or the cat, can be in two different states at once, and isn't just either in one or in the other.

[Anonymous No.3886696]

>>3886616
>Yes it does, because that's exactly how things are. The system evolves unperturbed until a measure is done. While the system evolves it is in a superposition of states.

But to say that is to still make the outcome of things contingent upon knowledge and observation, which can not be the case, especially from the standpoint of causal determinism. How can there be superstates of entities and outcomes, if there can only be one end result? The absence of observation and observers does not change the real outcome of cause-effect situations.

[Anonymous No.3886742]

>>3886696
>The absence of observation and observers does not change the real outcome of cause-effect situations.
but it does, if there are no observers a system will evolve differently that if there was observers.

[Anonymous No.3886753]

>>3886595
>It doesn't make sense to simply say that "because I won't know for sure until i observe, the cat is in both states of existence"
but we can measure after the event if it happened one way, the other way, or if both happened in a superposition. so its not that "we don't know", its that the only way to make it fit the experimental data is if it is both.

[Anonymous No.3886757]

Quantum physics hurts the brain. You just have to forget about determinism here.

[Anonymous No.3886779]

Imagine flipping a coin. When it is in the air is it heads or tails?

[Anonymous No.3886783]

Your mom is dead and alive because you con't know if some one has murderd her.

[Anonymous No.3886788]

I'm not looking at the table behind me, so does it really exist? There's also part of the wall in front of me being blocked by the monitor. So is there a monitor shaped hole in the wall that will disappear as soon as I reach my head around to look at it?

[Anonymous No.3886797]

why can't the cat be considered an observer? if I'm a cat, and I start to feel sick, I can conclude that alpha decay occurred.

[Anonymous No.3886814]

>>3886788
cant to infer the tables presence at all? do you hear the objects fall the the ground, do you feel heat from the released energy of the table when it dispersed? if you are so far away that you cant detect anything like this, then yes, the table is there and not there. please note also that this can only happen if it still satisfy all conservation laws, the energy the table is made out of has to go somewhere.

[JamesBond !!JAU/DZkp95n No.3886819]

That analogy is just that. An analogy. Don't take it too seriously. The message is that nature at some fundamental level does not behave in a manner that corresponds to its behavior in the realm of normal human perception.

The idea is this: An object can exist in a SUPERPOSITION of states or at least behabes as if it does.

[Anonymous No.3886834]

>>3886797
it is an observer of the decay, and it gets entangled with the system, so it knows if the decay took place, but to observe the cat we need the human to see if the cat is dead to see if the decay took place, and to see if the human made that observation wee need a second human to observe the first one, and so on... until it reaches you in some form, even if it is just the change of the wind based on the scientist hand movement, for you the can it alive and dead, and the scientist made the observation and didn't, and so on...

[Anonymous No.3886848]

>The message is that nature at some fundamental level does not behave in a manner that corresponds to its behavior in the realm of normal human perception.
and where is that transition? is aa object the size of a human hair not in the realm of human perception? yes we have succeeded in putting it in a superposition so that you can see it vibrating and not vibrating with your naked eye.

[Anonymous No.3886856]

>>3886834
that is absurd.

[Anonymous No.3886864]

>>3886779
>Imagine flipping a coin. When it is in the air is it heads or tails?

Neither, not both...because it is still in the process of flipping. There is no way to determine the outcome though. I see what you're getting at, but yours is a slightly different situation.

>>3886788
>I'm not looking at the table behind me, so does it really exist? There's also part of the wall in front of me being blocked by the monitor. So is there a monitor shaped hole in the wall that will disappear as soon as I reach my head around to look at it?

Yes, they still exist even though there is no observer. The absence of an observer does not render the universe non-existent.

To infer that the universe or parts of the universe do not exist or are in superstates of existence when an observer is not present is complete nonsense.

[Anonymous No.3886880]

>>3886856
why? this is what QM says. this is also why the multiverse interpretation is the interpretation with the least problems.

[Anonymous No.3886884]

Hey, DOUCHEBAG, listen up.

First of all, no, the cat is an observer, so whatever. The event occurs, it's observed, whatever. I do not know of any work that actually isolates a macroenvironment and measures anything meaningful from it.

HOWEVER

if you look at the two-slit experiment, it gives a really meaningful view of phenomena like this.

