As the famous experiment suggestion goes, if you put a cat in  a box, and could not see it, it could be considered both dead and alive until you unveil the box and the contents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat

My late friend Bob, had a huge problem with this mental experiment, in that no mater the cause of the cat's survival or death, Shodinger never took into account the point of view of the cat itself. 

It is easy to assume life or death if you are outside the POV. Schrodinger never took into account the POV of the cat he theoretically put into his thought experiment.

I agree with your late friend. The thought experiment is invalid because the cat is the observer.

(October 14, 2020 at 8:37 pm)AFTT47 Wrote: I agree with your late friend. The thought experiment is invalid because the cat is the observer.

It isn't that the cat is the sole  observer, but the cat should not be counted out as one observer.

QM and QP, are not about one point of view, but countless, infinite calculations.

There's a cat in the box?

The point of view of the cat is immaterial - it is the subject of the experiment, not the observer. In the original formulation, the subject was a keg of gunpowder that could exist in the superposition of exploded/unexploded. No one would seriously contend that a keg of gunpowder is the observer of the experiment.

The experiment isn’t about a cat.

Boru

(October 14, 2020 at 8:53 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: The point of view of the cat is immaterial - it is the subject of the experiment, not the observer. In the original formulation, the subject was a keg of gunpowder that could exist in the superposition of exploded/unexploded. No one would seriously contend that a keg of gunpowder is the observer of the experiment.

The experiment isn’t about a cat.

Boru

He was wrong. "You don't know, until you look "is one thing. But, " I do know because I don't know, because I left out other parameters" is exactly what he did.

QM and PM are not defending "anything goes" as the cat thought experiment would suggest.

(October 14, 2020 at 9:00 pm)Brian37 Wrote:

(October 14, 2020 at 8:53 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: The point of view of the cat is immaterial - it is the subject of the experiment, not the observer. In the original formulation, the subject was a keg of gunpowder that could exist in the superposition of exploded/unexploded. No one would seriously contend that a keg of gunpowder is the observer of the experiment.

The experiment isn’t about a cat.

Boru

He was wrong. "You don't know, until you look "is one thing. But, " I do know because I don't know, because I left out other parameters" is exactly what he did.

QM and PM are not defending "anything goes" as the cat thought experiment would suggest.

Of course they’re not defending it. The thought experiment was constructed to show that Shrodinger and Einstein thought that superposition was absurd. It appears that they were wrong.

Boru

(October 14, 2020 at 9:05 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(October 14, 2020 at 9:00 pm)Brian37 Wrote: He was wrong. "You don't know, until you look "is one thing. But, " I do know because I don't know, because I left out other parameters" is exactly what he did.

QM and PM are not defending "anything goes" as the cat thought experiment would suggest.

Of course they’re not defending it. The thought experiment was constructed to show that Shrodinger and Einstein thought that superposition was absurd. It appears that they were wrong.

Boru

Tell that to the cat.

(October 14, 2020 at 9:13 pm)Brian37 Wrote:

(October 14, 2020 at 9:05 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Of course they’re not defending it. The thought experiment was constructed to show that Shrodinger and Einstein thought that superposition was absurd. It appears that they were wrong.

Boru

Tell that to the cat.

There's no cat.  There never was a cat. It was a thought experiment about quantum events (in this case, radioactive decay) influencing macroevents. And it seems fairly sure that observation and measurement do collapse the wave front.

Boru

"Spooky at a distance" could mean that ABBA are the ultimate Gods of the universe. Pretty sure everyone reading this is laughing right now.