“Revolution in Thought: A new look at determinism and free will"

[pood]

Got it.

You realize, I hope, that I was being sarcastic. This is pretty comprehensively the nuttiest claim anyone has ever advanced, and does not even have a hope of being correct.

 

[peacegirl]

Got it.

You realize, I hope, that I was being sarcastic. This is pretty comprehensively the nuttiest claim anyone has ever advanced, and does not even have a hope of being correct.

According to whom? YOU??? So far your hope of ruining it for Lessans has failed. You can't even show me how a bee can recognize faces (your claim), or how your modal logic proves that imagining a world where we can move toward dissatisfaction is even possible. You don't step up to the plate by answering any of my questions.

 

[pood]

Got it.

You realize, I hope, that I was being sarcastic. This is pretty comprehensively the nuttiest claim anyone has ever advanced, and does not even have a hope of being correct.

According to whom? YOU??? So far your hope of ruining it for Lessans has failed. You can't even show me how a bee can recognize faces (your claim), or how your modal logic proves that imagining a world where we can move toward dissatisfaction is even possible. You don't step up to the plate by answering any of my questions.

I’ve already outlined in detail the modal argument, but never had any expectation that you would grasp it. Your apprehension of logic is zero. Do your own research on bees, I’m not spoonfeeding anything to you. Finally, as to the claim about God turning on the sun, etc., you and I both know that YOU wrote that stuff, not the author. He wrote rather the opposite, as ChuckF, the True Steward of the Authentic Text, demonstrated at FF.

 

[pood]

Oh, hell, why not?

Bees recognize individual human faces.

Added bonus:

Bees do complex arithmetic

 

[pood]

Another bonus:

Pigeons recognize human faces

And I know from personal experience they do, because I had a wild pigeon friend, Brownie, who always flew right over to me when he saw me entering the park. He let me pet him, too.

 

[peacegirl]

Got it.

You realize, I hope, that I was being sarcastic. This is pretty comprehensively the nuttiest claim anyone has ever advanced, and does not even have a hope of being correct.

According to whom? YOU??? So far your hope of ruining it for Lessans has failed. You can't even show me how a bee can recognize faces (your claim), or how your modal logic proves that imagining a world where we can move toward dissatisfaction is even possible. You don't step up to the plate by answering any of my questions.

I’ve already outlined in detail the modal argument, but never had any expectation that you would grasp it. Your apprehension of logic is zero. Do your own research on bees, I’m not spoonfeeding anything to you. Finally, as to the claim about God turning on the sun, etc., you and I both know that YOU wrote that stuff, not the author. He wrote rather the opposite, as ChuckF, the True Steward of the Authentic Text, demonstrated at FF.

None of you at ff understood the book because you were too busy tearing it apart. You also failed to understand that being compelled, of your own free will, is not a contradiction. You never admitted you were wrong. It's your responsibility to explain modal logic to your audience, not the other way around. I have listened to your explanation regarding necessity and contingency, and it fails spectacularly! The fact that you can imagine living in a logically possible world where moving in the direction of dissatisfaction offers you some kind of proof that you can actually do this, is pure fantasy when it's impossible to move in this direction given our nature. It is a modal fallacy of huge proportions!! I tried to meet you halfway by showing you that the movement in the direction of greater satisfaction or preference is a necessary tautological truth. But alas, you just can't bring yourself to admit that Lessans might be right after all. You are no judge of this work. Finally, to tell me to do research on bees recognizing faces, when it's your burden to prove it, is a joke. I didn't make the claim, you did!

 

[pood]

Got it.

You realize, I hope, that I was being sarcastic. This is pretty comprehensively the nuttiest claim anyone has ever advanced, and does not even have a hope of being correct.

According to whom? YOU??? So far your hope of ruining it for Lessans has failed. You can't even show me how a bee can recognize faces (your claim), or how your modal logic proves that imagining a world where we can move toward dissatisfaction is even possible. You don't step up to the plate by answering any of my questions.

I’ve already outlined in detail the modal argument, but never had any expectation that you would grasp it. Your apprehension of logic is zero. Do your own research on bees, I’m not spoonfeeding anything to you. Finally, as to the claim about God turning on the sun, etc., you and I both know that YOU wrote that stuff, not the author. He wrote rather the opposite, as ChuckF, the True Steward of the Authentic Text, demonstrated at FF.

