The Campaign Builder's Guild

So in the Chat Box I posed a question. "Am I dumb for thinking you can solve the Schrodingers Cat problem by flipping a coin?" Well, okay. I worded it more poorly in the chat box, but that was the point.

Before I repost the great comments by Steerpike and Humabout, I want to moan just one more time about a particular topic....

Bioshock Infinite Spoilers
[spoiler]
So anyone who's read my Bioshock series thread knows that quantum physics is not a subject that I digest easily. I spent entire lengths of time and energy trying to figure out what it was about Bioshock Infinite that was driving me crazy. I latched onto the scene where Columbia is somehow bombing New York circa 1984 (Also I made an error when I was ranting I screwed up the Libya bombings with the Iranian hostage situation and I got them mixed up. Sorry for sounding like an uneducated dult). But now I see that was just a symptom of a much larger problem.

I simply do not like ambiguous endings. The ending I'm referring to is the after credits scene where Booker wakes up and the baby music is playing and he opens the door looking for Anna, but the screen turns black before we see the crib. So for a while now I've been reading up on theories about this ending, and I finally decided to read the details of what Schrodingers Cat actually means. It dawned on me that I have been looking at that final scene the wrong way.

Booker opens the door and now there are two endings. It's not a matter of "if the baby is in the crib" It's a matter of "there are two cribs. One is empty, one has Anna. What do they both mean?" This has given me a weird closure where now when I play Bioshock Infinite, I flip a coin. Heads, Anna is in the crib. Tails the crib is empty. This time around I got tails which means that this Booker that I'm playing is going to be all alone at the end of all of this. What does that mean for the character?
[/spoiler]

So that's why I posed the question.

Here are Steerpikes and Humabouts comments

Steerpike
[ic]How so? Isn't a coin-flip kind of like another version of Shrodinger's Cat anyway? A macrocosmic metaphor for quantum indeterminacy? In a sense it's actually a *better* metaphor, because while it's in the air the coin isn't really heads or tails yet, but a superposition in which it's both simultaneously. More intuitive than a cat - it's always bugged me that the cat doesn't seem to qualify as an observer... [/ic]

Humabout
[ic]The cat metaphor really sucks. I prefer thinking of superposition as a pixel that can be red, green, or blue, or any combination thereof. It may be any or all or none of them at any given time. As far as the interdependency goes, while schroedenger was technically wrong, he was wrong only in that he failed to include one component when calculating the threshold of possible certainty. Uncertainty itself still exists and stems from the necessity to measure thjngs by bouncing energy off of them. Whether particles have a discreet velocity and position abcent of measurement is still up for debate and falls largely in the realm of philosophy. [/ic]

I like Humabouts response, because it coincides with a weird thought I had.
BI Spoilers
[spoiler]What if there's one universe where Booker opens the door and doesn't find Anna, but Andrew.....[/spoiler]

My understanding is that the cat literally does not exist in a live or dead state, but indeterminate. As far as it being an observer, I think the cat has similar problems with us: We are Schrodingers' people-outside-the-box. It can't observe us so can't know our state to the point where we literally have no state to it. Once the box is opened, both are allowed to observe each other and the states collapse?

QuoteWhether particles have a discreet velocity and position abcent of measurement is still up for debate and falls largely in the realm of philosophy.

I thought things like diffraction of single photons through a slit indicate otherwise? (Though my knowledge is little more than like... reading a Brief History of Time years ago. >_>)

(Also hai guys I have no idea what my old password is.)

Quote from: brain
(Also hai guys I have no idea what my old password is.)

What's your old account? (brainface, I'm assuming)
If you still have access to the email address listed there, I can reset your password and email the new one to you.

Quote from: brainI thought things like diffraction of single photons through a slit indicate otherwise? (Though my knowledge is little more than like... reading a Brief History of Time years ago. >_>)

Negative. That experiment a classic example of quantum superposition, but it doesn't have to do with the Uncertainty Principle, though.

If you look at Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle and Schrodinger's correction thereof, there is no actual mention of whether an exact quantity exists for position and momentum. Instead, it says that the product of the standard deviations of your measurements of each must be greater than half the Plank constant: s1s2 >= h/2. Thus, neither measurement have have zero standard deviation (be perfectly precise) and as one gets more accurate, the other must get less accurate. Nothing about it or its derivation ever describes what the particles are actually doing. As a matter of fact, QM doesn't use exact anything for particles; it uses probability amplitudes that represent the likeliness of any particular outcome occurring. Now that is a result of the double-slit experiment, but it has nothing to do with just what is happening. If anything, it lowers an impenetrable veil over everything.