Your Little Cube of a World
When you play a virtual world game the computer does not actually maintain the entire virtual world and keep it waiting for you. Rather, it creates a cubical space that fills your screen with the game's world and action. Beyond the space on your screen, there is nothing. Then when your avatar moves, some of the scenery disappears, not only from view, but from existence. Why should the computer waste processing power to create an empty space? At the same time, new scenery, which did not exist a moment ago, appears on the screen.
Imagine you are playing such a game. You are in a room and see a closed door in front of you. Until you open the door, the other side of that door does not exist. There is nothing there. But, once you open the door and walk into the room, it exists and the room you had been in ceases to exist. Move elsewhere and the computer creates a new reality for you and the previous space you occupied dissipates into computer code.
In a way, real life is like that. I am aware of the space around me. Sunlight is streaming in the window and warming my arm. I can hear Le Nozze Di Figaro: Non Piu Andrai by Mozart playing on the stereo. I feel the pressure and clicks of my old keyboard as I write this. But beyond this, I rely on trust. I believe the neighbour's house is still next to mine (I cannot see it from here). I assume that the nearby city of Leuven is still nearby and full of people milling about on this sunny day. But, I cannot be sure of these things. For all I know, they disappear when I am not able to see, hear or smell them.
But, how can I know this? If a place that is not being observed in any way or through any sense, how can we be sure that it exists? Perhaps reality is more efficient than we realise. When we do not observe a space, perhaps that space disappears -- until someone observes it. You are surely familiar with the thought experiment question, "if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" I would further ask, does the forest and the tree exist if no one is there to see, hear, smell, feel, taste it?
Do I believe this is the case? No, but it is an amusing thought experiment.
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