I can’t be the only one who absolutely hates the idea of a particle having two states at once, right? Is it just a personal thing or is it tied somehow to the fact that autistic people generally have more binary thinking?
Forgive me if it’s a stupid question. I’m still trying to figure out how this all works and whether I’m autistic or not.
Schrödinger’s cat is indeed a terrible analogy, but so is the Christmas presents one. A cat is always either alive or dead, and the contents of a Christmas present are determined before opening it. But the state of a quantum particle is fundamentally ambiguous before measurement. This is demonstrated by experiments breaking the Bell inequality if you want to know more!
No, the state is not what’s ambiguous, but rather a single, definitive value of the variable is what does not exist unless it’s already in an eigenstate of said variable.
Yes, I am aware of what you meant, but your wording may be misleading.