Schrodinger's Box, and why you should scare people with too much time on their hands.
226 replies, posted
tl;dr: Crazy people kill cats with science. They have too much time on their hands.
So for those of you who don't know, Schrodinger's box was an theoretical experiment where the tester would put a cat, a Geiger counter, a decaying isotope, and some good ol' fashioned, home grown Cyanide, in a box. If the isotope decayed, and released enough radiation, the Geiger counter would go off, and release the cyanide, killing the cat. The theory is that human perception defines reality, and since the isotope is a quantum event, its nature will not be determined until a human, or something of equal/ greater intelligence perceives it. Therefor, until you look in the box, the cat is neither alive, nor dead.
I found myself thinking, "hey deca, why in the hell would anyone think of such a weird horrible experiment." The only answer is someone with far too much time on their hands, and that what other horrid shit must people like this come up with?
Feel free to post ridiculous shit like this.
[B]-Edit-[/B]
I just knowticed that I mistyped, the title was supposed to say "...and why you should BE scared of...."
What
The fuck did I just read?
Ad absurdum.
the point of the reduction ad absurdium is to create an impossible conclusion to the thing you're trying to disprove. Surely there are little things more absurd than a cat both alive and dead.
The less you're willing to accept it, the better. That's why I frequently use death and rape in my ad absurdums, the harder it hits, the more effective it is as an argument.
Schrödinger's Cat
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;32174439]Schrödinger's Cat[/QUOTE]
Schrödinger's Cat walked into a bar. The other didn't
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;32174439]Schrödinger's Cat[/QUOTE]
Guess he already looked inside.
[QUOTE=decamonos;32174310]tl;dr: Crazy people kill cats with science. They have too much time on their hands.
So for those of you who don't know, Schrodinger's box was an theoretical experiment where the tester would put a cat, a Geiger counter, a decaying isotope, and some good ol' fashioned, home grown Cyanide, in a box. If the isotope decayed, and released enough radiation, the Geiger counter would go off, and release the cyanide, killing the cat. The theory is that human perception defines reality, and since the isotope is a quantum event, its nature will not be determined until a human, or something of equal/ greater intelligence perceives it. Therefor, until you look in the box, the cat is neither alive, nor dead.
I found myself thinking, "hey deca, why in the hell would anyone think of such a weird horrible experiment." The only answer is someone with far too much time on their hands, and that what other horrid shit must people like this come up with?
Feel free to post ridiculous shit like this.
[B]-Edit-[/B]
I just knowticed that I mistyped, the title was supposed to say "...and why you should BE scared of...."[/QUOTE]
Uh. You know it was a theoretical experiment, right? And that was just an example of how it could be tested. That specific method was never carried out.
-snip-
I expected a cool thread about schrödinger's cat, but was sorely disappointed.
[QUOTE=Tacosheller;32174591]And that was just an example of how it could be tested.[/QUOTE]
No it wasn't.
You could have just set the damn thing to blink two lights. It was just a theory, and putting a cat in it is something most people can relate to. Not some giant metal box that has a two red lights on it that blink one or the other based on this random event.
I'm pretty sure Schrodinger used a cat just to make people give a shit.
This post is riddled with grammatical errors and the liking, the isotope isn't decaying, my IQ is.
Schrödinger's Cat is a thought experiment designed to highlight the apparent absurdity of the Heisenberg interpretation of quantum theory. It is not an objective fact of quantum dynamics. And it is not about 'human perception defines reality', it is about the third state in trinary logic (which QM relies upon, since classical logic doesn't function on a quantum level), and how that state can produce apparently paradoxical but nonetheless true conditions. The cat is just a metaphor to make it easier to understand, it doesn't [i]actually[/i] work that way, and a cat in a box with a decaying isotope is, in fact, either alive or dead, and never both.
What's equally mindfucking is that if you somehow managed to seal the room and have a scientist in the room capable of communicating to another person in the hallway via a single slip of paper, in theory the scientist inside would observe the cat collapsing into a definitive state, but if the scientist simply slips a piece of paper under the door to tell the person in the hallway that the cat reached a definitive state, then in theory everything would be reversible while having the slip of paper remain. In essence, we went back to the future.
Why did Schrodinger's cat cross the road?
Because he also didn't.
[QUOTE=Sourcream&onion;32176535]Why did Schrodinger's cat cross the road?
Because he also didn't.[/QUOTE]
But either way, we're sure it did something.
Schrodinger had a cat? I thought he owned a dog?
[QUOTE=decamonos;32174310]tl;dr: The theory is that human perception defines reality.
[/QUOTE]
No it isn't.
Just an FYI, the cat was never put into a box. The experiment was never done because science with good morals does not justify the murder of a living creature.
[QUOTE=Jurikuer;32176941]Just an FYI, the cat was never put into a box. The experiment was never done because science with good morals does not justify the murder of a living creature.[/QUOTE]Who said that science has to have good morals?
So this is more or less
"I found a tree in the woods that was about to fall down and put a microphone near it transmitting to a recorder a mile away. The tree is nor upright nor fallen over until I listen to the recording to see if it has fallen"
More or less?
This is probably so the matrix can run our universe at a smooth framerate. Imagine the lag with all of the cats also rendering shit.
[QUOTE=JeffAndersen;32176986]So this is more or less
"I found a tree in the woods that was about to fall down and put a microphone near it transmitting to a recorder a mile away. The tree is nor upright nor fallen over until I listen to the recording to see if it has fallen"
More or less?[/QUOTE]
No not at all. The point is by observing an event you change the situation. This is just an analogy that doesn't work in practice because the cat is constantly being 'observed' by vibrations/EM waves etc, but it demonstrates the theory somewhat.
To my level of understanding anyway.
It's also how quantum encryption works because if the message is intercepted on the way and read that reading changes the polarity of the light meaning that the someone cannot crack a code by obvious methods and needs the encryption key. I heard a lecture about it once that was super interesting but I've forgotten most of it by now.
dear op,
observe doesnt meant what you think it does.
sincerely,
kybalt
[QUOTE=sami-elite;32179040][media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrxqTtiWxs4[/media][/QUOTE]
That guys afro is fucking awesome!
[QUOTE=Kybalt;32177779]dear op,
observe doesnt meant what you think it does.
sincerely,
kybalt[/QUOTE]
Hasn't there been a lot of debate in the scientific community as to what constitutes 'observation' in the quantum realm? I mean the lack of concrete evidence on what actually causes a wavefunction to collapse (or if they even do) gave rise to the different interpretations of quantum mechanics.
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