So can someone explain this to me at the level of a freshman in college?

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untestable, unprovable, hypothetical spitballing bullshit

So I just spent 2 hours research this for no reason?

the cat was mind controlled
the observer was mind controlled
the environment was never tested for EMF or radio or microwaves

the test was not valid
and your stupid results are invalid

It's all bullshit dude. Stop wasting your time on this.

its just like a though experiment but even the premise is based on bullshit, and he keeps coming up with bullshit scenarios upon it. I mean a cat being both dead and alive should give you the idea.

its one way "to think about it"
that has since been popularized by the media
because of its absurdity

It doesnt mean that if you dont also "think like this" that you dont get the subject or is somehow inferior

Think of it this way. I put an apple on someones head. Some will argue that the apple is ontop of the person while some will save the person is under the apple.

Its pointless and retarded

schrodinger's cat is basically a description of probability deduced from the physical attributes of the cat which govern the accessibility of information about the cat. since the cat is hidden we cannot access visual information about its state, so the states are entangled, or juxtaposed, mathematically and physically, and represented by probabilities.

Schrodinger's cat is a thought experiment. Essentially the physics on the quantum level are different from those we experience in the every day world. Very small particles appear to be existing in more than one state at once, which will be very handy once we work out how to use quantum computers properly. Anyway, forget the cat, it's really about the stuff that makes up atoms.

It's just a meme explanation of probability.

it's an experiment that says "If I can't see it, it's not really there"
the cat is dead
But the person hasn't found out yet
so some """""""""""""scientist""""""""""""""
Made the statement that this means It can be whatever it could possibly be

This I think.

Quantum mechanics seem to go beyond just probability, it's just a key part of it

A more useful schrondiger's box:
game theory. You don't know for certain what actions will be taken, you just assume all possible actions for consideration. Then once a action is "observed", it's clear that a only 1 actually takes place.

No magic reality instantaneous destroying alternate universes or some shit.

Schroedinger came up with it as a thought experiment to say how stupid the idea of wavefunction superposition was.
He said that particles, when not measured can exist in a superposition of decay/no decay. He then adds a detector on the particle, which is attached to a gun that will kill the cat if the particle decays. He then says, if left unobserved - because the particle is in a superposition - the cat will be too.
Funny thing is - the thought experiment was right.

Thing is, it is a wonderfulanalogy for probability and it does make people understand the potential that exists within an unobserved state, but people simply aren't conditioned to understand it as such, because every time they hear about it it's just in the context of the latest quantum meme.

Probability from ignorance is not the same as quantum probability

This would be the closest explanation so far.

It's not to do with probability. It's not to do with ignorance of the state either.

Well, not really...

In quantum mechanics there is a thing called the wavefunction. When the wavefunction is observed, it collapses to any one of its characteristic values.

The point of this experiment is to illustrate superposition. That is, at any one time before the wavefunction collapses, it can be in a superposition of any characteristic states (eg alive and dead). Superposition is a real and verified feature of quantum mechanics.

>the thought experiment was right
you should qualify that with "in the quantum realm". there are various explanations as to why the cat-system does not apply, but that much should be obvious as it was meant, as you pointed out, to be an absurd extreme used to highlight flaws.

its just so absurd that it is no longer relevant to the discussion, is the problem. quantum systems are by definition, intrinsically different than a classic system of trillions of atoms.

>to say how stupid the idea of wavefunction superposition was.
He was the guy who invented superposition, fuckwit.

Isn't the argument from ignorance in physics form, except that philosophers got to it thousands of years before scientists even conceived of the idea.

In short: You don't know until you know and something isn't until it is, and until that exact moment that it is, it's in a superposition state.

It's associated with the observer effect, where the act of being nosey fucks shit up.

And fuck the aspies fucks that disagree with the style and content of my deliver.
Nigga, I'm cool.

>Funny thing is - the thought experiment was right.
So called "cat states" were first prepared in the new millennium, and they consisted of something like 6 atoms. Nobody has ever actually seen a superposition of something as large as a cat, and indeed it is possible that quantum mechanics breaks down at large scales. Penrose has suggested that this might solve the problem of quantum gravity; instead of trying to replace classical general relativity by some quantum theory at small scales (like string theory and its competitors), he says you should replace quantum physics by something else (what exactly isn't known) at long distances.
cont...

