[constant escape (OP)]

Still feeling out this forum, and still very early in a physics education, so my approach to much of this is philosophical or conceptual rather than properly scientific.

That said, I've been thinking a lot about ideology, and experimenting with the formation and development of ideology. Its all very influenced by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, who regularly employ the prefix schizo- to refer to a structure that has more than one center, or movement that has more than one direction - anything that cannot really be reduced down to a central essence from which everything else develops. Still early in studying them, as well.

But I'm inclined to think of schizo-system as a sort of inconsistent system, a system that is comprised of multiple contradicting structures. And, again, I have a naive understanding of quantum mechanics, but I tend to think of a schizo-system as some kind of superposition of structures, thus lending the system a sort of unstable quality. Which would be the reason hierarchies, structures with single centers, tend to form: to stabilize the structure of systems.

So I guess I'm just asking for opinions, explanations, or leads regarding this. Is there some kind of metric for quantum superposition, and is atomic instability a sort of symptom of a high enough measure of superposition? Or is the whole point that superposition, as a quantum mechanic, underpins all of classical mechanics without exhibiting any clear symptoms?

[Colin2B]

......but I tend to think of a schizo-system as some kind of superposition of structures, thus lending the system a sort of unstable quality.

So I guess I'm just asking for opinions, explanations, or leads regarding this. Is there some kind of metric for quantum superposition, and is atomic instability a sort of symptom of a high enough measure of superposition? Or is the whole point that superposition, as a quantum mechanic, underpins all of classical mechanics without exhibiting any clear symptoms?

Superposition in QM does not imply instability. It’s a way of describing the properties of quantum systems.
Simple example. Let’s say we have a vector in a Cartesian coordinate space x, y. We can describe that vector as having 2 component vectors ix &jy; or to put it another way a superposition of ix and jy.
Similarly, certain quantum properties can be described by complex vectors, eg spin, and we can also describe these as superpositions of 2 other vectors.
Obviously, I’m simplifying this, but you get the idea, this really is not to do with instability.

[constant escape (OP)]

Yeah I still have to better understand much of that, but I think I get it enough for the question to be cleared up. Thanks for explaining.

[Colin2B]

Yeah I still have to better understand much of that, but I think I get it enough for the question to be cleared up. Thanks for explaining.

If you are studying physics then much of this will become clearer. At this stage it is probably worth adding that an important aspect of QM is that it gives us a measure of our knowledge of a system. As an example lets say we have a system eg electron for which a particular property can have 2 states (call them 0 & 1) and we know from experiment that each of these states have equal (0.5) probability of occurrence. We don’t know which state the system is in until we measure it - it is considered to be indeterminate. So QM allows us to consider the system as being mathematically composed of a superposition of the 2 states which we can use until such time as we take a measurement when we say the wave function has collapsed into a known state, in other words we now know what state it is in.
There are QM interpretations that say the system is in both states and hasn’t decided which until measured, but I tend to stick with what is usable.

[constant escape (OP)]

Any purchase to the theory that the collapse occurs, in response to external forces, as a means of arbitrating the development of nature? Really lacking the terms here, but I'll try rephrasing it.

Instead of the physical content of the cosmos being predetermined, perhaps it determines itself piece by discrete piece, albeit perhaps in a vastly parallel fashion, and each piece is determined in reaction to already-determined forces acting upon it, such that each new determination is virtually unforeseeable/indeterminable from a prior position?

All that would need to be predetermined is the manner in which a superpositioned... bit (?) would respond to external forces. A sort of algorithm, I suppose, or something that lays out the basic parameters of determination. Once the parameters are established, an autopoietic cosmos can be executed, with effectively unpredictable systems arising, due to the sheer number of determinations that would unfold?

Just deferring to computational lingo here, not that I really understand that either.

[yor_on]

Try this one and see how you can fit it in. http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/qm/Quantum/node2.html