Is this not Schrodinger cat ?

You all are pretty sure... but gee wiz .. how would you know without it actually being there or there being more evidence rather than something along the lines of " I am pretty sure "

or hell, even if you say your 100 percent, we all just have to take a humans memory at face value ?

Transcript:

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to a bill that overturns the scientific finding that pollution is harming our people and our planet.

However, I won't physically rise, because I'm worried that Republicans will overturn the law of gravity, sending us floating about the room.

I won't call for the sunlight of additional hearings, for fear that Republicans might excommunicate the finding that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Instead, I'll embody Newton's third law of motion and be an equal and opposing force against this attack on science and on laws that will reduce America's importation of foreign oil.

This bill will live in the House while simultaneously being dead in the Senate. It will be a legislative Schrodinger's cat killed by the quantum mechanics of the legislative process!

Arbitrary rejection of scientific fact will not cause us to rise from our seats today. But with this bill, pollution levels will rise. Oil imports will rise. Temperatures will rise.

And with that, I yield back the balance of my time. That is, unless a rejection of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is somewhere in the chair's amendment pile.

"I had planned to spray on the Human's new designer boots in retaliation for this Schrodinger-esque humiliation... but certain unforeseen benefits have shown this item to be not completely without merit."

Next up, Maru vs. Schrodingers box.

>> ^RFlagg:

Upvote as it amused me so. I loved the straight forward answer. Of course I probably would have come back with a "but how do we know it moves air to make a sound? It gets to the old Quantum Physics Double Slit Experiment, and Schrödinger's cat, the very act of observing may be changing the results."


What a shitty comeback. It has nothing to do with that. Sound waves in the air is not a quantum phenomenon. Hence Schrodinger's cat and the double-slit experiment don't apply.

70- Mentally Disabled
80 Borderline
90 Low Average
100 Average
110 High Average
120 Gifted
130+ Genius / Very Superior

Revised

70-Christian/Muslim
80-Assholes that cut you off on the freeway
90-Your boss at work
100-The hot girl that you know is way dumber, but you feign interest in because she's so hot
110-The kind of cute girl that reads books and likes culture and shit but is a few pounds over weight so you hang out with the "100" IQ girl
120-Your friends
130+-You, Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc.

>> ^BicycleRepairMan:
>> ^Payback:
Still think this cat should be named Heisenberg.

Or Schrodinger .


I thought about that too, but with Schrodinger, when he's out of sight, you don't know if he's alive or dead, which would make me sad.

>> ^Payback:
Still think this cat should be named Heisenberg.


Or Schrodinger .

>> ^cybrbeast:
I've always seen this experiment as flawed. People assume the act of observation that causes the cat to either be dead or alive must be done by a human. But this is not the case I think, the Geiger counter is the observer and once it observes the decay or not, the cat will either die or not, irrespective of when the box is opened.


But the geiger counter is not an "observer" as the term is accepted. It is simply an inanimate object like the collection of atoms that forms the isotope.

The geiger counter acts in a certain way when a certain set of conditions presents itself. When a radioactive particle/burst of energy travels through the gas inside the counter, the gas conducts electricity, the electricity stimulates an output such as clicks. Doesn't have to be clicks either, it could be a guage. Regardless, it is not something that observes. You may as well say that the isotyope itself is an observer because the reaction of the parts in the geiger counter is an extension of what occurs in the isotope.

Schrodingers cat is a great way of simplifying the idea of quantum mechanics, but you still need a basis of what the thought experiment is trying to convey. The cat is just a way of linking quantum mechanics to the real world, it's not particularly important. You can just put the isotope in a box, do away with the cat, hammer and geiger counter and say "we cannot know whether it has decayed or not."

That's the point - we do not know what's happening in the box, because we can't measure it. And until we can measure it, in a quantum mechanical sense, all (or both) states are true.

I love chem but since it is such a difficult subject to get the layperson caught up on because if its abstract nature, my math skills had always been far beyond my chem needs. They touch on things like Schrodinger's equation, electron cloud probability function, etc. but they never really tied it into math. At least at those more general levels. Physics on the other hand is easier to conceptualize so they just kinda jumped right into the calc.

>> ^imstellar28:
>> ^Aendolin:
^I'd say evolutionary theory is harder to accept, not grasp.

