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

[bilby]

No one would dare dispute a well-known philosopher like Sapolsky without reading his book. Damnnnnn it!

Have you ever met an academic? They spend their lives disputing each other without fear or hesitation.

At least half of the philosophers in the world would dispute any conclusion from Sapolsky, even if it were, on it's face, completely noncontroversial.

It is the constant and unrelenting criticism and dispute of his work, that makes him well regarded. People are not impressed so much by what he says, and not at all by who he is; They are impressed by the mountain of dispute and criticism his work has survived.

If he made an outright counterfactual claim up front, and demanded that his readers accept it as axiomatic, then they would reject his work without further reading; And would be right to do so.

Academics are fucking brutal. They don't accept each other's work without a massive fight, picking every nit, and questioning every claim and assumption.

That's why their conclusions are mostly pretty reliable. That's why (and how) the system works.

 

[peacegirl]

Sight takes place for the first time when a sufficient accumulation of sense experience such as hearing, taste, touch, and smell — these are doorways in — awakensWha the brain so that the child can look through them at what exists around him.

OK. So, when a child sees the stars, is it the sound, taste, texture, or smell of them that lets him know they are there?

What are you talking about bilby?

I am asking a simple question. When anybody sees the stars for the first time, or indeed, any subsequent time, what informs him that they are there? Which sense is being employed? If none are, how dies he know the stars exist?

When a baby is born, he cannot focus his eyes until there is a desire to see due to the other senses stimulating this desire.

Leaving aside that this is a bald assertion, and that: a) That which is asserted without evidence can be rejected without evidence; And b) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, it even fails to be a response to my question, which was not about babies at all.

But babies are what explains what is happening.

No, they aren't. When I look up and see the stars of the Southern Cross, I see them in the exact same pattern as everyone else. But I saw them for the first time as an adult - they aren't visible from where I was born and raised. So how did the knowledge of their positions get from them to me?

Constellations travel.

Clustering Star Groups Into Known Structures

Astronomers examine the velocity and sky location of the Theia groups to see if they're actually part of known clusters.

aasnova.org

You cannot leave it out because you want to prove him wrong.

No, but I can leave it out because it's irelevant nonsense.

If you want me to accept that babies are relevant, you need to gove me good reasons to accept that. Just making apparently disjointed claims, and asking me to believe them before I read them is a non-starter.

They are relevant because that’s when they first learn to focus their eyes. The fact that it takes sensory stimulation could be tested even further.

This is exactly why READING THE ENTIRE CHAPTER is the only way you will be able to understand his full explanation. Without it, you're just guessing what he means.

Turnabout is fair play; Your response here is clearly not to the actual question I asked, but to a vaguely related question that you had a boilerplate answer for.

Stop being aggressive.

I am not being aggressive. I am just not agreeing with every word you say without question or hesitation. That's not aggression, it's reason.

You are not the ultimate arbiter of truth bilby.

Nor is anyone else. Lessans doesn't get to demand that I believe his false statements as a precursor to agreeing with his conclusions, and nor do you.

Goose sauce is gander sauce.

I am not saying you have to believe his statements, but to say they are false statements is a presumption.

I cannot talk to someone who puts me on trial.

Then you should avoid discussion boards.

I will not be put in this defensive position.

You have been, so it's too late. If you want to know who put you there, look in a mirror.

So I shouldn’t have tried to share this knowledge, according to you. Put yourself in my position for one second and you will have a little sympathy. He never had a chance in his lifetime because he was not in academia. This discovery is still not recognized and may never be not because it’s vapid and without substance but because I cannot reach true academicians who would take this book seriously and study it like other philosophers have been studied. That’s not asking too much but until then I’m stuck with forums where people have not read the book in its entirety to see how the blueprint comes together. It’s amazing how a work can be ripped apart where it’s totally unrecognizable.

If you won't defend your ideas, you will need to accept that they will never be widely accepted. Of course, that doesn't imply that they will if you do defend them - a defence is necessary, but is far from sufficient.

