Is Schrödinger's cat alive or dead?

The cat is alive or dead, settled inside the box, with no need for anyone to open the lid. Schrödinger invented the cat in 1935 as an attack, arguing that a theory letting an atom smear a live animal across two states had produced something ridiculous, and the joke became the theory's best-known exhibit. The confusion comes from the word observer. An observer is any bounded system that keeps a record and acts on it. A photographic plate qualifies, and so does a detector whose reading works a lever. Consciousness plays no part. When a record is written, the alternatives it resolved are discarded. Eugene Wigner once argued that a mind was needed, then abandoned the idea over one question: whose mind, and what were all the other minds looking at meanwhile?

Also in Chapter 33: Why Was Every Open Problem the Same Problem?, Appendix A: Eighteen Questions.