The cat isn't in a superposition the particle triggering the poison is. The cat is either dead or alive upon opening the box. So the experience of the person is that he was alive in a box if he's still able to answer questions.

I believe Schrodinger's rhetorical point was to drive home the absurd nature of superposition with a life-size example. Even the proverbial cat wouldn't be both alive and dead, which is only a metaphor for the indeterminate state of the supposed object of measurement. (Read ChatGPT's assessment of this response here.)

'Whenever I hear of Schrodinger's Cat, I reach for my gun' ~ Stephen Hawking

'What did you do to the cat, Erwin? It looks half-dead!' ~ Mrs Schrodinger.

By the way, I love Zizek’s take - ‘quantum physics has caught God with his pants down’:

https://youtube.com/shorts/ywVHFo1na38?si=7Jp75TEU0q5BkLGF

This is Wigner's friend.

Wigner observes John.

John measures a particle spin but doesn't tell Wigner the result.

From Wigner's perspective, is John in a superposition?

We had a long thread on Wigner's friend already, with @noAxioms, @Andrew M, @andrewk and @boundless going into it.

The cat isn't in a superposition the particle triggering the poison is. The cat is either dead or alive upon opening the box. So the experience of the person is that he was alive in a box if he's still able to answer questions. — Benkei

I think this depends on whether or not something like objective-collapse theory is correct. If it's not then there's no "size limit" to a superposition. If a particle having one spin will result in one macroscopic outcome (the cat is dead) and the particle having another spin will result in another macroscopic outcome (the cat is alive), then the macroscopic outcome is in a superposition until measured.

From here:

According to objective collapse theories, superpositions are destroyed spontaneously (irrespective of external observation) when some objective physical threshold (of time, mass, temperature, irreversibility, etc.) is reached. Thus, the cat would be expected to have settled into a definite state long before the box is opened. This could loosely be phrased as "the cat observes itself" or "the environment observes the cat".

The question was specific to the schrödinger cat setup, where the cat is replaced. The cat is not in a superposition there either - which in any case is not a state of being but a consequence of epistomological limitations of knowledge of a given system.

The cat is not in a superposition there either — Benkei

It is according to some interpretations of quantum mechanics, e.g. Copenhagen, Von Neumann, and Many-worlds.

which in any case is not a state of being but a consequence of epistomological limitations of knowledge of a given system. — Benkei

I believe this entails local hidden variables, which have been disproven. Superposition isn't just an epistemological limitation but a literal fact.

I also wondered what a chat bot would say about such a thing since there's so much BS in the training material. Bottom line is that science uses methodological naturalism, and hence has a very clear answer tot the question. The only conundrums that result are from when that methodology is denied.

This thought experiment is well covered in the literature in the Wigner's friend scenario. I notice chatGPT doesn't mention Wigner's friend.

— RogueAI

ChatGPT]there's a philosophical and conceptual conundrum regarding what the human would experience or perceive during that time. —

There is not. The live human will experience nothing out of the ordinary, and will experience not getting killed. The science is very clear about this. That certain philosophical stances might disagree with this seems to be a problem with the philosophical position, and not with science.

ChatGPT]as consciousness typically arises from classical processes in the brain, which are not well-described by quantum mechanics. —

If one presumes that consciousness arises from classical processes in the brain, then the answer is clear, but chatGPT apparently doesn';t see it. The conundrum only appears when different assumptions (woo) are made.

ChatGPT]Therefore, when the box is opened and the human is found to be alive, asking the human "what was it like to be in a superposition?" might not yield a meaningful answer. The human's subjective experience would likely begin at the moment of observation, just like our experience when waking up from a dreamless sleep or regaining consciousness after anesthesia. —

Ouch. So it says the human will not remember being in the closed box. Science says nothing of the sort.

The cat isn't in a superposition the particle triggering the poison is. — Benkei

The cat is entangled with the particle state, so it, and the bottle, are all very much in superposition. Keep in mind that there's pretty much no actual way to do it with a cat. They've done it with macroscopic objects, but only by putting it in conditions under which no living thing would survive. The problem is the box. The box must be something that can hold a cat, and yet can prevent any information about the box contents from escaping. Maybe if the box is put in deep space and is surrounded by multiple shells of shielding, none touching the others.

