QI - If a Tree in a Forest Falls, and Nobody Hears it, Does it Make a Sound REACTION

[@Max_Flashheart]

If a Man speaks in the forest and there is no woman there to hear him. Is he still wrong?

[@KEITH-jc6gs]

In my case yes (according to my wife)😂

[@robinkeeling8314]

Of course he is. Neil Armstrong was wrong, and look where he was.

[@dimwitdave9344]

fab comment

[@TheDarkhorse1947]

Dont say sorry for yawning Jodie. I tend to start yawning when Nick starts as well. LOL.

[@zaphodbeeblebrox6627]

That happens to be Comedy producer John Lloyd, he created this program.

[@MillerWright-mb1ob]

At some point in evolution, a not-chicken laid a not-chicken egg, and the mutated embryo within the egg turned out to be a chicken and in later life laid the first chicken egg.

[@simonball5746]

I say something that is a not-chicken laid an egg with a chicken in it, which makes that a chicken egg. Therefore the egg came first.

[@SRPM-yk9xw]

No. Evolution is a smooth, linear process. Try reading. There was no one point at which a chicken suddenly popped into existence.

[@zf5782]

​@@simonball5746 it also depends on the definition of egg. The chicken egg came first, but before it, there were other kinds of eggs

[@Thisandthat8908]

pre-chicken animals laid eggs for tens of millions of years. That question is not even remotely open. Also evolution is not smooth and linear (because there is no "plan" behind it), it is massive trial and error and something sticks. And chicken stuck mostly because they were so incredible useful for humans.

[@paulmccloud9395]

There will always be ears to hear it anyway, it's a forest. Millions of insects, hundreds of animals and birds, someone or something will always hear it.

[@ct5625]

But that's not the question. The answer is still no, whether you have an insect to "hear it" or a human, or even a recording device. The tree never creates a sound, it creates a vibration wave. It's the living organism which translates that vibration wave into a sound and without the brain to do it there is no sound.

[@conmcgrath7174]

Yeah but do insects have ears? (sorry)

[@vanbalzup6481]

EXACTLY. Came here to write this too. There is not a tree in a forest on this planet earth in which an animal with ears does not exist. These humans are so arrogant they forget that other species exist on this planet and don’t include them in their philosophical drivel. QI is most worthless conversations from Oxbridge toffy nose nepobabies.

[@Writeous0ne]

@@ct5625 exactly... everything is rendered by our very limited senses.

[@Ffinity]

That's John Lloyd, the creator of this show.

[@joepiekl]

Yeah, I heard he had to step in last minute because someone pulled out.

[@PelicanSoup]

He also wrote episodes of "The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" with Douglas Adams, and worked on or produced "Not the nine o'clock news" "Blackadder", "Spitting Image"

[@myopicautisticmetal9035]

As well as most of my favorite shows!

[@gdj6298]

@@PelicanSoup He has been responsible for an incredible amount of British comedy.

[@robertholmes809]

The chicken has to come from an egg, but the egg doesn't have to come from a chicken. Called Cross breeding.

[@helenwood8482]

In every forest, there are millions of ears listening.

[@philhallbrook7008]

How do you know if you're not there?

[@BlueBarchetta67]

There will always be sound waves. When a band records a track in a studio, youu can mute the audio during playback, but the sound waves still appear on the monitors. Soundwaves are inevitable.

[@erikholmgren1477]

But are soundwaves sound? or are the interpretation of the vibration the soundwaves causes in our ears, the sound? If it is the soundwaves that are sound, everything vibrates and creates 'soundwaves' in the universe, we as humans happens to just being able to hear a specific band of that vibration, or are only the soundwaves that vibrates in the spectrum humans hear, sound? To answer the question, you have first to answer the question what sound actually are. Thats why its a question that doesn't have a clear answer, or does it? :)

[@BlueBarchetta67]

@@erikholmgren1477 All I know on question is that without soundwaves there would be nothing for us to hear, but when you see soundwaves after recording them you can still see them without listening to them. One of the greatest questions ever asked.

[@Thisandthat8908]

Mr. LLoyd had a weird day that day. For a start there is not "nobody" in a forest. It's full of life. And something hitting something in an atmosphere makes sound waves. He got that mixed up with quantum theory.

