Hi, it's Eric with some thoughts for this week's audio essay on the topic of superposition.

Now to those of you in the know, superposition is an odd word in that it is the scientific

concept we reach for when trying to describe the paradox of Schrodinger's cat and the

theory and philosophy of quantum measurement.

We don't yet know how to say that the cat is both dead and alive at the same time rigorously,

so we fudge whatever is going on with this unfortunate feline and say that the cat and

the quantum system on which it's life depends are a mixture of two distinct states that

are somehow commingled in a way that is defied of satisfying explanation for about a century.

Now I'm usually loathed to appeal to such quantum concepts in everyday life as there

is a veritable industry of people making bad quantum analogies.

For example, whenever you have a non-quantum system that is altered by its observation,

it really has nothing to do with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Jane Goodall's chimpanzees are almost certainly altered in their behavior due to her presence,

but there is likely no competent quantum theorist who would analogize chimps to electrons

and goodall to a hermitian observable executing a quantum observation.

Heisenberg adds nothing other than physics envy to the discussion of an entirely classical

situation such as this.

However, I have changed my mind in the case of superposition as I would now like to explain.

To begin with, superposition isn't a quantum phenomena.

For example, imagine that you'd come from Europe to Australia and that you had both

euros and Swiss francs in your pockets.

You might then be said to be in a superposition because you have pocket change in both euros

...