The question of the cat problem is more than dead or alive. Will I be the one to kill it when I open the box? Is the poison administered all at once or slowly over time (like when some women slowly murder their old geezer husbands with small amounts of arsenic over time)? Will simply moving the lid be enough to trigger the release of the poison? In some ways it is like a “no win scenario” test given to military commanders to judge their reactions. And in the biggest ironic point to consider in this mind fuck is what kind of detector is used to trigger the release of the poison? If the wrong type of detector is used, then what? And in some science videos, they had to dumb it down further than necessary because at one time they were used to solicit donations to keep on doing research from politicians or some board of a research foundation that may not have had anyone very familiar with the detailed research going on. And lastly, the one thing that sometimes gets lost in arguments over science and especially philosophy is the perception of the person making a point and that depends on how they were raised, educated, and their personal experiences at that point in time and how they perceive or interpret the problem being discussed.

I thought that electrons did orbit around atoms.(?) And it’s not so much that we know where they are, it’s just how many are there, and an interesting thing about atoms. As you probably know (gosh this would be easier to explain with my hands), there are different distances that electrons orbit around the nucleus, say, distances 1-7. When an electron shifts it’s position from, say, 7, down to 4, that leftover 3 is emitted as light (and, of course, some heat) and that’s where light comes from. And, things are transparent because when the frequency of say, visible light, the wavelength of light is in harmony with the period of the electrons orbiting around the atom! So the light passes through effortlessly and we can see through stuff.

Woo!

Hello,

I’ve been listening for a while, and I finally felt the need to comment upon this podcast.

Despite the fact that Marina’s tirade against philosophy made me feel physically ill (as I’m basically in love with Plato), I did find a deeply amusing piece of irony therein:

You see Erwin Schrödinger’s original intention with his cat-in-the-box scenario was to prove that the cat must be either alive or dead- and the quantum state of being both alive and dead is ludicrous. Which is exactly what Marina was arguing. So, if that makes, you feel better- your response was exactly what the guy who came up with the whole concept was trying to elicit.

But anyway, I just thought I’d share that.