[@snubblebunny]

That intro was AMAZING! Jodie you are amazing haha 😂💅love the hair btw

[@sdkezjarran5206]

The simple answer is the egg came first as the question is Chicken or Egg, 2 Birds cross bred , out comes the egg, out of the egg comes a new breed called a chicken. The question should be Bird or Egg

[@BigAlCapwn]

Still easy to answer. Egg because some dinosaurs laid eggs. The question should be egg laying creature or egg

[@ct5625]

But then you'd need to go back through the evolutionary tree and widen your definitions to be able to even try to come to an answer, because the dinosaurs and lizards birds evolved from also laid eggs. Ultimately the answer is probably neither and both, all the way back to the first amphibian-like creatures fertilizing eggs in a pond like tadpoles.

[@volundrfrey896]

@@ct5625 If we go back all the way then it's singel cell organism splitting, the egg came later.

[@BigAlCapwn]

Stephen was wrong when he said there was no correct answer and he gave the right answer earlier. The answer to the question "If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?" is: 'It depends on how you define sound'

[@felonmarmer]

More on how you define noise. Noise is what you hear, sound is pressure through the air - which will always be there!

[@chrisparti]

I don't agree with the 'it depends how you define sound' answer. The definition of sound in the dictionary is: Vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear... It's not up to individuals to define what 'sound' means... If everyone had their own personal definitions of already defined words, the world would be in a right mess... I'll rephrase that... even more of a mess if there are 'alternative truths'

[@happilyeggs4627]

The tree argument is basically a simplified Schroedinger’s Cat problem.. They are both ways of describing the Uncertainty Principle.

[@handsolo1209]

Nick, on the chicken and the egg, you were close, but got it the wrong way around. The egg would be first. The egg is the mutation/evolution of whatever laid it, and that bird would not be a chicken, but its mutated offspring would be (obviously it doesn't happen that way in one generation. It takes hundreds/thousands of generations to go from the original bird to a chicken).

[@picanto12]

If a tree in a forest falls you can bet somewhere in the world a chiwawah will bark at it.

[@richardscratcher6075]

For a profoundly deaf person, the falling tree would make no sound whether they were there or not.

[@pabmusic1]

Eggs came about long (very long) before chickens. Many fish lay eggs.

[@Brakdayton]

A sound wave becomes a sound when it is received.

[@teclo1057]

as we all live in a simulation anyway, the forest will not exist until somebody approaches it, just like in old video games from years ago, you can actually see the scenery forming as you get nearer.

[@DropdudeJohn]

Sound only becomes sound after conversion by something, until then its just some form of carrier wave, and that's how I think of it.

[@JohnJohnson-bs4cw]

A 'sound' only exists when a pressure wave caused by some event - like a tree falling in a forest - is interpreted as a sound by a brain. If there is nobody there it is completely impossible for a sound to exist. The pressure wave would exist. But there would be nothing or nobody there to interpret it as a sound. It's like a stereo system with no amp or speakers. If you put a CD in your CD player and pressed play would there be any music if you had no amplifier or loudspeakers attached?

[@AgentOccam]

I can just see cockroaches and ants and other insects that survive the nuclear apocalypse laughing at Nick's suggestion that we are the "dominant species".

[@kitkatkseniya4226]

Are the cockroaches launching the bombs?

[@ericwilliams8504]

Great video... thank you... Look into the slit experiment... Particles act differently when they 'know' they are being observed... Kind of amazing 😊

[@hot5and77]

You possibly already know this but particles don't know they are being observed. This is a common misconception. If you do an experiment on the macro scale with big objects you can observe them by watching them so there is problem here. The issue comes when observing sub-atomic particles. We can't observe them by watching them so we have to interact with them in order to measure them. This interaction is what changes the particles behaviour. Imagine trying to track the trajectory of a football to test Isaac Newton's theories. You could film the ball and then do your measurements. No issues there, but imagine that in order to take measurements of the ball at different stages, you had to fire smaller balls at it that would plot the co-ordinates upon impact at various stages. This would change the trajectory of the ball, so it won't behave in the same way as in the first experiment. Our observations of the ball have changed the nature of how it reacts.

