when is Schroedinger's cat dead, and when is it not?

You, on the other hand, are certainly trying.

Yes, I am trying hard, because it is important to me. But to Rorty or to you, there is no need to make any sense. All you need to be right in your system is an entourage of sychophants agreeing with you... I hope you have that.

You didn't get my double entendre so I'm sending you a sycophant as a consolation prize.

Oh don't you worry. I got it, but it was so so lame that I opted for not commenting.

But hey, as long as you laugh profusely at your own jokes, you should be okay.

Responses using parables was the job of Jesus, I know Jesus, and you are not Jesus...

Just give examples corroborating how realist poor Einstein was. The simpler the better.

Oh yeh! Bet you don't know Professors Eccles and Bluebottle who worked with Einstein on the reality of time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tjHlFPTwVk

Well you did say you wanted it simple !

Non-representation makes for good art:



It doesn't yield good philosophy though.

The cat is only dead when it is observed to be dead.

If the cat is never observed it can be both, dead and alive simultaneously.

This is the point to express the dual nature of electrons. Where they are in a wave particle state until they are observed.

There is the possibility all you mentioned here, Krumple, is correct. But you should really have phrased it:






We really do not know...which is actually the short answer to the question.

You are right, that is a better way to phrase it..

Thank you, Krumple.

Well...we could have some fun thinking about the cat observing itself which requires it to be alive...of course the cat may or may not be observing itself depending precisely on whether he is alive or dead, but that we never know unless we observe it...certainly it is the case the cat is both alive and dead in a space continuum, but granting Einstein some credit he is not both dead and alive in the same place at the same time just because no one has observed it yet. Observation requiring observers which probably can't observe in the exact same relativistic time frame even if the variation is minimal to a Graham's number scale...things like the heart beat of a person, the micro body motions caused by the nervous and limbic system would be enough to argue about no observer being mathematically in the same spacetime frame continuum then any other observer...if the cat being both dead and alive depends on lack of observation then the cat awareness is the solely judge of its existence while such existence is a fact. Our lack of knowledge on the cat status is meaningless to establish coinage as being "both", as the beingness of the cat doesn't depend on our lack of knowledge but rather on is own awareness of itself. In between living beings there is always at least one observer, the subject itself. Regarding inorganic things which "experience"/observe exchange of information among themselves like the Earth "feels" the gravity of the Moon and vice versa then relativistic motions certainly makes sure that "both" as coinage is itself time paradoxical...

...the source of information observed at relativistic time frames itself cannot be question within a spacetime continuum. Its experiencing/observation can happen both at different spacetime frames of reference. In my humble amateur perspective Schroedinger forgot to addresses that observation trade of information is what he should be referring to and not the source of such information time frame.

The ensemble idea doesn't counter the idea of an order of reference, just like an orchestra plays ensemble and yet each musician is placed in a different space of reference from where the sound originates to form an ensemble to a given perceiver placed in X.
Ensemble, "now", is just the "meeting place" of information from different frames with different points of origin that happen to coincide at X point in spacetime.

Quantum mechanics is all bollocks!

Of course none of this solves the double slit experiment problem which originated the mind experiment on Schroedinger cat...nonetheless it is an important detail to make the distinction referring to the observation or lack of it, referring to a potential information ensemble, from the source of information itself. What we observe is information travelling in spacetime and not the thing which is the source of that information. In that sense literally the cat information can coincide at X point of observation with minor time fluctuations in between the observers. So the coinage "both" which should refer to the observation or lack of it does not apply. As for the source well...again different motions within the structure "cat" itself, different spins in the atoms and so on, all of that, would make the structure be fractured in spacetime fluctuations. You never have a both as technically you don't even have a fully coalesced structure in the same frame of reference.

PS - Does this matter ? Well it might come to matter...also I find it hard to believe they haven't thought of this yet 99.99999% of chance they did, but the lingo they use to address the masses is totally wrong and extremely simplified...

Lets order some stuff up:

- The macro structure we call "cat" is fully functional in spite of minor relativistic spacetime fluctuations ? Yes.

- The observation of information and the source of information are two distinct things.

- The "picture", the frozen frame, at X point in spacetime presents a structure which has at its source relativistic spacetime fluctuations. It is a picture of something else that doesn't exist like in the "picture" we perceive which having information travelling through spacetime is yet another ensemble of time fluctuations per se. Finally the observers themselves suffer from the same problem and can perceive said information with spacetime fractured fluctuations in relation to each other.

In resume, both, the sources, the potentially to become observed picture, and the observers, suffer from fractured spacetime fluctuations. The medium, the background, the "geography", interferes with all of them. And they interfere among themselves as time unfolds and further exchange of information proceeds with errors.

Can you cite a source for this?

The source is myself applying my understanding of relativity which is amateurish..nonetheless you just need to know 2 or 3 things to apply the principle. It easy to grasp. You know as everybody knows that at speed of light time goes faster and you know the speed is relative among observers. You also know that at a tenth of speed of light time dilation is a tenth of what would be if you were going at the speed of light right ?
Now take that into smaller and smaller and smaller fractions of speed of light...say instead of a 10th a 100th, or a 1000th, or 1 million under...in all scenarios you have ever smaller time fluctuations up to the point they barely can be noticeable unless you use an atomic clock (which we do in GPS satellites so they are precise, its not just maths and sci-fi its a scientific proven and tested fact)...what this means in turn is that no matter how small the change in speed is, there will always be ad infinitum a very very very small time dilation and that no one no thing lives/exists exactly in the same spacetime frame in relation to anything else. This of course has also repercussions in Quantum mechanics...explaining them is often left behind and set apart mainly because Einstein well established model theory of relativity regarding gravity and macroscopic things doesn't cope well with quantum mechanics models which explain the microscopic particles, the math of both works, but doesn't get along with each other...this is why searching for a theory of everything that unifies the motions and processes of all 4 fundamental forces of nature, gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces has been a extremely hard task no one has accomplished in the past 100 years in physics...the closest we got was with Steven Hawking black hole radiation that established a connection between gravity in black holes and virtual pairs of particles governed by quantum mechanics proving even black holes can lose mass through energy when these pairs are freed from annihilating each other in the event horizon of a black hole, it got its creator name Hawking radiation... and it grant him Newtons chair in Cambridge and world wild prestige. More recently we have other candidates like super string theory with several variations on the matter.

For the sake of intellectual honesty it is also required to remember there is nothing worse then a little knowledge...it may well be the case all I am referring to is well studied documented and simply isn't talked about in pop science to avoid further confusing peoples already confused minds...nonetheless if a physicist stepped in and brought some light on lamer terms on how relativity can relate with the problem of the double slit experiment I would be much appreciated...

Great point, Fil.

Which is why I like to like to remind people..."a little knowledge" is all that any human on planet Earth will ever have.

We really have to get over ourselves.

We may be nothing more than a relatively insignificant life form on a relatively insignificant planet circling a relatively insignificant star in a relatively insignificant galaxy in a relatively insignificant part of the megaverse.