The philosophical thought problem was presented as “A tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?” This promptly digresses into a discussion of what ‘sound’ is and ‘no one’ and so forth. But they miss the point: IT DOESN’T MATTER!

In old houses and buildings the interior walls were made up of thin strips of wood (lath) then plaster was smeared over the lath and smoothed out. On the back side of the wall the plaster would ooze between the strips of wood (if it was done right) then harden. The backside was ugly. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because nobody will ever see that side of the wall, and even if they ever did it was when the house was being demolished or new wiring was being installed or whatever and the old plaster that had oozed between the lath was as it was supposed to be (ugly). The ugliness doesn’t matter.

I installed a bathroom light in my rental house, the fixture was made of thin flimsy metal, it barely held its shape when it wasn’t screwed to the wall. The metal was dangerous with sharp edges. But these issues were not a problem once installed, secured to the wall, out of reach of anyone poking it or cutting themselves on the edges. It doesn’t matter.

I added a feature to an existing program but the existing code was crazy and convoluted, poorly written, but because it worked in all the ways it was ever used or needed to work, it was fine.

There was a cosmic cataclysm that killed everything in an entire galaxy. Everything. 100 billion stars, trillions of planets and moons a few of which were inhabited, probably even had sentient races.  Everything was cooked with hard radiation for a million years. This is very sad but it happened long, long ago, far, far away. It has zero effect on me, it can’t possibly be otherwise.

So I buy a pack of a dozen pairs of socks, I do laundry about once a week. The question I mulled over was “Which is better: to rotate through all dozen or just the same six? Sooner or later some will show signs of ware and then I’ll toss those. But along the way I’ll have warn-but-serviceable socks…” The answer is YOU ARE OVER THINKING IT. Just wear the dam socks.

A tree falls in the woods. Whatever. Shrug. Nothing to me.