Haha...My question is nuanced and requires a video. But your question has a simple abolute answer, under all circumstance, and in all universes - "yes."
I believe the question was "translated to modern language" if a tree falls and there is no player characters around will the "matrix" process the scene or just display the end result and save "computer power". This is how you have to consider the question.
Microorganisms exist everywhere and are alive in and around the tree. So they're playing the game too. Secondly the question was meant to stimulate philosophical thought. Endless answers.
There is a cause and effect. The tree falls ... the concussion with the ground sends out waves through the air with various frequencies unique to that trees impact. Imagine invisible waves travelling outward from the tree. The "sound" takes place when the uniquely shaped wave STRIKES your eardrum. You "HEAR" the wave hitting your ear. Without a "hearing apparatus" (like an ear) it would just be waves flying through the air quietly.
Thank you. I had the most nasty college professor who was extreme physical science genius. She asked that question and fortunately I got it right, the rest of the class got it wrong. Now people argue with me so much, and this question still being asked in a world where people just can't except there's no frigging sound, we have all kinds of explanations dancing around to satisfy people who can't accept there's no sound. To me the answer was simple but apparently the general population has trouble with questions that go against what they think. Just had family member tell me they agree to disagree!!! I told them it's not an opinion, it's what is correct and what isn't. They resorted to getting nasty. What a world we live in where ya just can't accept the correct answer. People making videos saying anything they can to Justify there's a sound of some kind. Ridiculous.
As A kid growing up I always hated hearing that question. I will offer my analogy of the question with my own question: Keep in mind that you can't change the parameters of the question itself by saying " No One" as in a person, includes animals. Ok, so.. tree falls, frightens a deer and the dear runs out of the forest and on to a highway. Your driving you car, you hits the deer, deer goes through the windshield and starts kicking your teeth out. At this point, I ask you, do you think the tree made a sound when it fell? I would have loved to had been able to respond to my teacher in that fashion when I was a kid, lol
the falling tree in a forest causes a wave form (vibration) which can be interpreted as a "sound" by an instrument that detects it as a "sound." A deaf person has no such workable instrument, and as such can not experience sound, but if the vibration(s) are forceful enough, he may "feel" such vibrations via his touch senses.
The lesson I get from this video episode is: Every action and thought we take and perceive has the potential to be heard and known by someone or something with intelligence, now, in the past, or in the future or in different time dimensions. There is no such thing as secret. More importantly, every action we take has an impact on this universe (or in another one). Our action does matter even if we think it was done in privacy / secrecy. This video touches me religiously more than scientifically.
@clips7701 the Latin origin for religion means to become one or to link. This had been overshadowed by the modern connotation of organized religion. So the view of seeing everything is connected and everything has meaning is religious.
If you set a timer for 10 minutes then leave your as soon as you set the timer..and come back 2 hours later.. Im pretty sure the timer made a sound. Just because you werent around to hear it doesnt mean it ceases to function.
I want to hear your comments after watching this video. Can you think of a way that sound could absolutely never be made if a tree falls? Challenge me.
Falling is a term we give to an object accelerating towards the centre of the nearby larger mass curving space time. What if the tree was the centre of the universe and it is the universe that has repositioned itself with respect to the tree? 🙂 In our universe the buck stops in the conscious mind. Without a single conscious entity to experience and interpret our universe, there is no purpose for the universe to even exist. Colour, light, smell, touch and sound exist only for the conscious being otherwise there is no reason for their existence. This point alone provides a strong standpoint for a conscious creator whom created conscious beings in a wonderous playground of asrtonomical proportions. Solitude is a killer. Relationship between conscious beings is the only purpose for anything. Arvin, your question is about if there is a sound. This is a beautiful question. These are the kind of questions I love. My question is: If not for the existence of consiousness, why is the creation of sound even necessary?
Hmm? The question is wrong.....There is no friction in space? If that is the case the tree would fall apart! Secondly the tree does not make a sound...do you mean the Molecules are making a noise? Hmm! Too get accurate answers the question has to be flawless and quintessential....Seeking the essence from what is a 🌲?
B universe There is a universe which is a black hole that emits waves and radiations into its interior, while emitting much more intense waves and radiations to an outside universe, unimaginably greater than it. Universe of A There is a universe that is a photon of an infinitely larger universe, this photon contains an energy that expands infinitely, and in turn inside it contains a gravitational singularity that contracts infinitely. Universe in superposition. As it turns out, the previous 2 universes were the same but on different fractal scales and seen from A or B.
I thought the main question in this problem would be the observer paradox. If a tree falls in a forest (provided there be no living thing there, including microbes), there would be no observers, and thus the particles of the tree would remain in superposition. If that's true, then how can a sound be emitted? Does that mean that a living observer needs to be around in order for a tree to fall and produce sound? I thought you would've mentioned this in the video, I'm surprised to see you didn't. The answer to that question is, of course, no, there doesn't need to be an observer for a tree to emit sound as it falls. A conscious being doesn't need to be present for an "observation" to happen, the term is wrongly coined. It's the biggest misconception in all of quantum mechanics. Two particles interacting with each other can also cause an "observation". Therefore, all the particles interacting with each other within and around the tree will cause it to snap out of superposition and make a sound. The belief that consciousness is needed for something to exist is called Biocentrism, and I think that it is totally wrong. The Universe can exist without consciousness. If consciousness is needed for something to exist, then how come the Universe was existing for many billions of years, and doing just fine, before we living beings came along? The same is true for the tree, it can do just fine without us humans.
I pointed out at the beginning that a "receiver" is need to perceive the vibrations as "sound." -- I don't think a "sound" is created unless someone or something can interpret vibrations as being "sounds." Note, that this is analogous, but not quite the same as QM. Vibrations that create sounds are a classical physics phenomenon.
You don't know that for sure. Maybe there was consiouness when the universe was created, maybe there's a god, we can't be absolutely certain yet but I'd agree a sound is made even if there's no observer, just like anything else it still exist or happens regardless of an observer. To me the universe seems pointless unless there's a Consious observer but that's just the way I see it, obviously it doesn't make it true.
I believe that every group of matter has its own way of consciousness. I mean, ours comes from electric potential in neurons, but how can we be so sure that a galaxy doesn't manifest its consciousness from the interaction of stars, planets and everything else? Maybe the sound of a tree it's even a ridiculous small part of a "galaxial thought" 😂. I really mean it, just laugh about the words.
@@guidolandinidrums Who knows. It depends what is required if anything at all to make consiouness. If like life it requires certain conditions for consiouness to be created then we only need to find out what that is to determine what consiouness is and if it can exist in other forms and if it can exist in things besides living things. Maybe consiouness exist in every particle in the universe and nothing else is needed.
@@ZeusHelios that's a wonderful answer. A couple of years ago I read a paper saying that some fluctuations of H2O were found to interact with the stability of DNA, but the conclusion was "thus, we can confirm that water is actually essential for life itself". Then I thought it was completely wrong. Did they ever think about metanol fluctuations? Silicon? Electricity? Light? Any kind of dense plasma in gigantic forms? If we define life as the way a group of matter can manage to reproduce itself and maybe mutate through time, we're going the wrong way if we limit it to water.
I always thought that this was a silly question. Sound is just the word we use to describe a vibration that we can detect wih our ears. Take the ears out of the equation and the vibration still occurs.
There was a young man who said, "God, Must find it exceedingly odd, That a tree, as a tree, simply ceases to be, When there's no one around in the quad." Reply: "Young man, your astonishment's odd, For I'm always around in the quad, So the tree, as a tree, never ceases to be, Since observed by yours faithfully, God." (Ronald Knox)
@Jamie Ragan your version (which I also came across) strikes me as more-likely the original; it's older English to use "about" rather than "around," which is likely a modernization. I only discovered the quote about 10 years ago while listening to an Alan Watts talk (he quotes it). Cheers.
I submit that sound is defined as information that is communicated and understood. Thus, a tree falling the a forest with no one around to hear it, makes a noise, but not a sound. The understanding of noise, allows the shifting of categories. Cosmic background radiation was noise, until it was understood.
Answer from another perspective: If the world is a simulation, then most probably it doesn't. If reality is real, then it doesn't care about our observations (using senses) and things happen whether or not we observe them. By the way, this video reminded me about your video about quantum double slit experiment, it is almost impossible for a macroscopic object to be isolated informationally ("Why don't Balls Act Like Atoms?").
@@ArvinAsh Because sound waves travel through a given medium regardless of if any of us are there to perceive them. You could also take this question to its extreme and ask the same about black hole mergers, the answer would also be yes, since we've measured them happening millions of lightyears away. Which would mean they happened before any humans had been born or had even evolved into existence.
@spaghetti yummy No it didn't, the merger happened even if we hadn't measured it. Saying that it didn't is very egocentric. We just wouldn't have known about it, hadn't some people figured out how to measure gravitational waves. And no, I don't think what you're saying is what quantum field theory tells us.
The answer is yes.. of course it “makes a sound”. The question is not “is the sound heard. That’s like asking, if it rains in a forest, but nobody sees it, does the ground get wet?! That’s a slight exaggeration, but still in the same ball park.
Yeah, it would still make sound waves. Even with nothing alive to perceive the sound, it would still make vibrations that would travel through the medium of air or the ground.
The energy transmission is not sound until it is heard by something with the ability to perceive that transmission, so a sound is not a sound until it is heard.
@@johnnywest5445 that's just one definition of a sound - but one can think of other definitions that would still make enough sense. Eg if i define a sound as that type/range of energy transmission which WOULD fall in human ability (for example) to hear it WERE we present to that transmission than it would still be a sound even without an observer there.
@@johnorgovan5259 You cannot have more than one definition of anything or you start losing the very laws of physics and mathematics. 1 + 2 = 3 *only* if you define 1 as a single, 2 as two singles, and 3 as three singles. Let's not go into what a single is or you start getting even more confused. What is the official *scientific* definition of sound then? That is the definition that must be used in this question.
Unlike the Schrodinger cat analogy, this was a real question about the philosophical implications of conscious observation. But again, it is arrogance, in my opinion, to believe that things don't happen if we (humans) are not around. The analysis of the tree is a good case study in that respect.
@@ArvinAsh/videos The meaning seemed pretty clear when I first heard it. I meant to say I think that the video focuses too much on the actual tree and not what the phrase actually was trying to convey
To me, answering this question mostly requires clarifying the terms, such as: what is "sound"? If sound is merely vibration of a medium, then falling trees make sound even when nothing living hears it. If "sound" requires being perceived, then falling trees don't make a sound if nothing living hears it. Doesn't really matter whether the answer is "yes" or "no". What matters is that we know what "yes" or "no" means.
The answer to this question depends on your definition of sound. If sound is just a pressure wave then yes it makes a sound. If sound is the brain’s interpretation of that wave then no it does not make a sound.
I think, if you define sound as an electrical signal in the human brain, then you start going down the route of "reality only exists in the mind". And we know that there is an objective reality regardless of our perceptions.
Even with this fantastic video, the question can still be thrown up for debate. It all depends on how one thinks of what a sound is. Here's my take on it... I'm not saying I'm right.... I'm just sharing how my brain looks at the question:.. A sound is only created in the brain and by the brain. The "sound" we here is our brains creation from the decoding process of vibrational energy that was made by the fallen tree. The tree has kinetic energy as it falls then turns it into vibrational energy once it hits the ground, creating the "potential" for sound. If there is no one there to decode the disturbance then the potential for sound eventually disintegrates. It's the same as colour. Colour doesn't actually exist independent of observation. Colour is solely created inside the brain and by the brain. Colour is the result of the brain differentiating between the differing wavelengths that light possesses. So it's like saying, "If there is a red flower in the forest but no one there to see it, is it still red?" And the answer to that question would be, "No, but the flower does have the potential to be red, it just has to be observed first." So to me, no, the tree doesn't make a sound, it only creates the potential. Again, not saying I'm right and Arvin is wrong, just sharing how I look at it, that's all. What do the rest of you think about it? Great video as always Arvin! Love your content! 👍🏼
Yes, I agree with your statement. I don't think my view is in conflict. There is potential for sound in the fallen tree. That's why I include the three things necessary for sound, the third being a receiver to interpret the sound. I am just saying that "sound" can be interpreted not just with air vibrations, but vibrations of any sort, including gravitational vibration. Any instrument that can detect the sound can also be later interpreted by a conscious receiver.
You are right. Ash is wrong. The falling tree makes waves. Most living creatures perceive this as sound. If there is no living thing to perceive the waves, there is no sound. There are just waves. Sound is a psychological fenomenon.
