It could also be framed as an issue of making your beliefs pay rent, similar to the dragon in the garage example—or perhaps as an example of how reality is entangled with itself to such a degree that some questions that seem to carve reality at the joints don’t really do so.
(If falling trees don’t make vibrations when there’s no human-entangled sensor, how do you differentiate a human-entangled sensor from a non-human-entangled sensor? If falling-tree vibrations leave subtle patterns in the surrounding leaf litter that sufficiently-sensitive human-entangled sensors can detect, does leaf litter then count as a human-entangled sensor? How about if certain plants or animals have observably evolved to handle falling-tree vibrations in a certain way, and we can detect that. Then such plants or animals (or their absence, if we’re able to form a strong enough theory of evolution to notice the absence of such reactions where we would expect them) could count as human-entangled sensors well before humans even existed. In that case, is there anything that isn’t a human-entangled sensor?)
Good points in the parenthetical—if I make it into a top-level article, I’ll be sure to include a more thorough discussion of what concept is being carved with the hypothesis that there are no tree vibrations.
It could also be framed as an issue of making your beliefs pay rent, similar to the dragon in the garage example—or perhaps as an example of how reality is entangled with itself to such a degree that some questions that seem to carve reality at the joints don’t really do so.
(If falling trees don’t make vibrations when there’s no human-entangled sensor, how do you differentiate a human-entangled sensor from a non-human-entangled sensor? If falling-tree vibrations leave subtle patterns in the surrounding leaf litter that sufficiently-sensitive human-entangled sensors can detect, does leaf litter then count as a human-entangled sensor? How about if certain plants or animals have observably evolved to handle falling-tree vibrations in a certain way, and we can detect that. Then such plants or animals (or their absence, if we’re able to form a strong enough theory of evolution to notice the absence of such reactions where we would expect them) could count as human-entangled sensors well before humans even existed. In that case, is there anything that isn’t a human-entangled sensor?)
Good points in the parenthetical—if I make it into a top-level article, I’ll be sure to include a more thorough discussion of what concept is being carved with the hypothesis that there are no tree vibrations.