What evidence is there that Greta is being used? — ZzzoneiroCosm

No human being is an island. These ideas didn't magically pop into Greta's head from nowhere. She is influenced and continues to be under influence by other groups of people.

You think she acts wholly on her own without any support from other people?

Clarity. Your point is well taken. There is a difference between the statement of the problem and possible solutions. But shooting the messenger does not serve clarity, rather the opposite. Why do that? — tim wood

Tim Wood, it's not that i'm necessarily condoning that behaviour, I'm just saying this is the way it goes. If you enter the political arena and take an (extreme) stand on one side, you will get shot at (metaphorical).

Ofcourse this debate is ideological.

There are two sperate things here.

One is the question whether climate is changing and what the causes and effects are etc. This is a scientific question, and there's pretty much a consensus on this in the scientific community.

And then there is the question of what we can do about it. This is a policy question, and ideologies will certainly play a part in that. There's a host of different things you can do to try to address the problem, all with different pro's and con's having an impact on other policy issues.

Greta Thunberg is essentially akin to a fundamentalist, she only sees this one problem (that of climate change) and doesn't have the knowledge nor life-experience to be able to properly assess the complexity of the policy question.

The fact that someone has it right on the first question doesn't mean their opinion is worth anything on the second question.

She's just a child with views you could expect of an average... child. But then she is being used to sell the ideology of one part of the political spectrum. Ofcourse she will get a lot of flak for that, what do you expect?

One thing that is missing in your rant is maybe the social/moral dimension.

Intelligence relies on doubting. You only get smart by questioning things over a pro-longed period of time. And so it naturally undercuts intuïtions and faith.

Historically and evolutionary, the individual heavily relied on the succes of the group, and so generally anything that threatened the group was frowned upon.

A group of people allways is in flux untill someone establishes dominance and imposses an order so that the group can function as more than a mere collection of individuals, and more as a unit.

To keep everybody functioning in that specific order (and to keep on top), those in power essentially made up stories so that people don't start questioning the imposed order... If the order falls away it's back to flux and a struggle for power, harming the functioning of the group as a unit in the proces (and necessarily also harming the individual that relies on the group).

Intelligentsia are a treat to said order because they question those stories, and so in the proces also threaten the order imposed.

In the end Socrates had to drink his Hemlock for questioning the Gods!

I would have thought Thrasymachus' whole contention would rely on 'pay' and 'self interest' being the only true 'benefit' of the practice.
That must mean that while Thrasymachus acknowledges another type of benefit that isn't monetary, he's contending that the monetary benefit is a primary motivation ahead of any other motivations that he wouldn't see as beneficial at all. — Yanni

'Monetary benefit' and 'self-interest'/'benefit in general' need not be identical. Why couldn't he see other motivations as potentially beneficial?

Yes, I would agree life is important but I would still base it on the merits of that life. The import of a life correlates directly with the important things dine with that life. — DingoJones

But who decides what is important? Who get's to determine what is valuable. The killer and murderer will think his life has value… You seem to be implying some objective standard.

Anyway, I think I agree, I think life is not inherently valuable. That is probably a leftover from religious ages. Though usually people will think their life is valuable, and usually any type of value-system will recognise the value of peoples lifes, because it is at least recognised that people value their own lifes.

But I do think life can have 'negative' value sometimes, to the person itself, and to other people too. In a lot of Western countries euthanasia is legal, precisly because it is recognised that it can happen that a life is not worth living anymore.

"Intrinsic value" is a bit of a problematic concept. We value things, or give a value to somethings as human beings. There's nothing really intrinsically valuable, as in having some objective value in itself outside of someone valuing it.

That said, most people value being alive (as opposed to being dead), as it is a prerequisite for everything else really... you need to be alive before other things even can have value to you.

So even if it is not necessarily sacred or intrinsically valuable, etc... life seems to be pretty important however you slice it.

Yeah I got that, but you wanted to add "conventionally considered" because you seemed to think that was necessary to make some kind of distinction there, whereas I think it is redundant because it can really only be interpreted that way, in the past tense anyway... which is why i wrote what I wrote.

I think we agree, ultimately.

It's morally permissible to do x" is an opinion that someone can have, a way that they can feel about interpersonal behavior. — Terrapin Station

Right, 'It's morally permissible to do x' in the mouth of someone, is then the expression of the moral feelings of that someone.

