Comment Re:Hmmm (Score 1) 136
Can we get the guys at Atheist Shoes to do the same
:)
I know, I know - somewhere out there some wannabe genious is chortling to themselves saying "Silly
Fie upon such notions, I say - fie! This is what your so-called "classical" physics leads young and impressionable minds to believe. Alas, the sorry state of education these days. Woe unto you, sad people with your childish "linear time" and "cause and effect" view of the world. Truly, I weep for the youth of today.
As anyone with even a cursory understanding of quantum mechanics knows (and I speak from experience, for I myself am possessed of a quite cursory understanding of QM), once a package has entered the US Postal system, it can only be described in quantum mechanical terms. True, once it has been delivered you can ascertain its position, thereby collapsing its waveform. But prior to delivery, packages are in a superposition - simultaneously both potentially deliverable and potentially lost. Until the package is observed by the recipient, it's impossible to say with certainty what its current state is. It may be on the delivery truck on its way to your house. It might still be at the post office, possibly propping open the door to the break room for a week or two. It may have fallen out of an airplane in a freak decompression incident and landed in a corn field in Kansas. Oh poor limited "classical" minds - your package either "lost" or "delivered". Marvel at the vast vistas of non-delivery available to the quantumly trained! Our undelivered packages exist in an infinite array of intrigue and adventure, potentially scaling Everest, going 10 rounds in bare-knuckled fisticuffs with a half-man half-shark mutant, sitting under a pine tree at the Time's Square Macey's Christmas display window - all these and more, before potentially appearing on our doorsteps.
Still, there remains the so-called "Atheist Shoe Paradox" - how do you track the journey of a camera in a box when the box has yet to be delivered? Again, with a cursory understanding of quantum mechanics, the answer is obvious. One camera is insufficient. You need two cameras. And two cats. Cats, as we all know, have special quantum mechanical properties. So, attach a camera to the collar of each cat. Next, vigorously rub the cats together, so that they become quantumly entangled. (If they are long-haired cats, they may also become physically entangled, which is undesirable - based on my own experience, I recommend sticking with short-haired felines for quantum experimentation.) Place one cat in the shoebox, seal it (but remember airholes!), and bring it to the Post Office. The second cat remains at your home. (Or, given the possessive nature of cats, you now remain at the cat's new home.) Since the cats were quantumly entangled while wearing cameras, you can now use the camera on your resident cat to view the pictures taken by the camera on the shoebox cat. Voila! Paradox avoided and problem solved.
Solutions like this come from thinking outside the box, even if what you're thinking about is inside a box.