[@hot5and77]

The first paragraph of my previous post was meant to read "there is no problem here" rather than "there is problem here". That one word kind of changed the whole weaning of the sentence.

[@hot5and77]

Meaning not weaning. Flipping hell, I can't seem to type today.

[@felonmarmer]

Egg/chicken - egg first from a pre-chicken beast that hatches into a chicken.

[@zebedeemadness2672]

All Chickens are Jungle fowl, but not all Jungle fowl are Chickens. So a Jungle fowl hen had to lay a egg first for a Chicken to come out of.

[@jackabalas]

The egg came first. Evolution isn’t a belief system, it’s a scientific theory that is supported by evidence from multiple sources from the geologic column to genealogy

[@virtualal]

This is the guy that created the show

[@StewedFishProductions]

Correct, John Lloyd... His television work includes 'Not the Nine O'Clock News', produced all four series of 'Blackadder', 'Spiiting Image', 'The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' and (of course) this programme... 'QI'. Interestingly, 'Have I Got News for You' was originally going to be presented by John Lloyd and was going to be called 'John Lloyd's Newsround'...

[@splodge561]

It boils down to the fact as to whether you regard the vibration of air as sound or not.

[@chrisparti]

In the same way that radio waves would be defined as music?

[@splodge561]

@chrisparti or electromagnetic waves into sound yes.

[@chrisparti]

@@splodge561 Sound is defined in the dictionary as : Vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear. therefore if no one hears it it remains as vibrations in the air. In the same way as if no radio is tuned into a broadcast then no sound is generated, just radio waves. 🤔😂 I think we both agree, it is just semantics of word definition, we both understand the actuality of the physics and biology involved.

[@splodge561]

@chrisparti 2 people agreeing on KZbin, whatever next!🤣

[@chrisparti]

@@splodge561 😂😂😂

[@True_Heretic]

Two people walking through a forest. One is deaf. A tree falls. .......

[@oaksho]

I think the egg was first because dinosaurs laid eggs and then over time birds evolved from reptiles (I think!) The question is "what came first the chicken or the egg" and because dinosaurs laid eggs it has to be the egg.

[@donkfail1]

Two easy answers to the egg-chicken problem: Q - Was the chicken or the egg first? A - The egg. There were insects, spiders, fish, frogs and other egg laying animals way earlier than chicken. Q - Was the chicken or the CHICKEN egg first? A - Now you have to define "chicken egg", because as birds evolved there had to have been a first chicken. Is it any egg a chicken is hatched from? Then the egg was first, laid by a proto-chicken who's offspring was the first chicken. But if a "chicken egg" is defined as an egg laid by a chicken, then the chicken was first.

[@jonenih]

I love you Nick 😂😂😂🎉🎉. And I am an African dude. At the risk of being asked.... "Who is gay? Doesn't that make you gay? Why are you gay? "(Find the African interview of who is gay). I still state your brain matches my cousin's brain and it makes me laugh uncontrollably (especially your questions)...

[@peterbabicki8252]

Makes me wonder how many other anomalies are floating around out there we're completely unaware of, because we don't have the innate or created tools to perceive them. This question seems more of a semantic question than anything else. Most people agree the _"sound"_ waves out out there, but are they making a noise? You could take this question out into space. If you beat a drum in a vacuum like outer space, does it make a sound? The vibrations and sound waves are still there, but there's nothing for them to vibrate against.

[@Dexter_2105]

The chicken and the egg. What was the chicken before it became a chicken? Evolution. It would have evolved to become an egg layer. I would like to have seen the look on it's face when it squeezed out that first egg. Priceless.

[@greygreen5610]

chickens are decedents of dinosaurs. dinosaurs laid eggs so the egg came first and the chicken evolved over time.

[@chrisparti]

The dictionary definition of sound is: Vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear. if there is nothing to hear it, then it it doesn't make a sound, it merely creates air pressure waves and vibrations in the air molecules... It's the same as radio waves, if there is no radio to receive them, then there is no music... just radio waves. It is not up to individuals to define what words mean, otherwise anything can mean anything..

[@HenrikJansson78]

Which dictionary? There are quite a lot of them out there. The Cambridge dictionary says "something that you can hear or that can be heard", so according to them, nobody needs to hear it, it just have to be possible to hear, which means that the lonely tree does make a sound.