None of you understood the book because you were too busy looking for anything to laugh at. You understand nothing at all, not even your summary of the two-sided equation. It's your responsibility to explain modal logic to your audience, not the other way around. I have listened to your explanation regarding necessary and contingent, and it fails spectacularly!

Take it up with a logician, then. Of course it fails spectacularly, for YOU, because you are uneducable. I also provided links to scholarly essays on modal logic and the modal fallacy, which I’m sure you ignored.

The fact that you think because you can imagine that you can move in the direction of dissatisfaction in some other logical world, you think this is accurate? :crazy: It proves nothing at all. I tried to meet you halfway by showing you that this is a necessary tautological truth. Anything you don't like, you conveniently skip over.

Lol, such projection, you’re a master of that, if nothing else.

You are no judge of this work, far from it. To tell me to do research on bees recognizing faces, when it's your burden to prove this, Pood. I didn't make the claim, you did!

I don’t have to prove anything to you, peacegirl, but see upthread. I linked where bees can recognize individual humans and do arithmetic, and pigeons recognize individual human faces too.

And yes, you changed what the author wrote about light and sight. Would you like me to post up the ORIGINAL text that you changed? ChuckF has it, if you’ll recall.

 

[peacegirl]

Got it.

You realize, I hope, that I was being sarcastic. This is pretty comprehensively the nuttiest claim anyone has ever advanced, and does not even have a hope of being correct.

According to whom? YOU??? So far your hope of ruining it for Lessans has failed. You can't even show me how a bee can recognize faces (your claim), or how your modal logic proves that imagining a world where we can move toward dissatisfaction is even possible. You don't step up to the plate by answering any of my questions.

I’ve already outlined in detail the modal argument, but never had any expectation that you would grasp it. Your apprehension of logic is zero. Do your own research on bees, I’m not spoonfeeding anything to you. Finally, as to the claim about God turning on the sun, etc., you and I both know that YOU wrote that stuff, not the author. He wrote rather the opposite, as ChuckF, the True Steward of the Authentic Text, demonstrated at FF.

None of you understood the book because you were too busy looking for anything to laugh at. You understand nothing at all, not even your summary of the two-sided equation. It's your responsibility to explain modal logic to your audience, not the other way around. I have listened to your explanation regarding necessary and contingent, and it fails spectacularly!

Take it up with a logician, then. Of course it fails spectacularly, for YOU, because you are uneducable. I also provided links to scholarly essays on modal logic and the modal fallacy, which I’m sure you ignored.

I don't care about scholarly essays when your belief that you can move in the direction of dis-satisfaction or choose the greater of two evils, rather than the lesser, is somehow valid because of this kind of logic. It's all word salad in an effort to keep moral responsibility intact. I can't even get to Chapter Two to show how the law of greater satisfaction has the ability to make our world 1,000 times better because of this resistance to determinism.

The fact that you think because you can imagine that you can move in the direction of dissatisfaction in some other logical world, you think this is accurate? :crazy: It proves nothing at all. I tried to meet you halfway by showing you that this is a necessary tautological truth. Anything you don't like, you conveniently skip over.

Lol, such projection, you’re a master of that, if nothing else.

Whatever!

You are no judge of this work, far from it. To tell me to do research on bees recognizing faces, when it's your burden to prove this, Pood. I didn't make the claim, you did!

I don’t have to prove anything to you, peacegirl, but see upthread. I linked where bees can recognize individual humans and do arithmetic, and pigeons recognize individual human faces too.

Without cues, I doubt very much whether they can identify individual features, even though pigeons are known to have some interesting skills.

And yes, you changed what the author wrote about light and sight. Would you like me to post up the ORIGINAL text that you changed? ChuckF has it, if you’ll recall.

I did not change anything that would alter the basic concept. I am the true steward and would never do that. Lessans used the word molecule rather than photon. He was not in the field and he wasn't a Ph.D. either. Neither was Galileo or Einstein. This has nothing to do with whether his observations were correct. Sometimes it takes someone outside looking in to see what cannot be seen from the inside looking out.

 

[peacegirl]

He was spot on in how difficult it is for "outsiders" to have half a chance at sharing their knowledge.

