But when Erwin Schrodinger came up with the idea, he wasn’t trying to explain something to some stupid undergrad — he was trying to mock the idea. It’s pretty obvious once you realize that the original writing of the example started with, “One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber …” Also because it’s not even true: The situation Schrodinger describes only occurs at the atomic level — if you actually lock a cat in a box like that, nothing magic happens. The cat just dies, and you’re just an asshole.