SO LISTEN UP, YOU COCKKNOCKER

In the two-slit experiment, photons are fired at a card with two slits in it. The photons either pass through one hole, and go straight, or the other, and go straight, right?

WTF THEY DON'T. If you don't look at them going through the card, you see them create a wave pattern.

So they don't just have the state of going through one or the other. They have some state that depends on where they're observed.

IF YOU OBSERVE ONE SLIT, ALL THIS CHANGES.

If you have some way of knowing that a particle went through one hole, then it goes straight through that hole. STRAIGHT THROUGH AND MAKES A SPOT ON THE WALL LIKE YOU'D EXPECT.

But if you don't observe it, it should do the same thing? WRONG. THAT IS WRONG. YOU WEREN'T FUCKING LISTENING.

If we extended this to the effects of the unknown states, a dead cat breathes no oxygen, right, so the amount of oxygen might be the expected value of oxygen in the box, if you have no way of knowing when the vial of poison was broken. This is weird, because if the cat died, there'd be more oxygen, probably, and if the cat is alive, there'd be less. But you get some sort of weird intermediate behavior.

So in summary,
OBSERVATION CHANGES THINGS, YOU DUMB NIGGER
and
THERE IS AN INTERMEDIATE STATE THAT ISN'T JUST "DEAD" OR "ALIVE" AND IF THE EXAMPLE WERE MORE DETAILED, IT WOULD TALK ABOUT THAT. THE POINT IS, IF YOU'D FUCKING BELIEVE US, THAT YOU'RE WRONG, YOU'RE FUCKING WRONG, AND YOUR PRECONCEPTIONS ABOUT HOW THE WORLD WORKS ARE WRONG, YOU STUPID NIGGER.

This has been another 4chan lecture. Thank you for your time.

[Anonymous No.3886897]

>>3886884
I like your style

[ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? No.3886914]

>>3886536
>Takes schodingers cat experiment literally

>Thinks it implies the cat is both dead and alive

The thought experiment was actually an argument to demonstrate how Quantum behavior cannot be directly applied to the macroscopic scale. NO ONE IS ARGUING THAT THE CAT IS ACTUALLY DEAD/ALIVE AT THE SAME TIME, THAT IS FUCKING STUPID, AND ACTUALLY WHAT IT WAS ARGUING AGAINST! It was proof by contradiction.

YOU HAVE SO MUCH FAIL!

[Anonymous No.3886917]

>>3886914
No, it was an analogy.

[Anonymous No.3886921]

>>3886536
>Draws the wrong conclusion from a basic thought experiment

[Anonymous No.3886922]

>>3886884
I'm in love with you.

Breaking Bad?

[Anonymous No.3886923]

The problem here is that none of you have the faintest idea of what actually constitutes an "observer."

[Anonymous No.3886931]

>>3886917
>>3886536
This is what happens when you teach science wrong.

Retarded kids end up thinking schodinger cat is both dead and alive. LMFAO.

[Anonymous No.3886932]

>>3886914
>NO ONE IS ARGUING THAT THE CAT IS ACTUALLY DEAD/ALIVE AT THE SAME TIME, THAT IS FUCKING STUPID, AND ACTUALLY WHAT IT WAS ARGUING AGAINST!
except all those people who studied QM, but what do they know, popsci is way above them!

[Anonymous No.3886938]

>>3886931
This is what happens when you dont learn science but try to have a conversation about it.

Retarded kids end up thinking schodinger cat isnt both dead and alive. LMFAO.

[Anonymous No.3886941]

>>3886536
>thinks Schrodinger implied that can was dead and alive

MY FAGGOTRY METER IS GOING THROUGH THE ROOF!

[Anonymous No.3886957]

>"philosophical"
Should have stopped reading here because this is /sci/ not /lit/

>"a priori"
Oh look, a philosophy undergrad

Reported.

[LMFAO AT YOUR STUPIDITY No.3886975]

>>3886938
>>3886932
>>3886536

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat

"Schrödinger DID NOT WISH TO PROMOTE THE IDEA OF DEAD-AND-ALIVE CATS AS A SERIOUS POSSIBILITY; quite the reverse, the paradox is a classic reductio ad absurdum."

Schrödinger, Erwin (November 1935). "Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik (The present situation in quantum mechanics)". Naturwissenschaften.