'It was morally permissible' (past tense) however, can't be an expression of a moral attitude a person wants to voice (because it's the past), but only really makes sense as a description, of a group of people having had those moral feelings. If it only was one person then it seems like you would specify that, right (person x had that moral feeling)?

Maybe you think it doesn't makes a whole lot of sense to make those 'it was'- statements about moral feelings because not all people had the same feelings etc.... but I think it's a meaningful statement one can make. There's a sense in which the overal moral feelings concerning slavery have changed over the years, across the board... so that you can make meaningful descriptive 'it was'-statements about it.

Likewise, present-tense 'it is morally acceptable'-statements can also be descriptive if enough people agree, and so they need not be allways expressive.

Do you believe all moral debate is pointless/useless? — Mark Dennis

I'm sure Terrapin Station can answer for himself, but I do want to give you my answer too because I think it's an important question, and our meta-ethical stances seem to overlap at least to some extend.

In the absence of objective morality and moral claims not having truth-value, I think it is even more important to have moral dialogue. Because one consequence of that view is that you cannot just find or discover moral facts, we have to create or construct them. Dialogue then serves a vital role to refine, clarify and generally evolve your moral ideas.

Furthermore the only way to get to some kind of morality that transcends individual moral stances, which I think is necessary to live together somewhat successfully in groups, is to agree on certain moral ideas... and agreement necessarily implies that you debate what you want to agree on first.

We could say that it was true that it was conventionally considered morally permissible. That's an important distinction to make. — Terrapin Station

Sure, though I'm not entirely sure what "it was morally permissible" could mean otherwise in the absence of an objective morality.

The US tends to produce do-gooders. A less famous example is Herbert Hoover, who felt it was important to lead a multi-national team to rescue starving Russians. They discovered that they couldn't distribute aid because the railroad had broken down. So they fixed the railroad. Little did the participants know: Lenin wanted those people to starve to death. Bizarre, but true.

If you read the article posted in the OP, Buchanan gives more recent examples of the same thing: interference that proceeded from good intentions (to protect the development of democratic nations), but that 1) is costly to the US, and 2) is not welcomed by the affected regions. — frank

Political and military action usually isn't decided by one person. There may be exceptions sure (especially for smaller interventions), but usually there is a process of determining those decisions that involves a dialogue and weighing pro's and con's etc... Maybe this will sound overly cynical, but I find it hard to believe that the protection of the development of other democratic nations would be the only or even the first motive of any larger scale military action.

Beyond that, I think the world should shift to looking at China as a peace-keeper, not the US. — frank

I can understand that sentiment considering all that has happened over the last 70 years... but I can't really see it ending well with China as a peacekeeper.

What I hope for is some kind of power equilibrium developing between the US and China, and then some sensible leaders ala Roosevelt coming together and devising a supranational organisation, backed up with some real power and legitimacy, to end the whole superpower-peacekeeper situation.

Perhaps the problem here is that the opposite for isolationism doesn't have to be interventionism. The thing is that you can participate very actively in international organizations, without intervening in the affairs of other countries. The only thing is to respect the sovereignty of other states as you want others to respect yours.

That's it.

You don't have to close your borders, retreat to North Korea -type isolationism or leave international organizations and look at them as having sinister plans against you. You just opt out from the use interventions. Especially military ones. — ssu

Ideally yes, I would certainly prefer it if the world could mature in such a way that this is a viable strategy. But I don't know if, historically, the US allways had the luxury to stand back. Well maybe it could have done that, but then it probably wouldn't be in the position it is now. Presumably if the US would've refrained from intervening, some other country, like say Russia, would have.

How so? — frank

It think governments allways try to do what is in their best interest of their country in the first place (as opposed doing things that are in the interest of other countries in the first place). And their best interest then usually is economic prosperity and security.

That is the goal, and then there are different strategies one might presume to achieve that goal... like isolationism and interventionism.

argumentum ad populum fallacy — Terrapin Station

To clarify, I'm not saying I believe it's true, I'm saying a lot of people believe it's true. I'm with you on this, I think, that true and false don't really apply to moral claims.

That's the argumentum ad populum fallacy, and it results in saying that it's true that it's morally permissible to have slaves (if you're in the US in the 1820s in the South), that it's true that it's morally permissible in certain historical tribal settings to cannibalize neighboring tribes, etc. — Terrapin Station

But it is true that it was morally permissible to have slaves in the South of the US in the 1820's.

What's your point? Let me guess... relativism?

