Schrödinger's cat isn't a theory (or a theroy). It is a thought experiment which creates a macroscopic analogy for a quantum system.
The cat in the closed box with the radioactive isotope, detector, and poison gas is analogous to the quantum system before it is measured. Opening the box is like measuring the quantum system - it forces an uncertain superposition of states to 'collapse' into a single, certain state, which is the result of the measurement.
That quantum physics is silly. Obviously, the cat cannot be both dead and alive just because we do not know which one it is. Just because we can think it, does not make it real. He's taking the daunting quantum physics theories and applying them just as appropriately to a real, understandable perspective and making us see that they are just silly. If you don't know which something is, it's a good guess to give it a 50/50 chance, but that doesn't mean that the chance scientifically exists, it just means you're doing a mathematical approach to guessing. The cat isn't really half dead and alive- you just don't know so get as close as you can to certainty by calling it that.
that's also why it's so funny to call it a thought experiment- because quantum physics really has you convinced on a microlevel that a thought can change things. Imagine a thought experiment: "Apply this thought to Group A, and this thought to Group B, and this thought to a control group"- meanwhile, all we really learn by doing this experiment is that it doesn't really matter what we think about it, it exists regardless.
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Schrödinger's cat isn't a theory (or a theroy). It is a thought experiment which creates a macroscopic analogy for a quantum system.
The cat in the closed box with the radioactive isotope, detector, and poison gas is analogous to the quantum system before it is measured. Opening the box is like measuring the quantum system - it forces an uncertain superposition of states to 'collapse' into a single, certain state, which is the result of the measurement.
That quantum physics is silly. Obviously, the cat cannot be both dead and alive just because we do not know which one it is. Just because we can think it, does not make it real. He's taking the daunting quantum physics theories and applying them just as appropriately to a real, understandable perspective and making us see that they are just silly. If you don't know which something is, it's a good guess to give it a 50/50 chance, but that doesn't mean that the chance scientifically exists, it just means you're doing a mathematical approach to guessing. The cat isn't really half dead and alive- you just don't know so get as close as you can to certainty by calling it that.
that's also why it's so funny to call it a thought experiment- because quantum physics really has you convinced on a microlevel that a thought can change things. Imagine a thought experiment: "Apply this thought to Group A, and this thought to Group B, and this thought to a control group"- meanwhile, all we really learn by doing this experiment is that it doesn't really matter what we think about it, it exists regardless.