[@wallywombat164]

G'day lovely people. Question. Why to americans wear hats and caps indoors?

[@Womberto]

Good question. I'd also like to know why they often drink from jam jars.

[@Lloyd-Franklin]

It drives me mad.

[@danmayberry1185]

Brains still incubating?

[@helenwood8482]

John Lloyd wasn't unsure or embarrassed. Both sides had expressed their views fully. Unlike Americans, Brits express opinions and discuss them for the ideas, not to score points. Americans get their egos involved, which is why Nick feels threatened by an intellectual who has confidence in his understanding. John Lloyd, by the way, created QI in order that such ideas could be discussed. He's not afraid to be challenged.

[@peterbabicki8252]

Nothing to do with Brits or Americans. There are ego driven _"point scorers"_ and people looking to get at the truth on both sides of the pond.

[@irreverend_]

A tree falling in the forest doesn't make a sound because that's a waste of processing power. They only render the audio when someone is around to hear it :)

[@balaamsdonkeyuk]

Egg came first. Dinosaurs laid eggs before chicken had evolved.

[@philipr1567]

The rooster came first and the hen was left feeling frustrated.

[@ltsecomedy2985]

Hi Nick & Jodie, my quick reply would have been like Jodie. However on reflection, I imagine, it was similar such hypotheticals that led to some of the inventions we take for granted now.

[@davidjb-750]

We have a lot to thank that man for

[@dennisjobling8441]

As to to the chicken and the egg question, the chicken came first because only the chicken can produce the chemicals to make the eggshell. Take care guys!

[@glastonbury4304]

Love Jodies hair...❤

[@janolaful]

Which came first, the chicken or the egg in 2024? Researchers have discovered dinosaur eggs, including those of long-necked sauropods, dating back around 195 million years ago, a time when reptiles and early birds commonly laid eggs. If these findings are taken altogether, it can be concluded that eggs existed on Earth long before chickens

[@mana3735]

Well...does a bear sht in the woods? And if it does, and there's nobody around for miles...does it smell?

[@ct5625]

Nick. The recording device is only recording the vibration wave, it's not recording a sound wave (despite people calling such things "sound waves" they really don't exist, they are just a vibration wave within the spectrum of human perception). The recording device only creates a "sound" when you are there to perceive it, until then playing back that "sound" only produces vibration waves. Look at any speaker, it is not creating a sound, it is a diaphragm generating a replication of a vibration pattern which then travels through the air to meet your eardrum, which then vibrates and triggers the electrical signal to your brain, which then decodes the electrical signal to produce the sound. Every sound engineer in your audience is probably yelling at their screen throughout this video lol

[@Thisandthat8908]

something hitting something in an atmosphere makes sound waves. Everything else is philosophical nonsense (if that). He got that mixed up with quantum theory.

[@helenwood8482]

Eggs predate chickens by millions of years.

[@johnfaulk7775]

IMO the naming of “sound waves” is a misnomer. They should be called “reaction waves” because a “sound” means something is receiving the wave, and interpreted as “sound”. Without a receiver of the “sound” you are simply left with actions and their “reaction waves”.

[@mossyman65]

Well said Nick and a good point about the animals hearing it.

[@Erulin68]

A chicken and an egg are laying in bed having a sigaret after doing the nasty. Chicken turns to the egg and says : "Well... I guess that answers that old question" 🤭

[@Griexxt]

The egg came first by a significant margin. The ancestors of all land-living tetrapods used eggs as part of the reproductive method long before there was anything that could be called a chicken.

[@ethelmini]

The egg, not an egg. Same semantic ambiguity, different word.

[@Griexxt]

@@ethelmini Huh? It's the same word.

[@Uatu-the-Watcher]

The egg has been around for billions of years. The chicken egg is much much more recent. The first chicken was laid by a non-chicken and subsequently laid the first chicken egg.

[@Max_Flashheart]

The Rooster came 1st

[@barrymiller3385]

Here's another one you might like to consider: - If a man speaks and there is no woman there to hear it, is he still wrong?

[@veryvarley6706]

The majority of questions on this show are about challenging what we commonly know ( but end up not being fully true ). Then there are some questions without a genuine answer with arguments from both sides.

