^^ I would say that yes, it really was a major physicist offering an example, a "Well Duh!" example, for sure, to explain to a whole lot of breathless people -- including other physicists -- why the observations and discoveries being made in quantum mechanics were not mystical, mysterious, or absurd (as was also happening with that slit experiment, BTW, and still is), but just new, and very different. And on top of all that, Schrödinger was actually stating the obvious in simple terms; perhaps his real joke was knowing that no one would get it.
All of this has been explained, plenty of times. The trouble is that such a powerful mythology, even a pop culture, has arisen over the last century about the quirks, paradoxes, and mysteries of quantum mechanics that very few people (aside from actual physicists, of course, who have mostly moved past those mysteries) choose to even try to understand even the simplest of its concepts.
Yes, the math is still only understood by a few, but understanding unusual concepts, like that an electron is different when observed than it is when not observed, is not that hard an idea to grasp, especially with the help of "Well, duh!" examples like Schrödinger's cat -- also Einstein's trains, Galileo's balls, Plato's cave, and probably a hundred other simplistic examples, metaphors, or thought experiments meant to translate extremely new and easily misunderstood concepts to the mystified masses (and I suppose their confused colleagues as well). Explaining very complex ideas with very simple examples is an old tradition, and it is amazing that Schrödinger's Cat is one that has remained so darn mysterious over the years, despite its beautiful simplicity.
Of course I could be wrong ... still waiting for an actual astrophysicist to chime in to correct me!
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