Write your definition for “things” and that’ll answer your question for you.
This is the correct answer. It seems like matter and energy exist regardless of our attentions but the rest comes down to ontology. What is a thing? How does it come into being? How does it cease to be?
Next, ask yourself “do things need to be made of matter and/or energy to exist?” What about Mickey Mouse?
Then you move on to questions like “does a piece of art exist if nobody has ever witnessed it?”
And finally, the psychiatric ward. 😜
The atoms are there for sure, but we could argue, whether it is a thing/object without an animal being aware of it, since it’s us that define things to be objects.
The universe doesn’t care whether a pile of atoms behind Pluto happens to be chair-shaped. It’s only when we look at it, that we declare it an object.
No, things outside the player’s field of view are unloaded to save memory, obviously.
If that’s the case, would things outside our field of view still have an effect on us? And to what extent?
In a good game they do, but those effects can be abstracted rather than simulated to save processing power.
Your question is a lot like this thought experiment:
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Whatever your answer is to the above text can be applied to your question.
People were dying en-masse because you had doctors not washing their hands when moving from autopsies to giving birth.
No one was aware about the germs that are causing this. It still killed people.
This is true for most of the early medicine/illneses/hygiene, this was just an example I remember. Especially in regards to germs and bacteries, the humanity wasn’t even close to getting it right.
Perhaps I just confabulated all that, and your comment. Perhaps in the process, I manifested the history therein described.
Animals are sometimes declared ‘extinct’ (no one is aware of any living examples) while they still exist (sometimes for decades).
Until 1967, noone was aware of the existence of gamma-ray bursts, the result of the biggest explosions in the universe. The bursts were only visible to specialized satellites.
Right now, people are suffering from diseases caused by unknown viruses.
Yes, they necessarily do.
did neptune exist before somebody looked at it?
Object permanence is technically an axiom. The idea that things exist even when we aren’t observing them.
There’s also a problem with terms, particularly related to quantum mechanics. It uses the term observer. To a layman, that’s a person watching. To a scientist its any collection of atoms/fundamental particles that can cause the quantum waveform to collapse.
The results of the axiom are that things do exist when we are not observing them. Our observations don’t back propagate to retroactively bring them into existence. We can’t prove that however, though it’s fundamental to a lot of science making sense (quantum mechanics being the oddball).
Does the concept of an axiom actually exist and make sense in physics? I thought we just had models.
One of the goals is to minimise them. Most of those left are blindingly obvious, but unprovable. They are technically there, but just part of the base assumptions of the models.
E.g. we couldn’t do science if an all powerful being was deliberately messing with our results. We also can’t prove the universe isn’t a computer program, only rendering what a “conscious” entity is looking at, while back calculating the required history on the fly.
Obviously, yes. But now the question is, can you be aware of things that don’t exist?
As fiction exists but describes things that may not exist, I think the answer is also yes.
Maybe we’re not aware of a non-existent thing itself, but of an idea or perception in our minds.
Actually this is the right answer, and doesn’t deserve the downvotes.
I think me and Ahmed gave the same answer, but with mine being indirect using an example, and Ahmed’s answer being direct, so maybe people had a harder time understanding Ahmed’s answer.
How does this differ from having an idea or perception in our minds about existing things?
purely imaginary things exist only in the mind.
But are we aware of existing things in themselves, apart from the idea and perception in our minds?
Well I exist, despite it seeming that no one else in the world is aware of my existence.
You’re ruining it.
Bacteria and viruses existed for billions of years before humans ever existed and the majority of the time since. Dinosaurs existed before we were aware of them. Lots of things have.
This isn’t a very well thought out Shower Thought
That’s what you think, but as soon as I leave this comment thread and become unaware of it, I’m sorry to say, but you will stop existing. Tough luck.
Dinosaurs have conscious awareness. They were “anyone”. Some evidence suggests that consciousness is a fundamentally intra-cellular process that became inter-cellular, and that even the simplest organisms exploit some form of consciousness.
Yes, my one man black metal project exists and no one knows about it. 🥺
I can’t believe it’s you! Your one-man black metal project changed my life!
One man black metal? Must be fuckin excellent!
Technically they exist.
But do they exist for you if you don’t even think of them? Theological/ philosophycal views might say no.
Tho you can still be affected by unkown therefore “non-existent” things.
Nowadays I call “tap to pay” magic. I know the very basic things to go in there - but I couldn’t recreate it. Thos is kinda the same tone as your question.Yes. Because people are not the only observers.
What qualify as observers though? Or, how far divorced from an event counts as unobserved?
If a tree falls in a forest and scares a rabbit which a dog barks at which I hear… is that chain of observation enough to grant existence to the tree?
Does existence only count if there is an observer to observe it? I don’t understand this notion.
I think about this every time I drive long distances, passing through forest.
“That tree over there is just standing there, all hours of every day, winter and summer, just waiting. Then I drive by it for 2 seconds. Then it still stands there, waiting.”
Similarly I think of rocks rotating in silence around planets, stars. Or orphan rocks around galaxies, in darkness, and also silence. They’re just there, for millions of millennia. Without anyone’s knowledge. But surely they exist.
