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

[bilby]

So what are we doing here?

Keeping mentally fit, which I think is especially important as one ages.

Reading and responding to utter nonsense helps me organize my thoughts, consult sources, and write articulately.

^ That's it, exactly.

 

[peacegirl]

I see you Pg trough space and tie with my Third Eye.

Yep, all kinds of srange beliefs out there.

Third eye - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[bilby]

I am very skeptical when it comes to people marketing pseudoscience. They prey on people's dreams of becoming better versions of themselves

...with no free will, and instant vision

 

[peacegirl]

Pg

Not hypothetical you are making apologetics for the book. Expanding away the rblms.

I'm not apologizing for anything nor am I expanding away anything.

If the Moon face voice claim is hypothetical what is not hypothetical in the book?

Nothing else. He had to explain his reasoning in this way because there was no other way to get it.

The image in that light is modified by reflection off an object is formed at the object.

Yes, that is true when we are looking at the object. That is the only way that we would be able to see it if not for the reflection. But the reflection is there when we see the object; it does not travel through space/time. This whole thing is unfortunate because no one questions it.

'The light wave of the object' has no meaning. If I said the fritzenkoffer carries image to the eye you would ask what does that mean, right?.

The light wave has a lot of meaning, but when you say light travels to the eye through space/time, and is then seen as an image due to delayed time, is the only thing that is being disputed. And I stand by that.

Do you now understand that when you see an object as an image it is an image of the state of an object in what is to you is the past?

Yes, if that account of sight were true, but he's disputing that it is true. There are no sacred cows, remember?

Yes or no.

'The image is in the light is semantics', the trouble with words and philosophical explanations for physical reality.

I understand that, but there is no confusion with the words he used when it has been clarified, so stop using this as an excuse.

Geometric optics is ray tracing, a lot of work is doe with it. Physical optics explains how light interacts with objects by solving Maxwell's Equations. How light interacts with and passes through a lens. I have a general overview, I am familiar with geometric optics.

I have no doubt that you are familiar with geometric optics. That said, I don't think any of geometric optics proves that we see in delayed time.

Round and round we go.

That vision is delayed i experimental fact. How an object interacts with light to for pasterns is resumed and is observed with optical methods.

Note that the law of refection applies to flat reflective surfaces. There is catering. How light interacts with an object depends on he wavelength of the light, the dimensions of surface irregularities, and size of the object,. scattering.


Wave particle;e duality. Light has both wave like and particle like properties. Actual ijnteraction at the surface is at the photon level, discrete particles.

The fi9rst cause of our vision is light interacting with an object and then traveling to the eye. We call this being in the time domain. Working with causal sequences separated in time.

t = time inn seconds

t0 light emitted by bulb
t2 light arrives at object
t3 light leaves object odified by surface interaction
t4 light arrives at eye
t5 light arrives at retina
t6 electrons lave retina and travel along optic nerves
t7 signal arrives at brain vision center
t8 we perceive image of object


Think about it, if there were no delays between cause and effect everything would happen at the same time.

Space exists, and locomotion to get from A to B cannot be done without motion whether it's walking, driving, flying, or roller skating. lol

Tap a metal rod on one end with a hammer and it takes time for effect to travel to the other end.

Yes. There is a cause and there is an effect.

Amateur astronomers are versed in geometric optics without any formal training. They use it to deign and build their own telescopes.

Do you want to argue and be stubborn or do you want to listen and learn something?

I hope you're learning something, too.

 

[peacegirl]

I am very skeptical when it comes to people marketing pseudoscience. They prey on people's dreams of becoming better versions of themselves

...with no free will, and instant vision

Yes, exactly, with no pseudoscience to boot!

 

[pood]

Right now another winter blizzard is about to blow in and I am about to blow my brains out.

It was 36°C here yesterday, and humid. I mowed the lawn in the sunshine; When I finished, my clothes were soaked through as thoroughly as if it had been torrential rain.

