There are two schools how the quantum problem with Schrödinger's Cat can be solved: One is the Copenhagen Solution. It says that the cat sends out an 'offer' wave thru time and space, to the past and to the future. Once you open the box, that wave is canceled by a 'demand' wave. Those waves cancel each other out everywhere but in the direct line of sight. This gives you the solution - the cat is either alive or dead. The other is called the Many Worlds Interpretation, which means once the box is closed, 'reality' splits into two universes: in one, the cat lives. In the other, the car is dead. Personally, I'd use rats Point is, both solutions kill any notion of free will. In the MWI, the whole thing is - whatever your 'alternate' self sees, you are forced to see the other side. Nothing says the 'you'-you is in command. In the CS, you influence the solution by observing and you change the past and the future. You are not in control of how this happens. This is a philosophical discussion, not one about physics. Have fun
OKay..I Googled, then read about the Schrodinger's cat scenario. Then I read it again. I still can't wrap my mind around something this abstract, let alone form an opinion.
Lock a cat in a box and abandon it, and this is what'll happen: At first, it'll meow. Then it will meow and scratch at the box. Then it will get quiet as it fades from hunger and thirst. Then it will die. When I approach that unopened box two weeks later, quantum physics doesn't trump (in my mind) the certainty that the cat is 100% dead. It's not a cloud of probability at that point. This is where, to a certain extent, the MWI deal breaks down a bit. There may be infinite other 'solutions' where other people, nature, or what not interceded and the cat was let out of the box alive before it starved to death. Even more infinite 'solutions' where the cat was never put in the box in the first place. But there is NO solution where the cat was trapped for two weeks with no food or water and didn't die. Oh, and there is also a 100% certainty that if I find whoever did that to the cat, I will seriously fuck them up.
I don't entirely accept that cats have what could be considered free will . . . I do think that an "offer" wave implies someone's "offering" something, which last I checked tended to be a voluntary sort of action.
Of course the cat has NO free will. It's trapped in there. It's about its quantum state and how WE perceive it.
Sorry, I've heard the term but I'm not really familiar with what its all about. What's the idea behind Schrodinger's Cat? Is it related to a book series by the same name?
The "point" of the Schrödinger's Cat gedankenexperiment was to point out the absurdity of the Copenhagen Interpretation. Many physicists accepted it because they could understand it (kind of) and it fitted the mathematics well. What they were doing, though, was disregarding the weirdness because it was only happening on a quantum level. What this does is force that quantum effect to happen at a macroscopic level (it ain't just electrons with an uncollapsed wavefunction--it's a whole damn cat). Suddenly the Copenhagen Interpretation seems a damn sight more weird and unpalatable than it did before.
iirc, in the Many Worlds the universe doesn't split when you close the box, there are two (or more, in more complex scenarios) coexisting until an observation is made and one collapses, leaving the other. Once the observation is made, then the universe splits, one where probability A survives, another where probability B survives. As a note, it was the father of E from the Eels who came up with that. With free will, quantum reality far more pro-free will than a relativistic one, as in a truly relativistic universe anything that will happen, has happened, just further along the timeline.
No definition of free will I've ever seen demands that in order to have free will, I must be able to kill or save cats by my will alone. But perhaps I misunderstand your argument.
Dawwww!!! Wook at the Wittle kitty!!!: Seriously, this is an intresting take on the dilema... one that I've never been exposed to before. So your looking for a manifestation of free will in this? I don't think either solution implies any.
