Schrodinger’s Cat
It’s no surprise that Schrödinger’s cat, one of many paradoxes, has undergone many inconclusive debates since it’s commencement. Honestly for me, it’s pretty straightforward at first. The cat is both dead and alive if it is not being observed. It doesn’t make sense at all to me, it rejects any notion of common sense, but it is a relatively easy concept to grasp. In fact, this chapter specifically mentioned that it is easier to make sense of an electron “in some superposition of states” than to mentally configure a cat simultaneously being dead and alive. With this simple paradox in mind, I read through this particular section of the chapter with more confusion as each beings in the box progresses more in intellect.
“Wigner’s Friend” is described to be a “competent observer” with the ability to “collapse wave functions.” If he makes it out of the box alive, he will not recall being both dead and alive just because there was no one to observe him for the duration of his time in the box. I’ve known about Shrodinger’s cat for a while now, and I’ve never thought to replace the cat with a human being. To add to that, the person still occupies a superposition of states, until he is being observed. Does that mean that his testimony of being alive and well in the box carries no weight to physicist?
At this point in the chapter, things become a little weird. The author now replaces the humans with computers which lack the capacity to physically, mentally, emotionally react to any environmental stimuli. They can, however, report with extraordinary accuracy every second of information about the radioactive decay. Do they have the ability to collapse the wave function? The author asks himself this question as well, but goes on to say “at least inside the wave box.” From here, I double take. This implies that the human wasn’t able to break the wave function inside the box. As I read through this chapter, I was convinced that Wigner’s Friend could at least disturb the wave function inside the box. Turns out said friend can neither break the wave function outside of the box or inside of the box. This, for whatever reason, totally blows my mind. So I readx on to see if this computer can break the wave function. The author know says that human observation or awareness has no effect of quantum level physics. The fact that the each radioactive atom is being recorded on a quantum level broke the wave function. This reminded me of the Doctor Quantum Double Slit video. Observing the atom, recording it’s every move eliminates any possibility of superposition, meaning one can definitely say whether whomever in the box is alive or not.
I too found myself shocked and astounded when Schrodinger’s cat was replaced with a human being and other things that could be in a “superposition of states”. I also found it hard to accept that the cat was both dead AND alive, as it does seem to defy common sense. But much like how the determination of a superposition of states relies on perception, perhaps common sense does as well. So maybe if we did change our notion of common sense, Schrodinger’s cat could exist in two states at once. Or superposition could be a final, third state that the cat could take on.
















