Before you decide on what to order at the restaurant, I’d like to ask, how did you come to that conclusion? From the seemingly endless choices of specialised dishes that you could have, how did you end up on choosing only one of them? Did you flip a coin? If not, why not?
When 20th century Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger put his beloved cat into a toxic box for an hour, did he think I’d be misinterpreting his theory in the most bizarre way to make the simplest of decisions? Here’s how I use the basic understanding of quantum mechanics to decide on what pizza I’ll get.
Schrodinger’s cat, the theory, not the cute animal, states that you can’t ascertain the quantum state of a particle without observation. That is, you need to break the superposition of waves to know where the particle is going to be. But what does that have to do with what toppings I’ll put on my pizza?
You see, according to Schrodinger, putting a cat in a box along with a toxin that can kill it in an hour, for about half an hour is not inhumane, rather it’s a thought experiment. In 30 minutes, is the cat dead or alive? No way to know until you see inside.
But why was Schrodinger putting his cat, named Milton, in a venomous chamber? You see, the thought experiment was devised to explain what he thought about the Copenhagen interpretation and how nothing in the quantum world is certain. Everything depends on observation, including the position and state of a particle.
In a similar way, when I flip a coin in the air, heads for pepperoni, tails for barbecued chicken, how do I know what I’m going to eat until the coin lands on the floor? I’ll have to observe to know if it’s pepperoni or barbecued chicken, that is, if the cat is alive or dead. This saves me from the dilemma of choosing one over the other. And if the pizza turns out to be bad, I can blame Schrodinger instead of my own bad choices. A win-win.
Why don’t I just get both? Have you seen the economy? You haven’t? Well, it’s time for another misinterpretation that you can use to make your life a little bit easier.