@@ArvinAshYes, I agree and i also don't believe our way of looking at it is in conflict. I understood the points you made and thought the video was very well put together and covered a lot of angles to the question. It was a great watch. I just red some of the comments and realised some people were just looking at it from the one angle, "The experience of sound exists without the observer." So I just wanted to open their minds a bit whilst letting them know I dont think you are wrong 😊 I love how your videos make me think 👍🏼
According to your logic, objects don’t exists because their physical nature is not Made (or interpreted) by your brain until you physically touch it and then it comes into existence or reality. Although you can see it, it only has potential to exist but since the question only ascertained to the physicality of it, and you only perceive it when YOUR brain decides to function, the wavelengths seen by your eyes are irrelevant part of the equation. The point being, sound is not dependent on an observer...
The sound signal converted to an electrical signal finally reaches the auditory complex and then we *magically* get the first-hand experience of 'hearing'. It is a pity that science has shied away from attempting to explain how this magic happens whereas the _Rishis_ many millennia ago addressed this very issue, for example, in the _Kena Upanishad:_ "Not that which the ear can hear, but that whereby the ear can hear: know that to be ...."
The definition of sound, simplified, is a hearable noise. ... Since sound does not exist without our hearing of it, sound does not exist if we do not hear it. However, when a tree falls, the motion disturbs the air and sends off air waves.
I love how you systematically eliminated everything on Earth and then eliminated the Earth as well. I then wondered what if the tree fell into a black hole. I thought, not even light can escape a black hole so certainly sound can't escape. Then I thought, it's not that light or sound for that matter can't escape. It's captured. There needed to be sound to be captured in the first place so that darn tree STILL made a sound. How did I do? Question. I heard that black holes can scrape against space. Would that make a sound? Can black holes scrape against spacetime? Sorry Arvin. That's two questions. I liked the video. I subscribed a long time ago. Thank you for your hard work and making science so easy to comprehend. Astrophysicists shouldn't have all the fun!
Blackholes collect information and store it in it's surface. So 2D is enough to contain all information within 3D space of the blackhole - read about the holographic theory of the universe.
If the tree fell in space and it was made to be perceived that it fell by adding a opposite force even without any medium present the sound must travel within the tree as it itself becomes a medium for sound to travel. Does that sound energy remain in the tree to be detected at a later time is something that needs to be reaearched.
YES . If a tree falls in a forest with no one around, a cricket, deer, squirrel , some critter will hear and react to it. We are not alone on this planet people.
If we agree on what sound is... You could say that according to Einstein the tree makes a sound at some moment in time, Niels Bohr would say only if someone is watching and Heisenberg would say the tree makes a sound and no sound at the same time and you can only say what it did after you observed it.
it's as simple as asking if someone deaf were near the tree when it falls, does that mean that the fall didn't have any sound associated with it simply because the person was deaf? is the tree gonna ask the person "excuse me can you hear anything? no? alright boys, sound's off this time"
This analysis hits the main practical issues. But if you want to chase them down, there are so many other potential questions. Here's a few that immediately spring to mind: 1. Does the tree make the sound or do interactions with the context make the sound? For instance, does it make sense to say 'What is the sound of one hand clapping'? And is the "it" that the question asks referring to "the tree" or to "the falling"? 2. There are innumerable other causes. (e.g. a storm, lack of water or nutrients, borers, growth of the seed that became the tree, gravity, the atoms that it collides with, etc) Do we also attribute the sound to them, or only to this particular identified proximate cause of the tree falling? 3. What is the ontological perspective that defines what is real? If we look from the standard, accepted, shared, objective perspective then we will define reality quite differently from when we take a subjective, experiential perspective. This difficulty is highlighted by, but extends beyond, the problem of hard solipsism (Note: I am not advocating this as practical). And when is it meaningful to define something as existing if there is not sufficient (experiential) evidence of its existence (e.g. proposed 'existence' in an alternative universe, or 'existence' of a claimed unfalsifiable god)? 4. We only have access to appearances, rather than to Kantian noumena. So we lack certainty of knowledge. And our perceptions can deceive. Would the question be more precisely stated as "If a tree falls ... does it APPEAR to make a sound"?
Really?? Then enlighten us all. Explain the double slit experiment for us. Why does matter.... what every single thing in the world is made out of....changes its behavior when OBSERVED....or even measured. As if it knows its being watched. So..... either matter can think.....or just the meer act of it being observed changes its behavior. That being said, is what you're seeing in the world, everyday, really there....in a different configuration....or not there at all.
@@RickyPisano I have literally been in a fridge and closed the door whilst still inside said fridge and can tell you that it was pitch black. Although I must admit I'm blind, it was a moonless night and there was a power outage at the time
Your videos are great! I do have a different interpretation on this one than you however. A sound could be defined as simply as a pressure wave caused by conversion of energy, i.e a sound wave. It's likely that 'sound wave' and 'sound' are interchangeable terms for most people. So if you define 'sound' as 'sound wave', then the answer is clearly yes, the falling tree does produce one. It will always produce a measurable impact on the universe, as your video concludes. However, you haven't really explored consciousness here. I think the original question is written to make us think about consciousness. The question makes use of the word 'hear', which is what I think gives this clue. You do use the words 'hear' and 'perceive' in your video, but don't really explore them. The use of the word 'hear' could imply that sound is being defined not just as a sound wave, but to also include the conversion, interpretation and, crucially, the understanding (the 'awareness') of it. To be 'aware' of the sound wave requires consciousness, the ability to understand what is being perceived. A plant does not 'hear' a sound wave because it cannot be aware of it, i.e it cannot understand it. A plant can only react to a sound wave in the way it is genetically programmed, give or take a bit of random variation. A plant does not make conscious choices. For me it doesn't matter if you keep extending the distances involved in the measurement and removing objects from around the tree, which is how the video progresses and concludes. The phrase 'no one is around', in the original question, can be extended to mean no one ever being around at any distance or in any time. If the universe was empty of all conscious beings forever, would the tree make a sound? If we define sound as being able to hear and understand the sound wave, then in this context the correct answer to the question would clearly be no. Unfortunately the question does not have a definitive answer, because it does not explicitly define the term 'sound'.
what if a deaf person was near but was looking at something else so they did not see the tree falling and didn't HEAR it (since they're deaf) did it even make a sound?
In order for sound to make vibrations, the waves transmitting through a medium must carry energy or else they could not vibrate other things upon contact. Therefore, due to the conservation of energy - yes, when a tree falls in a forest it still makes a sound regardless of an observer is there to hear it or not. Not making a sound while falling (once hitting the floor or other trees on the way down) is a direct violation of conservation of energy laws.
From the beginning I thought that was the most stupid question on Earth. The answer was clearly Yes. I'm very glad somebody took it in the scientific way and answered leaving no doubts at all. Thanks, great video.
Science or any scientific theories is not necessarily right, it just haven’t been proven wrong yet. Therefore we must not take science as a basis of absolute truth!
I always precived this question on a quantum level. As in do wave functions of the universe will collaps if I’m not around o see it. The answer is yes according to your last video
even if you were to grant quantum properties to the sound's existence, why did you not also grant quantum properties to the tree's existence? then it's not only a question if the falling tree made a sound, but also a question of the tree even existing in the first place. but as you alluded to, most physicists agree that macroscopic behaviors overtake quantum behaviors at certain scales and numbers of particles. so it would seem nonsensical to project quantum weirdness onto macro-scale objects that we see and interact with daily. in my opinion, the tree falling in the forest question isn't as deep or interesting as it's made out to be. the saying wasn't even created with quantum mechanics in mind (that i know of). if you believe in a type of objective reality at all, and there's every reason to believe, then of course things happen with or without human/animal perception. there's tangential questions about the mapping of our senses onto an objective reality, but that really doesn't matter when the question is about if an event happened at all (regardless of our subjective perception of the event)
@spaghetti yummy everything we experience in this world seems to point to an objective reality of sorts (even if we at times, seem to perceive it slightly differently). obviously epistemology 101 says that we probably can't ever be 100% certain about anything, other than maybe a select few axioms about one's own existence in some form. but at the end of the day, we don't have good reason to disbelieve some sort of objective reality is out there in some form, as we all seem to agree to a similar reality, with the same objects in it and in the same locations and at the same times. just because you can think up some scenarios in which it creates doubt about some sort of objective reality, does not mean the scenarios are correct or have a good chance of being correct. if there is no objective reality in some form, there is absolutely no foundation to even begin thinking about anything other than your subjective experiences, never mind the possibility of things outside of your mind like trees or sounds. the whole questioning objective reality thing only becomes interesting if we begin to experience things about reality that start leading us away from objective reality. some experiments in quantum mechanics do bring these questions up, but again, that type of interpretation is not favored among physicists. other than that, if you do accept there are others like you in this reality (other humans), the fact that we can all agree on the locations and times that objects outside of our mind exist, strongly points to some form of objective reality. you can question in what way our perception of objects maps onto those objects outside of perception, but it seems clear that objects exist in some form, regardless of the interesting spin that our perception gives us.
@spaghetti yummy since you didn't provide any details for your opinion, i'm guessing you're talking about the recent paper "Experimental test of local observer independence". i think you need to understand better how scientific progress happens and the history of quantum mechanics interpretations. scientific progress depends on scientific consensus. scientific papers are published all the time where the conclusions or interpretations of data are not widely agreed upon in the scientific community. just because a paper is published, does not mean its suggested conclusions or conjectures are true. this is especially true for quantum mechanics interpretations. there has been no consensus on quantum mechanics interpretations since the inception of quantum mechanics in the early 1900s. there have been many papers published since then, speculating and formulating arguments for particular interpretations. there are about a dozen popular quantum mechanics interpretations that physicists have come up with throughout the decades. the thing about quantum mechanics interpretations is, they are all supported by the experimental evidence and mathematical framework of quantum mechanics. so the merit of all the interpretations are fairly equal in terms of the quality of experimental evidence/predictions we would normally hold any scientific theory to. as of now, this still holds true for any paper published on the topic of quantum mechanical interpretation. there's not a great reason to hold that recently published paper you're referring to on a pedestal. but don't take my word for it, see the critiques that actual physicists have on that paper (or any other paper published on QM interpretation)
I have another question though. A guitarist can sing and play "yesterday " with no emotions. And yet another guitarist can sing and play "yesterday " full of emotions. How do air waves transmitted those emotions ?
I have always said that "yes it makes a sound" I have been called all kinds of bs because those people have no idea of science. Glad to see I am right about this. Surely those persons were "humans above other animals" type of people so it makes sense they cannot expand their cynical views.
12:00 The sound was indeed made, but it only propagated through the tree itself, it didn't spread outside the tree since there's no medium aside from the tree itself.
Sound is vibrations through our medium here on earth - air. Since we know the tree falling had to produce those vibrations through the air as it fell, we know that sound was created. Whether or not a human ear was in the vicinity.
Dictionary definition: NOUN 1. vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear. The definition includes the necessity for a listener.
@@russellfield5010 The definition is wrong then, since otherwise a listener would casually be connected to the vibration - which as literally even the grammatical structure of the original sentence gives away does not exist.
@@russellfield5010 Hmm... well, then we're at an impasse, since that's really a matter of if you define it as the concept of vibrations or the perceiving of vibrations. No discussion to be had.
Yes, but vibrations are not sound. Vibrations are the raw material needed to make sound. The brain manufactures the sound....ie sound is a biological response to waves. Without us, sound, as we well know it to be, cannot be manufactured. Without us, that infamous falling tree does so in absolute silence. Of course, the tree will have other responses, but those responses will take place in library-quietness.
Still can't believe that some people confuse sound with sound waves - they're not one and the same thing. Sound is a personal experience as a result of the brain interpreting signals received from the human ear. Soundwaves, on the other hand, are merely vibrating air molecules in the form of a wave - ergo, human ears would have to be present to send the necessary electrical signals to the brain in order for the brain to 'create' the sound that we hear. With no human ears present, the falling tree would still produce soundwaves, but nothing more....it's as simple as that. Your ears are covered by bafflers? No sound. A person IS present, but is deaf? No sound. No humans whatsoever are present? No sound. I really don't know what's so difficult to comprehend about all this....
This is almost complete. The listener can be more then just humans. Many animals would interpret the vibrating air molecules as sound also. Even a recording device could record and reproduce this disturbance later and it will interpreted as sound by hearing creatures. But your argument is well stated. BTW this is also true for light and color as it pertains to vision. No such thing as light or color.
