Frank Mundo the book columnist for the LA Books Examiner asks some pretty tough questions. Frank just reviewed my book (and a rather nice commentary too—I’ll post it soon. In the meantime, you can read it here).
He then followed up his review with some intriguing interview questions.
There was one question, though, about art versus commercial success, that really hit home.
That question, in fact, got me to thinking about this…
Have you heard of Schrödinger’s cat?
Erwin Schrödinger was a physicist who, pondering the matter of quantum mechanics, contemplated the possibility of a cat being both alive and dead. At the same time.
You see, one of the tenets of quantum science is that it might just be possible for an element (a particle, an atom, a molecule) to exist in all possible states, all at the same time.
Which, I suppose, led Schrödinger to wonder if that might, perhaps, apply to a cat—could it be both alive and dead?
Which, I suppose, makes most of us cringe (or scoff) at the absurdity of it all.
Which, however, led me to wonder—if quantum science is correct—if there can be more than one outcome, is anything, in fact, mutually exclusive?
Which, of course, remained somewhat rhetorical as a question, because to my knowledge, there hadn’t been any real evidence that quantum science was correct.
Until I saw a New Scientist piece, retweeted by Mike Cane, that speaks of a laboratory experiment in which a strip of metal was made to both oscillate and not oscillate at the same time.
Eureka!
Can it be true?
If a strip of metal can be made to simultaneously move and not move, is it true that the concept of mutual exclusivity exists more in our minds than in fact?
Further, if that’s true, is it also true that, in our everyday lives, we often arrive at decisions based on a concept—that of mutual-exclusivity—that is outdated and erroneous?
I mean how often do we believe that it has to be A or B, This or That?
Even worse, think of how often we frame those mutually exclusive choices in one of two ways: i) desirable but risky, ii) undesirable but safe.
And, think of how often we put ourselves in a position of choosing between; Something we want to do versus something we have to do. Or Something that’s meaningful but unprofitable versus something that pays well but sucks the creativity right out of us.
Or…..as Frank put it in his interview question, How do you reconcile art with commercial success?
All to say that maybe, just maybe, the question shouldn’t be, Should I choose this or that?
Maybe the question should actually be, How can I get both?
And, maybe, that’s exactly what Schrödinger meant.
Questions? Ideas? Suggestions? Please leave a comment.
Re: Schrödinger’s Cat, here’s to burst that bubble, from Decoding the Universe:
>>>Likewise, even if we chill the cat to near absolute zero, it will still emit quite a bit of radiation, at least compared to a microscopic object like a fullerene. Any given atom has a chance of radiating a photon at a low temperature. The lower the temperature, the lower the probability of emitting that photon. Since a fullerene has only 60 or 70 atoms, if the temperature is relatively low you can prevent all of those atoms from radiating. Just make the probability of emission one in a thousand or so for the time period you want to store your qubit and you’ve got better than a 90 percent chance that none of the atoms will radiate. A cat, on the other hand, has roughly a billion billion billion atoms. With a one-in-a-thousand chance or a one-in-a-million chance or a one-in-a-billion chance or even a one-in-a-billion-billion chance of an atomic emission, you would be guaranteed to have atoms on the cat emitting photons. There is essentially a 0 percent chance that none of the cat’s atoms will radiate. The bigger the object is, the harder it is to keep from spilling its information through radiation.
And:
>>>This is the essential difference between the microscopic, quantum world and the macroscopic, classical one. Nature has a harder time gathering information about cold, small objects, so they can preserve their quantum information for a relatively long time. But it’s easy for Nature to gather information about big, warm objects, which pretty much describes everything that we encounter in day-to-day life. Even when quantum information does get inscribed upon a large object like a baseball or a cat, that information quickly disseminates into its environment, destroying whatever superposition it had. Large objects quickly become entangled with the environment as the information about the objects flows into the objects’ surroundings.
>>>Information—and decoherence—holds the answer to the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat. When Schrödinger proposed his thought experiment, he got most of the details correct, but he was unaware of the effects of decoherence. Yes, a particle can be in a superposition. Yes, you can transfer that superposition, that qubit, from the particle to the cat. Yes, the cat can be put in a superposition of some sort, at least in theory. But because the cat is big and warm, the information about the cat’s state leaks into the environment even before someone opens the box. The cat’s state decoheres in a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of a second. The cat’s superposition disappears in such a small time that it is not noticeable at all; effectively, it instantly “chooses” to live or die. Even though the cat is following the laws of quantum mechanics, it behaves like a classical object; you’re never going to be able to catch the cat in a state of superposition or make a cat-interference pattern. The flow of information into the environment is too fast. Nature measures the cat long before anyone can open the box. Even in a completely isolated environment, Nature has the power to make measurements, and large, warm objects are more easily measurable than small, cold ones.
>>>Decoherence is what kills the cat. And decoherence is what makes a macroscopic object behave classically while a microscopic one shows quantum behavior. Including our brains.
So, um, so to speak, scratch the cat analogy.
Thanks for posting this, Mike.
While I suggested, vaguely I’ll admit, the allegorical nature of Schrödinger’s Cat, I’ll continue to maintain that many of us create mutually-exclusive options where none exist.
I am intrigued, by the way, by the second-last in your comment; “Including our brains.”