The war in Iran is a Rorschach test
Or if you prefer, it’s Schrödinger’s cat.
Take your pick.of metaphors – either way, how the person sees it at the moment is more a reflection of that person’s attitude towards Trump, war, and Iran itself than any reality. Do you think Trump’s a bumbling fool? Then you probably think it’s a foolish and perhaps even evil war. Do you think Trump’s a wily old bastard with many tricks up his sleeve? Then you probably think the war has achieved a great deal towards defanging an active terrorist state bent on the destruction of the West, and you are willing to trust that Trump has no intention of undermining those gains and every intention of extending them, as well as the ability to do so.
If you’re a pacifist or isolationist and thought Trump was one too, you’re probably angry and feel betrayed. And of course, if you think Iran’s a great place and the leaders are heroes who had no evil intent and need nuclear weapons, you’re on their side.
But sooner or later, the inkblot turns into a recognizable picture. Sooner or later, the box is opened and you either observe a live cat or a dead cat. The basic question is: at what point will that happen? Some think it should have happened already. Others are willing to wait.
One of those willing to wait is Roger Kimball, who writes:
Trump held Iran’s head underwater for six weeks. He pulled it up and let it sputter while he offered the mullahs an off-ramp. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio, responding to the press, is right. “The idea that somehow this President, given everything he’s already proven he’s willing to do, is going to somehow agree to a deal that ultimately winds up putting Iran in a stronger position when it comes to nuclear ambitions is absurd!”
Indeed. Trump is waiting impatiently while the Iranians prance and posture. The IRGC tried laying some mines in the Strait of Hormuz and: pow! The US took out the boats involved and destroyed a surface-to-air missile battery in Bandar Abbas that was targeting US warplanes. “These were defensive strikes,” a US spokesman said. “They do not indicate the ceasefire is over.”
What they do indicate is that Trump is serious about his terms.
Kimball also believes that the Iranian regime “may shatter” once “a few cracks appear.” I think “may” is doing a lot of work there. Of course it “may” shatter, but IMHO that will take more than “a few cracks.” A lot more.
Trump isn’t making a deal contingent on the regime shattering; he’s making it contingent on their cooperating on his key points. But is that even possible, and would capitulation be meaningful if they can’t be trusted? I think the answer is “no.” I think this particular regime will never yield on those points and even if they do is not to be trusted. And I think Trump, Rubio, and the rest of the American negotiators know that. That’s why the endgame is a conundrum.
NOTE: Here’s a piece about the Rorschach test. And here’s one about Schrödinger’s cat.
They have no where to go.
I trust kimball because he has been so right so often however the gordian knot might be the right metaphor
The only test I see is if one is infected with TDS. If so, then that determines all thinking on Iran. For the rest of us, we can have varying degrees of doubts on the current status, but I also think that we all agree it was a necessary action.
Whos actually in charge the ‘right people’ cant even tell us that
I agree with Neo’s assessment.
The IRGC has a tight grip on Iran, and will not let go. Those who feel the oppressed Iranians should just overthrow their rulers are nuts. The governing fanatics already murdered with mass shootings by the IRGC maybe 20,000 (? more) demonstrators, and Iranians all know that.
The boycott/blockade must be sustained for a long time, several decades, and Iran will slowly and surely become horribly impoverished. Oil is the only asset of Iran. Once all their oil storage tanks are full, the oil wells with their pumps will deteriorate because slow pumping of oil with no place to put it yields damage to wells and their pumps, and it will take money and time to undo that.
I’ve always been a fan of Roger Kimball. But frankly, his record as a prognosticator, is dreadful. He’s always totally optimistic. He was sure Romney would beat Obama.
Few realize that the original intent of Schrödinger’s “Cat” thought experiment was to illustrate the absurdity of the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.
The idea was to extend the indeterminate state posited for a Uranium nucleus in the subatomic world “up” to our everyday world, showing that if one accepts the former, it logically leads to dead / alive cats and other illogical things.