I am defending them. I posted part of chapter four for your convenience. Pood read it, did you?

 

[Testy Calibrate]

Also, his two-sided equation stuff arguably has some merit and is certainly worth entertaining, if he weren’t so hyperbolic and dogmatic about his claims. For example, one can be a compatibilist, as I am, yet reject retributive justice, as I do. It can certainly be argued that while we always act on our preferences, a lot of our genetics and our upbringing heavily influence our choices, and if we recognized this and stopped blaming people for what they do, forcing them into a defensive crouch of rationalizing their behavior, they might well make choices better for themselves and others. We know the old childhood saw “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me” is quite wrong, and moreover, childhood trauma alters gene expression in a way that lasts for a lifetime, leading to inherited intergenerational trauma. Perhaps much of this could be tempered and some of it eliminated in an environment in which blame and shame is greatly reduced. These are points worth entertaining.

Exactly. How our sense of the world develops and what feeds it are possibly the most profound questions facing humans. It's why religion can still be relevant in an age where magic and miracles are no longer valid causal forces.

So I can read the first 3 chapters metaphorically and see some points worth thinking about. And I see them as really quite important points. And I am also aware that there is a several thousand year history of philosophy dealing directly with these issues and am sympathetic to most efforts to rework them to make them relevant in each time.

 

[bilby]

I will not be put in this defensive position.

You have been, so it's too late. If you want to know who put you there, look in a mirror.

If you won't defend your ideas, you will need to accept that they will never be widely accepted. Of course, that doesn't imply that they will if you do defend them - a defence is necessary, but is far from sufficient.

I am defending them.

So, when you said "I will not be put in this defensive position", that was empty bluster?

 

[Testy Calibrate]

Also, his two-sided equation stuff arguably has some merit and is certainly worth entertaining,

Gosh, I can't believe you gave him some credit. It sounds so strange coming from you.

if he weren’t so hyperbolic and dogmatic about his claims.

He was never dogmatic. Is it dogmatic to say that one plus one is two? No.

For example, one can be a compatibilist, as I am, yet reject retributive justice, as I do.

This shows me you don't understand how this knowledge of no free will, therefore no blame, extends. How can we punish people for wrongdoing when they can do no wrong?

[/QUOTE]
In Buddhism this is called dukkha and samsara, in Taoism it is called the way, in xianity it is illustrated in parables culminating in turning the other cheek.

One of my favorite thinkers of all time, Thich Nat Han, illustrates the concept in a poem called Call Me By My True Names https://www.parallax.org/mindfulnessbell/article/poem-please-call-me-by-my-true-names/

It is the consequence that general semantics is working to uncover. In short, it is something that is incredibly well covered by philosophers throughout the ages. Your book adds to a rich history but doesn't overturn that history.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

Take out weird metaphor of eyes and you have a decent take on one of the principles of general semantics

What I took from GS was the idea we substitute symbols for reality as reality itself which lead's to a disassociation form reality leading to social ills, or something like that.

We look at something called 'chair' and we see nothing but the symbol.

'The map is not the countryside' which led me to see science as a symbolic map of reality not fertility itself.

Yes. That is the general point. While I did read Science and Sanity, I found it hard to get past the writing. Hayawatha's "Language in Thought and Action" I thought made it much more plain. The part I took from is is the implied subject problem. If I say, "blonds are cuter than brunettes" one might be tempted to prove or argue the point, possibly even going so far as to take a poll and considering the results as answering the question when really the statement is malformed. The implied subject is "I think" which, when added, makes the statement true or a lie.

 

[pood]

And anyone foolishly inclined to do so is probably still wading through Dianetics.

Or Aristotle. Actually that’s not quite fair, but couldn’t resist. We read and laud him for being one of the early thinkers to at least try to think clearly and consistently about the world, and about how it works and why that is. Given their lack of a knowledge base, we wouldn’t expect the early Greeks to get things right, but some of them, including Aristotle, had decent insights. But no, contra the author, scientists do not believe what they do because Aristotle said so. Quite the opposite.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

.

