Schroedinger's Paper

Schrödinger’s Paper

Right now I bet you just noticed that you were breathing consciously, or maybe you just noticed how often you blink, if you’re really stubborn then maybe you’ll begin to feel your left hand itch. I know it’s cliché, but I believe that “when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.”  From psychology, to physics, and your day-to-day life, the echoes of Nietzsche’s idea are still reverberating through the intellectual world. As I sit in front of my computer trying to figure out what to write on, I consider how the act of thinking about my writing is impacting what I write. One of my biggest fears when thinking about writing is that somehow it will all stop working. I’ve never quite understood my own creative process, between ages 11 and 21, I generated about twenty pages of non-academic writing; they were all crap. Between midsummer of this year and right now, I’ve written a couple of hundred pages of either fiction or nonfiction. I like to believe that at least some of those pages are decent. I don’t know what sparked this deluge of creativity, as I’d always had an interest in writing. I just never had anything to say, or at least I didn’t know how to say it. So I try not to think too hard about where this newfound creativity came from, because I’m worried it’ll go away. Although I realize that he made this thought-experiment with his tongue firmly in cheek, I think that Schrödinger was really onto something with that cat of his.

In short, if you put a cat in a box (with or without a fox) and place a tiny radioactive particle in said box, there is an equal chance that in an hour that particle will have decayed or remained the same. If that particle decays, it will trigger a hammer that will release poison into the box, thus killing the cat. However, we can’t know whether the cat is alive or dead unless we open the box, thus it is said that the cat is both alive and dead until we observe it. What I take from this is that, 1) Schrödinger  did not like cats, and 2) I do not understand quantum physics. However, as an English major I do not need to actually know things, I can simply interpret them with artistic license (no offense to English majors, this is simply artistic license) . This cat, if it remains unobserved is un-dead. But not in the zombie way, we just simply don’t know what state it’s in, so it is functionally neither, and both. So in this case, if you stare into the abyss, you kill the cat.

In psychological circles, which I am clearly qualified to talk about because I once took psych-101, there is said to be an observer-expectancy effect. What this usually means is that it is very easy for an experiment’s bias to cause him or her to unconsciously influence the participants. However, this is not limited to people in lab-coats as a common corollary to this is confirmation bias. For example, I am an avid gamer and I periodically decide to base my game choices on reviews. Now, I don’t always agree with these reviews because sometimes I’ll pick up a game and truly despise every aspect of it. Then I’ll saunter over to my laptop, prepared for the vindication of my hatred. Unfortunately, there seem to be a number of misguided people on the interwebs that disagree with me. As such, I am fairly unlikely to take their views seriously, an even less likely to continue to frequent their websites. But the guy who trashed Transformers: War for Cybertron? He knows what’s up. What does this have to do with Schrödinger, cats, and the abyss you ask? Well, let me address the question I just told you to ask. I think that the world we observe may not be as objective as we like to think because what looks blue to me, could very well be green to someone else (this is frequently the case as I have a terrible time distinguishing colors). As far as I can tell, everything in the world is subjective; everything is subject to your unique collection of experiences and beliefs, even this sentence.

Remember when I told you that you could feel your butt in the chair? I hope not because I never said that, I said you could feel your tongue in your mouth. Actually I never said that either, but sometimes if you act confident enough you can convince people of anything, regardless of actual fact. Nonetheless, actual facts do sometimes factor into our lives. Some of you have heard of the by-stander effect which states that in a crowded environment, people are unlikely to come to the aid of those in distress. Psychologists believe that this is because we as a group decide that someone else would have already helped the person in need if it were a true emergency. That guy passed out on the train? He’s probably drunk, or else someone would have called 911. Don’t worry though, there is hope for us yet. If you are aware of this effect then you are much more likely to actually call 911, or to intervene when needed. I like to believe that this is because you want to spite whoever it is that told you about the bystander effect by proving him or her wrong and intervening. You know what they say… knowing is half the battle.

But sometimes you don’t, and can’t know how things work. I love to make puns, but if someone yells “make a pun, or I’ll kick this puppy,” I’m usually at a loss. Largely because I’m always surprised that people keep puppies on hand for kicking. I am also fluent in Tagalog, but if some asshole says “quick, say something in Tagalog,” I’ll stammer awkwardly and say… nothing. Which brings me back to my original quandary, please don’t ask me about comma usage. I was editing a paper for my girlfriend, and, she used, commas so often, that I forgot how to, use them, properly; it got to the point that I sounded like Christopher Walken in my head.

The more I think about these things, the more I’m thankful for the fact that even if I don’t know why, something in me has changed. I don’t know if I’ll always have inspiration to write; every week that we have a creative piece due, I go through a brief moment of panic because I have no idea what to write about. It scares me that I’ve never sat down and thought, “Hey this is a great story; I know exactly how to proceed!” Normally I’ll just sit down and start writing, hoping that something good will come. Even now, I try not to examine the process too closely because I’m worried my curiosity will kill the cat (ba-dump-tss).