I wish anyone – which is nearly everyone – who has no clue what Erwin Schrödinger was actually getting at when he devised the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment would just stop writing about it.

A good idea is that if you can’t explain what spin is in quantum mechanics, to never write another word about Schrödinger or his goddamn cat.

What ol’ Erwin was getting at is that the Copenhagen interpretation of QM is plainly ridiculous, as in the macro world there are no cats who are simultaneously alive and dead.

Nearly everyone writes this up all wrong, and most of those who manage to write it up correctly still have no clue what they are talking about.

I am no physicist or expert on QM, but I have spent many years trying to understand as much about it as a layman can. Even most books purporting to explain it get it wrong, including some written by actual physicists.

The problem is QM is so strange that you can’t think about it using anything in the macro world. It just doesn’t work. You have to give all that up. There is no analogue, no translation. Just think about it as it is, and you’ll be good.

That took me about a decade, though, so good luck.