In his book “Alternative Science, Challenging the Myths of the Scientific Establishment” Richard Milton writes: “We are living in a time of rising academic intolerance in which important new discoveries in physics, medicine, and biology are being ridiculed and rejected for reasons that are not scientific. Something precious and irreplaceable is under attack. Our academic liberty — our freedom of thought — is being threatened by an establishment that chooses to turn aside new knowledge unless it comes from their own scientific circles. Some academics appoint themselves vigilantes to guard the gates of science against troublemakers with new ideas. Yet science has a two-thousand-year record of success not because it has been guarded by an Inquisition, but because it is self-regulating. It has succeeded because bad science is driven out by good; an ounce of open-minded experiment is worth any amount of authoritative opinion by self-styled scientific rationalists. The scientific fundamentalism of which these are disturbing signs is found today not merely in remote provincial pockets of conservatism but at the very top of the mainstream management of science on both sides of the Atlantic. Human progress has been powered by the paradigm-shattering inventions of many brilliant iconoclasts, yet just as the scientific community dismissed Edison’s lamp, Roentgen’s X-rays, and even the Wrights’ airplane, today’s “Paradigm Police” do a better job of preserving an outdated mode of thought than of nurturing invention and discovery.

One way of explaining this odd reluctance to come to terms with the new, even when there is plenty of concrete evidence available, is to appeal to the natural human tendency not to believe things that sound impossible unless we see them with our own eyes — a healthy skepticism. But there is a good deal more to this phenomenon than a healthy skepticism. It is a refusal even to open our eyes to examine the evidence that is plainly in view. And it is a phenomenon that occurs so regularly in the history of science and technology as to be almost an integral part of the process. It seems that there are some individuals, including very distinguished scientists, who are willing to risk the censure and ridicule of their colleagues by stepping over that mark. This book is about those scientists. But, more importantly, it is about the curious social and intellectual forces that seek to prohibit such research; those areas of scientific research that are taboo subjects; about subjects whose discussion is forbidden under pain of ridicule and ostracism. Often those who cry taboo do so from the best of motives: a desire to ensure that our hard-won scientific enlightenment is not corrupted by the credulous acceptance of crank ideas and that the community does not slide back into what Sir Karl Popper graphically called the ‘tyranny of opinion.’ Yet in setting out to guard the frontiers of knowledge, some scientific purists are adopting a brand of skepticism that is indistinguishable from the tyranny they seek to resist. These modern skeptics are sometimes the most unreflecting of individuals yet their devotion to the cause of science impels them to appoint themselves guardians of spirit of truth. And this raises the important question of just how we can tell a real crank from a real innovator — a Faraday from a false prophet. Merely to dismiss a carefully prepared body of evidence — however barmy it may appear — is to make the same mistake as the crank. In many ways cold fusion is the perfect paradigm of scientific taboo in action. The high priests of hot fusion were quick to ostracize and ridicule those whom they saw as profaning the sacred wisdom. And empirical fact counted for nothing in the face of their concerted derision.

The taboo reaction in science takes many distinct forms. At its simplest and most direct, tabooism is manifested as derision and rejection by scientists (and non-scientists) of those new discoveries that cannot be fitted into the existing framework of knowledge. The reaction is not merely a negative dismissal or refusal to believe; it is strong enough to cause positive actions to be taken by leading skeptics to compel a more widespread adoption in the community of the rejection and disbelief, the shipping up of opposition, and the putting down of anyone unwise enough to step out of line by publicly embracing taboo ideas. The taboo reaction in such simple cases is eventually dispelled because the facts — and the value of the discoveries concerned — prove to be stronger than the taboo belief; but there remains the worrying possibility that many such taboos prove stronger (or more valuable) than the discoveries to which they are applied. In its more subtle form, the taboo reaction draws a circle around a subject and places it ‘out of bounds’ to any form of rational analysis or investigation. In doing so, science often puts up what appears to be a well-considered, fundamental objection, which on closer analysis turns out to be no more than the unreflecting prejudices of a maiden aunt who feels uncomfortable with the idea of mixed bathing. The penalty associated with this form of tabooism is that whole areas of scientific investigation, some of which may well hold important discoveries, remain permanently fenced off and any benefits they may contain are denied us. Subtler still is the taboo whereby scientists in certain fields erect a general prohibition against speaking or writing on the subjects which they consider their own property and where any reference, especially by an outsider, will draw a rapid hostile response.