It's just that that stuff is irrelevant when we're talking about the ontological status of moral stances re whether they can be true or false. You're not going to say every single thing about every aspect of morality every time it comes up. You'd have to write a book over and over. — Terrapin Station

Sure. I happen to think it's a vital aspect though if you want to understand how morality and the world works. It's also the reason why a lot of people believe morality is objective, and can be true or false.... well at least after mere convention becomes tied up into some kind of metaphysics. True or false is the context of morality simply means whether or not it is in accordance with fixed convention... the convention part often gets forgotten.

The reason I buy moral noncognitivism/subjectivism is that I want to get right what the world is like, and it's clear to me, via empirical and logical/reasoned means, that morality is simply dispostions that people have about interpersonal behavior that they consider more significant than etiquette. Moral stances aren't found in the extramental world, so there's nothing there to match or fail to match (so that utterances can be true or false). — Terrapin Station

And.... people agree on certain dispositions and enforce those agreements. Those agreements in turn influence what moral stances people adopt. Moral stances aren't found in the external world, but morality is very real in that there are consequences if you fail to match it.

It seems to me that if you want to get right what the world is like, this should at least be part of your description ;-).

Why do we think US interventionism has been anything but America first? Isolationism or interventionism is only a matter of strategy on how to best attain ultimately the same goal.

I think altruism is a better kind of egoism because we are part of the whole.... the US, like most other countries, cannot be un-tied from the global market anymore, and so it unavoidably has a stake in the stability of that market.

But didn't Merkel say it was time for Europe to start findong new allies (can't remember how she put it). Was that just bluster? — frank

Yes I think it was a bit of politcial postering mostly… in reaction to Trump saying all kinds of things like treatening to cancel the nato-agreement if Europe didn't spend more on its military.

But there may be some kind of sentiment to sail a more independant course from the US too. But frankly, I don't think Europe is up to it at this moment, and for the foreseable future. If you look at the military of the whole of Europe, it just pales in comparison with that of the US... and there isn't even a political unity on foreign affairs and the military to begin with.

In the most recent policy documents of the new European Commission, you will find a lot proposals to find an answer to the 'treat' of China. When it comes down to it, I think Europe much rather has the US dominating the world then China. Hong Kong is a nice reminder for that. Contra to what 'God must be an atheist' says about Europeans, most of us value our individuality… Chinese collectivism is completely antithetical to that.

None of that matters all that much, we come from the same catholic cultural root.

And seriously, Europe borrowed most of it's cultural icons from Russia? Social democrats and communists have allways been sworn enemies, because the social democrats betrayed the revolution.

It's just illogical until you see who's benefiting from this arrangement. BC nailed it. Globalism means global domination and it's not really the USA that dominates. It's certain entities who've learned to use the USA as a tool. That will change as nations learn not to trust the USA, when they realize they need to look to Russia or China for their defense instead of the US. — frank

I don't think that will change that easily. I think a lot of people have known for a very long time what the US was up to… the Marshal Plan wasn't exactly that altruistic act to save the European allies from their demise. Its goal was in the first place to create a strong buffer to contain the communist threat (and saveguard US position as a superpower) and to create a market for the excess production capacity the US had build up during the war. It's all there in the historic record.

Europe will continue to follow the US, not necessarily because they trust the US, but because it's the best option they have. It's not as if China or Russia are to be trusted, as nobody really is in geopolitics. Besides, ideologically Europe, and a large part of the world for that matter, is much closer to the US than to China or Russia, and that still amounts to some trust everything else being equal.

So, I'd like to use the claim that "future people have no standing at all" as a baseline for discussion and ask for your opinions and reasons as to why this statement is correct of false, given the system of moral philosophy you ascribe to.

With that said, what are your thoughts? — Echarmion

I'd start from the opposite assumption, that future people have as much standing as currently existing people, in theory at least. Because if you would know with certainty that you acting a certain way now will kill a person 100 years from now, that person will have been as real as people living now.

In practice however I think there are certain objections to this. For one the further you go in the future the less certain your knowledge of the impact of your actions becomes. And it makes sense to give more moral weight to certain harmful outcomes than uncertain ones.

Another objection follows from who we are as human beings. We typically feel more for people closer to us, in time... but also in distance. This is the basically the same reason I disagree with someone like Peter Singer who thinks one ought to treat a person across the globe morally the same way as someone next door. It just won't work... because it makes abstraction of moral intuitions and ways in which people tend to behave.

