Warp wrote:
>   Schrodinger's cat is a thought experiment, not an analogy.

It's not even that hard to set up. :-)

I think the point is that you have to question what an "observation" is. If 
the particle gets emitted and runs into the detector when the power is 
turned off, is it "observed"?  If the power is on but the detector isn't 
connected to anything?  If it's connected to a speaker you can't hear? If 
it's connected to poison but there's no cat in the box?  Etc?

In other words, if it takes an "observer" to collapse the wave function, is 
the cat enough of an "observer" to count? If so, how does the human get 
involved? According to the math, the cat is still superimposed. But that 
would imply the cat isn't sufficiently an observer to cause the collapse. 
*Or* that the math doesn't match reality. And multi-worlds is an attempt to 
say "no, the math really matches reality."

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

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