@@jpboy1962 "no such thing as light or color" -- They *do* exist -- as mental images in the mind of a perceiving being. If a thought can exist, then color and sound do too.
@@grayaj23 A mental image does not mean existence. I can create all kinds of mental images of things that no one would accept as existing. Light and color are not physical phenomena might describe it more completely.
@@jpboy1962 The things you *imagine* may not exist (see St. Anselm's ontological "proof" of god's existence). But the imagination of the thing *is* a thing all by itself. If I have a thought about a winged giraffe that recites Shakespeare backwards in Swahili, the giraffe doesn't exist. The *thought* of the giraffe does, though.
I'd define sound as far as the waves in the medium because the receiver seems to me irrelevant. If they are generated then yes, there's sound. In space I'd suggest the tree would make "ahhhh! I'm in spaaaace!" :)
@@ArvinAsh - Humans call a type of _awareness_ that they have: "sound" Another Being may sense it, or call it something else. A human brain _converts_ waveform information into sound, and so it only, truly, exists in a _mind_ All sentient Beings will have some sort of sensation particular to them; low-level Beings may just feel vibration; a higher-than-human Being may sense something that a human cannot comprehend, and they may 'call' it something else quite profound that is a function of _their_ own understanding.
I think this in a motivational way; Like the deef frog, who didn't hear the toxic bullys or negativities. we only hear when we near to it. If we far away from negativity, it wouldn't reach us. But yes to understand positivity we need to go through with negativity.
Sound doesn't exist, it's a construct of our mind, it's just waves moving through air with differing pitch and frequency that a conscious entity needs to encode into something that helps it survive. It's the same with colours.
@@ArvinAsh The entire universe has no purpose or reason to exist if there were no conscious being to experience it. Furthermore, a conscious being has no reason to exist if it has no other being to be in relationship with. Community is everything. An recording instrument is only another medium with a fundamental difference. It is man's way of suspending the unprocessed signal of sound energy as a conterfeit copy. This can now be accessed from another place in spacetime for processing by a consciousness. I don't think a device hears sound for it is inanimate
@@ArvinAshWhat would be the point of a stand up comedian telling jokes to an empty room? What is the point of a chessboard if a player has no opponent? The most precious thing that we have in life is each other. I am not my body. How could I possibly be? My body is merely a collection of atomic particles. All of which are inanimate. A large collection of inanimate particles doesn't make them any more alive. As a motorist drives a car, surely we as beings are also driving our bodies. Our universe provides us with a common framework in which we can interact. Our universe gives us a place to exist, an avatar to control and a duration to move (or be animated). What is the point of an entire universe if there isn't ever a consciousness to realise it is even there? Yes. I truly believe beyond any doubt that we give the universe meaning. I truly belive the universe was purpose built for us to coexist. Our five senses are fine tuned to our universe. Without our 5 senses we would have no way of even detecting this universe let alone interact in it. In your video you kept taking away living things to get to the bottom of your question. The rest of the universe didn't matter because it's irrelevant. This actually supports my viewpoint, that without life/conscious beings, the universe is irrelevant/useless/without purpose.
@Sepheryn Consciousness cannot be derived from the inanimate. There is no experiment or evidence that proves otherwise. Can you bring a couch or a rug to life? Inanimate objects do not become alive.
It all depends how you define sound. Are you saying sound is vibration of air or you are saying sound is an experience someone feels. If you define it as an experience, then it matters how you define someone, can insects that experience sounds count? For me the answer is easy, yes. because I define sound as vibrations in the air, this is not dependent on any creature with ear drums being there to experience it.
I think that another example for this argument,even if we’d arrogantly assume that only humas “hear sounds”,would be a speaker locked in a basement with completly sound proof walls,such that absolutely no sound would come out of that room,put a glass on a table with the speaker next to it,set a timer so that the speaker would automaticaly play some high frequency sound,such that the glass breaks,some high pitch opera singer.Remember that the there is no human being in the basement,since we set the speaker to automatically play it’s thing,and there is no sound going out of the room,since the room is soundproof,so then what breaks the glass?Obviously,the sound.
laws dont care about human sensations or feelings....so if we are all blind does light exists? statements like that usually lack of etymology and most often are kinda of ''pretentious'' imho
@tinylilmatt exactly.....btw since that statement was conceived we have the tech to prove it wrong! Go to a forest...put some microphones in....return to collect the recorded data! tadddaaaaaa
Facepalm Jesus people would argue that even the microphone is considered an observer , it too counts as „one“. The question was nicely answered here . the point though is that we want no observer to be there when the tree falls, even no microphone , camera etc .
Love ur videos Arvin , there are other good channels But more than often you just end up confused and half-way learning something instead of actually UNDERSTANDING and definately learning something , like from ur videos. Ur an exceptionally rare and Very Very good teacher.
I have thought about this question many times even going as far as considering the removal of all living creatures. But never thought of space! Lol. I mean the Q is about a forest, a normal one, so the answer must be yes. It would make a noise.
I think, "no!" For there to be sound, there has to be a person and/or creature to hear it, otherwise, it's just vibrations. Edit Oh wow! I hadn't thought that hard about it.
Everyone knows when a tree falls, it makes a noise. We know this from personal experiences and from second and third party experiences, i.e. someone telling another person about a big tree that fell and the huge crashing sound it made. ....or a news story we are watching about a tree falling and the noise it made. Imo, it is arrogant (no surprise from humans there...) to assume a HUMAN needs to be around to HEAR the tree fall. I am quite sure all the other mammals and insects around that tree heard it fall.
@@drew-shourd ..the tree itself makes a sound.. cracking and splintering and hitting the ground.. those noises happen whether or not anyone or anything is around to hear it.. yes ..a tree falling makes a sound!
I have used a similar argument. If we believe in an objective universe, then a falling tree will create a disturbance in the air and ground that will propagate outward. But this is not sound. Sound is created within the brain. It is how the brain informs us that pressure waves have been detected. So to me, sound only occurs if perceived; that is I define "sound" as the perception of the waves. The pressure waves exist regardless of whether they are perceived, but sound only exists if perceived. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. ;-) Thanks for the thought provoking video. Glad you didn't bring QM into it, then we'd have to decide if Schrodinger's cat both heard and did not hear the tree fall!
First of all, as Arvin was attempting to demonstrate in the video, the question must be posed in a way that assumes that all forms of life and consciousness are completely absent from the universe. In which case, if we loosely base the final conclusion on the implications of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum mechanics, then I suggest that the short answer is no, the falling tree does not make a sound. To explain why that is so, imagine a DVD player playing a DVD of raucous and noisy scenes of trees falling over left and right in a forest, all of which is appearing up on your new Samsung 4K television screen while blasting the crashing tree sounds from the speakers of your new surround-sound audio system. Now imagine removing the television screen and the speakers from this scenario while allowing the DVD to continue running, wherein all of the information that represents the images and sounds is still being scanned by the DVD player’s laser. The question is: are the images and sounds of trees hitting the ground literally present in the bumps and pits of coding on the DVD? Or, is the existence of the imagery and sounds dependent upon the presence of the monitor and speakers? The point is that it should be obvious that the patterns of quantum information that underpin the phenomenal features of the universe are analogous to the information encoded on the DVD. Furthermore, it should also be obvious that the sensory aspects of consciousness (in this case, vision and hearing) are analogous to the TV monitor and speakers. And just as it is logical to assume that there are no actual sounds and images of trees falling to the ground amidst the bumps and pits of information on a DVD,... ...likewise, there are no actual sounds and images of trees falling to the ground amidst the peaks and troughs of the quantum waves that underpin the phenomenal features of the universe. Both mediums require the presence of something else (something other than themselves) to transform the coded information into that which the information represents. And in the case of reality itself, that something is “consciousness.” Otherwise, “reality” as we understand reality to be... (the “sound” of a falling tree, for example) ...will simply reside in the unmanifest and ghostly realm of what Heisenberg called “potentia.” The bottom line is that Arvin didn’t go deep enough for the answer. He should have proceeded into Kant’s “noumenal-like” underpinning of the universe - into what physicists call “non-local” reality. _______
@@ArvinAsh Yes (loosely speaking, of course). Except, obviously, the information embedded in a DVD is static, while the information embedded in the quantum underpinning of the universe is moving and dynamic. Another analogy would be the static information embedded in the photographic plate of a laser hologram. Again, loosely speaking, I suggest that in the same way that the explication of the three-dimensional imagery of a laser hologram requires the conjoined relationship between a laser and the information embedded in the photographic plate,... ...likewise, so does the explication of the three-dimensional phenomena of the universe require the conjoined relationship between consciousness and the quantum.
@TheUlitmateSeeds Thank you for your post, wanted to post myself but you covered me. The question is much deeper than "sound waves" and "disturbance of material state" or anything else for that mater that Newtonian Physics cover.
Brilliant video! Randon thought, a falling tree won't make a sound if it was free falling in a vacuum strapped to a bomb set to detonate moments before impact. The tree would be vaporized and you would definitely hear the bomb but not the tree hitting the ground. I'm sure this would be wrong but would be fun to watch lol
Nice scenario! Well, the bomb, if in space would actually not make a sound, except in the same way as the tree - through the warping of space-time, because there is no medium in space. If you were within the debris field of the bomb, you might hear a sound because the explosive vibration would have the medium of the particles in the explosion. If the explosion occurred after the tree fell, then gravitational waves from the tree would have a head start over the gravitational waves of the bomb, so I suppose a sensitive enough detector could detect this immediately before detecting the gravitational disturbance from the explosion. But you are right, it would need to be an awfully sensitive detector.
@@ArvinAsh Thanks for the explanation. Then perhaps if only the tree was falling into a non spinning black hole this might be the scenario where it would be hardest to detect if at all.
No, every possible scenario was NOT covered. The prevailing understanding is that sound and colour are Qualia. That is, they exist only in the mind. They are sometimes highly correlated to external stimulus... but not always. The external universe has NEITHER sound nor colour. Do your dreams have sound and colour? If so... were those sounds and colours the result of photons and pressure waves, or did they originate purely in your mind as part of its perceptual model? Trees, falling, cause movement and heat ... and heat, is just movement. Movement can be converted into electrical impulses... stored on magnetic tapes, processed in computers, drawn on graphs... ... depending on whether the impulses came from a set of nerves in your eye... or a set of nerves in your ear... or a set of nerves in your skin... or in your nose... your brain creates a different sensation. Colour... or sound... or heat... or pain... or smell... or taste... ... none of these things exist in the universe. They are all an interpretation. And they are all ultimately, an interpretation of very similar electrical impulses sent down nerve fibres. The different sensations happen in the brain itself. Sound is a conscious sensation (a qualia) The external universe does not have sound.
Nothing makes a sound .Just about everything causes waves. It is the ear that creates the sound by transforming waves into the phenomenon we call sound. Think about it.
Yes, it does! Sound is energy and the universe does is thing without us being present. Our observation is not necessary for cause and effect to take place.
I love a good hypothetical to the Nth degree as much as the next person, but there should be no question that sound exists regardless of consciousness. Of course it does. 1. Sound is it’s most reduced explanation is a simply a form of Entropy. 2. Stars such as our sun are seething with internal acoustic energy. It’s an important part of stellar dynamics. There is certainly nothing conscious inside a star, yet there are real effects. 3. Tectonic processes such as earthquakes are basically sound waves at the core. The primordial Earth itself was shaped due to acoustical energy long before there were ever lifeforms around to perceive.
I've never considered that to be a scientific question.... I believe it's a philosophical question. In other words, if humans don't validate reality, is reality real?
There is still sound even if it is not heard. Consider the recent findings that sum, Saturn Jupiter etc making sound. Just Recently, it is discovered. But this sound should have been there for long time now
Well, if the Simulation Hypothesis is right a particular tree didn't exist before we could notice it; maybe was rendered directly as a fallen tree, hence it never did any falling sound.
Yes the answer is movement causes sound waves and affects everything. It affects movement and movement makes sound. It will affect something eventually because of pressure.
The modern version of this question I think would be: "If there's nothing that can perceive the flow of time and the changes within spacetime, does the Universe really exist?" Better yet, if the Universe has no conscious observer to witness the events that transpire in this plane of existence, does it even matter if the Universe exists or not? A photon cannot perceive the Universe and what happens in it. Same for the dead matter of the Universe.
If a tree falls, and no one is around, how do you know it fell? I mean, you can see clearly that it is laying down horizontally, but how do you know it wasn't set down carefully and deliberately? Maybe even... silently?