Sometimes, scientists who declare a taboo will insist that only they are qualified to discuss and reach conclusions on the matters that they have made their own property; that only they are privy to the immense body of knowledge and subtlety of argument necessary fully to understand the complexities of the subject and to reach the ‘right’ conclusion. Outsiders, on the other hand, (especially non-scientists) are ill-informed, unable to think rationally or analytically, prone to mystical or crank ideas and are not privy to subtleties of analysis and inflections of argument that insiders have devoted long painful years to acquiring. Once again, the cost of such tabooism is measured in lost opportunities for discovery. Any contribution to knowledge in terms of rational analysis, or resulting from the different perspective of those outside the field in question, is lost to the community. In its most extreme form scientific tabooism closely resembles the behavior of a priestly caste that is perceived to be the holy guardians of the sacred creed, the beliefs that are the object of the community’s worship. Such guardians feel themselves justified by their religious calling and long training in adopting any measures to repel and to discredit any member of the community who profanes the sacred places, words or rituals regarded as untouchable. Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the taboo reaction is that it tends to have a cumulative and permanent discriminatory effect: any idea that is ideologically suspect or counter to the current paradigm is permanently dismissed, and the very fact of its rejection forms the basis of its rejection on all future occasions. It is a little like the court of appeal rejecting the convicted man’s plea of innocence on the grounds that he must be guilty or why else is he in jail? And why else did the police arrest him in the first place? This ‘erring on the side of caution’ means that in the long term the intellectual Devil’s Island where convicted concepts are sent becomes more and more crowded with taboo ideas, all denied to us, and with no possibility of reprieve. We will never know how many tens or hundreds or thousands of important discoveries were thrown in the scrap heap merely because of intolerance and misplaced skepticism.”

 

[pood]

Got it.

You realize, I hope, that I was being sarcastic. This is pretty comprehensively the nuttiest claim anyone has ever advanced, and does not even have a hope of being correct.

According to whom? YOU??? So far your hope of ruining it for Lessans has failed. You can't even show me how a bee can recognize faces (your claim), or how your modal logic proves that imagining a world where we can move toward dissatisfaction is even possible. You don't step up to the plate by answering any of my questions.

I’ve already outlined in detail the modal argument, but never had any expectation that you would grasp it. Your apprehension of logic is zero. Do your own research on bees, I’m not spoonfeeding anything to you. Finally, as to the claim about God turning on the sun, etc., you and I both know that YOU wrote that stuff, not the author. He wrote rather the opposite, as ChuckF, the True Steward of the Authentic Text, demonstrated at FF.

None of you understood the book because you were too busy looking for anything to laugh at. You understand nothing at all, not even your summary of the two-sided equation. It's your responsibility to explain modal logic to your audience, not the other way around. I have listened to your explanation regarding necessary and contingent, and it fails spectacularly!

Take it up with a logician, then. Of course it fails spectacularly, for YOU, because you are uneducable. I also provided links to scholarly essays on modal logic and the modal fallacy, which I’m sure you ignored.

I can't even get to Chapter Two to show how the law of greater satisfaction has the ability to make our world 1,000 times better because of this resistance to determinism.

Who’s stopping you?

The fact that you think because you can imagine that you can move in the direction of dissatisfaction in some other logical world, you think this is accurate? :crazy: It proves nothing at all. I tried to meet you halfway by showing you that this is a necessary tautological truth. Anything you don't like, you conveniently skip over.

Lol, such projection, you’re a master of that, if nothing else.

Whatever!

Whatever!

You are no judge of this work, far from it. To tell me to do research on bees recognizing faces, when it's your burden to prove this, Pood. I didn't make the claim, you did!

I don’t have to prove anything to you, peacegirl, but see upthread. I linked where bees can recognize individual humans and do arithmetic, and pigeons recognize individual human faces too.

Without cues, I doubt very much whether they can identify individual features, even though pigeons are known to have some interesting skills.

Cues — yeah, like the cue of an individual face that they recognize, even without language.

