Anthony Appleyard

It seems to me that something "being noticed" is the sum of various neuro-electrical activity in the observer's eyes and brain, and is a part of the sum of all near and remote electrical and other effects that opening the box has. As soon as the alpha-particle flies and is detected, the effect and its wave equation have spread far further and over far more atoms than the sort of distance that quantum mechanics tends to usually extend.

I am sorry to repeat my message, but I have realized that I may have been a bit confusing: by force of habit I used the word "matter" to mean "topic", although the word "matter" has another main meaning in this forum's purpose, and it was too late for me to edit my previous message ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat Quantum mechanics is founded on an uncertainty principle. It seemed to me a while ago that there seems to be two sorts of uncertainty here. (1) Uncertainty caused by limitations in technology available to measure positions and speeds etc of very small objects. (2) Uncertainty caused by innate fuzzyness of very small objects such as electrons etc which have a partly-wave nature. Each of these 2 sorts of uncertainty could have its own probability function. Before the atom decays, the relevant events are limited to the insides of that atom's nucleus, and quantum mechanical rules apply to them. Then the atom decays, and the relevant events become more and more wide-scale as the alpha particle flies, and knocks electrons out of many atoms, etc, until a Geiger-counter-type detector detects it, and etc as in the usual scenario. By then, most of the relevant events are on such a wide scale that they are now Newtonian, and the cat is definitely alive or definitely dead, and the main remaining uncertainty is Type 1, including uncertainty caused by the human eye being unable to see inside the closed box.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat Quantum mechanics is founded on uncertainty principle. It seemed to me a while ago that there seems to be two sorts of uncertainty here. (1) Uncertainty caused by limitations in technology available to measure positions and speeds etc of very small objects. (2) Uncertainty caused by innate fuzzyness of very small objects such as electrons etc which have a partly-wave nature. Each of these 2 sorts of uncertainty could have its own probability function. Before the atom decays, the matter is limited to the insides of that atom's nucleus, and quantum mechanical rules apply to it. Then the atom decays, and the matter becomes more and more wide-scale as the alpha particle flies, and knocks electrons out of many atoms, etc, until a Geiger-counter-type detector detects it, and etc as in the usual scenario. By then, most of the matter is on such a wide scale that it is now Newtonian, and the cat is definitely alive or definitely dead, and the main remaining uncertainty is Type 1, including uncertainty caused by the human eye being unable to see inside the closed box..