That’s a question I’m actually asking myself in a more general way, does something exists if there is no one to perceive it? Can it exists if there is no second party that is somehow relative to it?
I will be hearing but NOT understanding what she is trying to say because my body maybe there but my mind may be elsewhere. I have been working hard to correct that in myself.
If this video drops and no one is around to play it, does it make a sound? Even deeper question, is a sound made if a conscious being plays the video but the volume is turned all the way down and muted?
The answer is yes... Simply because the tree has potential energy and when it falls to the ground the potential energy is transferred to some other sort of energy...... This is transferred to sound energy....
We really must make a difference between sound-as-wave and sound-as-perception. While tree definitely would produce some sound-as-wave, it's not impossible to have a creature, that would perceive sound as colour (take synesthetics for example). If you are a panpsychist, you would say that some sort of perception will be born during any physical interaction, but it may be very different from our sound-as-perception.
Why "sound as wave" ??? ... can't we just say "movement" ? Especially since the range of frequencies we associate with sound is strictly defined by the size of our ears... and not by anything intrinsic. Give me a big enough ear, and a period of a trillion years, is sound. Give me a small enough ear, and heat is also sound. "sound as wave" may not be qualia... but its definition is still inextricably bound to the notion of an observer. Even if an observer needn't be present to measure it... he DOES need to be present to define it. So, what defines it... the thing that separates it from mere "movement" ... is the observer! No, Sound, taste, smell, pain, colour... these are all properly understood as qualia. A tree falling causes movement and heat (and heat is movement) ... and, yes, we can interpret this as sound. But we can also imagine sound... or dream sound... or hallucinate sound... without any need for waves of alternating high and low pressure. Same with colour... we can dream colour without any photons being required. To our brain, everything is electrical pulses being sent through nerves. They are more or less identical, with the only differentiation being how they are ultimately processed. So, to consider that these phenomena exist externally in the universe even when unobserved, still requires an observer to exist. No? Otherwise, how would we know what sized ears didn't hear it? LOL
@GaryChap "movement", but electrical impulses in a brain are also a sort of movement. Everything is a movement, so it doesn't help to distinguish a sound-outside-of-observer from sound-inside-an-observer. " "sound as wave" may not be qualia... but its definition is still inextricably bound to the notion of an observer." Right. But are we discussing the things or their definitions? My point was that there is something beside observers. And this something can exist in multiple states. Some patterns of that something we can roughly link to our concepts like "sound, matter, energy". I can't say that this something is independant from observers. Observers consist of it. So they can interact with it. Like cars, which consist of metal and interact with other metal things/substances. But not all metal exists in form of cars, nor does it require cars to exist on its own. But it would be misleading to say that car-ish metal is distinguished from not-car-ish metal by presence of a car. It's just a word play. You can't have an observer without qualia, you can't have qualia without an observer. "Qualia" and "observer" are synonyms. So, just as you said, the only difference is how signals are processed. Or in other word how various motions codepend on each other. I currently accept Joscha Bach's view that consciousness is a sort of simulation and that only simulation can be conscious. In my oppinion his view explains well why consciousness simultaneously can interact with physical world, but somewhat poseses non-physical qualities. But this still remains a bit a word play. How exactly various motions should be codependant to produce a simulation? What would be the simplest model of an observer? I think if you have two bits of memory and a small program that at each step defines their future state based on their equality or inequality, this would be a simple observer. Such system requires their mutual state to exist, even though a mutual state can only be simulated. Equality of two bits is emergent in relation to the state of each bit.
@@count_of_darkness5541 "Right. But are we discussing the things or their definitions?" We can't discuss things, until we agree upon definitions. If we disagree, it's likely because we've not yet agreed on a definition of "sound" ... you insist there is some definition which is independent of the existence of observers, but you haven't formulated it. So, what is "sound" for you? Start with the definition. If sound is merely "alternating waves of higher and lower pressure" ... then at what frequency? In what medium? If ANY (to avoid observer led criteria) then we must define "sound" to be "any movement in any medium at any frequency" ... if we do that, then "sound" is effectively denied any meaning. But limit it to a specific range? Well, then you've already polluted the hypothetical with an observer. Sound exists because some observer, even when not present, exists to provide the definition of a sound-like wave. The sound is defined in relation to that potential observer. Don't like either? Then provide a definition of sound that isn't so broad as to be meaningless... nor dependent upon a notional observer for meaning. Then distinguish it from a Bat that might "see" sound, as a 3D model of its universe, visualised. Or how smell is also measuring the frequency at which molecules vibrate... or how heat is a similar measure of the rate and amplitude of oscillation.... ... and if heat, sight, smell and sound are just different subjective interpretations of the same thing (vibrations) at the inputs of the conscious mind... ... then, surely, any qualitative differences are OF mind. The distinction between sound and smell and heat and taste and colour, are part of the perceptual model ... not part of the universe. Think about "orange".... as a trichromat there is simply no way for orange to enter our brain as orange. Orange is (re)constructed, in the brain. But, our brains have never had any external verification of the nature or qualities of the colour orange... We call it a warm colour, because we live next to a yellow sun. We may feel it to be optimistic... because blues predominate in the dark when we are vulnerable and cold. And the experiential colour itself, divested of any emotional attachment, is merely a placeholder used to construct meaningful landscapes. ... that's because EVERYTHING about the experience "orange" is arbitrary, it is not formed from any objective truths. And, it is the same with sound. The correlation is higher, but ultimately the qualia itself is strictly an emergent phenomenon. And, like I say, because these things are constructions of mind we can dream, we can hallucinate... our perceptual model is quite capable of generating colour and sound without an external cause. And I'm a synesthete. My senses work VERY differently to yours. But we won't get anywhere in this conversation until you provide me your alternative definition for "sound" that we can then use to speak the same language. A definition, I assume, that defines sound as qualitatively different from the other natural phenomenon behind our senses (in a non observer-dependent way)! Unless, of course, you're arguing that smell, sight, sound, taste and touch are all the exact same thing perceived differently... in which case, NONE exist distinctly in the objective universe. But if they don't exist distinctly as qualitatively different objective phenomenon - they I suggest you ditch the word "sound" as a meaningless ornamentation and speak simply of motion. (After all, without an observer in mind, what size and mass is an eardrum?) Ditch the subjectivist ornamentation and we'd at least find agreement in the following : _"If a tree falls in a wood... and no minimally conscious being is there to interpret the resultant kinetic cascade as some form of subjective qualia, it nevertheless still moved! And its movement likely disturbed other matter in a manner that could otherwise have been so perceived"_
Quantum information can never be lost or simply information never destroyed. So if a tree falls there there should be the change in the configuration of that tree and it (information) may appears in different forms. Sound may be one of these.... ..
I wonder if it could make a sound without gravity?! And I also wanna know of what is the coldest place between Southpole and Northpole and their lowest temperature. Great facts and findings you showed us.
This video starts at at 8:05. I love your content, but it took you more than a half of the video to eliminate the observer, which in itself is a premise of this question. Also, you mentioned that a scientist could assert that the tree did make a sound, even though there was no observer at the time - but should this still be referred to as a sound? Shouldn't the scientist say that there were waves that would be sound, if someone was there to hear it, but because of no observer they were nearly quanta?
Yes and it was all totally unnecessary. There was no need to discuss animals and insects etc as he points out one moment but then ignores later, it's a *hypothetical* question!! Obviously when bishop Berkeley posed the question he meant hypothetically if it couldn't be heard by anything obviously he would say for the sake of argument let's not consider mushrooms and bugs mrs Higgins' cat from two doors down etc it's not a realistic situation for heaven's sakes it's a hypothetical question does it make a sound if it's not heard by anything. I'm sure he never meant only humans, that's not even part of the question really it's like getting side tracked. I mean that much is blatantly clear it really is ridiculous to spend ages and ages eliminating ladybirds and moths and nonsense like that and then after all that he goes on to say oh yes it generated sound waves even if there is nothing there to hear them when earlier he defined sound as something that was created when a compression wave entered an ear. Later he just forgets this and discusses how scientists could tell you that it had created a "sound wave" because they could tell you that some sand had been moved. really the most absurd ridiculous infantile argument I've ever come across. A total waste of my time
Does a tree fall if no one notices it? The initial question postulates that a tree falls, and if a tree falls it does not matter if anyone notices, it would still comply to laws of physics and make the sound trees make when they fall.
Nice job on a deceptive subject. Next video: "If a man makes a statement and his wife is not around to hear it, is he still wrong?"
Haha...My question is nuanced and requires a video. But your question has a simple abolute answer, under all circumstance, and in all universes - "yes."
Mike Petersen
Having been married for over 40 years I can say, in my case, yes.
😁
Mike Peterson, I’m not sure; but I can assure you that I’ve never cheated because I’ve never been caught. 😉💃🏿
If every creature turned and faced one direction, would the universe behind them disappear?
I believe the question was "translated to modern language" if a tree falls and there is no player characters around will the "matrix" process the scene or just display the end result and save "computer power". This is how you have to consider the question.
Thank you.
Correct. If the tree falls with nobody there to see it does the forest even exist.
Exactly
@@RickyPisano That's the right question
Microorganisms exist everywhere and are alive in and around the tree. So they're playing the game too. Secondly the question was meant to stimulate philosophical thought. Endless answers.
There is a cause and effect. The tree falls ... the concussion with the ground sends out waves through the air with various frequencies unique to that trees impact. Imagine invisible waves travelling outward from the tree. The "sound" takes place when the uniquely shaped wave STRIKES your eardrum.
You "HEAR" the wave hitting your ear. Without a "hearing apparatus" (like an ear) it would just be waves flying through the air quietly.
Thank you. I had the most nasty college professor who was extreme physical science genius. She asked that question and fortunately I got it right, the rest of the class got it wrong. Now people argue with me so much, and this question still being asked in a world where people just can't except there's no frigging sound, we have all kinds of explanations dancing around to satisfy people who can't accept there's no sound. To me the answer was simple but apparently the general population has trouble with questions that go against what they think. Just had family member tell me they agree to disagree!!! I told them it's not an opinion, it's what is correct and what isn't. They resorted to getting nasty. What a world we live in where ya just can't accept the correct answer. People making videos saying anything they can to Justify there's a sound of some kind. Ridiculous.
Does the refridgarator light really turn off when you close the door?
Lol. Funny because as a little kid, I used to test this!
@@ArvinAsh me too😂😂
Actually you can turn off the light by pushing that thing in the edge of the fridge door to fake it's closed.
@@Fixundfertig1 you just ruined my childhood.
Lol
As A kid growing up I always hated hearing that question. I will offer my analogy of the question with my own question: Keep in mind that you can't change the parameters of the question itself by saying " No One" as in a person, includes animals. Ok, so.. tree falls, frightens a deer and the dear runs out of the forest and on to a highway. Your driving you car, you hits the deer, deer goes through the windshield and starts kicking your teeth out. At this point, I ask you, do you think the tree made a sound when it fell? I would have loved to had been able to respond to my teacher in that fashion when I was a kid, lol
This is a great response, if only we could go back in time
the falling tree in a forest causes a wave form (vibration) which can be interpreted as a "sound" by an instrument that detects it as a "sound." A deaf person has no such workable instrument, and as such can not experience sound, but if the vibration(s) are forceful enough, he may "feel" such vibrations via his touch senses.
The lesson I get from this video episode is: Every action and thought we take and perceive has the potential to be heard and known by someone or something with intelligence, now, in the past, or in the future or in different time dimensions. There is no such thing as secret. More importantly, every action we take has an impact on this universe (or in another one). Our action does matter even if we think it was done in privacy / secrecy. This video touches me religiously more than scientifically.
Why religiously? Mind explaining?
@clips7701 the Latin origin for religion means to become one or to link. This had been overshadowed by the modern connotation of organized religion. So the view of seeing everything is connected and everything has meaning is religious.
At 1:30 you are already wrong. A sound doesnt need a receiver. A sound wave is a type of energy. It exists whether an animal can hear it or not
I am just thinking how many tree are falling right now all around the Earth..
More than is healthy for the earth, most likely.
If you set a timer for 10 minutes then leave your as soon as you set the timer..and come back 2 hours later..
Im pretty sure the timer made a sound. Just because you werent around to hear it doesnt mean it ceases to function.
I want to hear your comments after watching this video. Can you think of a way that sound could absolutely never be made if a tree falls? Challenge me.