[@ct5625]

On the chicken and egg question, the answer is both and neither. The chicken evolved from a dinosaur. Dinosaurs evolved from Archosaurs (Ornithosuchia). Ornithosuchia evolved from diapsid reptiles. Diapsid evolved from Eureptilia Eureptilia evolved from basal sauropsids. You'd have to go all the way back to the very first instance of the very first land lizard ancestor producing eggs on land and even then you wouldn't have a definitive answer because you'd need to redefine what an "egg" is. Does it qualify if it's a simple slimy organism producing ovum in a pool of primordial goo?

[@lucabaracuda987]

Fry and Nick are right.. the sound waves is sound itself, doesnt need an ear to be a sound.

[@daveofyorkshire301]

If a deaf man is there does that apply? Hear it or not the physical event occurs and creates a waveform that we detect as sound. That's there whether we are or not. The same is true for heat, cold any physical event. It exists, our detection of it does NOT determine it's existence or physical characteristics. Different life forms may detect it as visual or a physical vibration, what they're really asking is how "WE" perceive it, and that does not apply to whether it exists, only how we perceive it's existence and what "WE" call it. A tree does make those waveforms whether it not we're there, so YES a tree makes a "sound" when it falls, because that's what we call that waveform.

[@Cnith]

I agree. Just because nothing is around to receive the data that is being output, the data was still there to be received. We also know that the Sun is probably loud as bleeeeeep, but thankfully there's no atmosphere to propagate it to us from 150 million kilometers away.

[@ct5625]

But we're not talking about data in a general sense, we're talking about sound specifically, which is a product of vibration. Without the lifeform there to perceive that vibration as sound it just produced vibration. The sun isn't producing sound, it's producing vibration.

[@Cnith]

@@ct5625 But the concept we call sound has certain parameters that makes it perceivable to us. If those parameters of the "vibrations" exist but we just aren't around to perceive them, they still exist. I feel that this is largely a semantics discussion with a sort of "main character syndrome" sprinkled in, where nothing happens if we are not around. If we have 3 people standing near drummer that is hammering away but one of the 3 is deaf, is there still sound happening just because he/she can't perceive it but the other 2 can? Or MUST it be a product of a brain interpretation of "vibrations" to be called sound?

[@CroftyOriginal]

There is no right and wrong answer because it is how you perceive sound, if you think a sound wave is sound then the answer is yes but if you think a sound wave needs a recipient then it's no.

[@johnburns9634]

Please check out the QI video, about naming the Giant Tortoise! It’s an excellent and informative video.

[@nordlyselsker]

The chicken and egg question was also answered in this episode of QI.

[@BastiXIII]

Egg comes first unless the proto chicken directly before the first chicken live births their babies and for some reason its direct descendant somehow lays eggs.

[@educatednumpty71]

What came first, the Labrador and a Poddle or was there always a Labradoodle? You can have two similar Chickens that give birth to what we know as a chicken. So the Egg came first.

[@mpmlopes]

If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is around to hear it... What colour is the tree?

[@richardjames3022]

The egg comes first, because the genes are already in the hen or bird, when an egg is fertilised it has the male's genes are added, so it's becomes slightly different hence animals evolve as a mixture of genes, so neither identical to the male or female

[@Dgs106b]

What if there’s nobody there to hear the recording

[@frumpypigskin8009]

The lizard came first

[@tjaartvanderwalt5864]

Of course it does make a sound.Yesterday i had a fart in the supermarket.I went in an isle where there was nobody.Nobody else heard it.I did.

[@trevorlsheppard7906]

Hiya ,is the cat in Schroedingers box dead or alive ?? ,just asking for fun 😊😊 ❤ ❤.

[@eloquentlyemma]

Yes

[@jackchisnall9316]

Birds (chickens) developed from flying reptiles and reptiles lay eggs so the egg came first! and thats not counting amphibians, fish and insects. Depends on your definition of egg and simmillarly sound, is it the generation or reception of energy waves in the audable range.

[@JimmyRJump]

I don't care either, but it's sometimes fun to watch others not caring.

