Schroedinger's Caucus

There has been so much fixation on who the winners of the Iowa caucuses will be. The situation reminds me of a physics thought experiment. Schroedinger's cat, who is alive and dead at the same time.

A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.

It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.

Schrödinger, Erwin (November 1935). "Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik (The present situation in quantum mechanics). Naturwissenschaften. (as translated here.)  

Imagine it.  Right now Obama, Clinton, and Edwards are all winners and losers in Iowa.  Only by tomorrow night will two of the candidates be like Schroedinger's dead cat.

And that is a political parable. And I'm sick to death of the primary season, and it hasn't even started.