Falling is a term we give to an object accelerating towards the centre of the nearby larger mass curving space time. What if the tree was the centre of the universe and it is the universe that has repositioned itself with respect to the tree? 🙂
In our universe the buck stops in the conscious mind. Without a single conscious entity to experience and interpret our universe, there is no purpose for the universe to even exist.
Colour, light, smell, touch and sound exist only for the conscious being otherwise there is no reason for their existence.
This point alone provides a strong standpoint for a conscious creator whom created conscious beings in a wonderous playground of asrtonomical proportions.
Solitude is a killer. Relationship between conscious beings is the only purpose for anything.
Arvin, your question is about if there is a sound. This is a beautiful question. These are the kind of questions I love.
My question is:
If not for the existence of consiousness, why is the creation of sound even necessary?
@marcus hart The tree couldn't grow in space, or on the moon.
Hmm? The question is wrong.....There is no friction in space? If that is the case the tree would fall apart! Secondly the tree does not make a sound...do you mean the Molecules are making a noise? Hmm! Too get accurate answers the question has to be flawless and quintessential....Seeking the essence from what is a 🌲?
What if Spacetime is an illusion too? Just like the animals and insects and us
B universe
There is a universe which is a black hole that emits waves and radiations into its interior,
while emitting much more intense waves and radiations to an outside universe, unimaginably greater than it.
Universe of A
There is a universe that is a photon of an infinitely larger universe, this photon contains an energy that expands infinitely,
and in turn inside it contains a gravitational singularity that contracts infinitely.
Universe in superposition.
As it turns out, the previous 2 universes were the same but on different fractal scales and seen from A or B.
I thought the main question in this problem would be the observer paradox. If a tree falls in a forest (provided there be no living thing there, including microbes), there would be no observers, and thus the particles of the tree would remain in superposition. If that's true, then how can a sound be emitted? Does that mean that a living observer needs to be around in order for a tree to fall and produce sound? I thought you would've mentioned this in the video, I'm surprised to see you didn't. The answer to that question is, of course, no, there doesn't need to be an observer for a tree to emit sound as it falls. A conscious being doesn't need to be present for an "observation" to happen, the term is wrongly coined. It's the biggest misconception in all of quantum mechanics. Two particles interacting with each other can also cause an "observation". Therefore, all the particles interacting with each other within and around the tree will cause it to snap out of superposition and make a sound. The belief that consciousness is needed for something to exist is called Biocentrism, and I think that it is totally wrong. The Universe can exist without consciousness. If consciousness is needed for something to exist, then how come the Universe was existing for many billions of years, and doing just fine, before we living beings came along? The same is true for the tree, it can do just fine without us humans.
I pointed out at the beginning that a "receiver" is need to perceive the vibrations as "sound." -- I don't think a "sound" is created unless someone or something can interpret vibrations as being "sounds." Note, that this is analogous, but not quite the same as QM. Vibrations that create sounds are a classical physics phenomenon.
You don't know that for sure. Maybe there was consiouness when the universe was created, maybe there's a god, we can't be absolutely certain yet but I'd agree a sound is made even if there's no observer, just like anything else it still exist or happens regardless of an observer. To me the universe seems pointless unless there's a Consious observer but that's just the way I see it, obviously it doesn't make it true.
I believe that every group of matter has its own way of consciousness. I mean, ours comes from electric potential in neurons, but how can we be so sure that a galaxy doesn't manifest its consciousness from the interaction of stars, planets and everything else? Maybe the sound of a tree it's even a ridiculous small part of a "galaxial thought" 😂. I really mean it, just laugh about the words.
@@guidolandinidrums Who knows. It depends what is required if anything at all to make consiouness. If like life it requires certain conditions for consiouness to be created then we only need to find out what that is to determine what consiouness is and if it can exist in other forms and if it can exist in things besides living things. Maybe consiouness exist in every particle in the universe and nothing else is needed.
@@ZeusHelios that's a wonderful answer. A couple of years ago I read a paper saying that some fluctuations of H2O were found to interact with the stability of DNA, but the conclusion was "thus, we can confirm that water is actually essential for life itself". Then I thought it was completely wrong. Did they ever think about metanol fluctuations? Silicon? Electricity? Light? Any kind of dense plasma in gigantic forms? If we define life as the way a group of matter can manage to reproduce itself and maybe mutate through time, we're going the wrong way if we limit it to water.
I always thought that this was a silly question. Sound is just the word we use to describe a vibration that we can detect wih our ears. Take the ears out of the equation and the vibration still occurs.
There was a young man who said, "God,
Must find it exceedingly odd,
That a tree, as a tree, simply ceases to be,
When there's no one around in the quad."
Reply:
"Young man, your astonishment's odd,
For I'm always around in the quad,
So the tree, as a tree, never ceases to be,
Since observed by yours faithfully, God."
(Ronald Knox)
Sorry wasn't there to hear... Lol.
why does the tree cease to be ? it does not. And it does not need to have a name
@Jamie Ragan There's at least a half-dozen different versions of it, all from credible sites. So it's hard to know which (if any) is correct.
@Jamie Ragan your version (which I also came across) strikes me as more-likely the original; it's older English to use "about" rather than "around," which is likely a modernization. I only discovered the quote about 10 years ago while listening to an Alan Watts talk (he quotes it). Cheers.
It's "continues to be" not ceases
I submit that sound is defined as information that is communicated and understood. Thus, a tree falling the a forest with no one around to hear it, makes a noise, but not a sound. The understanding of noise, allows the shifting of categories. Cosmic background radiation was noise, until it was understood.
Great point!
Answer from another perspective:
If the world is a simulation, then most probably it doesn't. If reality is real, then it doesn't care about our observations (using senses) and things happen whether or not we observe them.
By the way, this video reminded me about your video about quantum double slit experiment, it is almost impossible for a macroscopic object to be isolated informationally ("Why don't Balls Act Like Atoms?").
I'm kind of surprised he didn't address the simulation issue, since I think it's one of the main reasons this question may be posed at all.
Indeed. Also, related to quantum mechanics: “Do you really believe the moon is not there when you are not looking at it?” A. Einstein
The answer to the title: Yes. End of video.
Sure, the answer is easy. But "why" is the question.
@@ArvinAsh Because sound waves travel through a given medium regardless of if any of us are there to perceive them.
You could also take this question to its extreme and ask the same about black hole mergers, the answer would also be yes, since we've measured them happening millions of lightyears away. Which would mean they happened before any humans had been born or had even evolved into existence.
@spaghetti yummy No it didn't, the merger happened even if we hadn't measured it. Saying that it didn't is very egocentric. We just wouldn't have known about it, hadn't some people figured out how to measure gravitational waves. And no, I don't think what you're saying is what quantum field theory tells us.
@@meandnoother Vibrations travel, but a sound needs a receiver of some sort, does it not?
@@ArvinAsh It needs a receiver to be heard, yes. But that doesn't mean it doesn't propagate when nobody's around to hear it.
I've always hated this question. If a tree falls of course it makes sound. Doesn't matter if anybody or anything is there to experience it.
Sure. The problem is many people will disagree with you.
@@ArvinAsh Physics beats philosophy. Sound waves will propagate due to impact.
The answer is yes.. of course it “makes a sound”. The question is not “is the sound heard. That’s like asking, if it rains in a forest, but nobody sees it, does the ground get wet?! That’s a slight exaggeration, but still in the same ball park.
Yeah, it would still make sound waves. Even with nothing alive to perceive the sound, it would still make vibrations that would travel through the medium of air or the ground.
The energy transmission is not sound until it is heard by something with the ability to perceive that transmission, so a sound is not a sound until it is heard.
@@johnnywest5445 that's just one definition of a sound - but one can think of other definitions that would still make enough sense. Eg if i define a sound as that type/range of energy transmission which WOULD fall in human ability (for example) to hear it WERE we present to that transmission than it would still be a sound even without an observer there.
@@johnorgovan5259 You cannot have more than one definition of anything or you start losing the very laws of physics and mathematics. 1 + 2 = 3 *only* if you define 1 as a single, 2 as two singles, and 3 as three singles. Let's not go into what a single is or you start getting even more confused. What is the official *scientific* definition of sound then? That is the definition that must be used in this question.
Nothing occurs independently of perception
OMG, this was never about the TREE!!! The falling tree was just an analogy
Unlike the Schrodinger cat analogy, this was a real question about the philosophical implications of conscious observation. But again, it is arrogance, in my opinion, to believe that things don't happen if we (humans) are not around. The analysis of the tree is a good case study in that respect.
A better question might be:
If something happens and no conscious being experiences it, did it really occur?
@@joexer1 Delving into the philosophical... The Big Bang happened... Religious groups will love this :/ my bad
@@ArvinAsh/videos The meaning seemed pretty clear when I first heard it. I meant to say I think that the video focuses too much on the actual tree and not what the phrase actually was trying to convey
@@ArvinAsh and you don't
Yes. It’s not a tricky question. Just over analysed to “sound” like one. Any other answer is for other questions.
To me, answering this question mostly requires clarifying the terms, such as: what is "sound"? If sound is merely vibration of a medium, then falling trees make sound even when nothing living hears it. If "sound" requires being perceived, then falling trees don't make a sound if nothing living hears it. Doesn't really matter whether the answer is "yes" or "no". What matters is that we know what "yes" or "no" means.
The answer to this question depends on your definition of sound.
If sound is just a pressure wave then yes it makes a sound. If sound is the brain’s interpretation of that wave then no it does not make a sound.
I think, if you define sound as an electrical signal in the human brain, then you start going down the route of "reality only exists in the mind". And we know that there is an objective reality regardless of our perceptions.
Even with this fantastic video, the question can still be thrown up for debate. It all depends on how one thinks of what a sound is. Here's my take on it... I'm not saying I'm right.... I'm just sharing how my brain looks at the question:..
A sound is only created in the brain and by the brain. The "sound" we here is our brains creation from the decoding process of vibrational energy that was made by the fallen tree. The tree has kinetic energy as it falls then turns it into vibrational energy once it hits the ground, creating the "potential" for sound. If there is no one there to decode the disturbance then the potential for sound eventually disintegrates.
It's the same as colour. Colour doesn't actually exist independent of observation. Colour is solely created inside the brain and by the brain. Colour is the result of the brain differentiating between the differing wavelengths that light possesses. So it's like saying, "If there is a red flower in the forest but no one there to see it, is it still red?" And the answer to that question would be, "No, but the flower does have the potential to be red, it just has to be observed first."
So to me, no, the tree doesn't make a sound, it only creates the potential.
Again, not saying I'm right and Arvin is wrong, just sharing how I look at it, that's all. What do the rest of you think about it?
Great video as always Arvin! Love your content! 👍🏼
This is a very interesting perspective which is overlooked by even the brightest scientists.
Yes, I agree with your statement. I don't think my view is in conflict. There is potential for sound in the fallen tree. That's why I include the three things necessary for sound, the third being a receiver to interpret the sound. I am just saying that "sound" can be interpreted not just with air vibrations, but vibrations of any sort, including gravitational vibration. Any instrument that can detect the sound can also be later interpreted by a conscious receiver.
You are right. Ash is wrong. The falling tree makes waves. Most living creatures perceive this as sound. If there is no living thing to perceive the waves, there is no sound. There are just waves. Sound is a psychological fenomenon.
@@ArvinAshYes, I agree and i also don't believe our way of looking at it is in conflict. I understood the points you made and thought the video was very well put together and covered a lot of angles to the question. It was a great watch. I just red some of the comments and realised some people were just looking at it from the one angle, "The experience of sound exists without the observer." So I just wanted to open their minds a bit whilst letting them know I dont think you are wrong 😊 I love how your videos make me think 👍🏼
According to your logic, objects don’t exists because their physical nature is not Made (or interpreted) by your brain until you physically touch it and then it comes into existence or reality.
Although you can see it, it only has potential to exist but since the question only ascertained to the physicality of it, and you only perceive it when YOUR brain decides to function, the wavelengths seen by your eyes are irrelevant part of the equation.
The point being, sound is not dependent on an observer...
Lmao! I love the animation at the 9:06! That tree literally “just gave up and quit life!” Haha.
Sound is the property of space and not vice-versa. If space is there sound is bound to be there . Sound creates space . Life really is subtle 🙏🙏
The sound signal converted to an electrical signal finally reaches the auditory complex and then we *magically* get the first-hand experience of 'hearing'. It is a pity that science has shied away from attempting to explain how this magic happens whereas the _Rishis_ many millennia ago addressed this very issue, for example, in the _Kena Upanishad:_ "Not that which the ear can hear, but that whereby the ear can hear: know that to be ...."
