Nerd Alert! Several wasted hours in Sims last night prompted me to think of this connection, so I share it in hopes that someone as nerdy as I finds delight in this comparison as well.
Schrödinger's Cat is a thought experiment which points to a paradox in quantum mechanics when it's applied to everyday objects. A cat is placed in a box, along with a means of death. Theory predicts that because we can't see the cat, it's simultaneously alive and dead inside the box. If we open the box, however, it will be either alive or dead, but not both at once.
Sims AI application: I've become very annoyed with my Sims family. I moved two YA sisters out of the main family house, and into a house next door with two spouses I created for them, in hopes that they would be fertile and multiply
on their own. I fixed up the house with a nursery for 3, twin beds for 3, double beds for each couple, the usual toddler and child toys, gave them Family Oriented trait and Fertility Treatment LTR and waited. Nothing happened, no babies, so I sent a sim to visit them and saw that the brothers were sleeping in one double bed, the sisters in the other. Very reluctantly, I switched households and made them woohoo, trying for babies. Success.
See, this house is like Schrödinger's cat box. When no one is "visiting" them, a peek into through the window shows it to be empty of furniture, with sims standing in place or else floating horizontally on invisible beds. However, when the main family visits them and the front door opens, they snap into action and furniture appears within. They only come into being when directly observed. Until then, they're in a semi-simmy state, just potential, not actuality.
I keep an eye on the pregnant household from afar until I peek through the window and see a non-pregnant mom inside an empty house, standing still. Hooray, the babies have been born! I send a family member over, who is let inside, and 4 parents and 4 babies plus furniture are all inside. Here's the part where it gets weird for me. I only made room for 3 babies, so one newborn is on the floor. Oh, and the moms and dads are sleeping with their siblings, not their mates. Still.
If I hadn't peeked inside the box, they would have happily carried out their Simish life, but I couldn't let things remain that way. Reminding myself that this is
a pretend family within a pretend family, I ignore myself and again switch households (ouch) to remodel the house to add room for 4 kids. I delete the parents' beds and place new ones and the appropriate sims onto them, establishing the correct bed ownership so that spouses can sleep together. Of course my main family loses all wishes for the second time due to the switch. After all the time I spent remodeling the house and correcting the bed situation, I realized how unnecessary it was.
My point is (the disturbing "pretend" nature of this family aside) the baby was only deprived of its own bed once the front door opened to my visitor. Before that, and after the visitor left, it was a happy AI baby living the way AI babies do (in a state of potential, not actuality). When I switched families and visited, the cribless baby came into being, and that bothered me. For that matter, maybe lots of AI Sims share a bed with the wrong people, who knows? They're in the box. They're simultaneously happy and terribly wrong. They only become appropriate or inappropriate when they open the front door.
