Quantum effects on the macro scale... my hypothesis

I was involved in a thread on the BTS side concerning whether Doris day was alive or dead. Thread

Given the following situation:

You don't know whether a person is alive or dead.
You do some research and find out that the person is alive.
The probabilitys of the person being alive are the same as being dead.

Given those assumptions:

A little hypothesis of mine is that it can be regarded as waves of probability like that in the famous Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment. The person is simultaneously both alive and dead. When you conduct your research and find out further information as to whether the person is alive or dead you have in essence "looked inside the box" thus collapsing the waves of probability yielding one of the two states. Alive or Dead. I also think that the universe divides upon such an action. One universe alive another where the person is dead.

My questions are thus:
1) Is this an example of quantum effects on the macro scale?
2) What are your general thoughts concerning my little hypothesis?

Dang! now I want to know if Doris Day is actually dead or not but I'm afraid to look it up 'cause I might kill her



I think the point of the experiment is that no one can see inside the box. which is hardly the same when it comes to the life of a celebrity.

I am quite fascinated with the theory of parallel dimensions or a multi-verse theory. With your hypothesis does the said time stream co exist with both the alive and dead person? So we are having this same conversation on the ATS forum where person X is alive and person X is dead? Or are they completely different dimensions/realities all together?

Originally posted by fishneedh2o
I am quite fascinated with the theory of parallel dimensions or a multi-verse theory. With your hypothesis does the said time stream co exist with both the alive and dead person? So we are having this same conversation on the ATS forum where person X is alive and person X is dead? Or are they completely different dimensions/realities all together?

I think that we would be having this conversation in two universes. One where the person x is dead and another were person x is alive. The splitting point would be the finding out if person x was alive or not.


Edited to add:

thinking of time. I imagine that time flow for each would be the same since they would have a common start point. That however gets me thinking about time travel. What if time travel were simply universe hopping? Going into the past would mean leaving this universe and entering another where events had happened differently? Entering another universe where the events that make up our world started later on? For example the earth forming say 100 years later than our own? but otherwise events were the same? That would take care of any causality loop problems.


[edit on 3-9-2008 by Deson]