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If you’re redefining the question as “if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does anyone hear it?” that is much easier to answer but also

by baddox 6y ago

If you’re redefining the question as “if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does anyone hear it?” that is much easier to answer but also much less interesting.

namero999 6y ago
Quite the opposite, actually. What compelled me to tune into this thread was the fact that I've felt the question was being redefined as "if a tree falls, does it displace air or creates any sort of physical effect which we might call sound?" which I find, as I'm sure you do too, easy and uninteresting. I think the question is meant to trigger reasoning on a much more deeper level than that, namely what it is to have a conscious experience and how we should go about defining what is real from that perspective.
- vidarh 6y ago
  The redefined question only has an obvious answer if you reject any possibility of a simulated or non-physical reality. If our reality is simulated, or if the idealists are right, then physics might well have temporal and spatial anomalities dependent on observability. Ironically I've just elsewhere on this thread argued that materialism makes sense as long as we can not observe anything to violate it, and as such idealism is largely pointless. I should perhaps have added a qualification that this is true in terms of practical application. That is, we have every reason to assume that the laws of nature are universal, but if they are 'just' universal within the constraints of what we can observe, then while we can continue to act as if they are universal, we may have no way of determining if they are. As such I do think the question has no practical bearing. Yet we can not dismiss the possibility that what we observe as reality takes shortcuts when we're 'not looking'
  - namero999 6y ago
    I definitely do not reject the idea of a non-physical reality. I find myself closer to idealism than materialism, although the needle just started to move in that direction. Yes, you were actually replying to me above. We do already observe plenty of things that violate our current understanding, quantum entanglement being the first that comes to mind, but we definitely do not lack paradoxes as of now. Sure, as I stated earlier, they might just be knowledge holes which we might fill once our experiments become more sophisticated, but then I can't help but sensing faith.
  - baddox 6y ago
    Even if the universe is simulated, it’s likely that a tree falling in the woods does have some minuscule causal link with humans that would require the simulation to simulate not just the tree falling but also all resulting effects according to the physical laws.
    - vidarh 6y ago
      It doesn't matter if there is a causal link unless such a simulation aims to be perfect. If the simulation only aims to be convincing, it can take all kinds of shortcuts. In the latter case it only matters if it is directly or indirectly observed. A simulation might choose to resolve that lazily in the case of indirect observations, in which case it'd only need to determine the proximity of entities deemed to be observers. We have plenty of cases of that in games already, where events only take place if a player entity is present.

by baddox 6y ago

If you’re redefining the question as “if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does anyone hear it?” that is much easier to answer but also much less interesting.

namero999 6y ago

Quite the opposite, actually. What compelled me to tune into this thread was the fact that I've felt the question was being redefined as "if a tree falls, does it displace air or creates any sort of physical effect which we might call sound?" which I find, as I'm sure you do too, easy and uninteresting. I think the question is meant to trigger reasoning on a much more deeper level than that, namely what it is to have a conscious experience and how we should go about defining what is real from that perspective.

vidarh 6y ago
The redefined question only has an obvious answer if you reject any possibility of a simulated or non-physical reality. If our reality is simulated, or if the idealists are right, then physics might well have temporal and spatial anomalities dependent on observability. Ironically I've just elsewhere on this thread argued that materialism makes sense as long as we can not observe anything to violate it, and as such idealism is largely pointless. I should perhaps have added a qualification that this is true in terms of practical application. That is, we have every reason to assume that the laws of nature are universal, but if they are 'just' universal within the constraints of what we can observe, then while we can continue to act as if they are universal, we may have no way of determining if they are. As such I do think the question has no practical bearing. Yet we can not dismiss the possibility that what we observe as reality takes shortcuts when we're 'not looking'
- namero999 6y ago
  I definitely do not reject the idea of a non-physical reality. I find myself closer to idealism than materialism, although the needle just started to move in that direction. Yes, you were actually replying to me above. We do already observe plenty of things that violate our current understanding, quantum entanglement being the first that comes to mind, but we definitely do not lack paradoxes as of now. Sure, as I stated earlier, they might just be knowledge holes which we might fill once our experiments become more sophisticated, but then I can't help but sensing faith.
- baddox 6y ago
  Even if the universe is simulated, it’s likely that a tree falling in the woods does have some minuscule causal link with humans that would require the simulation to simulate not just the tree falling but also all resulting effects according to the physical laws.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    It doesn't matter if there is a causal link unless such a simulation aims to be perfect. If the simulation only aims to be convincing, it can take all kinds of shortcuts. In the latter case it only matters if it is directly or indirectly observed. A simulation might choose to resolve that lazily in the case of indirect observations, in which case it'd only need to determine the proximity of entities deemed to be observers. We have plenty of cases of that in games already, where events only take place if a player entity is present.