The definition of sound, simplified, is a hearable noise. ... Since sound does not exist without our hearing of it, sound does not exist if we do not hear it. However, when a tree falls, the motion disturbs the air and sends off air waves.
I love how you systematically eliminated everything on Earth and then eliminated the Earth as well. I then wondered what if the tree fell into a black hole. I thought, not even light can escape a black hole so certainly sound can't escape. Then I thought, it's not that light or sound for that matter can't escape. It's captured. There needed to be sound to be captured in the first place so that darn tree STILL made a sound. How did I do? Question. I heard that black holes can scrape against space. Would that make a sound? Can black holes scrape against spacetime? Sorry Arvin. That's two questions.
I liked the video. I subscribed a long time ago. Thank you for your hard work and making science so easy to comprehend. Astrophysicists shouldn't have all the fun!
Blackholes collect information and store it in it's surface. So 2D is enough to contain all information within 3D space of the blackhole - read about the holographic theory of the universe.
See Arvind's answer. The black hole would preserve the information about the tree on the event horizon, at least, this is what we think happens.
If the tree fell in space and it was made to be perceived that it fell by adding a opposite force even without any medium present the sound must travel within the tree as it itself becomes a medium for sound to travel. Does that sound energy remain in the tree to be detected at a later time is something that needs to be reaearched.
YES . If a tree falls in a forest with no one around,
a cricket, deer, squirrel , some critter will hear
and react to it. We are not alone on this planet people.
Did you see that cricket, deer, squirrel hear the tree fall 🤔
@@mykq7286 But even if a person said they heard it, surely that's just hearsay and conjecture? Prove to me that it made a sound!
If we agree on what sound is... You could say that according to Einstein the tree makes a sound at some moment in time, Niels Bohr would say only if someone is watching and Heisenberg would say the tree makes a sound and no sound at the same time and you can only say what it did after you observed it.
I wrote Heisenberg but I mean Schrödinger
it's as simple as asking if someone deaf were near the tree when it falls, does that mean that the fall didn't have any sound associated with it simply because the person was deaf? is the tree gonna ask the person "excuse me can you hear anything? no? alright boys, sound's off this time"
Yes, it's like just because they didn't hear it doesn't mean it didn't happen.
This analysis hits the main practical issues. But if you want to chase them down, there are so many other potential questions. Here's a few that immediately spring to mind:
1. Does the tree make the sound or do interactions with the context make the sound? For instance, does it make sense to say 'What is the sound of one hand clapping'? And is the "it" that the question asks referring to "the tree" or to "the falling"?
2. There are innumerable other causes. (e.g. a storm, lack of water or nutrients, borers, growth of the seed that became the tree, gravity, the atoms that it collides with, etc) Do we also attribute the sound to them, or only to this particular identified proximate cause of the tree falling?
3. What is the ontological perspective that defines what is real? If we look from the standard, accepted, shared, objective perspective then we will define reality quite differently from when we take a subjective, experiential perspective. This difficulty is highlighted by, but extends beyond, the problem of hard solipsism (Note: I am not advocating this as practical). And when is it meaningful to define something as existing if there is not sufficient (experiential) evidence of its existence (e.g. proposed 'existence' in an alternative universe, or 'existence' of a claimed unfalsifiable god)?
4. We only have access to appearances, rather than to Kantian noumena. So we lack certainty of knowledge. And our perceptions can deceive. Would the question be more precisely stated as "If a tree falls ... does it APPEAR to make a sound"?
This really seems like an utterly pointless exercise in semantics.
You clicked the video. What the hell did you think it was going to be? It's just fun to think about.
Mooing - I was hoping it would an interesting take on the old idiom, but it wasn't. That's all, no big deal.
Really?? Then enlighten us all. Explain the double slit experiment for us. Why does matter.... what every single thing in the world is made out of....changes its behavior when OBSERVED....or even measured. As if it knows its being watched. So..... either matter can think.....or just the meer act of it being observed changes its behavior. That being said, is what you're seeing in the world, everyday, really there....in a different configuration....or not there at all.
@@RickyPisano I have literally been in a fridge and closed the door whilst still inside said fridge and can tell you that it was pitch black. Although I must admit I'm blind, it was a moonless night and there was a power outage at the time
This is so drawn out for absolutely no reason. When a tree falls it disturbs the air creating vibrations called SOUND waves. The tree made a sound.
Your videos are great! I do have a different interpretation on this one than you however.
A sound could be defined as simply as a pressure wave caused by conversion of energy, i.e a sound wave. It's likely that 'sound wave' and 'sound' are interchangeable terms for most people. So if you define 'sound' as 'sound wave', then the answer is clearly yes, the falling tree does produce one. It will always produce a measurable impact on the universe, as your video concludes.
However, you haven't really explored consciousness here. I think the original question is written to make us think about consciousness. The question makes use of the word 'hear', which is what I think gives this clue. You do use the words 'hear' and 'perceive' in your video, but don't really explore them. The use of the word 'hear' could imply that sound is being defined not just as a sound wave, but to also include the conversion, interpretation and, crucially, the understanding (the 'awareness') of it.
To be 'aware' of the sound wave requires consciousness, the ability to understand what is being perceived. A plant does not 'hear' a sound wave because it cannot be aware of it, i.e it cannot understand it. A plant can only react to a sound wave in the way it is genetically programmed, give or take a bit of random variation. A plant does not make conscious choices.
For me it doesn't matter if you keep extending the distances involved in the measurement and removing objects from around the tree, which is how the video progresses and concludes. The phrase 'no one is around', in the original question, can be extended to mean no one ever being around at any distance or in any time. If the universe was empty of all conscious beings forever, would the tree make a sound? If we define sound as being able to hear and understand the sound wave, then in this context the correct answer to the question would clearly be no.
Unfortunately the question does not have a definitive answer, because it does not explicitly define the term 'sound'.
Conclusion - There is no tree that falls over.
Sound and awareness are two sperate things so if a tree falls in the forest it does make a sound even if no person hears it.
what if a deaf person was near but was looking at something else so they did not see the tree falling and didn't HEAR it (since they're deaf) did it even make a sound?
yes, a sound does not need a hearer to exist.
@@ArvinAsh YES EXACTLY I LOVE YOU
In order for sound to make vibrations, the waves transmitting through a medium must carry energy or else they could not vibrate other things upon contact. Therefore, due to the conservation of energy - yes, when a tree falls in a forest it still makes a sound regardless of an observer is there to hear it or not. Not making a sound while falling (once hitting the floor or other trees on the way down) is a direct violation of conservation of energy laws.
excellent analysis. imagine a man like you running the world and being in charge of making everyone happy
God help us!
From the beginning I thought that was the most stupid question on Earth. The answer was clearly Yes. I'm very glad somebody took it in the scientific way and answered leaving no doubts at all. Thanks, great video.
Science or any scientific theories is not necessarily right, it just haven’t been proven wrong yet. Therefore we must not take science as a basis of absolute truth!
I always precived this question on a quantum level. As in do wave functions of the universe will collaps if I’m not around o see it. The answer is yes according to your last video
That's a good analogy. But sound really is different than the QM scenario. It is a classical physics phenomenon.
@@ArvinAsh A receiver is NOT required for a sound to be generated... any more than a receiver is necessary for a radio signal to be generated.
even if you were to grant quantum properties to the sound's existence, why did you not also grant quantum properties to the tree's existence? then it's not only a question if the falling tree made a sound, but also a question of the tree even existing in the first place. but as you alluded to, most physicists agree that macroscopic behaviors overtake quantum behaviors at certain scales and numbers of particles. so it would seem nonsensical to project quantum weirdness onto macro-scale objects that we see and interact with daily. in my opinion, the tree falling in the forest question isn't as deep or interesting as it's made out to be. the saying wasn't even created with quantum mechanics in mind (that i know of). if you believe in a type of objective reality at all, and there's every reason to believe, then of course things happen with or without human/animal perception. there's tangential questions about the mapping of our senses onto an objective reality, but that really doesn't matter when the question is about if an event happened at all (regardless of our subjective perception of the event)
@spaghetti yummy everything we experience in this world seems to point to an objective reality of sorts (even if we at times, seem to perceive it slightly differently). obviously epistemology 101 says that we probably can't ever be 100% certain about anything, other than maybe a select few axioms about one's own existence in some form. but at the end of the day, we don't have good reason to disbelieve some sort of objective reality is out there in some form, as we all seem to agree to a similar reality, with the same objects in it and in the same locations and at the same times. just because you can think up some scenarios in which it creates doubt about some sort of objective reality, does not mean the scenarios are correct or have a good chance of being correct. if there is no objective reality in some form, there is absolutely no foundation to even begin thinking about anything other than your subjective experiences, never mind the possibility of things outside of your mind like trees or sounds.
the whole questioning objective reality thing only becomes interesting if we begin to experience things about reality that start leading us away from objective reality. some experiments in quantum mechanics do bring these questions up, but again, that type of interpretation is not favored among physicists. other than that, if you do accept there are others like you in this reality (other humans), the fact that we can all agree on the locations and times that objects outside of our mind exist, strongly points to some form of objective reality. you can question in what way our perception of objects maps onto those objects outside of perception, but it seems clear that objects exist in some form, regardless of the interesting spin that our perception gives us.
@spaghetti yummy since you didn't provide any details for your opinion, i'm guessing you're talking about the recent paper "Experimental test of local observer independence". i think you need to understand better how scientific progress happens and the history of quantum mechanics interpretations. scientific progress depends on scientific consensus. scientific papers are published all the time where the conclusions or interpretations of data are not widely agreed upon in the scientific community. just because a paper is published, does not mean its suggested conclusions or conjectures are true. this is especially true for quantum mechanics interpretations. there has been no consensus on quantum mechanics interpretations since the inception of quantum mechanics in the early 1900s. there have been many papers published since then, speculating and formulating arguments for particular interpretations. there are about a dozen popular quantum mechanics interpretations that physicists have come up with throughout the decades. the thing about quantum mechanics interpretations is, they are all supported by the experimental evidence and mathematical framework of quantum mechanics. so the merit of all the interpretations are fairly equal in terms of the quality of experimental evidence/predictions we would normally hold any scientific theory to. as of now, this still holds true for any paper published on the topic of quantum mechanical interpretation. there's not a great reason to hold that recently published paper you're referring to on a pedestal. but don't take my word for it, see the critiques that actual physicists have on that paper (or any other paper published on QM interpretation)
I have another question though. A guitarist can sing and play "yesterday " with no emotions. And yet another guitarist can sing and play "yesterday " full of emotions. How do air waves transmitted those emotions ?
I have always said that "yes it makes a sound" I have been called all kinds of bs because those people have no idea of science. Glad to see I am right about this. Surely those persons were "humans above other animals" type of people so it makes sense they cannot expand their cynical views.
12:00 The sound was indeed made, but it only propagated through the tree itself, it didn't spread outside the tree since there's no medium aside from the tree itself.
Sound is vibrations through our medium here on earth - air.
Since we know the tree falling had to produce those vibrations through the air as it fell, we know that sound was created.
Whether or not a human ear was in the vicinity.
Dictionary definition:
NOUN
1. vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear.
The definition includes the necessity for a listener.
@@russellfield5010 The definition is wrong then, since otherwise a listener would casually be connected to the vibration - which as literally even the grammatical structure of the original sentence gives away does not exist.
@@slyseal2091 The 'sound' that we hear is a processed signal. Vibrations and waves are unprocessed.
@@russellfield5010 Hmm... well, then we're at an impasse, since that's really a matter of if you define it as the concept of vibrations or the perceiving of vibrations. No discussion to be had.
Yes, but vibrations are not sound. Vibrations are the raw material needed to make sound. The brain manufactures the sound....ie sound is a biological response to waves. Without us, sound, as we well know it to be, cannot be manufactured. Without us, that infamous falling tree does so in absolute silence. Of course, the tree will have other responses, but those responses will take place in library-quietness.
There was no life around to witness the formation of Earth, but the formation of Earth definitely happened.
Yep. No witnesses are needed. Things happen whether anyone is around or not.
Still can't believe that some people confuse sound with sound waves - they're not one and the same thing. Sound is a personal experience as a result of the brain interpreting signals received from the human ear. Soundwaves, on the other hand, are merely vibrating air molecules in the form of a wave - ergo, human ears would have to be present to send the necessary electrical signals to the brain in order for the brain to 'create' the sound that we hear. With no human ears present, the falling tree would still produce soundwaves, but nothing more....it's as simple as that.