You think quantum mechanics is easy to accept? Planck, Bohr, Schroedinger, and Einstein all considered it ludicrous, and they were much smarter men than most.
Quantum mechanics says that if you place a cat under a large box, and lift the box to peek in enough times, one of those times it will be a horse. You're okay with that?


My own opinion is that evolutionary theory is rather easy to grasp and understand. Quantum mechanics, not so much. I mean, I can recite some of the implications of quantum mechanics, but they're still beyond imagination and I have no concept of how these things happen.

And no, quantum mechanics doesn't say anything about cats transforming into horses. Quantum mechanics says that quantum particles exist in all possible states at all times unless they are observed. You'll be nominated for a golden crocoduck yourself if you keep saying things like that.

Einstein and Planck essentially founded quantum theory, though Einstein wasn't fond of its implications, and Schrodinger is famous for pointing out how ridiculous it is. They all still believed it because the evidence indicates it's true. Not sure if you were implying that they were all disbelievers, but that's how I read that part of your comment.

^As a matter of fact, yes, I am, since quantum theory has been well validated by experiment. And since it doesn't directly contradict any religious dogma, most religions find it easier to accept than evolution as well.
There is no great national debate about quantum mechanics like there is with evolution. It is the standard theory taught in college, and no one is clamoring to have other (contradictory) theories taught beside it.

I believe Einstein only thought some aspects of QM were ludicrous (like probability density functions). Didn't realize Schrodinger did. And there are many very smart people today who solidly accept it.

I couldn't get past the first minute of that man talking, what an arrogant dick... and WRONG.

Binary logic, trying to say do I see him or do I not, it's all down to that. What bull. There's an awful lot more to understanding the universe than trying to break things down to a 0 or 1. Is he completely ignoring the experimentally proven quantum theory of things existing in more than one state at a given time? Has he never heard of Schrodinger's cat?

And for him to then talk himself up like that.

Sorry, not going to watch someone aggrandize themselves when they WORK IN A BAR.

MaxWilder and harlequinn, I think you two are agreement at the conceptual level while your disagreements are occurring at the semantic level.

I tend to lean towards liking MaxWilder's definitions of agnostic and atheist though. I don't think there is any evidence for or against the existence of a deity; I simply don't know if God exists. By definition that makes me agnostic. I choose not to believe (i.e. have faith) that a god exists, and since I can't say I believe in God, that seems to imply that by definition I'm also an atheist. In other words, I think being agnostic makes one an atheist as well.

However, I recognize that the meanings of the words atheist and agnostic are used in ways that tend to imply slightly different definitions.

For example, many times people use agnostic when they mean to imply that they don't care or that it doesn't matter. I've even met people who were spiritual and religious (in a personal way) who called themselves agnostic as a way to describe the level at which they were religious. They may pray, but it doesn't bother them if the truth is that no god is listening.

I've also met people who think that the word atheist implies that the person believes there is no god.

If I had to give myself a label, I'd probably use "agnostic atheist" since I think it helps clear up the misunderstandings that sometimes come up.

I get what you are trying to say Harlequinn about there really being three states, so here's another analogy that may help.

(This analogy inspired from the classic Schrodinger's cat quantum mechanics thought experiment)

Suppose there is a box, in which a cat is placed. From your point of view, you can not see, hear, or sense the cat in any way. There is a button. When the button is pressed, the cat is either killed, or not killed. The button is pressed. Before the box is opened, someone turns to you and asks, "Is the cat alive?"

You could respond, "(I believe) the cat is alive." (Response A)
or you could respond, "(I believe) the cat is dead." (Response B)
or you could respond, "(I believe) I don't know." (Response C)

These responses are analogous to:
"(I believe) there is a god." (Response A)
"(I believe) there is not a god." (Response B)
"(I believe) I don't know if there is a god." (Response C)

The problem is, the terms theist, atheist, and agnostic, do not map one to one with these different responses, because an atheist doesn't have to be agnostic, but an agnostic has to be atheist. (per dictionary not necessarily common usage definitions). It seems to me that the best way to describe these three positions is as follows:

"(I believe) there is a god." (Response A) - Theist
"(I believe) there is not a god." (Response B) - Atheist, but not Agnostic
"(I believe) I don't know." (Response C) - Agnostic and Atheist

All I'm thinking is I'm glad that mirror was securely mounted. That could have killed off a hell of a Rube Goldberg variation on Schrodinger's Box.