[@HelloHello33333]

The chicken came first and then the hen laid an egg

[@FixTheLanes]

Not exactly, but there are some similarities. Both a recording device and the human ear capture sound waves, but they process them differently. A microphone in a recording device converts sound waves into electrical signals, which are then stored digitally or on a physical medium. The human ear, on the other hand, converts sound waves into vibrations in the eardrum. These vibrations are transmitted through tiny bones to the cochlea, where they're transformed into nerve signals for the brain to interpret as sound. So, while the goal is the same-capturing sound-the mechanisms are quite different.

[@robertobrien5709]

The question is what came first the chicken or the egg, not which come first the chicken or the chicken egg, eggs were created as a means of reproduction 10's of millions of years before chickens were placed on the earth, for instance, fish, dinosaurs, reptiles etc. Obviously though the chicken came first before the chicken egg, the chicken had to be there to have a chicken egg.

[@4Kandlez]

Yes it makes a sound even if there are no ears in the vicinity to hear it. It would be more accurate to say it creates vibrations which ears have evolved to hear certain frequencies. Human ears have a different range of audible frequencies than say bat ears, dogs can hear higher frequencies than humans. When a tree falls it creates a range of vibrations at different frequencies that make up the sound regardless of anyone or anything being there to hear it.

[@danmayberry1185]

Animals startled by the noise might have something to say about this.

[@wallywombat164]

Do satellites out in space make a sound? Crikey, have i lost the plot?

[@philipr1567]

If no-one was alive when the Big Bang happened, did it sound like a bang? (If you find a plot it might be mine - I've lost it!)

[@ndboulton]

Animals were laying eggs long before chickens evolved...

[@TheSwert]

You might as well say that nothing exists unless there's something to record it's existence.

[@SparkytheBlade]

Question: What came first, the Chicken or the Egg? Answer: the Jungle Foul

[@aidy7961]

The egg came first... Dinosaurs laid eggs long time before chickens evolved... 😁

[@Uatu-the-Watcher]

Sound waves don’t require being heard to exist.

[@BigAlCapwn]

The Chicken and Egg thing is easy to answer, it's the egg because some dinosaurs laid eggs millions of years before the evolution of the chicken

[@jamesgill218]

Surely some birds & animals heard the tree falling.

[@pauljones1513]

Omg .would love too have a coffee/hot chocolate with you beautiful stimulating humans. I've such great friends, don't agree on everything. Eh such is life.😂 Sorry I don't comment much about your vids, just me.🙄 Listen too you wonderful team most mornings before leaving home for work. Thank you ❤

[@hot5and77]

You're only wrong about it if you assert that there is a definitive answer. If you take the view that a sound is wave travelling through air then the falling tree makes a sound. If you take the view that a sound is how our brains make sense of the world then a falling tree doesn't make a sound. That would also be the case if a recording device is there because that will only record the wave travelling through air and until that is played in such a way that it is received by an ear drum, there is no sound. I like questions like this because it highlights the fact that the world isn't what we think it is. Our eyes receive wavelengths of light that are reflected off objects and not the wavelengths that are absorbed by it. This makes our brains perceive colour due to the way these wavelengths interact with the cones in our eyes, but the object itself doesn't have that innate colour. Heat doesn't really exist how we think it does. Temperature just measures the speed at which the molecules are vibrating. If they vibrate too quickly they can damage us. Luckily our nerve endings can detect the speed of these vibrations and our brains make sense of it and protects us. If they are vibrating too fast we perceive it as "too hot" rather than "too fast". As for the chicken and egg thing. I think you misunderstand the evolutionary explanation. From an evolutionary perspective there was no first chicken and no first chickens egg. There was just very gradual changes over time. In the same sense, there was no first human. We know what humans look like today and we know from the fossil record what many of our ancestors looked like. We also know that if you trace our ancestry far enough they will be fish and further still they would be single celled organisms. There won't be a single point in that ancestry that you would be able to identify a first human, just a gradual change within a population. A simple analogy is if you were to have photos of yourself every day from the day you were born until the present. Do you think that there would be a single photo showing the day that you went from being a child to an adult or do you thing the change is more gradual that that?

[@myopicautisticmetal9035]

Your play button gives a perfect angel to look into your ear!

[@Robbie3004]

If a man speaks in a forest and there's no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?!

[@kajenbop]

The egg came first and it isn’t up for debate lol. Chickens are born of eggs, so the egg came first. If the chicken came before the egg, it was not born of the egg and by definition is not a chicken!

