If a Tree Falls in the Forest - Part Three

In an earlier post on the subject I gave my answer to the Zen riddle: “If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, is there a sound? My answer was that sound needs both an originator (the vibrating air created by a falling tree) and a sensor (our ear) along with the ability to process the sensation (the chemistry of our brain). In the post I expanded the answer saying that without someone there, not only is there no sound, there is no forest nor tree, only empty space with tiny bits of matter and energy swirling around.” Now I need to modify this, The other day I listened to a TED talk by Donald Hoffman on consciousness, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY, where he takes my understanding of reality as a bunch of tiny pieces of matter and energy in a vast area of emptiness, a step further, he proposes that even these are false images created by our senses and brain chemistry. Donald Hoffman is a cognitive scientist with a PhD from MIT in Computational Psychology, and author of 90 scientific papers and three books. In the talk he quotes Galileo: “I think that tastes, odors, colors, and so on…… reside in the consciousness. Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be…. Annihilated.” Hoffman cites some ancient examples of dogma based on our sensors and ability to reason which, upon better information, were disproven. The world was thought to be flat, now we think it is round. The world is the center of the universe, here again we were wrong and the idea of matter and energy is also most likely wrong. He likens that our perceived reality to an icon on a computer screen. We interacts with the icon unaware of what happens in the hardware and software. His argument supports (at least in my mind) the notion that if there is an “absolute truth”, we don’t have the sensors or brain to understand it. Hoffman disagrees, believing we have the basic ability to get to the truth. I now need to modify my answer to “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, is there a sound?” Without someone there, not only is there no sound, there is no forest nor tree, NO empty space with tiny bits of matter and energy, only emptiness.