On being found by Schrödinger's Cat

Schrödinger's Cat >^.^<
No cats were harmed in the making of this blog.
Nor apparently in the following video....or at least not in my current universe.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IOYyCHGWJq4#!
Thanks to loadedphysics for this great rendition on youtube

The most commonly held interpretation of quantum mechanics is the Copenhagen interpretation[5] In the Copenhagen interpretation, a system stops being a superposition of states and becomes either one or the other when an observation takes place.... so looking makes it so >^.^<

In another galaxy far far away... the many-worlds interpretation holds both alive and dead states of the cat persist after the box is opened, but are decoherent from each other. Multiple realities/ distributed realities with no capacity to coexist. Just needs a timelord to travel between them...

Alternately: The relational interpretation makes no fundamental distinction between the human experimenter, the cat, or the apparatus, or between animate and inanimate systems. The cat observes the human, and not till the box is opened do the realities collide. The relational interpretation allows that different observers give different accounts of the same series of events. More than this though; for they live different accounts (or not as the case may be).
Distributed realities but with potential to talk between them.

And so yes, reality is multiple but does not have to be conceived of in the far far away type renditions.
And in the collateral realities of scientific research how come the cat is the one in the box?
How come the experiment is not about happy cat getting a cheezeburger rather than a bomb or radiation poisoning?
Where was the ethics panel and what were they thinking?
If the same experiment might even have been imagined in a way less harming to cats wouldn't that have been a better idea?
And why stop there? The box also has a position played out but not voiced in the typical scenario.
I note that blogger would not let the cat >^.^< appear in the subject line. Sometimes the technologies talk to each other and dont converse with the actors that those of us who are human centric tend to orient toward.

ontological politics and multiple realities

Establishing a talking familiarity with the jargon.

Annemarie Mol(in Actor Network Theory and After, 1999, pages 74-75) describes
"Ontological politics as a composite term. It talks of ontology - which in standard philosophical parlance defines what belongs to the real, the conditions of possibility we live with. If the term ontology is defined with that of politics, then this suggests that the conditions of possibility are not given. That reality does not precede the mundane practices in which we interact with it, but is rather shaped within these practices."
and that the term politics refers to this shaping.

The politics then of 'whats real'.
And of what 'reals' are enacted.
It is this second question that opens the discussion to consider the multiple realities that are being enacted, concurrently.

The ontological politics of voice

Reading for a PhD is an iterative process (the big words come thick and fast, my earlier reading let them slide past while I hoped that familiarity would one day lead to enlightenment. And repeated revisiting, rereading and reading the readings others have made of books i have read, does make understanding easier). Helen Verran pulls on the writing of Annemarie Mol, reminding me of Mol's intent of exploring the ontological politics of medicine.
And I am back to wondering: what am I doing?
I suspect half way through data collect is not the time for doubt, but it feels to me that there is no better time than this. My research does not follow a straight tangent regardless of the texts or the ethics application that suggest that this is so.
While exploring the actor network of a voluntary youth telephone counselling agency undergoing change with use of text, internet and message boards, I begin to appreciate that I am involved in a study that explores the ontological politics of voice.