The best reason to care for the future, for me, is maybe more an aesthetic than moral one. There's a certain joy or satisfaction in working together with other people to create a future. And the idea that things will go to hell is depressing.... even if I wouldn't be there anymore. I dunno, maybe this is even akin to religious feelings in that it gives some kind of larger purpose or justification to what you are doing now.

Fair enough. Since I know it's origins, I cannot really see what it would tell you if you didn't know it. I understand that viewing history as some kind of great cycle is appealing to many, though I don't think the facts actually support it. — Echarmion

Some things appear to be kind of cyclical, some are definitely not, like say technological progress. I didn't mean to imply some sort of general deterministic cyclical theory of history, which is why I shouldn't have posted the image because it certainly can be interpreted that way. But to be fair to myself :-), I did nuance it directly below the image:

Still I don't think it needs to end as badly for the US as with all other empires in history, because times are very different now. — ChatteringMonkey

Not in and of itself, but in this case it directly supports a view of history of cyclic, where "strength" and "weakness" are the governing factors, and where men need to be kept "strong" by rigid discipline and hardship. — Echarmion

I think, on the face of, it doesn't imply that, there's nothing in the picture that says that that is the only contributing factor. And there's certainly nothing in the picture as far as I can tell that implies a certain kind of normative or political action (which is not to say that that wasn't the original intent).

I intended it purely descriptive, as I captures some element that I think is true of history... though I shouldn't have posted it on a philosophy forum, because ultimately it is a merely an oversimplification... and not all that clarifying really.

You're aware that the picture you're sharing here is literally fascist propaganda? — Echarmion

No I wasn't aware of that... But does it matter where it comes from?

I think the US will be fine.

Economic power determines geo-political power, because among other things, it funds the military. And a strong military de facto gets you a good seat at the diplomatic table.

Future economic power will be determined by new technologies, especially AI. Whoever dominates that market, will pull ahead economically. And as it stands the US leads that race with Silicon valley. Maybe China can somewhat challenge the US with Shenzhen, but nobody else in the world comes close at this point.

So the likely scenario is that the pie will be divided largely between the US and China, but since China still remains somewhat isolated ideologically, the US will probably find allies more easily if it behaves somewhat reasonably going forward.

Among the history buffs on the forum, is this sort of thing normal for nations to go through? Or is it something particularly American? — frank

It's not all that surprising...



Still I don't think it needs to end as badly for the US as with all other empires in history, because times are very different now.

Hume believed in the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Constantly throughout the Treatise he is inquiring after the cause of certain mental events. It's funny that he doesn't like the principle of sufficient reason regarding the external material world, but he is a true believer regarding mental events. Hume believes our thoughts are caused by impressions, ideas, contiguity, resemblance, connection, imagination. He comes up with all kinds of causes for mental events, but he want to suspend judgment on material objects. — Ron Cram

Yes, this was Humes point, or one of his many points... that we want to see causes even if they are not necessarily there in world. That's a psychological truth, and not a metaphysical one like the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

If an apple drops from a tree, it still falls to the ground. It does not go into orbit following a curved spacetime. Attraction exists. The warping of spacetime explains planetary motion precisely, but I don't see that it is explains gravitational attraction on the surface of earth. — Ron Cram

I'm pretty sure this is just wrong, the apple does falls to the ground because of curved spacetime. The surface of the earth is not excluded from Einsteins theory of general relativity. It's only on the very small scales that it breaks down.

Causes and effects are necessary due to the Principle of Sufficient Reason. — Ron Cram

I don't wholly buy into the Principle of Sufficient Reason either.

False. What is true on classical scales does not have to be true on quantum scales. Also, Sean Carroll didn't mention this, but Einstein was correct when he said that GR and QM will never be unified because the spacetime continuum cannot be quantized. — Ron Cram

How could you possibly know this, are you a theoretical physicist? Even they don't know if unification is possible or not. Sean Carroll thinks "quantizing" is a wrongheaded approach because you are starting from a classical framework and trying to incorporated quantum mechanics. He thinks QM is more fundamental and we should start from there and try to find space, time and gravity in QM...

Anyway, if unification is not possible, one theory will have to be revised. That's what they do agree on, and the non-compatibility can't just be waved away with things behaving differently on smaller and larger scales because in some cases the smaller and the larger scale coïncide, i.e. black holes and the big bang.

