I'm gonna be a bit obnoxious here and ask people to please consider before sharing Schrödinger memes, and for two reasons:
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@dragonarchitect Yeah, that conflation of micro- and macroscopic properties is one of the big problems with the thought experiment, but I'm even willing to give that one a slight pass on that it's common to exaggerate the scale of things to make a narrative around them that helps with the thought experiment.
Where it goes truly awry, imho, is the "alive and dead at the same time" bit, which terminates thought in an apparent absurdity.
@xgranade Ahh, yeah, that's not even how superpositions even work at all in the first place. At least as far as I understand how they work.
As far as I understand it, a superposition is simply some state that is not strictly aligned with any arbitrarily chosen measurement axis. It can be literally anywhere in between the measured states, but we only ever measure One State.
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@xgranade Ahh, yeah, that's not even how superpositions even work at all in the first place. At least as far as I understand how they work.
As far as I understand it, a superposition is simply some state that is not strictly aligned with any arbitrarily chosen measurement axis. It can be literally anywhere in between the measured states, but we only ever measure One State.
@dragonarchitect I'll mostly agree, modulo the word "only." But yeah, superposition is inherently only meaningful with respect to a given choice of axes (more generally, basis states).
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@xgranade Ahh, yeah, that's not even how superpositions even work at all in the first place. At least as far as I understand how they work.
As far as I understand it, a superposition is simply some state that is not strictly aligned with any arbitrarily chosen measurement axis. It can be literally anywhere in between the measured states, but we only ever measure One State.
@xgranade While the cat is locked in the box, there's no way of knowing whether it is still alive or finally dead.
It's not simultaneously alive AND dead.
The cat is always in just one state.
You (generic 'you', the observer) just don't know what that state is until you open the box and Observe That Cat.
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@xgranade While the cat is locked in the box, there's no way of knowing whether it is still alive or finally dead.
It's not simultaneously alive AND dead.
The cat is always in just one state.
You (generic 'you', the observer) just don't know what that state is until you open the box and Observe That Cat.
@dragonarchitect I mean, not really, no. Partly, as you point out, that's the absurdity of conflating micro- and macroscopic properties. But also, it's less that the cat is alive and dead at the same time than that "alive" and "dead" aren't the right set of directions for describing the cat.
The supposed paradox has a resolution, and it's not even that difficult a one, but the point of the thought experiment is to terminate thought at the absurdity before you get to the resolution.
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@dragonarchitect I mean, not really, no. Partly, as you point out, that's the absurdity of conflating micro- and macroscopic properties. But also, it's less that the cat is alive and dead at the same time than that "alive" and "dead" aren't the right set of directions for describing the cat.
The supposed paradox has a resolution, and it's not even that difficult a one, but the point of the thought experiment is to terminate thought at the absurdity before you get to the resolution.
@xgranade You have a more nuanced understanding of the thought experiment than I do, then.
I am now curious.
What is the resolution that you have for it?
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@xgranade You have a more nuanced understanding of the thought experiment than I do, then.
I am now curious.
What is the resolution that you have for it?
@dragonarchitect Just that, that "alive" and "dead" are not the right words to describe the state of the cat at that point. It's easy to believe that about an electron, but phrasing it in terms of a cat poisons us against the idea that there could be a more correct set of terms to describe that state.
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@dragonarchitect Just that, that "alive" and "dead" are not the right words to describe the state of the cat at that point. It's easy to believe that about an electron, but phrasing it in terms of a cat poisons us against the idea that there could be a more correct set of terms to describe that state.
@dragonarchitect "Alive" and "dead" are *incredibly* complex phenomena, and even modern medicine hasn't been able to conclusively define those words. There are cases of medically "dead" patients coming back to life, not because of anything supernatural, but just because our definitions suck.
So inviting someone to think of another even more complex state than that is a nonstarter. But that apparent absurdity goes away when you ask a simpler question like "is this electron here or there."
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@dragonarchitect "Alive" and "dead" are *incredibly* complex phenomena, and even modern medicine hasn't been able to conclusively define those words. There are cases of medically "dead" patients coming back to life, not because of anything supernatural, but just because our definitions suck.
So inviting someone to think of another even more complex state than that is a nonstarter. But that apparent absurdity goes away when you ask a simpler question like "is this electron here or there."
@dragonarchitect That's when you get to the actual resolution, which is "position is the wrong set of variables to use to describe this object. It is in a definite and certain state, but I should use a different set of variables to describe that state."
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You're not going to understand quantum mechanics without a little bit of work, sure, but that's not unique to quantum mechanics at all! That's kind of how learning works!
The learning required to understand quantum mechanics is not terribly out of line with other fields, but memes like Schrödinger's Cat prime us to believe that it's not understandable at *all*. Which I reject.
I'm going to quote my own reply as a kind of addendum here, as there's a more general point I want to extract. Taxonomy is fucking hard, and when we're talking about living beings like humans and cats, even defining "alive" and "dead" is incredibly difficult to do in practice.
