Tuesday 5 February 2008

Wendy Alexander is Schrödinger's cat

First of all, let's give a big welcome to any physicists who have dropped by with quizzical looks on their faces.

For those who don't know why you shouldn't ask Schrödinger to look after Tiddles when you're off sunning yourself in Thurso, he was trying to illuminate a paradox implicit in the measurement problem (I blame Bohr, it's easier if you ignore most of it and just go with measuring a thing is what makes it real, don't look at the bit about how it means that our existence now affects history before we existed, that's a bad thing to get inside your head. Physicists - you wait ages for one and then none come along at the same time).

Here it goes - take a cat, put it in a box (wear stout gloves) with a radioactive source which will decay within an hour and a Geiger counter connected to a device which will kill the cat if the source decays. Leave it an hour...
Of course, the radioactive source, being unobserved, is in a superposition and so neither decays nor doesn't decay and the cat is therefore neither alive nor dead but is itself in a superposition in which it will stay until you open the box and look at it whereupon it will become one or the other. Oh, look it up yourself - categorical.

Anyway, Wendy Alexander is Schrödinger's cat.

You see, she's neither innocent nor guilty and neither honest nor dishonest (or perhaps she's both innocent and guilty as well as honest and dishonest) because we don't know what's going on inside that box. She emits little particles of carefully selected information - some of which have proven to be lies - but never reveals the whole truth, ask about all the emails I say.

She hangs on tenterhooks for the Electoral Commission but doesn't know whether she'll live or die by their report. She and her colleagues cast doubt upon the probity of others - other MSPs to begin with and now public servants. Her own wee brother joined in on Sunday before her henchmen were released for today's papers.
Let us be done with it and open the box, release all the information and let Ms Alexander dance or go in the radioactive luminescence of Schrödinger's box. Have pity on kitty!

I do hope that there's a random physicist has floated in here on the back of a google for Schrödinger's cat - they'll be more confused by Wendy Alexander than anyone else will be by Quantum Theory.

5 comments:

Anseo said...

And the award for the most tortured metaphor goes too...

But hang on a minute. Since we're talking quantum theory and scottish politics why don`t we bring in decoherence here? Or perhaps not.

Anonymous said...

"Physicists - you wait ages for one and then none come along at the same time"

Groan! That sir, is the worst joke I have ever heard :ok:

Calum Cashley said...

Oh come on, there was the epigenetics post, and I've got far worse jokes than that...

Anonymous said...

I may be getting my quantum physics confused but I thought Schrodinger's cat was itself an illustration of Heisinger's principle that the act of watching and measuring an experiment or phenomenon influences the outcome (see Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks, christopher brookmyre).

Ipso facto therefore, the scrutiny Ms Alexander is currently under is itself influencing her behaviour, which given the nature of politics may well be the case.

To put it another way, if the leader of the Labour party was in a forest clearing unobserved being lifted by the polis and nobody was around to see it, would she make a sound?

Calum Cashley said...

I think you may have boiled that frog.

I'm not sure about Heisinger's Principle ...

Boom boom Mr Roy!