Your ears are covered by bafflers? No sound. A person IS present, but is deaf? No sound. No humans whatsoever are present? No sound. I really don't know what's so difficult to comprehend about all this....
interesting but another life beings can hear
This is almost complete. The listener can be more then just humans. Many animals would interpret the vibrating air molecules as sound also. Even a recording device could record and reproduce this disturbance later and it will interpreted as sound by hearing creatures. But your argument is well stated. BTW this is also true for light and color as it pertains to vision. No such thing as light or color.
@@jpboy1962
"no such thing as light or color" -- They *do* exist -- as mental images in the mind of a perceiving being. If a thought can exist, then color and sound do too.
@@grayaj23 A mental image does not mean existence. I can create all kinds of mental images of things that no one would accept as existing. Light and color are not physical phenomena might describe it more completely.
@@jpboy1962 The things you *imagine* may not exist (see St. Anselm's ontological "proof" of god's existence). But the imagination of the thing *is* a thing all by itself. If I have a thought about a winged giraffe that recites Shakespeare backwards in Swahili, the giraffe doesn't exist. The *thought* of the giraffe does, though.
I'd define sound as far as the waves in the medium because the receiver seems to me irrelevant. If they are generated then yes, there's sound. In space I'd suggest the tree would make "ahhhh! I'm in spaaaace!" :)
Sound is not in a tree, it is the product of the _mind_ of a sentient Being. If no-one is there to hear it then no sound occurs.
Does the being have to be sentient? If not, then how sentient do you have to be?
@@ArvinAsh - Humans call a type of _awareness_ that they have: "sound" Another Being may sense it, or call it something else. A human brain _converts_ waveform information into sound, and so it only, truly, exists in a _mind_ All sentient Beings will have some sort of sensation particular to them; low-level Beings may just feel vibration; a higher-than-human Being may sense something that a human cannot comprehend, and they may 'call' it something else quite profound that is a function of _their_ own understanding.
Everything is vibration but what is awareness made of?
We require sentience, in whatever form, to establish a thing called 'sound'
What substance is a mind made of?
I think this in a motivational way; Like the deef frog, who didn't hear the toxic bullys or negativities.
we only hear when we near to it. If we far away from negativity, it wouldn't reach us.
But yes to understand positivity we need to go through with negativity.
Dear Lord, please give me the knowledge to understand everything will be said in this video. amen!!
haha...love it!
😂😂😂😂
It makes sound waves but an eardrum is needed in the vacinty to technically convert those waves into just sound.
Sound doesn't exist, it's a construct of our mind, it's just waves moving through air with differing pitch and frequency that a conscious entity needs to encode into something that helps it survive. It's the same with colours.
Why only our minds? Why not the mind of other creatures, or even instruments that can detect the sound?
@@ArvinAsh The entire universe has no purpose or reason to exist if there were no conscious being to experience it.
Furthermore, a conscious being has no reason to exist if it has no other being to be in relationship with. Community is everything.
An recording instrument is only another medium with a fundamental difference. It is man's way of suspending the unprocessed signal of sound energy as a conterfeit copy. This can now be accessed from another place in spacetime for processing by a consciousness. I don't think a device hears sound for it is inanimate
@@russellfield5010 Does our existence give meaning to the universe? Or is it still meaningless?
@@ArvinAshWhat would be the point of a stand up comedian telling jokes to an empty room?
What is the point of a chessboard if a player has no opponent?
The most precious thing that we have in life is each other. I am not my body. How could I possibly be? My body is merely a collection of atomic particles. All of which are inanimate. A large collection of inanimate particles doesn't make them any more alive.
As a motorist drives a car, surely we as beings are also driving our bodies.
Our universe provides us with a common framework in which we can interact. Our universe gives us a place to exist, an avatar to control and a duration to move (or be animated).
What is the point of an entire universe if there isn't ever a consciousness to realise it is even there?
Yes. I truly believe beyond any doubt that we give the universe meaning. I truly belive the universe was purpose built for us to coexist.
Our five senses are fine tuned to our universe. Without our 5 senses we would have no way of even detecting this universe let alone interact in it.
In your video you kept taking away living things to get to the bottom of your question. The rest of the universe didn't matter because it's irrelevant.
This actually supports my viewpoint, that without life/conscious beings, the universe is irrelevant/useless/without purpose.
@Sepheryn Consciousness cannot be derived from the inanimate. There is no experiment or evidence that proves otherwise. Can you bring a couch or a rug to life? Inanimate objects do not become alive.
It all depends how you define sound. Are you saying sound is vibration of air or you are saying sound is an experience someone feels. If you define it as an experience, then it matters how you define someone, can insects that experience sounds count?
For me the answer is easy, yes. because I define sound as vibrations in the air, this is not dependent on any creature with ear drums being there to experience it.
"Scientific method for dummies"?
It could be also based on the "Is there a reflection in the mirror if there is none in the room?" question.
I think that another example for this argument,even if we’d arrogantly assume that only humas “hear sounds”,would be a speaker locked in a basement with completly sound proof walls,such that absolutely no sound would come out of that room,put a glass on a table with the speaker next to it,set a timer so that the speaker would automaticaly play some high frequency sound,such that the glass breaks,some high pitch opera singer.Remember that the there is no human being in the basement,since we set the speaker to automatically play it’s thing,and there is no sound going out of the room,since the room is soundproof,so then what breaks the glass?Obviously,the sound.
laws dont care about human sensations or feelings....so if we are all blind does light exists?
statements like that usually lack of etymology and most often are kinda of ''pretentious'' imho
You make an excellent point!
@@ArvinAsh ty..i m not fond of hardcore solipsism
@tinylilmatt exactly.....btw since that statement was conceived we have the tech to prove it wrong! Go to a forest...put some microphones in....return to collect the recorded data! tadddaaaaaa
@tinylilmatt trollscience XD
Facepalm Jesus people would argue that even the microphone is considered an observer , it too counts as „one“. The question was nicely answered here . the point though is that we want no observer to be there when the tree falls, even no microphone , camera etc
.
My man took it to another level 👏🏼👏🏼
Love ur videos Arvin , there are other good channels But more than often you just end up confused and half-way learning something instead of actually UNDERSTANDING and definately learning something , like from ur videos. Ur an exceptionally rare and Very Very good teacher.
Thank you my friend. The best is yet to come. Next week's video, I think, provided we can pull it off, may be one of our best.
I have thought about this question many times even going as far as considering the removal of all living creatures. But never thought of space! Lol. I mean the Q is about a forest, a normal one, so the answer must be yes. It would make a noise.
This isn't a simple answer to a complex question, this is a complex answer to a simple question. The true answer is yes.
If a man says something,
And there's no woman around to correct him,
Is he still wrong?
Same answer.
Yes, he is...at least from my experience. lol.
I think, "no!" For there to be sound, there has to be a person and/or creature to hear it, otherwise, it's just vibrations.
Edit
Oh wow! I hadn't thought that hard about it.
Everyone knows when a tree falls, it makes a noise. We know this from personal experiences and from second and third party experiences, i.e. someone telling another person about a big tree that fell and the huge crashing sound it made. ....or a news story we are watching about a tree falling and the noise it made. Imo, it is arrogant (no surprise from humans there...) to assume a HUMAN needs to be around to HEAR the tree fall. I am quite sure all the other mammals and insects around that tree heard it fall.
@@drew-shourd ..the tree itself makes a sound.. cracking and splintering and hitting the ground.. those noises happen whether or not anyone or anything is around to hear it.. yes ..a tree falling makes a sound!
I have used a similar argument. If we believe in an objective universe, then a falling tree will create a disturbance in the air and ground that will propagate outward. But this is not sound. Sound is created within the brain. It is how the brain informs us that pressure waves have been detected. So to me, sound only occurs if perceived; that is I define "sound" as the perception of the waves. The pressure waves exist regardless of whether they are perceived, but sound only exists if perceived. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. ;-) Thanks for the thought provoking video. Glad you didn't bring QM into it, then we'd have to decide if Schrodinger's cat both heard and did not hear the tree fall!
First of all, as Arvin was attempting to demonstrate in the video, the question must be posed in a way that assumes that all forms of life and consciousness are completely absent from the universe. In which case, if we loosely base the final conclusion on the implications of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum mechanics, then I suggest that the short answer is no, the falling tree does not make a sound.
To explain why that is so, imagine a DVD player playing a DVD of raucous and noisy scenes of trees falling over left and right in a forest, all of which is appearing up on your new Samsung 4K television screen while blasting the crashing tree sounds from the speakers of your new surround-sound audio system.
Now imagine removing the television screen and the speakers from this scenario while allowing the DVD to continue running, wherein all of the information that represents the images and sounds is still being scanned by the DVD player’s laser.
The question is: are the images and sounds of trees hitting the ground literally present in the bumps and pits of coding on the DVD?
Or, is the existence of the imagery and sounds dependent upon the presence of the monitor and speakers?
The point is that it should be obvious that the patterns of quantum information that underpin the phenomenal features of the universe are analogous to the information encoded on the DVD. Furthermore, it should also be obvious that the sensory aspects of consciousness (in this case, vision and hearing) are analogous to the TV monitor and speakers.
And just as it is logical to assume that there are no actual sounds and images of trees falling to the ground amidst the bumps and pits of information on a DVD,...
...likewise, there are no actual sounds and images of trees falling to the ground amidst the peaks and troughs of the quantum waves that underpin the phenomenal features of the universe.
Both mediums require the presence of something else (something other than themselves) to transform the coded information into that which the information represents. And in the case of reality itself, that something is “consciousness.”
Otherwise, “reality” as we understand reality to be...
(the “sound” of a falling tree, for example)
...will simply reside in the unmanifest and ghostly realm of what Heisenberg called “potentia.”
The bottom line is that Arvin didn’t go deep enough for the answer. He should have proceeded into Kant’s “noumenal-like” underpinning of the universe - into what physicists call “non-local” reality.
_______
Nicely done! Are you saying that sounds we hear in reality are like the sounds embedded in a DVD?
@@ArvinAsh
Yes (loosely speaking, of course). Except, obviously, the information embedded in a DVD is static, while the information embedded in the quantum underpinning of the universe is moving and dynamic.
Another analogy would be the static information embedded in the photographic plate of a laser hologram.
Again, loosely speaking, I suggest that in the same way that the explication of the three-dimensional imagery of a laser hologram requires the conjoined relationship between a laser and the information embedded in the photographic plate,...
...likewise, so does the explication of the three-dimensional phenomena of the universe require the conjoined relationship between consciousness and the quantum.
@TheUlitmateSeeds Thank you for your post, wanted to post myself but you covered me. The question is much deeper than "sound waves" and "disturbance of material state" or anything else for that mater that Newtonian Physics cover.
Brilliant video! Randon thought, a falling tree won't make a sound if it was free falling in a vacuum strapped to a bomb set to detonate moments before impact. The tree would be vaporized and you would definitely hear the bomb but not the tree hitting the ground. I'm sure this would be wrong but would be fun to watch lol
Nice scenario! Well, the bomb, if in space would actually not make a sound, except in the same way as the tree - through the warping of space-time, because there is no medium in space. If you were within the debris field of the bomb, you might hear a sound because the explosive vibration would have the medium of the particles in the explosion. If the explosion occurred after the tree fell, then gravitational waves from the tree would have a head start over the gravitational waves of the bomb, so I suppose a sensitive enough detector could detect this immediately before detecting the gravitational disturbance from the explosion. But you are right, it would need to be an awfully sensitive detector.
@@ArvinAsh Thanks for the explanation. Then perhaps if only the tree was falling into a non spinning black hole this might be the scenario where it would be hardest to detect if at all.
Excellent! Simply excellent. Every possible scenario was covered. I agree, the tree makes a "sound".
Well you're wrong
No, every possible scenario was NOT covered.
The prevailing understanding is that sound and colour are Qualia. That is, they exist only in the mind. They are sometimes highly correlated to external stimulus... but not always.
The external universe has NEITHER sound nor colour.
Do your dreams have sound and colour? If so... were those sounds and colours the result of photons and pressure waves, or did they originate purely in your mind as part of its perceptual model?
Trees, falling, cause movement and heat ... and heat, is just movement.
Movement can be converted into electrical impulses... stored on magnetic tapes, processed in computers, drawn on graphs...