Ironically, the proponents of Copenhagen said in effect “Precisely so!”, and the Cat became an illustration not of quantum impossibility, but of the true weirdness of the quantum world!
Many examples exist of such turnarounds, for example the common term “Big Bang”. Today, most of us accept it as a description of what was supposed to have occurred, even those of us who are skeptical that it did. But originally, it was intended to be a rude, mocking description of such a beginning of the universe, designed to demean those who could possibly believe in it!
Militarily, it is inarguable that “the war has achieved a great deal towards defanging an active terrorist state bent on the destruction of the West”.
I am certain that Trump has no intention of undermining those gains and every intention of extending them.
I am somewhat doubtful that Trump has the ability to do so without sufficient Senatorial support.
“The boycott/blockade must be sustained for a long time, several decades, and Iran will slowly and surely become horribly impoverished.” Cicero
Yes and the effectiveness of that strategy depends upon its longevity. Which will be determined by whether the next administration supports it and whether Congressional support remains firm.
Both are at least somewhat problematic.
Ps. Copilot says that “Big Bang” is an example of “Amelioration” of a negative term, while Schrödinger’s Cat is an example of “Reductio reversal”, in which a reductio ad absurdum argument is turned on its head!
Pps. I must add that after reading many others’ thoughts on these subjects over the years, I am personally somewhat skeptical of the current evolved interpretation of both these… thingys.
Iran just rejected turning over any enriched uranium if it were to leave the country.
Finish the job.
Ray Van Dune,
Given Schrodinger’s subsequent books like Mind and Matter, I think your interpretation of his Cat to illustrate the absurdity of QM is quite wrong.
Good post at the Washington Free Beacon.
https://freebeacon.com/culture/whats-the-deal-with-iran/
The observations today by Mike Watson about the deal and MOU conditions is not unique, but this analysis was interesting, and generally in line with what Victor Hanson said in the interview physicsguy linked in the Open Thread. (repeated below)
From the link under the bolded sentence in the last paragraph:
Amichai Stein
@AmichaiStein1
Iranian sources: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attacked four ships in the Strait of Hormuz region, including American vessels.
1:51 PM · May 28, 2026
Hanson link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_HM3nWRj8U
Don Surber notes this about the Iran war (among a long list of other news items and some joking around), retweeted from Newt Gingrich.
I have always thought that much of the controversy surrounding Trump’s actions comes from not knowing what’s going on behind the scenes – either not leaked by the administration or not seriously addressed by the media.
https://donsurber.substack.com/p/highlights-of-the-news-3af
Gingrich’s tweet is copied completely by Surber.
https://x.com/newtgingrich/status/2060280411641569337
Don ends with: “I told you 9 years ago this picture would be on the final exam.”
See if you can guess what it is before peeking.
Update from last night from VDH talking to Mark Levin.
“They interpret survival as victory.” “At some point we have to stop it (negotiations)”. “They look at magnanimity on our part as weakness to be exploited.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3b3JZsN4U0
I sure can’t read what’s going on. The Trump administration keeps saying that real progress is being made in the negotiations. Iranian leaders keep saying that they aren’t giving up on the uranium dust, uranium enrichment and control of Hormuz.
Which would seem to mean that no progress has been made since the ceasefire. Or that the Iranians negotiators are saying something different in the negotiations.
It’s true that as the blockade and sanctions continue, Iran grows weaker by the day. Which can’t go on forever, but might last long enough to damage the midterm elections.
Trump is also using the Iran War as leverage to pull the Gulf States into the Abraham Accords. So that’s another piece of the puzzle.
I guess the key is that Trump can return to military operations whenever he chooses and he will continue to talk up the negotiations with the usual threats until he decides to bring the hammer down again.
I suspect that’s what will happen, but no one will know when, neither us nor the Iranians.
Meanwhile, POTUS doesn’t have a distracting, unnecessary fight with our real enemy (the donkey party) over the unconstitutional war powers act.
1. We elected this president to undo the erosion of deterrence that was caused by decades of skittish post-Vietnam “limited engagements” and failed drive-thru-window attempts at “regime change”.
