“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.

 

[peacegirl]

Pg

Another thought experiment.

You are standing in a dark room with an object behind and to the side of you and a mirror in front of you.

A light is swished on. What is the process of you seeing the object in the mirror?

Light does what it does when it strikes objects, and patterns are reflected (please don't misinterpret the word "reflected") back to the mirror. If the object was removed from the background, and we still saw an image of it in the mirror, then that light would be the cause of sight, but we don't see an image of the object in the mirror when the real object is no longer there, since the light is no longer carrying a pattern which would create an image in the mind. Scientists want us to believe that we are seeing images from celestial objects that fizzled out long ago, which is the very thing being contested. In summary, nothing in the way light interacts with mirrors disproves seeing in real time.

When you look into a mirror, you see an image that appears to be behind you. This is because the mirror reflects light rays from the object behind you, which are then directed to your eyes. The image you see is a virtual image, meaning it is not real light rays but the tracing of real rays to the location of the image. The image is upright and appears to be the same distance behind the mirror as the object is from you. This phenomenon is due to the law of reflection, which states that the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. The light rays from the object hit the mirror at the same angle they hit the object, reflecting off the mirror and traveling into your eyes. This creates the illusion that the image is behind the mirror, despite the object being behind it.
LibreTexts+5

 

[steve_bank]

Pg

Another thought experiment.

You are standing in a dark room with an object behind and to the side of you and a mirror in front of you.

A light is swished on. What is the process of you seeing the object in the mirror?

Light does what it does when it strikes objects, and patterns are reflected (please don't misinterpret the word "reflected") back to the mirror. If the object was removed from the background, and we still saw an image of it in the mirror, then that light would be the cause of sight, but we don't see an image of the object in the mirror when the real object is no longer there, since the light is no longer carrying a pattern which would create an image in the mind. Scientists want us to believe that we are seeing images from celestial objects that fizzled out long ago, which is the very thing being contested. In summary, nothing in the way light interacts with mirrors disproves seeing in real time.

When you look into a mirror, you see an image that appears to be behind you. This is because the mirror reflects light rays from the object behind you, which are then directed to your eyes. The image you see is a virtual image, meaning it is not real light rays but the tracing of real rays to the location of the image. The image is upright and appears to be the same distance behind the mirror as the object is from you. This phenomenon is due to the law of reflection, which states that the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. The light rays from the object hit the mirror at the same angle they hit the object, reflecting off the mirror and traveling into your eyes. This creates the illusion that the image is behind the mirror, despite the object being behind it.
LibreTexts+5

Again you are not able to explain how the Lessans theory of vision works.

The short answer is you can not explain it probably because there is no clear explanation in the book. Which is why you deflect by saying you have not read the book.

Maybe you do not realize you contradict yourself. I don't blame you, it is not your faulty. You don't have the basic scene background to comprehend what people post.

Strike 3 and you are out, game over.

 

[peacegirl]

Pg

Another thought experiment.

You are standing in a dark room with an object behind and to the side of you and a mirror in front of you.

A light is swished on. What is the process of you seeing the object in the mirror?

Light does what it does when it strikes objects, and patterns are reflected (please don't misinterpret the word "reflected") back to the mirror. If the object was removed from the background, and we still saw an image of it in the mirror, then that light would be the cause of sight, but we don't see an image of the object in the mirror when the real object is no longer there, since the light is no longer carrying a pattern which would create an image in the mind. Scientists want us to believe that we are seeing images from celestial objects that fizzled out long ago, which is the very thing being contested. In summary, nothing in the way light interacts with mirrors disproves seeing in real time.

When you look into a mirror, you see an image that appears to be behind you. This is because the mirror reflects light rays from the object behind you, which are then directed to your eyes. The image you see is a virtual image, meaning it is not real light rays but the tracing of real rays to the location of the image. The image is upright and appears to be the same distance behind the mirror as the object is from you. This phenomenon is due to the law of reflection, which states that the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. The light rays from the object hit the mirror at the same angle they hit the object, reflecting off the mirror and traveling into your eyes. This creates the illusion that the image is behind the mirror, despite the object being behind it.
LibreTexts+5

Again you are not able to explain how the Lessans theory of vision works.

Are you kidding? He explained exactly how it works, but you want me to say, "Oh, you're right, I contradicted myself." That won't happen because I didn't.

The short answer is you can not explain it probably because there is no clear explanation in the book. Which is why you deflect by saying you have not read the book.

Well, that's part of it. I posted important excerpts. In fact, I posted the entire chapter somewhere in this tome.

Maybe you do not realize you contradict yourself.

I am not contradicting myself, Steve. Light travels; there are applications due to the speed of light that have been proven to work, but this has absolutely nothing to do with this version of sight. According to Lessans, light does not bring an image or pattern or wavelength to the eye to be interpreted as normal vision. Seeing in real time doesn't bring all of science to its knees, though our reality may shift if we have believed for decades that we are seeing the past. It may even change our relationship to time itself, but most importantly, this knowledge opens up new doors of understanding that were never given any thought.

I don't blame you, it is not your faulty. You don't have the basic scene background to comprehend what people post.

Strike 3 and you are out, game over.

I'm in overtime. The game ain't over until the fat lady sings.

 

[bilby]

ADDING TO THIS POST FOR FURTHER CLARIFICATION: It isn't that light doesn't get reflected off the object. It's that we wouldn't see the object if that object's reflection weren't already at the eye. This reflection has nothing to do with the speed of light because the light is not what we're interpreting.

