system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What exactly was Schrodinger trying to prove with “Schrodingers Cat”?
gpt
Schrödinger proposed the cat thought experiment to illustrate the _problems_ with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. It was meant as  a _reductio ad absurdum_, an argument that shows that if you take a train of logic too far, you get silly results. Specifically, the idea of quantum superposition being related to observation — maybe you think it's OK that we can't know the quantum properties of an electron without some kind of observation (e.g., bumping it with a photon), Schrödinger is saying, but if you scale up the issue to macroscopic objects, it becomes just ridiculous! Schrödinger wanted a quantum theory that dispensed with such things like observation-based wave-function collapses and superpositions of states (there are various other ways to try and interpret quantum mechanics that get rid of them). Schrödinger has hardly been the only person to have these objections, and not the only thought experiment to do something like this (e.g., Wigner's friend is another), but his example for whatever reason (perhaps it is just weird enough) is the one people know popularly.

The irony is, of course, that Schrödinger's cat has become _the_ way to explain quantum superposition of the Copenhagen interpretation; it has gone from a ridiculous argument to the easiest way to explain it to laypeople. The difference is, the story becomes a "I know that sounds crazy, but that's how crazy the world really is!" sort of story, as opposed to a "I know that sounds crazy, so it must be wrong!" sort of story.