[@outdoorsocialist8774]

Nick need to look up the Delayed reaction double slit experiment! It does make a difference wether something is being observed 😂 be prepared to have your mind blown though if you do watch it 🤯😂

[@Dougie-]

He could still argue that it doesn't make a sound before the recording is played back. Until then it's just a recorded vibration. But it becomes sound when someone listens to it. Having said that, I'd say of course it makes a sound as I define the vibration itself as a sound.

[@js0988]

Really, do you also consider tv signals(also waves as sound waves) as TV shows playing in a forest because there are radio waves there? No, you need a receiver that converts the waves into moving pictures. As sound waves needs a receiver to convert them into SOUND.

[@Dougie-]

@@js0988 No need to reframe the question. As I wrote in my first post, I understand the dilemma. Nevertheless, my opinion remains that it does make a sound.

[@chrisparti]

Do you also define radio waves without a radio to receive them, as music?

[@grahamholmes9630]

And no one has mentioned Schrodinger's Cat!

[@ct5625]

But a "sound wave" is an arbitrary and invented concept which really shouldn't exist any more than a "seagull wetting wave" does. An ocean wave is just a wave, until it wettens a seagull it's just a regular wave. Sound "waves" are the same. Until they hit your eardrum and your brain perceives that vibration as a sound, it's just a vibration wave.

[@killkenny3720]

Nick, my wifes also more comfortable being confrontational with me, than anyone else. She tells me its because she is so comfortable and relaxed in my presence that its one of the few times that she can say anything without a filter, its a safe space, where she doesn't have to mind her manners and try to be perfect with her words and behaviour. When I understood it like that, its quite the privelige that partners are the only ones who truly get to see their other half, warts and all. It reminded me of the scene in Good Will Hunting, when Robin Williams is explaining to Matt Damon about precious memories of his wife and one in particular of her farting in bed. He said those were golden and the good stuff that only he experienced them with her ❤.

[@simonball5746]

I think evolution means the first chicken egg had to come before the first chicken, as whatever intermediary creature gave birth to the first creature we would describe as a chicken, we would not describe as a chicken, therefore the chicken egg came first. if it's any egg, fish and insect eggs came billions of years before chickens.

[@raythoburn3744]

What came first??? We know the first chicken hatched from an egg what weird mix of creatures got together to make that egg I couldn't say but the egg definitely came first

[@rasmusn.e.m1064]

I always feel like the people who answer 'the egg' immediately because of evolutionary reasons (eggs as we know them first evolved in fish, and the trait was inherited by all the descendent groups of vertebrates) ignore the spirit of the question. It's clearly meant to be a chicken egg because the idiom is used as a rhetorical question to demonstrate that cyclical systems don't have a beginning or an end, like if someone says, "I don't trust politicians; they talk to us like children and lie all the time, and people love it!" You might respond: the chicken or the egg? If we assume that we're talking about a chicken egg, we need to define what a chicken egg is: either, it's an egg containing a chicken, an egg laid by a chicken, or both. The answer to the question completely depends on which definition you use. An egg containing a chicken: the egg came first. An egg laid by a chicken: the chicken came first. An egg both laid by and containing a chicken: the chicken came first.

[@ethelmini]

The statement uses the definite article. The chicken that came first must have been a chicken. The egg must only have been the egg that carried the first chicken.

[@dannykent6190]

Thank you. It's a funny joke answer to say that eggs existed long before chickens... but it becomes a bit annoying when people start seriously spouting that as a genuine answer. Obviously everyone knows that eggs, as a concept, existed first. That's not the point of the question.

[@MillerWright-mb1ob]

Is a red ball red if there is nobody there to see it ? Is a red ball red if the only person looking at it is colour blind or if the creature observing it has no colour sense? Is a red ball red in the dark? Is a song melodious if the only person listening is tone deaf ? As with the tree falling, the tree falling creates a vibration that given an appropriate receptor will be interpreted as a sound, the vibration is not altered by the reception of it. If you can argue that it doesn't make a sound if nobody hears it you can just as well argue that it doesn't make a sound even if somebody does hear it, the trees action is not modified by someone hearing it and remains asis.