Anyway, thanks for having the link posted.

Peace out

When you get rid of causality you can imagine anything.

Gods. demons, magic spells, and most importantly somethings something form nothing.

Elaborate on what you men by causality being a gross level.

It's interesting that you went straight to what happens when you get to imagine. But gods demons etc would still be causal, no?

I don't mean that there isn't an arrow of time. I mean that our ideas of causality tend to be reductionistic in the same way as most physics and chemistry is. Dependent and independent variables and causes being describable in less than 14b years worth of writing.

But a short amount of time working with complex adaptive systems as such makes it quite clear that our notions of causality are not as generalizable as we tend to assume. Causality does not begin at the low level and transfer to each higher level of organization the way we think it would. Each level requires it's own causal language. Hence my use of the word gross.

There has been the emergent property arguments on the forum before.

The claim is sum is not always the sum of the parts. Philosophically you can make a case but not physically.

It of course can not be proven but the foundation in the Laws Of Thermodynamics says matter and and energy must always add up. Nothing from or too nothing.

A physical painting is the sum of physical parts. Aesthetics are emergent properties of art. Appreciation of art can not be derived from reduction of caliphs parts.

The argument can used to get around conservation and causality to support metaphysical claims.

As an engineer I was a member of the reductionist club. Physacly things must always add up.

The gas gauge in a car is never going to go up while drving.

And autopoeisis does not violate the second law even though entropy within is negative.

I get where you're coming from but I work with complex dynamic systems and the language problem is a big issue. It's not really which view is True with a capital T so much as that reductionism and the associated causal concepts are decidedly unuseful when working out properties involving path dependency and positive feedback.

Can you point me to one of those threads? I don't want to hijack this one

 

[bilby]

So I shouldn’t have tried to share this knowledge, according to you.

Pretty much. You should have recognised that it's not in a fit state for publication, if you want it to be taken seriously.

Put yourself in my position for one second and you will have a little sympathy.

I have the greatest of sympathy for you. It's not easy being a Dunning-Kruger victim.

He never had a chance in his lifetime because he was not in academia.

No, he never had a chance because he didn't understand what academia is. It's not an old boy's club, it's a barely controlled brawl, in which only the strongest and best ideas have a hope of survival.

Thus discovery is still not recognized not because it’s vapid but because I cannot reach true academicians who would take this book seriously and study it like other philosophers have been studied. That’s not asking too much

Yes, it is.

A soldier who has fought bravely against almost impossible odds gets awarded medals, and when other soldiers see those medals, they give that soldier deep respect. But it would be a terrible mistake to just buy some medals in a junkshop, and wear them expecting to get the same respect.

It's not the medals that are respectable; It's the battle that they represent.

In the same way, an academic might be called Doctor or Professor, or have a string of letters after his name, and you might see that he is deeply respected by other academics as a consequence.

But it's not the honorifics that get him the respect; It's the intellectual hardships, conflicts, criticisms, and attacks that they represent.

If you turn up demanding respect, having never done the hard fighting needed to defend your ideas, and then, when challenged to prove your right to that respect, by defending the ideas you rode in on you try to hide behind demands for respect, instead of standing up and doing battle for your claims, reasoning, and ideas, then you are going to have a rough time of it.

Asking to be taken seriously abd treated with respect in academia, without first fighting for your ideas and winning, is just like turning up at the veterans dinner wearing a Military Cross you found in a junkshop.

 

[peacegirl]

Take out weird metaphor of eyes and you have a decent take on one of the principles of general semantics

See, that’s the thing. It’s not a metaphor. If it were a metaphor, he may have some decent stuff on, as you say, general semantics. If he had something like, for example, “while the eye strictly of course is a sense organ, we make sense of what we see by projecting our semantics and conditioning onto the external world.” Then when he says, “We project words onto an undeniable screen of substance,” this would make sense as a metaphor, Taken literally, of course, this is all nonsense, but he does have interesting things to say how semantics and conditioning color our view of reality.

