Copying a Facebook post. I didn’t include the article which was about quantum reality versus observable reality because I didn’t think it was covering any new ground.
I simply must respond to this article. It irritates me so much. Actually, not the article. Just a single comment beginning it: > If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Perhaps not, some say.<
Like all supposed paradoxes this is just a bad misuse of language and simple human confusion regarding the the nature of reality.
The answer to this supposed conundrum is what exactly do you mean by “sound”?
If no human is there to hear the sound a squirrel heard it. That’s a sound. No squirrels? Then a frog heard it. No frogs? Then a snail heard it. No snails… you get the picture.
But what is something extremely weird and improbable happened and no animals are within any range which could possibly have heard the sound? As it happens, sound is a series of compression waves in the air. Even if there were no ears to hear the sound there would still be compression waves and thus there would still be sound.
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