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Dialogue

A truly deep question

Mihir Sahasrabudhe · October 11, 2026 · 5 min read

If a tree falls in a dense rainforest, and you know for certain that nobody was there to hear it, does it make a sound?

[thinks for a full minute]

Oh my God. This is the craziest question I have ever heard. OMFG.

Is there any significance… no, scratch that. Is there any meaning to sound beyond the perception of it? Sound is something a living being hears. There is nobody there. Is there any significance to a mundane crash if nobody is around to observe it? Not really.

[pause]

But you just know the tree is going to make a sound. If you even mentally put yourself in that forest, you can hear it. CRASH.

Oh my God, how circular. How weird. How bizarre. The world is a place of such contradictions—

[different voice, flat]

Just drop the act, bro. Calm down.

[normal voice]

Okay. Say there are two friends. Ram believes the tree made a sound. Sham believes it did not. How do they settle this?

Round one. They walk into the forest and look. Is the tree on the ground?

RamYes.
ShamYes.

Okay. No fight yet.

Round two. Lucky for them, someone left a recorder next to the tree. They play it back. Is there a crash on the tape?

RamYes.
ShamYes.
Ram[triumphant] SEE. Sound was produced when the tree fell.
ShamNot really. You produced the sound just now, when you pressed play. In the forest, it was just a recording of air wobbling around.

Here, I, the author, side with Ram. Obviously. The tape did not invent the crash.

Round three. Sham is not done.

ShamOkay, scan every brain on Earth at the moment the tree fell. Did any brain hear it?
Ram…No.
Sham[points] No one heard it. HA. Got you.
RamBut the speaker shows the—
ShamThe speaker shows squiggles. Squiggles are not sound. Sound is what a brain hears.
RamSound IS the squiggles.
ShamSound is the HEARING.
RamSQUIGGLES.
ShamHEARING.

[They do this until sunset. Then the next sunset.]

· · ·

Meanwhile, in a smarter universe

Same forest. Same tree. Same Ram and Sham. But in this universe, they have read a few blog posts.

RamSound is the squiggles.
ShamSound is the hearing.
RamOkay, stop. Let's bet on it. Loser buys vada pav for a month.
ShamDeal.

They walk to the bookie at the edge of the forest. Yes, there is a bookie at the edge of the forest. It is a smart universe.

BookieSure. I pay out on what we find when we check. Ram, what will we find?
RamA crash on the tape. And nobody heard it.
BookieSham, what will we find?
ShamA crash on the tape. And nobody heard it.
Bookie…You both said the same thing.
RamYes, but I call that “sound.”
ShamAnd I call that “no sound.”
BookieI pay out on what we find, not on what you call it. Whatever we find, you both win. Or you both lose. [closes the window] I can't take this bet.

[long silence]

ShamOkay. New rule. Nobody is allowed to say “sound.” Say what you mean without that word.
RamFine. When the tree fell, the air shook, and the shaking would have moved the needle on any microphone.
ShamAgreed. When the tree fell, no ear picked up the shaking, and no brain turned it into an experience.
RamAgreed.

[longer silence]

RamSo what are we disagreeing about?
ShamI think we were disagreeing about which of those two sentences gets to own the word “sound.”
RamThat's a fight about a dictionary.
ShamWe spent two sunsets on a fight about a dictionary.
RamVada pav?
ShamSplit the bill.

[The author, who sided with Ram, quietly realizes he also agrees with Sham. Embarrassing.]

· · ·

What the smart universe did differently

They used two tests, and both are easy to remember.

The bet. A real disagreement about the world can always become a bet, because you can name something that would come out one way if you are right and the other way if I am right. If you cannot write a bet that one of you could lose, you do not disagree about the world.

Banning the word. When an argument goes in circles around one word, stop using the word. Each person says what he means in other words. If the two descriptions fit together, the argument was only about the word. If they still conflict, now you can see the real disagreement in plain terms, and you can go and check it.

So before you argue with someone, ask one question: “Is there anything you expect to see that I don't?” If the answer is no, choose who gets which word, and go eat. If the answer is yes, good. Now you know what to go and look at.

Both ideas come from Eliezer Yudkowsky's essays “Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences)” and “Taboo Your Words.” His versions have fewer people shouting “SQUIGGLES,” and no vada pav.