Quote:
Originally Posted by SluttyShemaleAnna
If the forest sets on fire and no-one is around, does it make heat and light?
Now, I don't think anyone is going to argue that heat only means the sensation felt from hot things or that light refers to the sensation of seeing, so what's the deal with people trying the same thing with sound?
As for the fallen tree, you can prove it fell by the way it is snapped off at the roots and also the signs of impact on the floor.
The whole Zen thing really is a crock of shit, if you want to really get all mystic why don't you ponder something genuinely mysterious and incomprehensible, like Quantum Physics.
Particles have no fixed position, unless they get close enough to interact with another particle, which also has no fixed position....
|
I've always thought the sound if noone's there to hear it thing was pretty silly too. The only argument that can get a little traction is what exactly is the definition of sound. But vibrations through air does not need an audience.
And you're right. Quantum Mechanics is much more interesting. Many parts of the theory that can actually be experimentally observed yield baffling results. And the parts that we can't experimentally determine, like when observations are made do quantum particles choose a particular state, or are alternate universes created on the spot? That's plenty of food for thought.
Or my favorite... There are several physical constants that must be just right to permit life to exist in the universe. Like the charge of the election & proton. If they were at all different atoms would be impossible. The value of the gravitational constant. Too high and the universe would collapse before it hardly expands at all. To low and the universe expands so fast that galaxies or even solar systems and planets cannot form. etc... So if quantum states and parameters can take on any value within its probability spectrum, and only take on a specific value when observed, did the human race, when making astronomical measurements and observations of the cosmic background noise left over from the Big Bang, set these quantum state parameters to parameters that were condusive to the evolution of life in the universe? And since these parameters could only be observed by living creatures, they would
have to be configured to values that led to the development of life right?
Questions like this depend on what exactly occurs when an observation collapses a quantum wave function, which we do not know. What constitutes an observation? Can it only be made by a living organism? If so, why? What's so special about plain ordinary matter that can be found anywhere in the universe that's assembled in a certain way that constitutes life? Or can an observation be made simply be the excitation of electrons in an atom by incoming radiation? If so, how is it that an electron or atom is in the proper place for an observation when it's own position would have to be determined by observation? So yeah, you're right. Quantum Mechanics is ripe with interesting questions that go right to the heart of why we're here, what is existance and challenge our perception of reality.
p.s. or we could talk about if your refrigerator light is on or off when you close the refrigerator door.