The implied subject that universalizes a point of view is one of the more vexing problems of language. The biomechanics of the eye do not seem to be required to understand this problem.

Ideas as to the mechanism of how something works can look to be completely valid, but the conclusions can be wrong.

Show where they are wrong.

This happens more than you may think. Even in criminal justice, all of the circumstantial evidence looks beyond a reasonable doubt and therefore justifies charging someone with a guilty verdict when in actuality he was innocent. This is not much different.

"Your honour, the evidence against my client is compelling, and I have no exhibits, forensics, or testimony whatsoever to offer in his defence. But you must agree that sometimes a person is found guilty, when he is in fact not guilty, and there is considerable history of guilty verdicts being overturned on appeal. Therefore I remain confident that the jury will find my client not guilty, and will apply an insane standard of reasonableness to any doubts they may have. The defence rests".

That is not what I'm doing. But the truth, when it comes to the criminal justice system (which I used as an analogy to what is happening here) is they often put together circumstantial evidence that make it appear a person did the crime when in actuality, they didn't. It looked like an airtight case, but it turned out not to be. Many innocent people are found guilty, which is why the innocent project was created.

If my brief used this in his summing up, I would begin to wonder if I had accidentally retained a barista, instead of a barrister. He does make surprisingly good coffee...

Funny!

 

[pood]

Also, his two-sided equation stuff arguably has some merit and is certainly worth entertaining, if he weren’t so hyperbolic and dogmatic about his claims. For example, one can be a compatibilist, as I am, yet reject retributive justice, as I do. It can certainly be argued that while we always act on our preferences, a lot of our genetics and our upbringing heavily influence our choices, and if we recognized this and stopped blaming people for what they do, forcing them into a defensive crouch of rationalizing their behavior, they might well make choices better for themselves and others. We know the old childhood saw “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me” is quite wrong, and moreover, childhood trauma alters gene expression in a way that lasts for a lifetime, leading to inherited intergenerational trauma. Perhaps much of this could be tempered and some of it eliminated in an environment in which blame and shame is greatly reduced. These are points worth entertaining.

Exactly. How our sense of the world develops and what feeds it are possibly the most profound questions facing humans. It's why religion can still be relevant in an age where magic and miracles are no longer valid causal forces.

So I can read the first 3 chapters metaphorically and see some points worth thinking about. And I see them as really quite important points. And I am also aware that there is a several thousand year history of philosophy dealing directly with these issues and am sympathetic to most efforts to rework them to make them relevant in each time.

Exactly. And in that light I can see merit in the book, shorn of inanities like the eye is not a sense organ and if god turned on the sun at noon we would see it immediately, even though it takes the light eight minutes to reach our eyes. People reading this are going to reject the work outright even though it may have useful insights.

 

[bilby]

And anyone foolishly inclined to do so is probably still wading through Dianetics.

Or Aristotle. Actually that’s not quite fair, but couldn’t resist. We read and laud him for being one of the early thinkers to at least try to think clearly and consistently about the world, and about how it works and why that is. Given their lack of a knowledge base, we wouldn’t expect the early Greeks to get things right, but some of them, including Aristotle, had decent insights. But no, contra the author, scientists do not believe what they do because Aristotle said so. Quite the opposite.

To extend a metaphor (probably beyond it's design limits), he fought well and bravely. He didn't charge any machine gun nests armed only with a bayonet, but that's because machine guns hadn't yet been invented.

 

[DBT]

That we tend to see the world through the lense of our life experiences and conditioning doesn't alter the fact that our eyes are senses that detect light and transmit information to the brain for processing.

 

[pood]

Also, his two-sided equation stuff arguably has some merit and is certainly worth entertaining,

Gosh, I can't believe you gave him some credit. It sounds so strange coming from you.

if he weren’t so hyperbolic and dogmatic about his claims.

He was never dogmatic. Is it dogmatic to say that one plus one is two? No.

For example, one can be a compatibilist, as I am, yet reject retributive justice, as I do.

