Schrödinger found superposition so odd that he illustrated its absurdity by a thought experiment. He imagined his cat in a box with a device that would releaser fatal poison gas if it detected a photon of light, alongside a radioactive source that randomly emitted photons. The box is closed, so no-one knows when the gas is released, but according to quantum theory, the source and device are a quantum system that superposes the photon being detected and not, until it is observed. As the box is also a quantum system, that the poison is released and not also superposes, so the cat is in an alive-dead superposition until Schrödinger opens the box! But how can a cat be alive and dead? Or if cats can’t be alive and dead, how can a photon exist and not exist? Or if a photon can do this but a cat can’t, on what scale does the superposition stop?
Schrödinger’s example shows that what physics accepts at the micro-scale makes no sense at the macro-scale. If a superposition doesn’t stop until it is observed, Schrödinger cat is both alive and dead before that, which is ludicrous. This conclusion assumes that only human observation triggers quantum collapse, but quantum theory doesn’t say that. It just says any observation.
In processing model, any network overload that causes a physical event collapses the quantum wave. It follows that anything can observe a quantum wave to collapse it, as quantum theory describes, not just us. It seems strange to say that everything observes but the logic of quantum theory is, as usual, impeccable. If the observation of quantum theory was only of humans, we would be needed to cause physical events, which can’t be. If only we could cause quantum collapse, physical history couldn’t begin until we evolved, but it did. The only sensible conclusion is that everything observes, and every observation causes quantum collapse, not just those that involve our eyes or instruments.
For Schrödinger’s cat, this means the photon superposition collapses when the detector observes it, so it releases the poison that kills the cat regardless of what Schrödinger does. Before opening the box, Schrödinger doesn’t know if the gas was released, but the cat does! The quantum superposition is stopped by any observation, not just ours, so there is no alive-dead cat.
This interpretation also clarifies another concern, that quantum theory implies that we create what we observe as in a dream, which contradicts realism. If observation formally causes physical events, as quantum theory says, how is our world still real? The answer is that every physical event is a mutual observation, so we aren’t the only cause. In a dream, the observer alone causes the dream, but our world isn’t just caused by us, so it isn’t a dream. We do indeed create the physical world, but so does everything else, because when we observe a photon, it also observes us. If every observation creates a physical event, we aren’t creating the universe alone, everything is.
Schrödinger’s cat example was meant to illustrate the illogic of quantum theory but actually reveals its depth. We think we see the world around us objectively, as it is, but quantum theory tells us that what we observe is a generated view, just as in a virtual reality.