With Integrity

File this under: Things Not Quite Topical Enough to Put in the Podcast.

President Trump’s tweets about collusion may serve as a decent example of the "Schrödinger’s Cat" thought experiment. And we don’t even have to kill (or not kill) a cat in the process!

Trump has regularly denied collusion via his official Twitter account - even going so far as to state that his lawyers “have shown conclusively that there was no Collusion with Russia.” So, let's associate “no collusion” with a “living cat.” 

But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

For those who don’t know of the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment, I’ll attempt to summarize and simplify for you. You have a cat and you have a contraption with the capability to kill this cat. For reasons I can’t even begin to fathom, you place both the cat and the contraption into a steel box, and seal it up. The contraption has a less than 100% and greater than 0% chance of activating over the period of confinement. You allow some time to pass, then, without opening the box you ask yourself, “is the cat alive or dead?”

Schrödinger suggested that - until you actually open the box and observed the situation - the cat must be simultaneously alive and dead. (Einstein wrote to Schrödinger with his own example that referenced an unstable keg of gunpowder that is both exploded and unexploded, but this didn’t catch on, perhaps due to the lack of cats of the living-dead variety.)

Now we can go back to the Trumpian example at the start. But let’s swap out Schrödinger’s sealed steel box for the metaphorical 'black box' of the Mueller investigation - which isn’t a stretch as both are opaque and neither is prone to leaking. Next, we can exchange Schrödinger’s cat for the guilt or innocence of the Trump campaign as it pertains to colluding with Russia. Now - before we open this box - we ask ourselves, “did the Trump campaign collude with Russia?”

By Schrödinger’s logic, and regardless of what Trump's detractors say, Trump’s statement that there is no collusion isn’t exactly wrong. Further, those who claim Trump is guilty of collusion are also not wrong. To all of us not inside the box that makes up the Mueller investigation it both true that there is collusion, and true that there is no collusion. Only when the Mueller box is unsealed will the two conflicting states resolve into one. 

This, of course, will not prevent pundits, prognosticators, and our President from continuing to proclaim that their perspective is the true one and anyone who disagrees is an idiot. 

So, if it doesn’t shut anyone up, why did I write this post? 

Honestly, I’m not sure. Maybe if you can properly cite the basics of Schrödinger’s Cat in your response, you might at least convince yourself that you’re not the one who’s the idiot.

Links to content discussed in the podcast:

My TED Talk

Basic Integrity Diagram

Music by: Borrtex under Creative Commons license

First podcast is locked in and ready to post later today. Now I'm looking for suggestions on interesting guests to talk with for upcoming podcast episodes on the following topics: 

• Reliability
• Specificity
• Honesty
• Forthrightness
• Drive & Passion
• Mental Presence

Got someone in mind who can speak to the importance of one of these topics, and might be willing to share examples of their own experiences when they've had and lacked it? Would love to host someone with public visibility, but I'm not exactly a household name, so it's entirely possible that I end up just interviewing my kids. Which, come to think of it, would be interesting and entertaining in and of itself. 

No fair withholding suggestions just to get my boys some airtime. I've already promised them that they can participate.

Comment here - or tweet @TateLinden with your ideas. Even better if you can make an introduction!

Just finished the first episode of the With Integrity podcast! Have to do a bit of editing and it should be good enough to post. Found out after I'd finished recording that my computer doesn't have enough horsepower to record in high fidelity, so there are some annoying little clicks and glitches that I'm trying to minimize. Next time I'll be recording low-fi - so when it drops you should try to enjoy my rich, dulcet, glitchy tones while you can. 

__Tate