Schrodinger's Cat

Went library to study with Wei Chuan today lol but we were both very ineffective, and it was damn fking cold in the Queit Reading Room...

Re-read "101 Philosophical Questions" again today. There's this interesting thought experiment called Schrodinger's Cat. Basically, a poisonous gas will be released to kill a caged cat if a radiation is produced by a radioactive substance and sensed by a sensor. The radioactive substance has a 50% chance of decaying and 50% chance of not.

However, there is a problem. All radioactive substances can have an intermediate state (so called superposition of states), where it is both decayed and not-decayed, and will only became decayed or not decayed until it is observed or measured.

So does it mean that before anyone observe this setup, the cat can be both dead and alive? That is the question many philosophers and physicists have been trying to answer, but it still remains paradoxical.

Took me awhile to get this intermediate state thing and i just thought that the fundamental paradox still lies with the intermediate state and whether a radiation is produced and not produced at the same instance. And i felt that the radiation sensor should be considered a sensor that will cause the intermediate state to collapse into either decayed or not decayed.

However, it is also possible that there are two parrellal time frames created during the decay of the substance, and that they are independent of each other.

ok actually i'm also a bit confused by this now...

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Watched a movie just now, Oldboy (2003).

Was quite intense but don't think it was too realistic. Some disturbing scenes with torture, incest themes and revenge, but never boring. Very unsatisfying ending though. It was highly acclaimed by many critics and directors (even Tarantino) but i guess it was just not my type of movie.