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if the message never achieved a physical form such as printing, does the message exist? if the message stopped existing, but nobody was there, did it make the
by m463 2y ago
if the message never achieved a physical form such as printing, does the message exist?
if the message stopped existing, but nobody was there, did it make the trash-can sound?
- verandaguy 2y agoWhat substantial difference is there between a message being manifested physically via printing as opposed to having it be a collection of bits in specific states on your hard drive (or memory, for that matter)?
- m463 2y agoisn't paper substantial while magnetic patterns are insubstantial?
- gorlilla 2y agoWhat would be transubstantial?
- verandaguy 2y agoIn what way are magnetic patterns unsubstantial? You can read information from them, which is really what we’re trying to do here, isn’t it? Is the goal to have it be readable to the naked, nominally working human eye? If so then I’d wager you could use magnetic paper as storage if you were a particularly persistent driver developer.
- doodlebugging 2y ago>if the message stopped existing, but nobody was there, did it make the trash-can sound? I know the answer for the case where this question refers to something on my pc. I have disabled audio warnings, alerts, etc so if the message stopped existing and I wasn't around to notice then it clearly does not make a trash-can sound.
- Sebb767 2y ago> if the message never achieved a physical form such as printing, does the message exist? The physical bits do exist, though, on the storage medium. Now, of course this does not match our usual image of existing, since the bytes were technically always there, but it still exists in the physical world. You can actually make the same argument with a letter: The paper and ink were there before, the pattern ist what brought it to existence.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]