My poem last Friday was about the existence of things.\u00a0 That is, how things continue to exist without human, much less personal, observation.\u00a0 In the last couple of days, I started thinking about that in a virtual way.<\/p>\n
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There is a zone in EverQuest call The Deep which once was feared by many.\u00a0 It was a challenge to survive.\u00a0 In addition to the usual collection of mobs, there was a weird bridge problem:\u00a0 The gap between two sides of the zone had a visible bridge which did not exist and an invisible one which did.\u00a0 Now, however, very few visit the zone.\u00a0 Those who do go there for the same reason I did:\u00a0 To obtain something which drops off of a semi-rare mob which is used to shrink one’s character.\u00a0 I think there’s something else which drops there for an epic quest or two, but other than that there’s little purpose for it anymore.\u00a0 I suppose some folks might go there with their upper (but not high) level characters for the experience, but the area is a bit out of the way for that.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Anyway, most of the time the zone is empty.\u00a0 Even when somebody goes there, they go to a specific place and ignore most of the mobs.\u00a0 A lot of the zone’s residents, then, could go completely unobserved from one server downtime to the next.\u00a0 Did those mobs really exist without anybody to see them?\u00a0 Does a tree make a sound when it falls in a forest if nobody hears it?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I would answer both of these questions with “yes.”\u00a0 In the virtual world, there is<\/em>, technically, constant observation.\u00a0 Even if no player went to The Deep or to a particular spot in it to see some of its less-visited residents, the servers housing that virtual world would record their existence.\u00a0 So the question becomes, perhaps, more philosophical, along with many other questions of existence.\u00a0 The deeper question (no pun intended) might ask the meaning of such existences.\u00a0 In the virtual world of EverQuest, after all, the purpose of these mobs is to challenge players’ characters, to kill or be killed.\u00a0 If nobody shows up to accept that challenge, does the mob’s virtual existence have meaning?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Taking this back to the real world, what is the meaning of other unobserved existences?\u00a0 The south pole ice cap often has snowstorms, sometimes in places no man or beast will see.\u00a0 The snow may fall and then evaporate without being observed, not even by a satellite.\u00a0 Is there meaning to this occurrence?\u00a0 Or of similar phenomena on other worlds, which are even less observed?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I know, I know.\u00a0 It’s a human thing to try and find meaning in everything.\u00a0 People attach significance to astronomical events which have nothing to do with reality.\u00a0 But to these folks, it’s important, it helps them go about their daily lives.\u00a0 There is no real basis for astrology, but people have a need for answers and astrology and similar new age practices give them that.\u00a0 The position of the moon and planets and stars now have a special, human<\/em> significance where there was none before.\u00a0 I don’t know if there is significance to the sound trees make (or don’t make) falling unobserved in a forest, or in the neglect of virtual creatures, but it’s interesting to question anyway.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My little blog here is unlikely to be read by anyone other than I, the writer, and the automated bots which crawl around the web making (or trying to make) advertisements in the comments of blogs like this.\u00a0 If nobody ever reads one of my posts–including this one–did it really exist?\u00a0 Does it have meaning?\u00a0 I think I will, for now, pretend that it does.\u00a0 See you tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My poem last Friday was about the existence of things.\u00a0 That is, how things continue to exist without human, much less personal, observation.\u00a0 In the last couple of days, I started thinking about that in a virtual way. There is a zone in EverQuest call The Deep which once was feared by many.\u00a0 It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=509"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":511,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions\/511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}