Gulo Blue
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- Oct 4, 2013
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I'm not familiar with Schrodinger so I'm probably missing something here (and I'm too hungover to read his wikipedia page especially considering the possibility that there may be more than one Shrodinger and I may read the wrong one) but why is the average of the unknown equal to the average of the known - is there a known limit of outcomes for Schrodinger packages?
It's supposed to be a thought experiment about the absurdity of quantum states. You don't know what state a particle is in until you look at it, and there's evidence the particle is in both states until the measurement is made. The absurd thought experiment was to have a cat in a box with some poison that would be release if the particle was in one state and not the other. Since it's valid to treat the particle as being in both states, then it's valid to think of the cat as both dead and alive...or the brown paper packages simultaneously containing a case of Old Rasputin Imperial Stout and tube socks.
It's technically not valid to apply it to situation that just involves probability and not quantum superposition, but a show like the Big Bang Theory will look the other way and make jokes based on that stretching of the thought experiment.