The propaganda work of Schrödinger's Cat, then, is to invite us to falsely extrapolate that complexity onto quantum mechanics.
Cassandra is only carbon now (@xgranade@wandering.shop)
@dragonarchitect@rubber.social "Alive" and "dead" are *incredibly* complex phenomena, and even modern medicine hasn't been able to conclusively define those words. There are cases of medically "dead" patients coming back to life, not because of anything supernatural, but just because our definitions suck. So inviting someone to think of another even more complex state than that is a nonstarter. But that apparent absurdity goes away when you ask a simpler question like "is this electron here or there."
The Wandering Shop (wandering.shop)
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I'm going to quote my own reply as a kind of addendum here, as there's a more general point I want to extract. Taxonomy is fucking hard, and when we're talking about living beings like humans and cats, even defining "alive" and "dead" is incredibly difficult to do in practice.
The propaganda work of Schrödinger's Cat, then, is to invite us to falsely extrapolate that complexity onto quantum mechanics.
Cassandra is only carbon now (@xgranade@wandering.shop)
@dragonarchitect@rubber.social "Alive" and "dead" are *incredibly* complex phenomena, and even modern medicine hasn't been able to conclusively define those words. There are cases of medically "dead" patients coming back to life, not because of anything supernatural, but just because our definitions suck. So inviting someone to think of another even more complex state than that is a nonstarter. But that apparent absurdity goes away when you ask a simpler question like "is this electron here or there."
The Wandering Shop (wandering.shop)
Modern medicine has not been able to come up with a precise enough taxonomy for "alive" and "dead" to enable statements like "once something is dead, it will never be alive again." That complexity has absolutely *nothing* to do with quantum mechanics, and it's a thought-terminating cliche to conflate that complexity with quantum mechanics.
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You're not going to understand quantum mechanics without a little bit of work, sure, but that's not unique to quantum mechanics at all! That's kind of how learning works!
The learning required to understand quantum mechanics is not terribly out of line with other fields, but memes like Schrödinger's Cat prime us to believe that it's not understandable at *all*. Which I reject.
@xgranade I can't speak to the actual history, but I always took the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment as more making a philosophical point that the Copenhagen Interpretation, while often a useful framing for designing experiments, cannot be literally true.
Which doesn't change the fact that it's often used as "look how ~weird~ and ~incomprehensible~ quantum mechanics is", especially in pop-science presentations, and that has all the problems you mentioned. Think I've seen exactly one pop-sci book that doesn't do that, which was a relief to see.
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Modern medicine has not been able to come up with a precise enough taxonomy for "alive" and "dead" to enable statements like "once something is dead, it will never be alive again." That complexity has absolutely *nothing* to do with quantum mechanics, and it's a thought-terminating cliche to conflate that complexity with quantum mechanics.
@xgranade one could argue that Fungi *are* death
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You're not going to understand quantum mechanics without a little bit of work, sure, but that's not unique to quantum mechanics at all! That's kind of how learning works!
The learning required to understand quantum mechanics is not terribly out of line with other fields, but memes like Schrödinger's Cat prime us to believe that it's not understandable at *all*. Which I reject.
@xgranade I was really disappointed that the quantum mechanics textbook assigned when I took the class described the field as “unintuitive” in its introduction. “Intuitive” is subjective, and if “unintuitive” is how you think of something then maybe you shouldn’t be writing a textbook about it
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@xgranade resisting the urge to make a sorry/not-sorry joke here
glad I didn't undercut the (extremely correct) point of the thread by stuffing my shitposting into CWs
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@xgranade one could argue that Fungi *are* death
@cthos "you cannot kill me in any way that matters" is a meme for very good reason.
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@cthos "you cannot kill me in any way that matters" is a meme for very good reason.
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@xgranade oh no. I liked it because of the cat.
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@alter_kaker @Leendaal I mean, sure, but as with most humor, unpacking and problematizing the power dynamics that make a joke work is a useful exercise in inclusive thinking. That's why I said "consider" and not "abstain."
If you can punch up with a Schrödinger joke, knowing the power dynamics at play, then by all means. I'd nominate "Schrödinger's asshole" jokes as one potential category where you can do that analysis and come out with a joke that avoids hero worshiping and disinformation.
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@dragonarchitect That's when you get to the actual resolution, which is "position is the wrong set of variables to use to describe this object. It is in a definite and certain state, but I should use a different set of variables to describe that state."
@xgranade @dragonarchitect This reminds me a little of a misuse of square root notation to negative numbers that leads to nonsense.
If x := sqrt(-1) then x.x = -1 but also x.x = sqrt(-1 . -1) = sqrt(1) = 1, a contradiction.
This assumes that sqrt is a function with a single value for every real input. By *convention* sqrt(x) is the positive solution to “what number’s square is x?” but you cannot extend that convention to negative x since “positive” for complex numbers doesn’t even make sense.
