Hopefully this might be slightly clearer.
If you already know about
Schrodinger's Cat
then good, if not then go read about it now.
Great so you now know that the state of the
cat is uncertain until "observed",
i.e. until the box is opened.
Eugine Wigner suggested that you
place the box in a locked room with
a person in the room.
You let the person in the room observe the cat,
but you have no way of knowing what that observation is,
so until the door is opened the person in
the room has observed a dead cat and observed
an alive cat (i.e. he is in a superposition
of states) until the door is opened.
This is obviously ridiculous and the paradox
was proposed to point out the fact that the act of observation is not clearly defined.
You can constuct a hierarchy of rooms
and observers until the entire universe
is in such a superposition,
again what does it mean to observe ?
I'm fucked if I know
To the present day the fourth postulate of quantum mechanics, the collapse of the wavefunction postulate,
remains problematic in science. oh well.
tdent says
"I don't necessarily agree that the person being in a superposition is 'obviously ridiculous'... although it is certainly problematic." I agree with
tdent on this. It is the interesting question.