A) The cat is in the box

B) The vial is in the box

C) The poison is in the box

D) The pressure broke the vial

E) The cat has been killed by the poison

And assuming is faith. Therefore you have put faith into five different things already that you cannot see, hear, touch, smell, feel, or in any way acknowledge their existence.

Post edited at 4:03 pm on July 19, 2008 by TheLastMagister

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Moderation-LiveWire's 3rd Reich.

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The theory is if you put a cat in a box, then put poison in a vial in the box, seal it, then use a change of pressure in the box to break the vial, you are therefore assuming that  

A) The cat is in the box

B) The vial is in the box

C) The poison is in the box

D) The pressure broke the vial

E) The cat has been killed by the poison

And assuming is faith. Therefore you have put faith into five different things already that you cannot see, hear, touch, smell, feel, or in any way acknowledge their existence.

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Is that supposed to be the Schroedinger's Cat situation?

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"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

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The theory is if you put a cat in a box, then put poison in a vial in the box, seal it, then use a change of pressure in the box to break the vial, you are therefore assuming that  

A) The cat is in the box

B) The vial is in the box

C) The poison is in the box

D) The pressure broke the vial

E) The cat has been killed by the poison

And assuming is faith. Therefore you have put faith into five different things already that you cannot see, hear, touch, smell, feel, or in any way acknowledge their existence.

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Lets do the same thing, we will line up 10,000 clear boxes of the same material and built exactly the same in the same factory.
We will put a cat in each box.
We will make enough poison to kill all 10,000 cats.

If we put the vile in the box with the cat and seal it up, then change the pressures, one by one, we will see that in each and every single box the cat dies.

all the way up through 9,999 boxes, they ALL die in 30 seconds +- a few seconds.

The last box we cover up with black wrap, so that we can not see or hear anything inside the box. We change the pressure and after ~30 seconds we assume that the cat is dead.

Shrodinger's theory is that the vile both broke and did not break, and the cat is both dead and not dead. Else, it is nothing until it is observed.

I disagree. If all 9,999 cats die within 30 seconds, then it is safe to assume that the last cat will be dead too. That is not faith, that is reason.

The vile breaks at a certain pressure
the poison is potent enough to kill the cat 5 times over

those are not subjective things, those are FACTS.

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Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful.It's the transition
that's troublesome.   --Isaac Asimov

The poison vial is triggered by the decay of a radioactive isotope which has a 50/50 chance of releasing the triggering particle every so often.

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"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"