Schrodinger’s Hero

April 28

Here’s a thought experiment:

There’s a person who represents the best of all of us. Kind, strong, thoughtful, personable, humble. For lack of a better phrase, we could call them a hero.

We place them in a very large room. In one half the room is a radioactive substance—if they walk to far towards that part of the room, they die. If they stay on the correct side of the room, they live.

(For the sake of the thought experiment, we can give them a comfortable chair and snacks).

The question is, in this thought experiment, can you think of this person as a hero? The answer is almost certainly yes. They’re too secluded from the world to ruin their good nature—there’s no money for them to embezzle or people for them to abuse. No spouses to cheat on or kids to run out on.

They are, dead or alive, a hero. Without any of the complications of the real world. Complications that usually drive us to think “we should choose better heroes.” Because clearly, if those people were really heroic, they wouldn’t have ruined their reputation.

Then again, of course, most heroes fall apart. So it seems life gives us two options:

We can choose not to have heroes, or we can accept them as they are.

Unless Schrodinger gets involved.

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