The term "fundamentally" and "metaphysically" are not synonymous. — Ron Cram

Alright, what does metaphysical mean then, if it doesn't include the fundamental?

False. Sean Carroll is a modern physicist. He knows that we live in the classical scale universe and the video admits that cause and effect play a role in our everyday lives. — Ron Cram

But nobody believes that we shouldn't divide things up into causes and effects in our everyday lives, not even Hume. The point is that cause and effect are just conveniences, for our understanding, not a fundamental law of the universe, which was what Hume was arguing against.

The use of "cause and effect" to describe the warping of the universe causing the attraction of gravity is exactly right. — Ron Cram

No it's not, that's a Newtonian way of speaking about it. There is no attraction, mass curves spacetime, and the curve of spacetime determines how masses move. Singling out causes and effects to describe a proces where everything influences everthing else seems to only complicate the matter unnecessarily.

The math between Newton and Einstein is very, very close. Newton's equations are much easier to work with and precise enough on smaller astronomical scales, that NASA used Newton's equations to plan the manned flight to the moon instead of Einstein's. — Ron Cram

Sure, Newton's equation works in most cases, but Einsteins is more accurate and general because it also works in extreme cases. And even if it's only a refinement in math, it's a paradigm shift in what kind of worldview it gives rise to. A physics equation often can be interpreted in a myriad of different ways, like for instance QM-equations now. Usually one only starts to make progress again if one changes the way one interprets things… like it was the case with the devellopment of QM.

You're ignoring the important point, that Hume didn't say what you think he said.

The words "fundamental level" refer to quantum scales. Hume was not aware of quantum mechanics so don't try to force him to take a position he never took. In the video you linked, Sean Carroll admits that causes and effects are known on the classical scale. — Ron Cram

Hume only made a sceptical argument about Causation, namely that (on a macro-level) we don't see anything like a mechanism or law of Causation, which was inferred by others at the time. For Causation to be true metaphysically it has to be true on a more fundamental level too, or what would 'metaphysical' mean otherwise?

On a classical scale means on the surface, emergent... that is not fundamentally or metaphysically. Causes and effects only emerge from more fundamental properties of the universe, like those described in particle physics and the fact that the universe happened to start out low entropy.

Edit: The point is not that Hume took a modern physics point of view, but that he was sceptical of people inferring something they had no evidence for. And as it turns out modern physics seems to justify his scepticism.

Newton did not assign a cause for gravity, he simply described it as a centripetal force without being able to assign a cause for the attraction. Einstein came with a deeper and more precise theory which explained the cause of the attraction as the warping of the spacetime continuum. — Ron Cram

I don't think causes (and effects) are the best vocabulary to use here, the curvature of spacetime doesn't exactly 'cause' attraction... Edit: ... and although some of the math stayed the same, the whole paradigm has changed.

You are arguing against a strawmen, Hume didn't deny the world can be split up into causes and effects for practical purposes,... he was after capital C Causality as a underlying metaphysical law. His motivation was to undercut the unbroken chain of Causality all the way back to an original creator, which gave theist an argument for God.

Also modern physics actually agree with Hume that causes and effects or Causality don't really exist at a fundamental level, things move according to a pattern, no causes and effects are necessary. Here's a vid where this is explained clearly and briefly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AMCcYnAsdQ

And a final point, on could argue that even though on an everyday basis Newton's law of gravity holds as an accurate mathematical description, his picture of gravity is fundamentally wrong. There's no 'force of gravity' or "masses attracting eachother"... gravity is the curvature of space.

That's not going to happen. Given [insert local history here] it simply is the case that people of ethnicity X are liable to be in danger from people of ethnicity Y in the places where people of ethnicity Y rule the roost and there is a history of conflict. This applies to honkeys in the South African townships, and blacks almost anywhere in the US or Europe. Only if you are of ethnicity Y that rules the roost can you afford to ignore the obvious facts of life on some theoretical principle.

One comes to assume these things because they are true, not because genes or skin colour make it true, but because social forces make it true. Just as Germans tend to speak German despite there being no gene for speaking German and no distinct race of Germans. It is a wonder to me that seemingly educated folks hereabouts cannot get their heads around this. — unenlightened

It is a complex problem because self-labelling also becomes a factor... i.e. it's not merely true because [generic] "social forces" make it true, but also because the minorities themselves begin to self-identify with those labels and self-identify as victims.

