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

[DBT]

"Every conversation is reduced to it's lowest level of understanding" ~ unknown

Occam's razor is the simplest form of conversation but that doesn't mean it's the lowest level of understanding. Are you not understanding why man's will is not free, according to the author, or are you just not understanding why light can be at the eye without time for it to travel? I'm sure it's the latter.

I understand that light can't be 'at the eye' before it has been radiated by or reflected from by the object being observed, which happens to be the well established physics of the matter.

Sorry, but the book is wrong.

 

[peacegirl]

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.

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.

I won't change his words and his claims. I don't have the wherewithal to even begin to change things around, even if I wanted so. People can read the book and take what they like and leave the rest. The knowledge is helpful, even in this world. It could actually save marriages and keep families together.

 

[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.

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.

I won't change his words and his claims. I don't have the wherewithal to even begin to change things around, even if I wanted so. People can read the book and take what they like and leave the rest. The knowledge is helpful, even in this world. It could actually save marriages and keep families together.

I know you won’t, but any educated person who reads that the eye is not a sense organ and that if God turned on the sun at noon we would see it instantly, even though it takes the light from the sun some eight minutes to arrive at the eye, will drop the book like a hot potato. Those claims are false and the latter is both physically and logically impossible.

 

[peacegirl]

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.

This man worked on his discovery for 30 years. You don't get to tell me it's not in a fit state for publication.

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.

You wouldn't make a good psychologist. Stick with your day job.

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.

This is a major discovery (whether you or anyone here believes it or not). I will not even try to reach academicians who believe their *#%^ doesn't stink.

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.

This doesn't have anything to do with respect. Like I said, people can admire someone's hard earned accomplishments, but everyone deserves respect regardless of what they do. I'm not demanding that people agree if they don't, but I am demanding respect because I'm a human being and I won't tolerate disrespect.

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.

I've been fighting for these ideas probably longer than you've been alive, so please don't be so condescending. Thank you.

 

[bilby]

This man worked on his discovery for 30 years. You don't get to tell me it's not in a fit state for publication.

I think you'll find that I just did.

But if it makes you feel any better, I am only going on your presentation of it as unfit for publication.

 

[bilby]

Asking to be taken seriously and 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.

I've been fighting for these ideas probably longer than you've been alive, so please don't be so condescending. Thank you.

Yeah, but you missed completely on the "and winning" clause, and are oblivious as to just how badly and obviously you have failed, so condescension is actually warranted.

 

[peacegirl]

This man worked on his discovery for 30 years. You don't get to tell me it's not in a fit state for publication.

I think you'll find that I just did.

But if it makes you feel any better, I am only going on your presentation of it as unfit for publication.

It’s already published! For you to say it’s not fit for publication is not very nice!

 

[pood]

I have been thinking more about Krishnamurti since his name was brought up, and also started a thread about him. It seems this passage some commonalities with the author’s writings;

The word is never the thing. The word wife is never the person, the door is never the thing. The word prevents the actual perception of the thing or person because the word has many associations. These associations, which are actually remembrances, distort not only visual observation but psychological. Words then become a barrier to the free flow of observation. Take the words, prime minister and clerk. They describe functions but the words prime minister have tremendous significance of power, status and importance whereas the word clerk has associations of unimportance, little status and no power. So the word prevents you from looking at both of them as human beings. There is ingrained snobbery in most of us, and to see what words have done to our thinking and to be choicelessly aware of it, is to learn the art of observation – to observe without association.

 

[peacegirl]

Asking to be taken seriously and 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.

I've been fighting for these ideas probably longer than you've been alive, so please don't be so condescending. Thank you.

Yeah, but you missed completely on the "and winning" clause, and are oblivious as to just how badly and obviously you have failed, so condescension is actually warranted.

There is nothing to win. This is not a fight! I am just tired of working so hard to get anyone to listen without bias! And there’s plenty of it to go around. If he was wrong about the eyes, then so be it, but his proof as to how the brain and eyes are conditioned to see what doesn’t exist because of words that are projected onto the screen of the outside world could only happen the way he described.

 

[pood]

Asking to be taken seriously and 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.

I've been fighting for these ideas probably longer than you've been alive, so please don't be so condescending. Thank you.

Yeah, but you missed completely on the "and winning" clause, and are oblivious as to just how badly and obviously you have failed, so condescension is actually warranted.

There is nothing to win. This is not a fight! I am just tired of working so hard to get anyone to listen without bias! And there’s plenty of it to go around. If he was wrong about the eyes, then so be it, but his proof as to how the brain and eyes are conditioned to see what doesn’t exist because of words that are projected onto the screen of the outside world could only happen the way he described.

Look at the Krishnamurti quote.

 

[peacegirl]

I have been thinking more about Krishnamurti since his name was brought up, and also started a thread about him. It seems this passage some commonalities with the author’s writings;

The word is never the thing. The word wife is never the person, the door is never the thing. The word prevents the actual perception of the thing or person because the word has many associations. These associations, which are actually remembrances, distort not only visual observation but psychological. Words then become a barrier to the free flow of observation. Take the words, prime minister and clerk. They describe functions but the words prime minister have tremendous significance of power, status and importance whereas the word clerk has associations of unimportance, little status and no power. So the word prevents you from looking at both of them as human beings.

I wouldn’t go that far but words can literally bring forth negative or positive feelings that are associated with that particular word.

There is ingrained snobbery in most of us, and to see what words have done to our thinking and to be choicelessly aware of it, is to learn the art of observation – to observe without association.

True. Words have different emotional responses depending on what is being said and who is saying it. It’s good to be aware of how our mind works in order remove false associations.