Cassandra is only carbon nowFeb 18

I'm gonna be a bit obnoxious here and ask people to please consider before sharing Schrödinger memes, and for two reasons:

• Schrödinger was a serial pedophile, and should not be glorified.
• Schrödinger's Cat was originally posed as a thought experiment to try and make quantum mechanics more confusing, as a form of ridicule. Its use in the field today is a kind of institutionalized gatekeeping.

Show threadd3reoFeb 19
@xgranade I only recently learned what a truly disturbing and despicable man Schrödinger was. It shows a highly frustrating lack of consideration that university physics curricula entirely ignore his shameful history. Not even G. Segrè’s otherwise enjoyable book Faust in Copenhagen mentions it, despite all of its biographical digressions. Neither my studies nor this book gave me a single clue; I had to find out from a friend, which left me feeling profoundly ashamed of my own ignorance.
Show threadd3reo
@xgranade I’d also like to better understand your point on Schrödinger’s cat. I know it was created back when he and Einstein were pouring effort into challenging QM, and that it was meant as a mockery. But I always thought it survived their failed attempts because of this: accepting superposition of states for a remote subatomic particle is easy; however, linking it causally to macroscopic effects (like a cat being alive/dead, or a drawer being open/closed) challenges this ease.
Feb 19 at 2:30pmWeb
Show threadd3reoFeb 19
@xgranade of course having a superposition of positions or momenta should be just as disconcerting as of any antithetical macroscopic observables. Indeed the experiment has fallacies: micro and macro phenomena don’t interact as pictured in it. However, since modern QM is heavily taught via linear algebra, I figured the thought experiment found its use in that it forces students to remember we aren’t just manipulating basis vectors or directions on projective spaces, but describing real physics
Show threadCassandra is only carbon nowFeb 19

@D3Reo As noted in other replies that it's a bad analogy by someone who intended it to mock rather than elucidate doesn't prevent one from drawing useful lessons out of Schrödinger's cat *in spite of* how bad of a thought experiment it is.

Definitely, I've seen people use it to remind folks that electrons are real physical objects, as you say, but there's ways of doing so that don't celebrate historical child rapists and modern gatekeepers.

Show threadCassandra is only carbon nowFeb 19
@D3Reo It's also why the top of my thread starts with "consider" rather than "don't."
Show threadd3reoFeb 19
@xgranade sorry, i hadn't read those replies, and thanks a lot for your answer!
Show threadCassandra is only carbon nowFeb 19
@D3Reo No worries!