Ok, it’s 8.00 am in the morning, haven’t slept this night, and just took a shower. While in the shower I was thinking about quantum mechanics applied to future generations. I then noticed that they might be better able to understand things like Schrödinger’s Cat than we are.
Everyone knows about Schrodinger’s Cat (if you don’t, read the wikipedia article about it). Basically the idea is to have a cat in a box whose life depends on a 50/50 chance. However, while you don’t open the box, you won’t know if the cat is still alive, or not. The point is the cat’s status is neither alive nor dead until you look at it and define its state.
Thinking back at the time when I was playing GTA IV on XBox 360 I noticed a similar property in the environment. For example let’s take an empty street in this game, look somewhere else, then look at the street again. It might, during the time we weren’t looking at it, be suddently populated with a great amount of cars. Accidents might even happen the second you look in the direction.
While you weren’t looking, the street had no status, it was full and empty at the same time. Then looking at it defined its status, sometimes with an explosive effect. It is effectively the same as Schrödinger’s Cat’s theory. As long as you don’t look, there is no status.
Mh… Anyway I might better sleep a bit before I start coding weird things… and be more careful when skipping a night, it might have unexpected results, such as this post.