2. The drumbeats of doubt, manufactured deadlines, and false expectations emanate from the same media/pundit class that nurtured Western defeatism in the first place.
This chattering class has repeatedly demonstrated ignorance of how the world really works, and anything resembling resolve.
So why are we (you!) listening to them about Iran?
3. The last *successful* regime change (WWII) took 5-7 years, depending how you count – plus decades of occupation and “de-Nazification” of a basically Judeo-Christian country.
How long do you think it will take to deNazify Iran?
Trump is successfully confusing/neutralizing the naysayers while continuing the program – without angering his base too much.
In terms of the REAL time frame for regime change – we haven’t even reached the morning coffee break.
https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/germany/iran
Excellent comment.
Schrödinger’s Cat was designed as a critique — a demonstration that Copenhagen’s collapse postulate becomes absurd when applied to everyday objects.
Schrödinger and Einstein both felt this way, and my sources indicate his book “Mind and Matter” did not change that position.
In this morning’s newspaper, Thomas Friedman has spoken, to the effect that the only question will be how big a plate of crow Trump has to eat in order to escape from Iran, and will he lie and claim it’s actually lobster, or it’s steak?
Whew! When such a great as Friedman says you’re screwed, you know you are golden!
@Ben David: So why are we (you!) listening to them about Iran?
I do so love being addressed as “you,” then lectured.
@Ray Van Dune: Schrödinger’s Cat was designed as a critique — a demonstration that Copenhagen’s collapse postulate becomes absurd when applied to everyday objects.
That’s my understanding as well:
___________________________________________
The solutions to Schrödinger’s equation, unlike the solutions to Newton’s equations, are wave functions that can only be related to the probable occurrence of physical events. The definite and readily visualized sequence of events of the planetary orbits of Newton is, in quantum mechanics, replaced by the more abstract notion of probability.
This aspect of the quantum theory made Schrödinger and several other physicists profoundly unhappy, and he devoted much of his later life to formulating philosophical objections to the generally accepted interpretation of the theory that he had done so much to create. His most famous objection was the 1935 thought experiment that later became known as Schrödinger’s cat.
A cat is locked in a steel box with a small amount of a radioactive substance such that after one hour there is an equal probability of one atom either decaying or not decaying. If the atom decays, a device smashes a vial of poisonous gas, killing the cat. However, until the box is opened and the atom’s wave function collapses, the atom’s wave function is in a superposition of two states: decay and non-decay. Thus, the cat is in a superposition of two states: alive and dead.
Schrödinger thought this outcome “quite ridiculous,” and when and how the fate of the cat is determined has been a subject of much debate among physicists.
–Encyclopedia Britannica, “Erwin Schrödinger”
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Erwin-Schrodinger
Ah flathead removing all doubt, he has been nearly as bad as robert fisk who rightly became a verb, after a particularly cringey twist (where he waa accosted by afghan tribesmen and blamed himself)
As with halberstam getting vietnam wrong at the outset then moving on to other venues like auto industry
The perspective from the levant is appreciated many of these same type of critics attack netanyahu with similar vituperance
The irgc is much like the ss the artesh like wehmacht the basij like the gestapo
Thomas Friedman does have this rather tiresome tendency of letting us in on his most fetid fantasies and fever dreams.
Not sure why he feels he must share all this personal dreck with the Rest of World but I guess that’s what he believes he’s being paid to do…as a STAR (if a very dark one) in the totally corrupt firmament known as the Left-Wing Media.
Merely another case of “By their dreams (and fantasies) thou shalt know them”…
(Thomas Fetishman?)
Meanwhile POTUS46 proves he’s not only President Fentanyl-Tranq; he’s also President Let’s Incinerate Whole Families…
“Non-English-Speaking Bus Driver Faces Manslaughter Charges After Horror Virginia Crash Kills Entire Family”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/non-english-speaking-bus-driver-faces-manslaughter-charge-after-horror-virginia-crash
(Alas, Pete Buttigieg was unavailable for comment…)
+ Bonus:
Trump Toughens Terms Of Iran Deal Framework, As Bessent Pinpoints Tehran’s ‘Big Mistake’
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-tightens-terms-iran-deal-framework-bessent-pinpoints-tehrans-big-mistake
I stand corrected.