I think it then becomes a valid question to ask whether we should continue to use those labels even though there is some historical social reality to it that still affects those minorities.

I agree with the description, but not necessarily with the prescription....I don't think anybody really 'knows' how to solve this problem.

Brexit is about sovereignty I think, more then specifically neoliberalism.

A bureaucratic EU that is notoriously hard to maneuver, has been a torn in the eye of many UK actors seeking to be in controle. It effectively reduced their agency from being relevant powerbrokers in a world-empire, to that of one of countless pawns of a member-state in a EU that saw it's position decline over the years.

The specifics of the ideology matter less then the brute fact of being in a position of controle I'd think, although some sort of neo-liberalism would seem to be a nice fit in that it conveniently happens to have the effect of channeling wealth into the hands of a few.

Anyway, I disagree that ideology is the main driving factor here eventhough there are undoubtedly some true believers that swallowed it whole.

That strikes me as the main reason new life doesn't come into being. If it takes 100s of millions of years for it to "evolve" from non-living matter, we would never see it "pop" into extence. Even the simplist life is incredibly complex. That leaves a very big door open for development to be disrupted by other life or changed conditions. Seems like it would take a very long period of stable conditions to life to develop abiotically. — T Clark

We don't know how long it actually took to develop live from existing complex molecules, and i'm no biologist, but yes, that seems a plausible hypothesis.

Edit: I like that you put evolve in quotes there, because abiogenisis is not evolution. For evolution you need reproduction, and then you get a self-perpetuating proces. Molecules don't reproduce, so it seems to have been some random re-combination of complex molecules. And maybe this is a proces that doesn't built on itself (in that you have to start over each time)... And so it seems to be a chance event where a lot of time is not necessarily a prerequisite for it to happen (unlike say the evolution from a single cell to dinosaurs that does need a lot of generations). Say for example there is a 0,1% chance of that specific combination to happen given certain complex molecules, then it could happen anywhere between a day from now, a million years... or never, but the proces itself doesn't necessarily takes a lot of time.

3.5 billion years ago, which is actually pretty fast after the earth became somewhat suited for life. Then it took a very long time to evolve multi cellular life. But by and large, yes, genetics show that life now can be traced back to the very first life... and lots of bottlenecks caused by extinctions-events and changes in circumstance (geology, climate and composition of atmosphere) got us where we are now.

Consider the following :

- Abiogenisis is probably a very rare event, which may or may not require conditions that are very different from the conditions now.
- The earth is relatively speaking pretty big for us to monitor in detail, the detail necessary to see microscopic little life. Futhermore, abiogenisis is hypothesized to have happened in deep sea near thermal vents, which is not a place we frequent all that often.
- When abiogenisis first happened on earth, there was no other life that could compete with new life. Now the earth is teeming with all kinds of life that allready went through a long proces of evolution, which could mean that new life is immediately eliminated if it were to pop into existence.

So it doesn't necessarily follow from the fact that we haven't seen new life, that there is no life popping into existence via abiogenisis now. It could very well be that it does still happen now, but that we just arent' there to see it.

Ok fine... it's not that important for the discussion. What I meant was that experiments have verified the math, and that however you want to interpret that math, apparently something weird is going on, either you end up with things in a state of superposition, spooky action at a distance or many worlds etc... .

It's about quantum indeterminacy until the observer appears. That's literally the whole point of the example. — Artemis

No it's not. Here an excerpt from the link you posted in response to my first post :

But—and this was Schrödinger’s point—the quantum theory of Bohr had no principled means of confining the smeariness to microscopic scale. Schrödinger proposed placing the radioactive atom near a Geiger counter, and then hooking the Geiger counter up with a device that would smash a flask of hydrocyanic acid if the atomic decay is detected, thereby killing a cat. If the wave function of the system always evolves in accord with Schrödinger’s equation and if the wave function provides a complete description of the system, then the smeariness of the electron will inevitably be amplified to macroscopic scale into a smeariness of the cat itself: just as the electron was not in any particular location, the cat would end up objectively “smeared out” between being alive and dead! And that would, indeed, be in the most severe possible conflict with common sense beliefs about cats!

https://iai.tv/articles/quantum-theory-and-common-sense-auid-1254

Then you don't seem to understand what Shrödinger's cat was about. — Artemis

I think I do, it's about quantum indeterminacy, not necessarily about the measurement problem. The absurdity is that the cat would be in a state of superposition, both dead and alive.