A reply to Mike's reply

Thanks for the reply, Mike. 

So is the Schroedinger's Cat thing just a way to explain quantum mechanics? It's just a teaching tool, right? It's not really saying anything about a real cat being alive or dead in a box, right? The same thing with your coin analogy, right? If you consider universes branching off and shit I could see that the coin is both heads and tails when you take that into consideration but in the our universe isn't the coin one or the other?


Also, yeah, when anyone says that everything has been predetermined since the Big Bang they're making a bold claim. It feels like, even if no one knew anything about quantum mechanics, they would still not know shit, I feel. It's just such an assertion without much proof to back it up. It's like an gross extrapolation of good some good science to the point that it's been extrapolated so much no one knows their ass from their elbow anymore.


And my last questions for now:

How does observing it affect it? Why is an observer so important? If a dolphin or ant observed something, would the same thing happen as when a human did? Why would these things on a quantum level "choose" to act differently when being observed? How would they "know" they're being observed?