AI and cognitive psychology rant (getting more and more OT - tell me if I should shut up)

[Stephen Horne]

On 28 Oct 2003 08:32:16 -0800, mis6 at pitt.edu (Michele Simionato)
wrote:

>The point and the crux of the discussion is: "what happens to
>the cat *before* opening the box?" This is a matter of principle,
>so the experiment is a thought experiment; thought experiment
>does not mean it cannot be realized (it's the same for Einstein's
>elevator experiment, the basis for the equivalence principle). 

Not exactly. When we look at superpositions of subatomic particles,
there are observable artifacts of the interactions between
superpositions - the interference patterns. Without those
interactions, the theory of superpositions would be pointless as there
would be no effects of superposition to observe - the theory would
have no predictive or explanatory power.

My point is that the cat is superposed in the same way as the
subatomic particle, and yet we are unable to observe any artifact of
that superposition. *All* we can see is a single state resulting from
the waveform collapse when we observe the cat, but this is
emphatically not the case with subatomic particles where we can
observe artifacts of the superposition itself.

This has been answered, however, by the simple fact that interference
patterns are the only observable artifact of superpositions - it would
be rather hard to fire a cat through two narrow slits simultaneously,
it would also be rather hard to observe the resulting interference
pattern, and certainly the animal protection charities would be pretty
upset with you if you tried it ;-)


-- 
Steve Horne

steve at ninereeds dot fsnet dot co dot uk