Schrodingers cat question

[vitttorrio]

My question: in the schrodinger cat experiment it only reveals us if the cat is dead or alive if we open the box and it interacts with our eyes. But the cat in the box has eyes too. Does that not matter if there is no light which can interact with the quantum object (the atom) and the eyes anyway? If i understood something wrong, could somebody please explain what interaction in that experiment matters.

[joigus]

It's a question having to do with quantum mechanics of open systems interacting dissipatively with billions of atomic degrees of freedom. The environment "learns" pretty fast whether the cat is dead or alive, because the environment makes the alternatives (corresponding to quantum numbers that gave rise to the fateful event) decohere with each other --in modern parlance. So it's nothing to do with conscience. It's about the system interacting in a complex way with its environment. Conscious beings are but a particular example of this occurrence. The cat is no exception, I'm sure, as it's also made up of billions of subatomic degrees of freedom, so the cat learns pretty fast too about his own health state just before he dies.

There's a question pending about the so-called pointer states that's still not solved. But it has no consequences from the practical point of view. Different people embrace different interpretations of quantum mechanics in order to make a mental picture of what happens to the previous quantum states.

[Lorentz Jr]

Schrödinger himself presented the scenario as a criticism of non-realist interpretations. His whole point was that it doesn't make sense.

[exchemist]

2 hours ago, vitttorrio said:

My question: in the schrodinger cat experiment it only reveals us if the cat is dead or alive if we open the box and it interacts with our eyes. But the cat in the box has eyes too. Does that not matter if there is no light which can interact with the quantum object (the atom) and the eyes anyway? If i understood something wrong, could somebody please explain what interaction in that experiment matters.

According to my (limited) understanding of Rovelli's relational interpretation, the wave function applicable from the cat's perspective is different from the wave function applicable from our perspective, so long as the box remains closed. There is not necessarily a single, absolute, wave function describing a quantum system: it depends on the informational state to which it relates. The cat, being inside the box , is in a different informational state from those outside and so a different wave function applies, from its perspective. 

[Genady]

The "state of cat" is entangled with the "state of bomb" as well as with states of everything else the cat interacts with. To separate the "state of cat" from all this mess, one needs to sum up (integrate) this entangled state over all variables describing all other parts of the entangled system. The resulting "state of cat" is not a pure quantum state, but rather a mixed state with classical probabilities, something like "50% chance it is dead and 50% that it is alive." This is not unlike "50% heads and 50% tails" of a coin before we check it. Nothing paradoxical here.

Edited January 2, 2023 by Genady

[joigus]

6 hours ago, joigus said:

So it's nothing to do with conscience.

Obviously, I meant consciousness. I'm not implying anything about the cat's morality.