[Anonymous No.3886983]

>>3886536
ITT: kids not understanding Schodingers cat
ITT: kids drawing shitty and wrong conclusions

[Anonymous No.3886995]

>>3886536
>Listen to popscience
>Fail real science

[Anonymous No.3887001]

>>3886975
and your point is? now we after no one could find anything wrong with it, it was accepted as a good example of QM, who the fuck cares what Schrödinger thought when he thought it up.

[Anonymous No.3887009]

>>3886536
Schrodingers cat is reductio ad absurdum OP. It is ment to demonstrate how silly it is to apply Quatum Mechanics to big objects. It isn't ment to actually make you think the cat is dead and alive at the same time, that is fucking retarded.

[Anonymous No.3887024]

>>3887001
>it was accepted as a good example of QM

No, it wasn't. Physicist don't use it as an "example" of actual Quatum Mechanics. They use it to make you understand that there is a size limitation to which you can apply principles of Quantum Mechanics.

Are you shitting me? Trollin? Where are you getting your bullshit from?

[sage No.3887031]

>>3887001
Can't possibly be that stupid.
Must be troll

[Anonymous No.3887036]

>>3887024
It's easier to understand big objects! Jesus christ. It's hard to understand protons because you have no real concept of a proton except in the very abstract. A cat is much less abstract. That's why it's used as an analogy. You think about a cat, and you think about death, and you can understand these things so much better than something like the state of a proton.

[Anonymous No.3887037]

>>3887024
>They use it to make you understand that there is a size limitation
what fucking limitation? the plack mass? we already have much larger objects able to be superpositioned, see >>3886848

if something as big as a human hair is quantum mechanical, why not a cat? is there a magical barier between those too objects?

[Anonymous No.3887044]

>>3886923
This is an excellent point:

"Was the wave function waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer for some highly qualified measurer - with a PhD?"

[Anonymous No.3887063]

>>3887036
Yes, it is an analogy, it is NOT MENT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY.

The only people who think cats can actually be dead-and-alive are underage fags who have never taken an actual physics course. Everyone in the physics community knows that the cat is not dead-and-alive.

[Anonymous No.3887073]

>>3887044
There's no size limitation, only a momentum or mass beyond which most effects are mostly unmeasurable.

[Anonymous No.3887076]

>>3887073
Sorry, linked the wrong thing. I should say any time anything interacts with any other thing, each has, to some extent, been observed.

[Anonymous No.3887077]

OP. I know it's extremely counter-intuitive, but that's how it is. Particles do actually exist in multiple states and they only "settle" to just one after being observed (not necessarily by any "conscious" observer, but that's another story). It's not just that we don't know a particle's behavior until we check it, it's that data shows that the particle, when not being measured, exists in many states. Forget Schrodinger's Cat, read about the Double Slit experiment.

[Anonymous No.3887079]

OP, you are basically proposing a hidden variable theory. Read up on Bell's theorem.

[Anonymous No.3887086]

>>3887079
As an eliminative materialist I fully support superdeterminisim.

[Anonymous No.3887094]

>>3887073
mostly unmeasurable
yes, but the effect it still there.

[Anonymous No.3887095]

>>3887037
The size limitation is cause of wave-fucntion collapse. Typically many many many mnay wave-fuctions have collapsed leading up to the the macroscopic level, already setting most parameters out of super-position.

If you actually try to apply Quatum Mechanics to everyday macro-things, it is pointless right. That is why you use classical Mechanics...DURRR. Superpostion and quanntum behavior IS NOT THERE ON THE MACRO-LEVEL! The transition from quatum behavior to classical behvaior usually happens on the nano-scale, but is system and material independant.

Yeah, there are some very very very very special controlled experiments that can be done to keep the superosition in at the macroscopic level. But those are the excpetion, not the norm.

Bottom line: If you actually do a schodinger like experiment, you will get a dead or alive cat, not a dead and alive can.

[Anonymous No.3887106]

>>3887094
Until the point where actually being able to measure it would violate some law of physics.

[Anonymous No.3887111]

>>3887086
I see, carry on.

[Anonymous No.3887112]

>>3887095
if you used QM on macro objects, you would get the correct answer, you just have to include all the light and wind and everything that interacts with the body. that would be hard so we use the approximations of classic mechanics, not because its incorrect, but because its hard. and what if you put the cat in a "very very very very special controlled experiment" to determine it? what then?