This shows me you don't understand how this knowledge of no free will, therefore no blame, extends. How can we punish people for wrongdoing when they can do no wrong?

In Buddhism this is called dukkha and samsara, in Taoism it is called the way, in xianity it is illustrated in parables culminating in turning the other cheek.

One of my favorite thinkers of all time, Thich Nat Han, illustrates the concept in a poem called Call Me By My True Names https://www.parallax.org/mindfulnessbell/article/poem-please-call-me-by-my-true-names/

It is the consequence that general semantics is working to uncover. In short, it is something that is incredibly well covered by philosophers throughout the ages. Your book adds to a rich history but doesn't overturn that history.
[/QUOTE][/quote]

There is also merit, as I told peacegirl, in the author’s discussion of time. It is very Buddhistic.

Not sure how to fix the quote tags you somehow butchered, Testy.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

I don't know how to edit posts apparently.

 

[pood]

So I shouldn’t have tried to share this knowledge, according to you.

Pretty much. You should have recognised that it's not in a fit state for publication, if you want it to be taken seriously.

Put yourself in my position for one second and you will have a little sympathy.

I have the greatest of sympathy for you. It's not easy being a Dunning-Kruger victim.

He never had a chance in his lifetime because he was not in academia.

No, he never had a chance because he didn't understand what academia is. It's not an old boy's club, it's a barely controlled brawl, in which only the strongest and best ideas have a hope of survival.

Thus discovery is still not recognized not because it’s vapid but because I cannot reach true academicians who would take this book seriously and study it like other philosophers have been studied. That’s not asking too much

Yes, it is.

A soldier who has fought bravely against almost impossible odds gets awarded medals, and when other soldiers see those medals, they give that soldier deep respect. But it would be a terrible mistake to just buy some medals in a junkshop, and wear them expecting to get the same respect.

It's not the medals that are respectable; It's the battle that they represent.

In the same way, an academic might be called Doctor or Professor, or have a string of letters after his name, and you might see that he is deeply respected by other academics as a consequence.

But it's not the honorifics that get him the respect; It's the intellectual hardships, conflicts, criticisms, and attacks that they represent.

If you turn up demanding respect, having never done the hard fighting needed to defend your ideas, and then, when challenged to prove your right to that respect, by defending the ideas you rode in on you try to hide behind demands for respect, instead of standing up and doing battle for your claims, reasoning, and ideas, then you are going to have a rough time of it.

Asking to be taken seriously abd treated with respect in academia, without first fighting for your ideas and winning, is just like turning up at the veterans dinner wearing a Military Cross you found in a junkshop.

IMO the best thing she could do, though she won’t is scrap the inanities like the eye is not a sense organ and God and the sun and all that, and focus one those claims which may be promising and have merit, several of which have been cited. She could then claim the final product as a joint.work of her and Lessans.

 

[pood]

I don't know how to edit posts apparently.

There is an Edit button on the lower left, between Report and Delete.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

One of the concepts that has influenced me greatly, that I probably got from Pirsig rather than J Krishnamurti although the latter did I think a good job of explaining it here: https://jkrishnamurti.org/about-dissolution-speech
Is that truth is a pathless land. Everyone gets a profound insight in their own way and there is no one single way to explain it.

If you haven't read the dissolution speech linked above, I highly recommend it.

 

[pood]

One of the concepts that has influenced me greatly, that I probably got from Pirsig rather than J Krishnamurti although the latter did I think a good job of explaining it here: https://jkrishnamurti.org/about-dissolution-speech
Is that truth is a pathless land. Everyone gets a profound insight in their own way and there is no one single way to explain it.

If you haven't read the dissolution speech linked above, I highly recommend it.

I once saw Krishnamurti speak in San Francisco. At the end when everyone rose and applauded, he sprang to his feet, waved at the crowd, and snarled, “You’re just applauding yourselves!”

 

[pood]

Krishnamurti and Bohm, discussions between him and the famous theoretical physicist. We also have a thread on Julian Barbour, the physicist who contends time does not exist.