Schrödinger’s Cat is a thought experiment: the cat is both alive and dead until observed, so in a way, the act of observing it changes it’s state.
I love talking to my dear friend in Rochester, NY, Bruce Peters, he is immensely learned and curious about humans, I always learn and share so much with him. We were talking this week and riffing on coaching and how, when there is a coach present to a conversation, the dynamic changes, even if the coach says nothing at all. Bruce reminded me as we spoke of the work of Wilfred Bion, as I had previously written about after an earlier inspiring sessions with Bruce in: “A response to “Listening for Energy”“, where Bruce noted that his {Bion’s} research technique would be to call a meeting and then sit silently and take notes as to the reactions of the individuals and the group.
This week, though as we talked, Bruce paused, then said: “it is like Quantum Mechanics”. I laughed, then said “Schrödinger’s Coach!”. The tl;dr on that joke is the reference to the “Observer Effect”, in that the act of observing something changes it, so the act of being present to a conversation even if one says or does nothing, changes the conversation.
In a way, that is part of my live conversations each Tuesday at 5pm UK time, #WhatComesNextLive. For myself and my guest each week, the fact we are speaking live changes the conversation. Now, to explain, Schrödinger’s Cat is a thought experiment, which goes thus:
Schrödinger wanted people to imagine that a cat, poison, a Geiger counter, radioactive material, and a hammer were inside of a sealed container. The amount of radioactive material was minuscule enough that it only had a 50/50 shot of being detected over the course of an hour. If the Geiger counter detected radiation, the hammer would smash the poison, killing the cat. Until someone opened the container and observed the system, it was impossible to predict if the cat’s outcome. In short, the cat is both alive and dead until observed, so in a way, the act of observing it changes it’s state.
BTW anybody with an inkling of quantum mechanics will shake their head strongly at my bonkers way of combining ideas, but please give me some leeway, it is simply a joke upon a thought experiment, said simply to anchor the idea that even sitting silently in observation of a conversation changes the conversation.