It's a fact and until you accept it you won't ever be able to truly begin studying QM because you'll be thinking it's some kind of external idea because YOU have some idea of what reality should be based on having developed a macroscopic monkey brain.

Except you're missing the physical significance of it. If that was the whole story, it would just be some lame philosophical unfalsifiable claim.

The experiments show that a single particle in a superposition of states has a different outcome than a single particle not in a superposition of states. And this is heavily prominent in all calculations in QM.

It's definitely not argument from ignorance. Before measurement, the wavefunction does exist in a superposition of states that form a basis of the value you're measuring. It's not that we don't know how they're behaving - it's that we don't know what what state they will collapse to when we measure them. We can tell the probability of collapse to each state though.

>It's definitely not argument from ignorance.
It is, the wave function isn't anything physical

The coefficients give the probability density of the particle. You have no idea what you're talking about.

i think you missed the point

>Before measurement, the wavefunction does exist
>that we don't know what what state they will collapse to when we measure them

That's not right though.
Measuring doesn't cause field collapse.
That quantum woo theory, not quantum science.

Erm, yes - it does. After the system is measured it has to collapse into an eigenstate of the observable.

you can only prove that if observer was not mind controlled
and you discount the 11.8 million videos about mind control on youtube (from the victims)

therefore, all studies are shit. your tests are not valid (all of them) and your results are corrupted (all of them)

later...

bunch of memers. schroedinger's cat is a thought experiment to demonstrate how the copenhagen interpretation can be scaled in the macroscopic world. to show how saying that an atom can be split and not split at the same time is as logical as saying that a cat can be alive and dead at the same time. which it can't. there is no "probability distribution". once the time has passed, the cat is either dead or alive and us observing this or not doesn't change it.

>us observing this
Way to miss the subtle points of QM there, buddy.

The ccat is either alive or its dead... thats the point.... randomness is pixie dust faggot shit..
when u grow up and become a heterosexual u have to drink determinism

Alder's Razor

When in reality the complex "warm" cat is already interacting with itself far more than the photons necessary to observe its state would, achieving the classical limit.

Schrodinger was criticizing copenhagen interpretation, but some people still buy the kool aid they teach at schools. There ARE other interpretations out there.

The cat is an observer.
>The cat doesn't count he can't collapse his own waveform

Ok I put in a video camera and observe after the fact that the cat was never in a superposition of states
>No that doesn't count either, the waveform only collapses when a human eyeball observes it.

Anyway, the really important question raised by Schroedinger's cat is:
Why can we only measure |alive> or |dead>?
Why aren't the physical states |alive> + |dead> and |alive> - |dead>?

how does can have Rinnegan?

>Why aren't the physical states |alive> + |dead> and |alive> - |dead>?

We can measure those states, in principle. To do so would require a "cat beamsplitter" where sending a living cat or a dead cat produces a superposition of each, but sending in a superposition of living/dead with the right phase generates living (or dead, for the opposite phase).

The problem is that |alive> and |dead> are messy approximations, representing a pair of vast phase spaces. So the real problem is a thermodynamic one: you can't measure the superposition-cat-state because you don't know how to reanimate a dead cat.

Thank you user. That makes perfect sense.

Schrodinger's cat doesn't exist. He was using a life size example to show why the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is horse shit. I don't really know either way (I'm not really a QM pro), but I know that's something a lot of people don't really get.

>I have no idea what quantum mechanics is about aside from YouTube videos

this is correct

>I am an idiot

most of the posts you quoted were right and the one you called right is ok up until the part where it says "the experiment was right"

how an interpretation of probability can be "right" is fucking beyond me

it's silly gibberish and nothing more

missed the experiment was right part because that's incorrect but the rest is nonsense

this has nothing to do with Bayseian informational probability but inequalities that arise from wave functions and set the probability as a fundamental and true in a very real sense (not just lack of information) which gives the paradox of the cat
and the thought experiment was a criticism of the idea

a cat can't be both dead and alive. the probability is completely lack of information. for anything else:

no you don't know what you're talking about

>I don't like your interpretation of what the math means

If i put an egg in a cardboard box and shack the box, before i look inside to see what its state is, it could be in 2 states. This is broken or not broken. But for a physicist, its broken and unbroken at the same time. When things get very small, this is plausible, but for us, its not.

for reference what exactly is your background?
high school physics? computer science? calculus I?

>my interpretation of QM is the right one and i'm going to prove it to the internet
I disagree with who you are responding to. You are an idiot for responding.

math junior