[Anonymous No.3887144]

ITT: a bunch of 14 year olds arguing about shit they really know nothing about

i'm not a physicist. i'm a mathematician, physics is too hard for me. so what i'm not going to do is pretend i have a valid opinion, because i don't. however, i think it is very logical to conclude that if people who are much smarter than me or you at physics believe that quantum mechanics is really how particles work, they're more right than me or you could ever be. so until you actually have a very extensive knowledge of particle physics attained via an actual university and not a bunch of youtube videos made to make science look totally rad, SHUT THE FUCK UP. this board was supposed to be for science & math, not a bunch of kiddies who want to prove to the world how smart their anonymous persona is.
>>3886923
UM OF COURSE A OBSURVER IS ME OR LIKE A CAT OR SOMETHING WAIT BAD EXAMPLE LOL

[Anonymous No.3887146]

>>3887111
Well, I really don't have a choice, do I?

[Anonymous No.3887148]

>>3887144
>i'm a mathematician, physics is too hard for me

[Anonymous No.3887158]

>>3887144
>SHUT THE FUCK UP. this board was supposed to be for science & math, not a bunch of kiddies who want to prove to the world how smart their anonymous persona is.

I think you're conflating peer reviewed journals with 4chan...

[Anonymous No.3887176]

>>3887148
ooo, edgy, i like it. i only understand the pure mathematics of things, i'm only a freshman in college. physics is the practical applications of these mathematics, and requires an understanding of the world around me. i lack the latter.
>>3887158
never said it was supposed to be that smart, but it's infested with people who pretend to be smart and ruin the point of having a board like this.

[Anonymous No.3887199]

>>3887176
Again, this is 4chan -- it's utterly inundated with morons and trolls. Hell, I'm just here on a brief vacation from /b/ to troll people. If you want serious intellectual stimulation, this isn't the place for you.

[Anonymous No.3887214]

>>3887199
or we can just make a thread containing any math beyond calc2, that scares everyone away reel fast.

[Anonymous No.3887221]

>>3887214
Does advanced math destroy the part of the brain responsible for spelling words correctly?

[Anonymous No.3887228]

>>3887221
no, it deteriorates through lack of use.

[Anonymous No.3887266]

>>3887112
Yes, you can use QM for macro-objects, if you had supercomputers the size of cities maybe.

However, the superposition and probablistic nature will still end up getting scaled out as size increases. By the time you get to the scale of the cat, you will have probablities that are so fucking small they are for all praticle purposes 0 (or so close to 1, they we say they are certainity). You won't have probablstic classical machanics. YOU WILL JUST GET REGULAR CLASSICAL MECHANICS.

You won't have a dead and alive cat, you will just get a dead or alive cat.

[Anonymous No.3887298]

>>3887266
but if you eliminate all those interactions with the wind and so on, you will get a situation where the cat is both.

[Anonymous No.3887366]

>>3887298
>eliminate all interactions

I don't think you know how the univsere works. You have a shit ton of interactions at all times everywhere. Even if you got rid of noticible big shit like the "wind" it doesn't matter much, there are still billions of billions of sub-atomic interactions going on between the cat, the box, and everything else in the universe.

Wavefucntions collapsing everywhere, and superpoistion becoming certainity everywhere.

The sheer amount of interaction by the time you get to "cat" level, statistically makes Quatum mechical probablility become certainity. Values get chosen, and superposition no longer is relavent.

Schrodinger new this (as well as all other physicist who CAN FUCKING DO BASIC MATH). Schrodingers thought experiment was actually him pointing this out to others.

It is proff by contracition.
1) Assume the universe always keeps its QM nature
2) then the cat must be dead+alive
3) But we know that 2) is wrong
4) Hence, 1) is wrong

[Anonymous No.3887396]

>>3887366
>Even if you got rid of noticible big shit like the "wind" it doesn't matter much, there are still billions of billions of sub-atomic interactions going on between the cat, the box, and everything else in the universe.
if a fucking plants can keep macromolecules in superpositions, and we can keep human hair in superpositions, why do you assume a cat is to big? and were working with an idiolised system with a perfect box, not some cardboard you found on a hobo.