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Enough cat in a box! – an isolation setup

John Healy

I’ve cited Nick Lucid’s Science Asylum YouTube channel over the years. His latest video is a wonderful take on all the quantum cat clickbait which I’ve noticed lately – another nostalgic set of pieces on Schrödinger’s legendary thought experiment.

Much misunderstood [1]. A favorite of fabulists (and mystics).

Well, Nick nails the reality. Yet, I imagine that the trope (and memes) will live on (in a superposition, eh).

Since I’ve written a lot about the so-called “wave-particle duality” trope, I like Nick’s point that quanta are not magical morphing entities:

There’s this misconception that quantum entities are particles when they’re being watched and waves when they’re not. The so-called “wave-particle duality.”

While human intuition cannot explain it, understanding quantum physics – in the sense of its usefulness – is achievable. And that’s where I think we can do a better job of visualization – without all the Weirdness 1.0 baggage.

• YouTube > The Science Asylum > “No, Schrodinger’s Cat is NOT in a Superposition!” (May 11, 2025) – The Schrodinger’s cat experiment is the source of many arguments in quantum mechanics, mostly because that was the whole point of it.

TIME CODES

00:00 Intro
00:47 Schrodinger’s Cat History
01:49 Scale vs Isolation
03:15 What is a Quantum Observation?
05:00 Human Intuitions Don’t Work
05:32 Why is Quantum Mechanics hard?
06:04 Closing Thoughts
06:21 Featured Comments

Notes

[1] Misunderstood, even as to Schrödinger’s intent. And Nick refutes each aspect of the hypothetical setup. Even the radioactive atom is not a quantum object.

Schrödinger's cat
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

• Wiki > Schrödinger’s cat

… Schrödinger described how one could, in principle, create a superposition in a large-scale system [a cat] by making it dependent on a quantum particle [radioactive atom] that was in a superposition. … Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-live cats as a serious possibility; on the contrary, he intended the example to illustrate the absurdity of the existing view of quantum mechanics, thus employing reductio ad absurdum.