The cat is only a thought experiment, and a famous one at that. It makes the wild world of quantum physics somewhat accessible to the masses. You can easily translate it into the real world, tho. Fork in the road, two ways. You think you choose one freely. But when we assume the MWI is right, you are not - either you or your alternative self (who's 'you' too!) are forced to take the other way. In the Copenhagen Solution, the quantum wave travels thru time and space and forces a series of events that leads up to exactly that decision, canceling free will in the past and future. Stuff tickles my brain even thinking about it casually
My problem with the whole thought experiment is that the cat is definitely an observer, and it is inside the box. In fact, I don't see where any sort of remotely conscious observer is even required - any other particle is in some way "observing" the particles that it can interact with. Which to me means that you cannot actually have either proposed scenario. Any act of "measuring" a quantum state is actually an act of influencing that state, we all agree on that; so are we saying that our measuring (ie, interfering) with a state in some way changes the past (I will accept that it changes the present, and those changes are reflected in the system from that point on) or causes multiple universes to appear? Preposterous unless you assume that all possibilities already exist, that is every possible state of every quanta already exists and will continue to exist from the inception of the universe until it ceases to be. In other words, we're just one slice (or phase if you will) of the seemingly infinite possible configurations for all of the stuff that makes up "the universe". Certainly possible, but from our internal point of observation pretty much unprovable. In a nutshell, the idea that "stuff" requires an observer to be "stuff" seems to me to be ludicrous. Falling trees make sounds regardless if anyone is around to hear them; distant galaxies didn't spring into existence just because we developed the technology to observe them.
There's quite a few other areas in science where "free will" can be called into question. Here's a simple example: What day where you born? I know before you read that, you certainly had no conscious thought about your birthday - so where did that information come from? What processes lurk within our minds that carry all the information, influence all of our decisions, and drives all of our actions that we simply don't interact with on a conscious level? In other words, what makes "you" you? Hard to define "free will" when we can't even define ourselves.
Debating the existence of free will is much like debating the existence of altruism, science cannot provide the answer for either topic. So at the end of the day all we're left with is opinion, belief. Of course not having free will does have its appeal. Nobody is responsible for anything!* *Disclaimer: Probably not be the best defense in a court of law. And talking about a dead cat in a box isn't going to help much either.
In translating into the "real world" with the "fork in the road", you've simply replicated the very narrow conditions of the "cat in the box" experiment. In the box, there are only two possible outcomes because the cat is a stupid animal with no notion of the imminent peril. Were it a midget in the box, and you explained the mechanism that could kill it, you've instantly introduced a new set of outcomes: Dead midget, living midget, and no midget at all because he's figured out how to get out of the box. If the experiment is translated to the "real world" the number of variables increases exponentially. First and foremost, the choices aren't the result necessarily unless death awaits the subject down one of the two paths. In addition, there is the option to take neither of the two paths and turn back, or never to make the trip to begin with. There are other variables that determine what happens along the timeline for the subject. There's a crack in the road which may cause nothing, which may cause the subject to take a larger step, or may cause the subject to trip and fall. There may be finite variables at any one moment, but the moment is not static, so each variable multiplies the number of variables in the next moment, and so on. To a finite observer, any one of the choices made may seem inconsequential at the time, may even turn out to be inconsequential, but then again it's entirely possible that the significant consequence occurs out of the observers perception due to time or location. The experiment may cast aspersions on the notion of infinite free will, but it's not necessarily a referendum on determinism.
The idea is that the chemical interactions in your brain determine brain activity and therefore determine your thoughts, actions, etc. Since things (from our point of view), happen in only one way, there's really no way that we can tell whether or not we have free will. After all, for any instance, we only got to "do" one thing, and we can never go back and do something else. It is an affront to our values to suggest that we aren't really in control of anything that we do, although it does seem that our learning in physics and science suggests that we are in fact very mechanical and predictable when given enough information. Of course, even if we are not in control of what we do, does it change anything about our society and how we should value ourselves and each other? Should we treat people differently who do things wrong? In fact, these last two questions are irrelevant, as we are bound to ask, answer, and respond to them based on tiny interactions that are beyond our control.
Journalist, mostly I am quite interested in this kind of extreme physics, tho. I approach it from a philosophical angle because I'm very, very bad at maths. Meaning, I understand what all those theories like Relativity and so on say but I totally can't prove them mathematically or something.
Well, it depends on how you view the relationship between the physical "you" and your spiritual self. Now, if you don't believe in your soul/spiritual self, then yes, free will is gone. But if you view yourself as having a soul, then the multiverse can be viewed as a "Choose your own story" kind of book, in which all the paths are already laid out, but on that higher plane you're working your way through the paths.