And yes, you changed what the author wrote about light and sight. Would you like me to post up the ORIGINAL text that you changed? ChuckF has it, if you’ll recall.

I did not change anything that would alter the basic concept. I am the true steward and would never do that. Lessans used the word molecule rather than photon. He was not in the field and he wasn't a Ph.D. either. Neither was Galileo or Einstein. This has nothing to do with whether his observations were correct. Sometimes it takes someone outside looking in to see what cannot be seen from the inside looking out.

You put words in his mouth that if God turned on the sun at noon, people on earth would see it immediately. He did not say that.

 

[peacegirl]

Why would I lie? Where did he mention military force in his books? This is the worst lie ever and you won’t apologize!

Got it.

You realize, I hope, that I was being sarcastic. This is pretty comprehensively the nuttiest claim anyone has ever advanced, and does not even have a hope of being correct.

According to whom? YOU??? So far your hope of ruining it for Lessans has failed. You can't even show me how a bee can recognize faces (your claim), or how your modal logic proves that imagining a world where we can move toward dissatisfaction is even possible. You don't step up to the plate by answering any of my questions.

I’ve already outlined in detail the modal argument, but never had any expectation that you would grasp it. Your apprehension of logic is zero. Do your own research on bees, I’m not spoonfeeding anything to you. Finally, as to the claim about God turning on the sun, etc., you and I both know that YOU wrote that stuff, not the author. He wrote rather the opposite, as ChuckF, the True Steward of the Authentic Text, demonstrated at FF.

None of you understood the book because you were too busy looking for anything to laugh at. You understand nothing at all, not even your summary of the two-sided equation. It's your responsibility to explain modal logic to your audience, not the other way around. I have listened to your explanation regarding necessary and contingent, and it fails spectacularly!

Take it up with a logician, then. Of course it fails spectacularly, for YOU, because you are uneducable. I also provided links to scholarly essays on modal logic and the modal fallacy, which I’m sure you ignored.

I can't even get to Chapter Two to show how the law of greater satisfaction has the ability to make our world 1,000 times better because of this resistance to determinism.

Who’s stopping you?

The fact that you think because you can imagine that you can move in the direction of dissatisfaction in some other logical world, you think this is accurate? :crazy: It proves nothing at all. I tried to meet you halfway by showing you that this is a necessary tautological truth. Anything you don't like, you conveniently skip over.

Lol, such projection, you’re a master of that, if nothing else.

Whatever!

Whatever!

You are no judge of this work, far from it. To tell me to do research on bees recognizing faces, when it's your burden to prove this, Pood. I didn't make the claim, you did!

I don’t have to prove anything to you, peacegirl, but see upthread. I linked where bees can recognize individual humans and do arithmetic, and pigeons recognize individual human faces too.

Without cues, I doubt very much whether they can identify individual features, even though pigeons are known to have some interesting skills.

Cues — yeah, like the cue of an individual face that they recognize, even without language.

I’d like to see this without creating a poorly designed experiment.

And yes, you changed what the author wrote about light and sight. Would you like me to post up the ORIGINAL text that you changed? ChuckF has it, if you’ll recall.

I did not change anything that would alter the basic concept. I am the true steward and would never do that. Lessans used the word molecule rather than photon. He was not in the field and he wasn't a Ph.D. either. Neither was Galileo or Einstein. This has nothing to do with whether his observations were correct. Sometimes it takes someone outside looking in to see what cannot be seen from the inside looking out.

You put words in his mouth that if God turned on the sun at noon, people on earth would see it immediately. He did not say that.

So now you’re the steward? He did write that and for good reason!

 

[pood]

I’d like to see this without creating a poorly designed experiment.

Yes, we know, peacegirl, every scientific experiment ever conducted by expert scientists, all of which show that the book is wrong, must be “poorly designed.” Right.

And yes, you changed what the author wrote about light and sight. Would you like me to post up the ORIGINAL text that you changed? ChuckF has it, if you’ll recall.

I did not change anything that would alter the basic concept. I am the true steward and would never do that. Lessans used the word molecule rather than photon. He was not in the field and he wasn't a Ph.D. either. Neither was Galileo or Einstein. This has nothing to do with whether his observations were correct. Sometimes it takes someone outside looking in to see what cannot be seen from the inside looking out.

