Re: My problem with Schrodinger's Cat

Scripsit "Chris" <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

I don't really understand why he would assume that the superposition of
states of the atom would carry over to the cat.

Schrödinger was just following the Copenhagen Interpretation to its
letter, which says that superposed states stay superposed until you
end the experiment and measure the outcome, period.

His _point_ was to demonstrate that this interpretation is absurd, and
he did it by applying it to a situation where it was (to him) clear
that the superposed stated _couldn't_ stay superposed, namely the
cat-in-the-box situation.

The Copenhagen interpretation means to me, that there is no
underlying causality that would determine when the atom would decay.

No, that is not the full scope of the Copenhagen Interpretation.
What the CI says is that everything _is_ fully causal until your
experiment ends and you measure things. At that point - but no sooner
- does the state collapse in a probabilistic way.

Scrödinger's cat situtation was an attempt to draw attention to the
question of how does the world know when to collapse? According to
the CI the world reacts to our more or less arbitrary division of
events into "experiment" and "measurement".

There has been some progress in resolving this question, but not as
far as I know any ultimative, universally accepted, answer.

--
Henning Makholm "However, the fact that the utterance by
Epimenides of that false sentence could imply the
existence of some Cretan who is not a liar is rather unsettling."
.

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