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

[pood]

Sorry, that doesn't make sense.

What doesn't make sense?

Any of it. It is just gibberish. It can barely be parsed.

If light is at our eye instantly, how were we able to measure its speed in the first place?

If we see instantly, it would not be possible to measure a finite velocity for light. Yet you claim we see instantly and that light has a finite velocity!

How do you reconcile this logical contradiction?

Per peacegirl’s request: *BUMP*

 

[peacegirl]

Swing and a miss!

Sreeee-riike 2

The count is 0 and 2.

It is bottom of the 9th folks, Pg is down a gazillion runs to none, two outs and Pg is on her last strike.

She will simply say that well-defined ratiocination, including the very laws of logic, don’t apply to her or her “genius” of a dad — who was greater than Einstein! — and keep on swinging and missing at pitches that no longer even arrive. Then she will declare that she hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth and wins!

Why do you keep bringing up Einstein? You are the one who said you don't believe everything Einstein concluded, so who are you to determine who was right in this case? Do you only agree when it's convenient? You can't just say Lessans was wrong because Einstein was right. That's pure folly. And how do you measure intelligence objectively anyway?

 

[peacegirl]

Sorry, that doesn't make sense.

What doesn't make sense?

Any of it. It is just gibberish. It can barely be parsed.

If light is at our eye instantly, how were we able to measure its speed in the first place?

If we see instantly, it would not be possible to measure a finite velocity for light. Yet you claim we see instantly and that light has a finite velocity!

How do you reconcile this logical contradiction?

Per peacegirl’s request: *BUMP*

I can't believe after all this time, you haven't understood a word. We see in real time, which is not the same thing as the ability to measure the finite speed of light. It's a different phenomenon altogether, so there IS NO CONTRADICTION. It is the speed of light that was used to conclude that we see in delayed time, which was a mistake.

 

[peacegirl]

I came across a patient case summary in a blog entry which strikes me as very interesting. I am not the least bit concerned that anyone might regard this as giving credence to there being an actual efferent-afferent "question".

The part that I found particularly interesting is this:

the doctors studying her did something interesting – they performed a visual evoked potential (VEP) on her while she was exhibiting a personality that was blind and again while she was exhibiting a personality that could see. What a rare opportunity to compare the two states. The VEP essentially is a test in which a flash of light is given to the patient while electrodes record the response from her visual cortex. There is typically a delay of about 100 ms. If this is significantly slow or absent that could indicate a lesion in the visual pathway. ... They found that the VEP was present and normal while she expressed a personality that could see, but was absent when she had a personality with persistent psychogenic blindness. That is a rather incredible result, indicating that there is some process in her brain that is actually suppressing her visual system. To be clear, there is no conscious way to do this (again, at least not known, but I guess this could be the way in which she is very neuroatypical). So it seems that her psychogenic blindness was [due] to a reversible inhibition of her visual pathway, in a way that would block the VEP.

[This was in contrast to] a 2001 study of 72 subjects with psychogenic blindness found that every one had normal VEPs. VEPs are still used to assess these patients – a normal VEP does suggest a nonorganic cause of blindness, however it is recognized that an abnormal VEP does not rule out a psychogenic cause.

This is a new one for me, that someone could actually cause psychogenic blindness depending on the personality that came forward.

It's the brain that generates vision, not only vision but dream landscapes, visual illusions, etc. The case study in no way supports the authors claim of instant vision.

We can create all kinds of dreamlike illusions in the brain. Our dreams are created by the brain. Hallucinations are created by the brain. But this in no way proves that we create virtual images of reality in delayed time.

Of course it does. As explained too many times, the brain generates vision based on the information it gets from the eyes.

The brain does not generate vision.

The eyes detect light and transmit the acquired information to the brain.

The eyes see the external world using light as a medium, which the brain then integrates into usable information. The light does not transmit information on its own.

Light travels from the object, be it emitted or reflected, to the eyes.

Light is inert. It doesn't bring anything because the pattern of the object does not get reflected.

Given that light has a finite speed, and there is travel distance, it takes time for the eyes to detect that light and the brain to generate sight based on the acquired information.

Which makes instant vision impossible. It cannot happen.

You are seeing this through the lens of afferent vision. If he is wrong about how the brain and eyes work (i.e., efferent vision), then your explanation would be correct. But if he is right, your explanation is 100% wrong.

The claim is wrong.

No, your explanation is wrong if his explanation is right. The verdict is still out.

 

[peacegirl]

@peacegirl labors all morning mightily over such stupid posts and brings forth not even a mouse, but nothing at all except a sea of gibberish.

She throws rhetorical spaghetti at a metaphorical wall, hoping some of it will stick. None of it ever does. She tosses great big bowls of word salad, hoping someone will buy them. No one does, ever has, or ever will.

This is a guy who says a bee could recognize its beekeeper in a lineup. How can we believe anything he has to say after a comment like that? Even if scientists confirmed Lessans was right, and we achieved world peace, that wouldn't be enough for Pood. He would rather sulk and say Lessans was wrong because he couldn't bring himself to admit that we don't live in a block universe, and there is no closed loop where we could begin our lives over again. I'm sorry to give you the bad news, Pood, but there's something even better on the other side.