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Vicente
2012 Jan 5, 6:45am
The cat was just a thought experiment to illustrate quantum entanglement.
Too many people try to apply this to our real world and make sense of it when they should not.
That damn cat is dead, I opened the box and force-fed it the cyanide.
marcus
2012 Jan 5, 6:55am
IT's useful in this case for spelling out a simple logical fact to some who otherwise for whatever reason might not be able grasp it.
You're thinking of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and specifically the concept that the observer affects the observed. While it's true in some ways maybe, that is what people are talking about when they say QM inferences about particle physics don't apply at our gross level.
MY example here is just a very simple easy to understand point about logic, and the aliveness of the cat, and was meant to be 100% independent of any connection to particle physics.
Vicente
2012 Jan 5, 7:01am
Haha, good luck with that. 99% of humanity is perfectly comfortable with a head full of paradoxes. They don't care to reconcile anything as long as most of it gets them through the day alive.
marcus
2012 Jan 5, 7:08am
MAybe I should have stuck to the thread. In another thread Dan said.
First, one does not need to prove something that cannot be disproven by definition. Anything that cannot be disproven by definition is false.
Worded awkwardly, but I'm pretty sure he is using some fallacious reasoning that I attempt to dispel above in as simple and clear a way as possible.
Meanwhile, you're right.
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In this famous thought experiment, which could actually be done, someone might say, "well, since by definition, we don't know whether the cat is alive or dead, the statement that the cat is alive is by definition false."
True, it is false in the sense that we can not know that it's alive. Therefore the statement that it's alive is false.
What might be easy to miss though, by someone who is only parroting this argument and using it in a fallacious way, is that the exact same reasoning can be made regarding someone who says the cat is dead.
That statement is also false.
We just don't know.