What Schrödinger’s cat REALLY means

The idea that a superposition doesn't mean its one or the other and we just don't know which - that its something else - isn't quite correct. The thing is, in QM one is dealing with state descriptions that are only capable of providing probabilities of where a particle is, because more precise information is inherently unknowable. And a physical scenario A where we can at most predict that the particle is 50% likely to be at position x1 and 50% likely to be at x2 is a different physical scenario to B the one where we can predict that it is 100% likely to be at x1 and 0% likely to be at x2, which is in turn different to C where its 100% likely to be at x2 and 0% likely to be at x1. Scenario A is a superposition of B and C, and this does not mean that the scenario is either B or C and we don't know which, A,B and C are three different physical scenarios. But, this also doesn't mean that in the 50% split scenario A that the particle is in some sort of limbo, we are still dealing with standard knowledge based probability, but it is a case of different physical scenarios corresponding to different probabilistic predictions. Even though A is a different physical scenario to either of B or C, it is still the case that the particle is either at position x1 or x2 but we don't know which and can't know unless a measurement takes place which changes the whole physical scenario. Trying to interpret the superposition as the particle being in limbo is one of the things that produces irrational nonsense. With the cat there is the additional complication that it is a multi-particle system which is not correctly modeled as simply two situations alive vs dead. See for example "From Micro to Macro Quantum Systems" by K. Kong Wan for a treatment on how to deal with cats and why it's nonsense to even talk of a superposition of an alive or dead cat.