Shrödinger's Rat
That cat in a box with a twist. There's a rat in there too, and that rat is either free, or not free... depending on whether you're looking or not.
It's a pretty deranged thing to come up with... that original idea isn't it?
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How does this idea get born?
Some guy is sitting around on a Sunday morning, with his coffee... thinking about ways to torture and kill cats and... or what?
Because really, it's just a extremely discombobulated and overcomplicated way to say "If I don't know what's in the box, I'll know what's in the box when I look in the box. As long as I don't look in the box, the box is fine and I won't have to do anything". But then with cats suffering... with slow torturing poisons and radiation and such... and no hope at all since obviously, just give it time and the cat dies from dehydration and starvation soon anyways.
You know... all that just for fun or something... because there are no other reasons to add all that other stuff beyond... "I won't look and then I won't have to care".
And it works the same with freedom, which is where the rat comes in. If the cat keeps the rat alive it can escape because the rat can gnaw its way out of the box.
In Erwin's "thoughts", the cat would be either dead or alive... which is already a flaw and an over-reduction since the cat could be perfectly healthy alive, alive but dying or dead but not getting alive. That's 3 states.. not 2. But since being alive means you're dying it also means it's just one state.
Dying. Since it could have been alive at some point. which makes it 2 again.
Simple.
And put the rat in there, then there are 9 since it applies to both. And then there are more since the choices and decisions of both the rat and cat can decide whether or not a potential state of freedom could be achieved. For which to make possible, the cat has to decide not to bother the rat, and the rat has to actually gnaw its way out of there, after which the cat can enlarge the whole with it's paws, but it would still have a lot of work to do, and it might decide not to do that or succumb to the poisons by that time.
So hang on... how many possible states is that now?
Doesn't even matter really. It's about getting out of the box.
I was reminded about Shrödingers Rat when I heard the important musing "Either we're all free, or no one's free" again.
And then I always remember that the outcome will depend on how far people are willing to look.
There are countless boxes out there... And countless boxes in each of those...
But get this.
Did you know it's also possible to have a box without poisons in it that slowly and agonizingly kill you?
Or did you completely forget about that one?
