That depends on whether you define sound as air waves/vibration or the sensation of hearing. Definitions vary [1,2,3], which is why this philosophical question manages to get people talking past each other.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sound

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound

[3] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sound (note that "can be heard" != "is heard")

Then it's not a philosophical question so much as about the meaning of "sound". And "debates" about semantics are about as uninteresting as it gets.

A lot of "philosophical" questions boil down to semantic debates, see the sleeping beauty problem for another one [1]. So we can get into a philosophical (or semantic?) debate about that, for a funny instance of recursion :-)

But I agree with that those debates are quite uninteresting, so let's not do that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Beauty_problem

> And "debates" about semantics are about as uninteresting as it gets.

A 'fact' that is relative to the frame of reference of the observer.

Nah, there’s nothing less interesting and more irritating than bikeshedding if that sort. Nobody cares about some blowhard’s attempt to generate pointless “debate” over hypotheticals and semantics.

> Nah, there’s nothing less interesting and more irritating than bikeshedding of that sort.

When you say "there’s nothing less interesting and more irritating than", are you speaking universally, or of your own personal experience?

> Nobody cares about some blowhard’s attempt to generate pointless “debate” over hypotheticals and semantics.

How do you people have knowledge of each others thoughts? Serious question.

Did... Did this actually just happen for real?

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a7n8GdKiAZRX86T5A/making-bel...

Well, I guess there's always https://xkcd.com/1053/

I don't get why you're posting this in a surprised manner. Yes, these philosophical debates have been happening for many, many years (and when they do happen they often happen with famous philosophical questions such as the tree-forest-sound one). Yudkowsky wasn't making a novel philosophical discovery, he was just putting particular philosophical debates and meta-debates together into an essay.

I'm sorry you accidentally joined an internet cult, but Yud did not invent philosophy, especially not Wittgenstein.