@Ben David: So why are we (you!) listening to them about Iran?
Huxley: I do so love being addressed as “you,” then lectured.
————————————-
Sorry – I couldn’t figure out the keystrokes to display a waggling finger icon to go along with the lecture…
More seriously – there are still many educated people who have somewhat gingerly, reluctantly admitted that The Donald is not “literally Hitler” – but are still susceptible to the Gell-Mann amnesia effect in all things Trump.
I get a bit put out of shape by good folk like Lee Smith (see his latest at Tablet) who for months now see and recognize the “Op” being run by our enemies against the Trump-Netanyahu tag team, warns us all not to fall for it, again, for months running, yet nevertheless turns about to fall for it himself. I mean, it’s nuts, and, I guess, a powerfully effective Op (to the extent that being run in the same pattern, over and over on different events) finally boon-swaggles even those who know it’s out there.
Hello. Back again after 2 weeks away without internet. Trying to catch up (going backward in time – can anyone really do that? – over Neo’ past posts).
While gone I read (reread actually) Spencer Klaven’s book Light of the Mind, Light of the World. From a classics major, he provides an amazing discussion of the history of science and of QM. His assertions about the necessity of a “mind” as an observer was not fully persuasive to me, but presumably no one is yet able to support rejecting that concept either. Apparently not even Stephen Hawkins?!
Klaven’s mention of the Plank distance (1.6×10^-35 meters) led me to wonder/ realize that as the idea of an “atom” or sub-atomic particle was explored/ discovered, you finally “had to” reach a point of describing the boundary between “something” and “nothing”. And then the idea of a “fuzzy” probabilistic description for that boundary makes some real sense – “it’s there but it isn’t – or not quite??”.
I am sure several folks here more qualified than I about QM may amplify or clarify this idea.
R2L,
I’m not a theorist, and my experimental work was at a very much larger scale, atoms/molecules. As I understand, the Planck length is just derived by combining h, c, and G so the units come out in meters. I’m not sure of the significance especially without a real combination of QM and GR.
The collapse of the wavefunction is an ongoing problem. One group including Bohr, Wheeler, et al say consciousness is needed to break the Von Neumann chain of wavefunction collapse. The other group, being very uncomfortable bringing in such get around the issue saying there’s no terminal collapse, as the universe is continually splitting…..hence many worlds/ multiverse solution. Your choice. I prefer the role of consciousness from my own philosophical viewpoint. Many worlds seems to overcomplicate the system. No experimental evidence for either that i know of.
There’s more than just two schools of thought on what wave functions mean. Science journalism seems to only have room for two or so. Some of them get fashionable and seep into pop culture, and then get forgotten later. Wikipedia article presents over a dozen. None of them makes much difference to actually doing work in physics.
The collapse of the wave function to classical probabilities in the interaction with classical systems is explained by decoherence. The need for probabilities is explained in the first chapter of Dirac’s book, he gives as an example the lumpiness of the interaction of the EM field with matter (photons), there are no half photons. Essentially, you are counting photons when measuring the transmission of polarized light through a polarizer at a different angle, and sometimes they go one way, and sometimes another, like throwing dice.
All the different interpretations must converge with the observed results, so in the end they make little difference. But why things work that way is a mystery. “Hypotheses non fingo”.
Are there problems with QM? Absolutely, for instance, that the ground state energy of the various fields seems to have little gravitational effect. Theories such as string theory may get around the renormalization problem, but they don’t solve the ground state energy problem.
The quantum mechanics math works. What people are arguing about is a picture of the universe that is consistent with that math. There’s any number of possibilities and more of them than people have thought of.