... depending on whether the impulses came from a set of nerves in your eye... or a set of nerves in your ear... or a set of nerves in your skin... or in your nose... your brain creates a different sensation.
Colour... or sound... or heat... or pain... or smell... or taste...
... none of these things exist in the universe. They are all an interpretation. And they are all ultimately, an interpretation of very similar electrical impulses sent down nerve fibres.
The different sensations happen in the brain itself.
Sound is a conscious sensation (a qualia)
The external universe does not have sound.
Nothing makes a sound .Just about everything causes waves. It is the ear that creates the sound by transforming waves into the phenomenon we call sound. Think about it.
Awesome video! If the tree knew that it's falling would cause such infinite nitpicking, it would have rather stayed put 😋
Yes, it does! Sound is energy and the universe does is thing without us being present. Our observation is not necessary for cause and effect to take place.
I love how you include all life capable of perceiving sound. A dog is far more likely to hear that tree fall anyway.
It might be simpler to ask, if an asteroid hits a barren planet, does it make a sound.
I love a good hypothetical to the Nth degree as much as the next person, but there should be no question that sound exists regardless of consciousness. Of course it does.
1. Sound is it’s most reduced explanation is a simply a form of Entropy.
2. Stars such as our sun are seething with internal acoustic energy. It’s an important part of stellar dynamics. There is certainly nothing conscious inside a star, yet there are real effects.
3. Tectonic processes such as earthquakes are basically sound waves at the core. The primordial Earth itself was shaped due to acoustical energy long before there were ever lifeforms around to perceive.
Do you exist? Without you existing does sound exist? Without the CD player does the cd make a sound?
“If a tree falls, the tree can hear it.” Loved this phrase 👍
I certainly remember many occasions of falling and feeling it myself 😁
I've never considered that to be a scientific question.... I believe it's a philosophical question. In other words, if humans don't validate reality, is reality real?
I'm gonna need more weed for this Arv
😂
There is still sound even if it is not heard. Consider the recent findings that sum, Saturn Jupiter etc making sound. Just Recently, it is discovered. But this sound should have been there for long time now
Does the tree ever actually fall or does its wave function simply collapse either to a "standing" or a "fallen" state when an observer comes along?
There's no way to know from our perspective.
Well, if the Simulation Hypothesis is right a particular tree didn't exist before we could notice it; maybe was rendered directly as a fallen tree, hence it never did any falling sound.
Very well and throughly explained. Great video!
Yes the answer is movement causes sound waves and affects everything. It affects movement and movement makes sound. It will affect something eventually because of pressure.
The way you reasoned it out is just amazing, brilliant all in a scientific way! as you said we cannot lose ourselves in arrogance. Thanks!
The modern version of this question I think would be: "If there's nothing that can perceive the flow of time and the changes within spacetime, does the Universe really exist?" Better yet, if the Universe has no conscious observer to witness the events that transpire in this plane of existence, does it even matter if the Universe exists or not? A photon cannot perceive the Universe and what happens in it. Same for the dead matter of the Universe.
It's like how I ask other ppl : If there's no human ,would there be ghosts?
Which came first - the quantum ghost (spiritual light body) ln the other side or the physical human on this side of the space-time continuum.
Possibly, it depends on what ghost are.
If a tree falls, and no one is around, how do you know it fell? I mean, you can see clearly that it is laying down horizontally, but how do you know it wasn't set down carefully and deliberately? Maybe even... silently?
That’s a question I’m actually asking myself in a more general way, does something exists if there is no one to perceive it? Can it exists if there is no second party that is somehow relative to it?
@Darth Ichthys That reminds me of a game series called Blazeblue
The golden question
Does a bear shit in the woods if no one is there to perceive it?
Arrogant human based question.
I love this channel. Arvin always breaks it down so a doorknob like me can understand.
Yes, If my wife is yelling and I’m not listening I can still hear her
I will be hearing but NOT understanding what she is trying to say because my body maybe there but my mind may be elsewhere. I have been working hard to correct that in myself.
If this video drops and no one is around to play it, does it make a sound? Even deeper question, is a sound made if a conscious being plays the video but the volume is turned all the way down and muted?
Once again, Arvin, excellent video supported by clear thinking and sound reasoning.
Glad you enjoyed it
The answer is yes... Simply because the tree has potential energy and when it falls to the ground the potential energy is transferred to some other sort of energy...... This is transferred to sound energy....
This completely misses Berkeley's point, as Arvin without any doubt knows. What about a next topic on QBism?
We really must make a difference between sound-as-wave and sound-as-perception. While tree definitely would produce some sound-as-wave, it's not impossible to have a creature, that would perceive sound as colour (take synesthetics for example). If you are a panpsychist, you would say that some sort of perception will be born during any physical interaction, but it may be very different from our sound-as-perception.
Why "sound as wave" ??? ... can't we just say "movement" ? Especially since the range of frequencies we associate with sound is strictly defined by the size of our ears... and not by anything intrinsic.
Give me a big enough ear, and a period of a trillion years, is sound. Give me a small enough ear, and heat is also sound.
"sound as wave" may not be qualia... but its definition is still inextricably bound to the notion of an observer. Even if an observer needn't be present to measure it... he DOES need to be present to define it.
So, what defines it... the thing that separates it from mere "movement" ... is the observer!
No, Sound, taste, smell, pain, colour... these are all properly understood as qualia.
A tree falling causes movement and heat (and heat is movement) ... and, yes, we can interpret this as sound. But we can also imagine sound... or dream sound... or hallucinate sound... without any need for waves of alternating high and low pressure. Same with colour... we can dream colour without any photons being required.
To our brain, everything is electrical pulses being sent through nerves. They are more or less identical, with the only differentiation being how they are ultimately processed.
So, to consider that these phenomena exist externally in the universe even when unobserved, still requires an observer to exist. No?
Otherwise, how would we know what sized ears didn't hear it? LOL
@GaryChap "movement", but electrical impulses in a brain are also a sort of movement. Everything is a movement, so it doesn't help to distinguish a sound-outside-of-observer from sound-inside-an-observer.
" "sound as wave" may not be qualia... but its definition is still inextricably bound to the notion of an observer."
Right. But are we discussing the things or their definitions? My point was that there is something beside observers. And this something can exist in multiple states. Some patterns of that something we can roughly link to our concepts like "sound, matter, energy".
I can't say that this something is independant from observers. Observers consist of it. So they can interact with it. Like cars, which consist of metal and interact with other metal things/substances. But not all metal exists in form of cars, nor does it require cars to exist on its own.
But it would be misleading to say that car-ish metal is distinguished from not-car-ish metal by presence of a car. It's just a word play. You can't have an observer without qualia, you can't have qualia without an observer. "Qualia" and "observer" are synonyms.
So, just as you said, the only difference is how signals are processed. Or in other word how various motions codepend on each other. I currently accept Joscha Bach's view that consciousness is a sort of simulation and that only simulation can be conscious. In my oppinion his view explains well why consciousness simultaneously can interact with physical world, but somewhat poseses non-physical qualities. But this still remains a bit a word play. How exactly various motions should be codependant to produce a simulation? What would be the simplest model of an observer?
I think if you have two bits of memory and a small program that at each step defines their future state based on their equality or inequality, this would be a simple observer. Such system requires their mutual state to exist, even though a mutual state can only be simulated. Equality of two bits is emergent in relation to the state of each bit.
@@count_of_darkness5541
"Right. But are we discussing the things or their definitions?"
We can't discuss things, until we agree upon definitions.
If we disagree, it's likely because we've not yet agreed on a definition of "sound" ... you insist there is some definition which is independent of the existence of observers, but you haven't formulated it.
So, what is "sound" for you? Start with the definition.
If sound is merely "alternating waves of higher and lower pressure" ... then at what frequency? In what medium? If ANY (to avoid observer led criteria) then we must define "sound" to be "any movement in any medium at any frequency"
... if we do that, then "sound" is effectively denied any meaning.
But limit it to a specific range? Well, then you've already polluted the hypothetical with an observer. Sound exists because some observer, even when not present, exists to provide the definition of a sound-like wave. The sound is defined in relation to that potential observer.
Don't like either?
Then provide a definition of sound that isn't so broad as to be meaningless... nor dependent upon a notional observer for meaning.
Then distinguish it from a Bat that might "see" sound, as a 3D model of its universe, visualised. Or how smell is also measuring the frequency at which molecules vibrate... or how heat is a similar measure of the rate and amplitude of oscillation....
... and if heat, sight, smell and sound are just different subjective interpretations of the same thing (vibrations) at the inputs of the conscious mind...
... then, surely, any qualitative differences are OF mind. The distinction between sound and smell and heat and taste and colour, are part of the perceptual model ... not part of the universe.
Think about "orange".... as a trichromat there is simply no way for orange to enter our brain as orange. Orange is (re)constructed, in the brain. But, our brains have never had any external verification of the nature or qualities of the colour orange...
We call it a warm colour, because we live next to a yellow sun. We may feel it to be optimistic... because blues predominate in the dark when we are vulnerable and cold. And the experiential colour itself, divested of any emotional attachment, is merely a placeholder used to construct meaningful landscapes.
... that's because EVERYTHING about the experience "orange" is arbitrary, it is not formed from any objective truths. And, it is the same with sound. The correlation is higher, but ultimately the qualia itself is strictly an emergent phenomenon.
And, like I say, because these things are constructions of mind we can dream, we can hallucinate... our perceptual model is quite capable of generating colour and sound without an external cause.
And I'm a synesthete. My senses work VERY differently to yours.
But we won't get anywhere in this conversation until you provide me your alternative definition for "sound" that we can then use to speak the same language.
A definition, I assume, that defines sound as qualitatively different from the other natural phenomenon behind our senses (in a non observer-dependent way)! Unless, of course, you're arguing that smell, sight, sound, taste and touch are all the exact same thing perceived differently... in which case, NONE exist distinctly in the objective universe.
But if they don't exist distinctly as qualitatively different objective phenomenon - they I suggest you ditch the word "sound" as a meaningless ornamentation and speak simply of motion.
(After all, without an observer in mind, what size and mass is an eardrum?)
Ditch the subjectivist ornamentation and we'd at least find agreement in the following :
_"If a tree falls in a wood... and no minimally conscious being is there to interpret the resultant kinetic cascade as some form of subjective qualia, it nevertheless still moved! And its movement likely disturbed other matter in a manner that could otherwise have been so perceived"_
Now riddle me this, “Do you really believe the moon is not there when you are not looking at it?” - Einstein
Of course the moon is not "there" if you're not looking at it. It's somewhere other than where you are looking
Quantum information can never be lost or simply information never destroyed. So if a tree falls there there should be the change in the configuration of that tree and it (information) may appears in different forms. Sound may be one of these.... ..
I wonder if it could make a sound without gravity?! And I also wanna know of what is the coldest place between Southpole and Northpole and their lowest temperature. Great facts and findings you showed us.
Something can exist without an observer or receiver. answer yes (for the sound to create/exist it only takes vibration and medium)
U know y? Cause you got that...
This video starts at at 8:05. I love your content, but it took you more than a half of the video to eliminate the observer, which in itself is a premise of this question.
Also, you mentioned that a scientist could assert that the tree did make a sound, even though there was no observer at the time - but should this still be referred to as a sound? Shouldn't the scientist say that there were waves that would be sound, if someone was there to hear it, but because of no observer they were nearly quanta?
Yes and it was all totally unnecessary. There was no need to discuss animals and insects etc as he points out one moment but then ignores later, it's a *hypothetical* question!! Obviously when bishop Berkeley posed the question he meant hypothetically if it couldn't be heard by anything obviously he would say for the sake of argument let's not consider mushrooms and bugs mrs Higgins' cat from two doors down etc it's not a realistic situation for heaven's sakes it's a hypothetical question does it make a sound if it's not heard by anything. I'm sure he never meant only humans, that's not even part of the question really it's like getting side tracked.
I mean that much is blatantly clear it really is ridiculous to spend ages and ages eliminating ladybirds and moths and nonsense like that and then after all that he goes on to say oh yes it generated sound waves even if there is nothing there to hear them when earlier he defined sound as something that was created when a compression wave entered an ear. Later he just forgets this and discusses how scientists could tell you that it had created a "sound wave" because they could tell you that some sand had been moved. really the most absurd ridiculous infantile argument I've ever come across. A total waste of my time
Does a tree fall if no one notices it?
The initial question postulates that a tree falls, and if a tree falls it does not matter if anyone notices, it would still comply to laws of physics and make the sound trees make when they fall.