I believe Schrodinger's rhetorical point was to drive home the absurd nature of superposition with a life-size example. — Wayfarer

It was, because the outcome was considered absurd at the time, but no longer. Schrodinger also envisioned a simple iron box, which hardly works. But then, Copenhagen was the only interpretation around at the time, and it was an epistemological interpretation, and epistemologically, the cat state is simply unknown (indeterminate as you put it). But it turns out that one can perform an experiment to demonstrate the superposition of macroscopic states (this has been done), so the absurdity turns out to be reality.

This is Wigner's friend.

Wigner observes John.

John measures a particle spin but doesn't tell Wigner the result.

From Wigner's perspective, is John in a superposition? — Michael

Yes, the OP describes Wigner's friend, but your summary doesn't. It has nothing to do with somebody holding a secret. It has to do with putting a human in the box. This is an attach against the Wigner interpretation, the only interpretation where humans play a significant role. Wigner himself abandoned the interpretation because it leads to solipsism.

We had a long thread on Wigner's friend already — Benkei

You should have linked the thread

Michael quoting Wiki:

According to objective collapse theories, superpositions are destroyed spontaneously (irrespective of external observation) when some objective physical threshold (of time, mass, temperature, irreversibility, etc.) is reached.

OK. Those sorts of thresholds seem to limit what one can put in a box. It isn't a spontaneity thing, it's a thing simply too energetic to isolate into a closed system.

in any case is not a state of being but a consequence of epistomological limitations of knowledge of a given system. — Benkei

Only an epistemological interpretation (old Copenhagen) would say this. Pretty much all interpretations since are metaphysical interpretations with describe what is, not what any particular observer knows. Humans play no special role in wave function collapse, except in that solipsistic Wigner interpretation.

It has nothing to do with somebody holding a secret. It has to do with putting a human in the box. — noAxioms

I was just trying to paraphrase the Wikipedia article.

However, unless Wigner is considered in a "privileged position as ultimate observer", the friend's point of view must be regarded as equally valid, and this is where an apparent paradox comes into play: From the point of view of the friend, the measurement result was determined long before Wigner had asked about it, and the state of the physical system has already collapsed. When exactly did the collapse occur? Was it when the friend had finished their measurement, or when the information of its result entered Wigner's consciousness?

Only an epistemological interpretation (old Copenhagen) would say this. Pretty much all interpretations since are metaphysical interpretations with describe what is, not what any particular observer knows. Humans play no special role in wave function collapse, except in that solipsistic Wigner interpretation. — noAxioms

That makes no sense to me. How can a physical theory say anything about metaphysics?

I was just trying to paraphrase the Wikipedia article. — Michael

OK, so I spent some time on that article, and apparently the Wigner's friend experiment is something completely different than what I've seen described under that name.
Maybe it was one of the extensions to that thought experiment, proposed later by somebody other than Wigner, that I am remembering. The article mentions an extensions by Deutsch and others, but doesn't say what those extension are, and I didn't click on the referenced articles.

Wigner's actual gist is that there are two observers, and one of them knows something about a system that the other doesn't. Each constructs a wave function to describe the system, and the descriptions differ, which is only a contradiction under a version of idealism where actual physical state supervenes on the mental beliefs of humans. Hence only one human can be right, hence solipsism.
This argument can be made for a classical system, so I don't know what it has to do with quantum mechanics.

All that is irrelevant to the topic at hand here. We go instead to what I had mistakenly labeled 'Wigner's friend'. I will modify the experiment a bit to get rid of poison and cats. You put observer F in a box (from which zero state information escapes) who subsequently performs a spin measurement on some particle. If it is spin up, he listens to his 8-track copy of "Hollaback Girl" (where the heck did he get that on 8 track??), and if it is spin down, he gets out a deck of cards and plays solitaire for a while. So according to W on the outside of the box, F is in superposition of card-playing (F52) and music-playing (F8). What is it like to F to be in superposition like that? That's what the OP asked of chatGTP, which gave such a wrong answer.

W subsequently opens the box and F state appears to collapse down to F playing cards, and he reports that everything is quite normal. He did the measurement, got spin down, and what's all the fuss about? This is all in accordance with quantum theory which will predict nothing else.

The philosophical question goes beyond the theory and asks: What is it like to be F8? Here, various interpretations must be invoked, and the answer varies from one to the next.

How can a physical theory say anything about metaphysics? — Benkei

It doesn't. None of the interpretations are physical theory, but some of them are metaphysical interpretations of it.