You could imagine, 500 years ago, people having similar arguments about if epicycles and deferents are really crystal rods and spheres or what are they. Their math worked in that they knew where the planets were going to be in advance. Other math also worked, math that didn’t agree with crystal spheres and whatnot, the math we used to launch the Voyage probes.
So many-worlds and wave function collapse and pilot waves and what have you, they are interesting to talk about between bong rips, but unless they make a physical prediction and they’re all different and testable you can’t conclude that any of them is how the universe “really” works. They’re all giving the same math, making the same predictions.
The Voyager probes didn’t hit any of the crystal spheres on the way out, so we can close the file on that one at least.
— Ray van Dune
When looking at the ‘news’ coverage, there’s a useful and relevant example from a few years ago that gives perspective. Remember when de Santis was tangling with the Disney Corp. over the Reedy Creek Improvement Zone (i.e. Disney’s corporate fief in Florida)?
It went on month after month, and most of the news coverage was (naturally) hostile to de Santis. Every time Disney made a legal move, the coverage would gloatingly explain how the Disney execs were making fools of de Santis, outsmarting him on every side, and how Disney was so beloved that he had lost before he started.
In actual fact, de Santis had the upper hand on Disney Corp. from start to finish. Florida State law was on his side. Disney tried to sue him in Federal Court on free speech grounds, but doing so automatically undercut their legal arguments in State Court.
(The basis of their legal case in Florida State Court was that Reedy Creek Improvement District was not Walt Disney Corporation. But de Santis, legally, was moving against Reedy Creek. So, a Federal claim that de Santis was retaliating against Disney by trying to dissolve Reedy Creek would only hold water if Disney=Reedy Creek Improvement District.)
But you wouldn’t have known that from watching the day-to-day coverage, which maintained constantly that de Santis was trapped, defeated, overmatched, the only question was his exit strategy. Then, suddenly, it was over and de Santis had won.
Of course he was always going to win, like I said, he was holding most of the cards from day one. It was just that the press was reporting the opposite. Probably out of both knowing deception and genuine ignorance.
What the lefty press was doing then with de Santis, and is doing now with Trump, is not reporting at all. They’re cheerleading. Rallying the Democratic faithful and urging the Dem players to fighter harder. Always remember that when evaluating their ‘coverage’.
— physicsguy
Which also begs the question of what constitutes an ‘observer’ and ‘consciousness’.
For ex, can the Schrodinger’s Cat itself be an Observer?
Plus, the relationship between observation and time. Presumably there was a time before there was consciousness, but the universe operated on some level then. Of course, the nature of time is mysterious, too.
Re: Douglas Adams / Schrödinger’s Cat
After “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy” Douglas Adams went on to write “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.” Gently solves crimes based on the interconnectedness of all things.
__________________________________
We solve the whole crime. We find the whole person. Please leave a message after the pretentious whale song.
–Dirk Gently’s Detective Agency’s answering machine
__________________________________
Perhaps not surprisingly, Dirk Gently got his start as a detective by solving “The Mystery of Schrödinger’s Cat.”
–“Dirk Gently – Schrödinger’s Cat”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKG_Q8GnIlo
Gently claimed that after the researchers opened the box, the cat was neither alive nor dead, but missing. He deduced she had simply grown bored of being locked in a box with poisonous gas and escaped through the window.
Presume for a moment that Trump manages to get the IRGC out of there, in whatever fashion; The Iranians celebrate joyfully. Demonstrations praising TRUMP! go on for days.
The democrats…….
A guy can dream, right?
Niketas,
“There’s more than just two schools of thought on what wave functions mean.”
To pick a nit, which you do often, There really isn’t any disagreement as to what the wavefunctions are: they are a probability distribution for a system that comes from solving the Schrodinger equation. The real question is what is a measurement? Mathematically it’s simple: operate on the wavefunction with the appropriate operator and get a number. Classic eigenfunction/eigenvalue case. The conundrum is when someone does something like [operator]*wavefunction = value*waverfunction” what is being described mathematically is a measurement. Defining what constitutes that measurement is where we go off into Copehagen, many worlds, etc.