You put words in his mouth that if God turned on the sun at noon, people on earth would see it immediately. He did not say that.

So now you’re the steward? He did write that and for good reason!

You’re showing the corrupted text.

 

[pood]

Oh, wait, you did a change up. Now you are using the AUTHENTIC TEXT, which says that if God turned on the sun at noon, we on earth would not see it for eight minutes! But all these years, until ChuckF dug up the original text, you were defending the opposite — defending the claim that if God turned on the sun at noon, we would see it instantly! You’ve been defending that very claim in this very thread.

The rest of what he wrote, of course, is totally wrong — photons are not molecules, and they don’t “hang around” for us to see. Total nonsense.

 

[peacegirl]

I’d like to see this without creating a poorly designed experiment.

Yes, we know, peacegirl, every scientific experiment ever conducted by expert scientists, all of which show that the book is wrong, must be “poorly designed.” Right.

Anybody can see that training an animal to recognize certain patterns when he's given a treat is not true recognition. You know I'm right and you hate it.

And yes, you changed what the author wrote about light and sight. Would you like me to post up the ORIGINAL text that you changed? ChuckF has it, if you’ll recall.

I did not change anything that would alter the basic concept. I am the true steward and would never do that. Lessans used the word molecule rather than photon. He was not in the field and he wasn't a Ph.D. either. Neither was Galileo or Einstein. This has nothing to do with whether his observations were correct. Sometimes it takes someone outside looking in to see what cannot be seen from the inside looking out.

You put words in his mouth that if God turned on the sun at noon, people on earth would see it immediately. He did not say that.

So now you’re the steward? He did write that and for good reason!

You’re showing the corrupted text.

That's the book Chuck got from the Library of Congress. It's the same type from an old electric typewriter. You're delusional!

 

[pood]

I’d like to see this without creating a poorly designed experiment.

Yes, we know, peacegirl, every scientific experiment ever conducted by expert scientists, all of which show that the book is wrong, must be “poorly designed.” Right.

Anybody can see that training an animal to recognize certain patterns when he's given a treat is not true recognition. You know I'm right and you hate it.

There’s that naughty AH again, peacegirl. Want me to use the report post button? Remember, you said you wanted a moderated forum.

And yes, you changed what the author wrote about light and sight. Would you like me to post up the ORIGINAL text that you changed? ChuckF has it, if you’ll recall.

I did not change anything that would alter the basic concept. I am the true steward and would never do that. Lessans used the word molecule rather than photon. He was not in the field and he wasn't a Ph.D. either. Neither was Galileo or Einstein. This has nothing to do with whether his observations were correct. Sometimes it takes someone outside looking in to see what cannot be seen from the inside looking out.

You put words in his mouth that if God turned on the sun at noon, people on earth would see it immediately. He did not say that.

So now you’re the steward? He did write that and for good reason!

You’re showing the corrupted text.

That's the book Chuck got from the Library of Congress. It's the same type from an old electric typewriter. You're delusional!

Hmm! Am I?

Here is the text you posted years ago at FF, and defended for years after that, and indeed have been defending right here, right now:

 

[pood]

now here is the text you posted just upthread:

 

[pood]

Do you notice the difference, peacegirl?

 

[peacegirl]

now here is the text you posted just upthread:

View attachment 48279

You misunderstood what he wrote. We would not see the LIGHT FROM THE SUN, which is true.

 

[pood]

now here is the text you posted just upthread:

View attachment 48279

You misunderstood what he wrote. We would not see the LIGHT FROM THE SUN, which is true.

In this thread, you posted a version of the text that says if God turned on the sun at noon, we would not see it for eight minutes. Meanwhile, you defended the opposite claim — that if God turned on the sun at noon, we would see it instantly.

The opposite claim is contained in a different version of the text, which you posted and defended at FF, and is reproduced by me above. .

These totally opposite claims about the same subject are, obviously, mutually exclusive. How do you propose to account for this?

 

[bilby]

there’s no travel time when the eyes work the opposite way from what you believe.

To pick just one element from the fractal wrongness here; Why would there be no travel time if the eyes work "the opposite way"?

That's like saying it takes an hour to drive to Nerang, but if I was going the opposite way, it wouldn't take any time at all. But we observe that it actually takes an hour to drive here from Nerang.