What is an object's reflection supposed to be made of, if not light?

This doesn't clarify anything.

It's all about the wavelength/frequency that is not reflected.

I don't care what you say is NOT happening. I want to know what yiu are claiming IS happening.

Neither I nor anyone rlse here has ever suggested that "the wavelength/frequency is reflected", and indeed you have repeatedly been told that that's a category error - a wavelength/frequency isn't the kind of thing that can be reflected.

Photons are photons. Light is light.

Thanks for clearing that up. Who knew?

But light does not bring an image to the eye to be reconstituted.

Not unless you are being VERY careless with words (again), no.

Light travels and reveals everything it strikes.

HOW??

If that light is bright enough and the object is large enough, we would see it because it would be in our field of view,

We already demonstrated that this claim is false. Being bright and large is NOT SUFFICIENT to ensure that an object is in our field of view. I can't see the Sun right now, but am confident that it is still both large and bright.

not because the light has traveled to our eyes in delayed time.

Yeah, that really is how we see stuff; Not only can this be easily demonstrated, but also there's no coherent alternative hypothesis - your dad's nutbaggery is not even wrong.

 

[bilby]

That's all you keep saying without even considering the possibility that he is right. It's probably too upsetting for you to even think that science may have gotten something so wrong. That's the only thing I can think of.

Ad hom again. You really are contemptible.

But that's probably the reason. I am not trying to be mean. It would be hard for anyone who first hears about something that challenges what has been taken for granted as true for millennia.

You are being defensive. Which, given an untenable position, is understandable but ultimately futile.

I am reminded of the North Korean behaviour at the Panmunjom peace talks. They drove a series of UN negotiators literally insane, by simply refusing to ever acknowledge any fact that didn't suit their position, no matter how obvious and blatant it might be.

This is not insane,

Well, it really is.

and what appears to be blatantly true does not make it so.

Well, it basically does, unless and until you find evidence to the contrary.

I'm not going to stick to a "fact" that isn't factual.

I am not asking you to "stick to" anything. Indeed, I am doing the EXACT OPPOSITE of that.

There is nothing in his claim that is impossible,

There is plenty.

as you may think at first glance.

...and may see even more clearly after a careful examination and testing of his claims against reality.

You're just not seeing it yet.

And unless you have something genuine to show me, never will, for the simple reason that there's no coherent "it" to see.

You'll thank me one day

I will, if you stop being so pathetically sycophantic to your unreasonable faith, or even just start being careful with words.

But I am not holding my breath.

because it uncovers a lot of new understandings about the world and our relationship to it.

It uncovers only one understanding - I understand now that some people will not change their minds even when the evidence that they are wrong is overwhelming.

Instead they become very inventive in finding ways to ignore the evidence, while persuading themselves that they are not so doing.

 

[peacegirl]

If you have trouble with photons traveling for millions of years what about the Earth going around the Sun which has been going around the galaxy for billions of yers?

And millionths of galaxies in the observable inverse.

The billions of years isn't the issue. It's what we are seeing in those billions of years. Are we seeing the light from the past, or are we seeing the actual events in the here and now? I can see this is not going to work, not because he was wrong, but because people cannot understand his reasoning. There is too much bias. No one is even curious about his observations. People keep saying that light travels; therefore, we must be seeing in delayed time. The conclusion drawn has been arrived at based on a false premise. As long as people keep insisting that there is no other way to look at this because the object reflects the image which travels through space/time, even when the object that reflected that light no longer exists, there will be no way for anyone to understand why Lessans disagreed. Round and round we'll go with no resolution.

 

[bilby]

This response has not added anything.

And yet you cannot respond to any of it in detail.

I cannot keep repeating the refutation when no one has ever asked what the refutation is.

You have not refuted anything other than nonsensical strawmen that nobody proposed in the first place.

It amazes me how no one will look because maybe, just maybe, they were wrong and that is hard to accept.

It amazes me that you can simply dismiss my detailed critique of your position without addressing any of it in detail, but that this doesn't even give you pause - you have excused yourself from thinking by inventing an ad hominem.

Yet again we see you finding ways to ignore the evidence, while persuading yourself that you are not so doing.

 

[bilby]

It is hard for me to keep up with the responses. If I missed one, please put BUMP in front, so I can address it.

You just literally quoted one of my highly detailed responses, and said:

"This response has not added anything." followed by a claim that you can't keep repeating "the refutation" (despite it's being easy to find and quote past posts, so in fact you could easily keep repeating a refutation if you had made one), and giving as your reason "when no one has ever asked what the refutation is", which is beyond absurd, because a claim that can be refuted is the only invitation anyone needs on a discussion board.

This is a transparent effort to persuade yourself that you could have refuted my arguments, but had reasons not to - despite no such reasons existing.

That is one good thing the other forum allowed.

This forum allows it too. All fora allow it. Quoting an earlier post with "BUMP" added is easy.

I am not trying to throw out what doesn't suit the premise,

Well you are surely not trying to address any of it.

as bilby wants to believe.

Bilby doesn't want to believe anything.

Bilby has good reason to note that you are evading his arguments and then claiming (without evidence) that you could refute them, and even insinuating (also without evidence) that you already did, and don't want to repeat the refutation (even though that would be the intellectually honest thing to do).