Yes, but cold weather is shortly coming for you, so there is that.

I live in Brisbane. Really cold winter's nights here get down into the single digits °C (that's less than 50°F )

Damn you for not sharing my suffering.

Latest NYC forecast: more than a foot of snow and winds up to 60 mph. Blizzard and whiteout conditions.

So I will stay indoors, drink hot coffee and tea, and babble on the internet.

 

[steve_bank]

I don't only see things without delay, I see them before they happen.

Pg. don't go outside on Tuesday.

 

[bilby]

So what are we doing here?

Keeping mentally fit, which I think is especially important as one ages.

Reading and responding to utter nonsense helps me organize my thoughts, consult sources, and write articulately.

^ That's it, exactly.

Indeed, we are doing the exact opposite if what we are accused of doing. She says we don't believe simlly because our preconceptions prevent us from taking her ideas seriously; But we explicitly don't do that.

Her (or her father's) ideas about sight are absurd, but that's not why we reject them. Quantum Mechanics and Relativity are absurd, too.

No, the reason why we reject her claims is precisely because we give them due consideration. We think about what they would imply, and compare those implications against reality.

When the Sun comes up, we see our surroundings brightly lit in direct sunlight at the same time as we see the Sun itself; This contradicts her claim that we see the Sun instantly, but that the light takes eight and a half minutes to arrive.

If her claims were true, they imply that the temperature would be about 4000K at the Earth's surface, and not the 300K we actually find.

These experiments and observations are exactly the kind of thing that somebody giving due consideration to the claims would come up with; In contrast, if we dismissed the claims out of hand as "absurd", or "contrary to science", no such methods to disprove the claims would be considered. Our response would simply be to present a scientific text and declare the argument to be over.

Which nobody here has done. Except @peacegirl

 

[peacegirl]

If people are born and die, how is being born as someone else any different? The someone else who is born can't remember being you in another life, you have no knowledge of being someone else before you were born, so where is the connection? How is it any different to 'people are born and die?'

You are trying to make a connection with yourself now, and you as someone else. This is causing confusion because there is no connection with DBT who exists now, and the YOU, who will be born later. You would like this chapter because you will see it's not the end when we die, and that is very comforting!

I disagree. I find the fact that I will eventually cease to exist very comforting.

A lot of people feel that way, especially antinatalists. But there is no connection with the YOU who exists now, and the YOU who will be born later, so you don't have to worry.

 

[peacegirl]

Here is Clark’s essay at naturalism.org:

Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity

Maybe someone else can read it and tell my why I should take it seriously.

IMO it runs off the rails in the fifth paragraph and never gets back on the rails. I think it’s easy to identify the error in the fifth graph.

As I have previously noted, I do take (somewhat, provisionally) seriously Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, because if the block universe model is correct, it may imply (even entail?) eternal recurrence.

You're completely out in left field. There is no block universe.

And you know this how?

The theory of relativity clearly indicates a block universe, that past present and future all exist. And the theory of relativity has passed every test for more than a hundred years.

Because it's science fiction, that's why. All the theories out there can't be right. You can imagine anything you want, but it doesn't make it true. The past does not exist. The future never arrives. We look back at our past, and we make plans for the future, but in actuality, the past is a bunch of stored memories, and the future is just a thought of things that could be, but it actually has no reality. We don't live in the future. We live in the here and now. But who am I to change your stupid beliefs?

 

[peacegirl]

They reasoned that since it takes longer for the sound from an airplane to reach us when 15,000 feet away than when 5000; and since it takes longer for light to reach us the farther it is away when starting its journey, light and sound must function alike in other respects

Literally nobody reasoned this. "They" are a figment of his imagination, and this is a classic strawman logical fallacy.

That has been the logic that gave people the belief that the eyes were a sense organ like the other true sense organs. It made sense, but it turned out to be 100% wrong!

It’s not wrong. You and your author are wrong.

But you will go to your grave believing in this nonsense, because it makes you feel good I guess.

Well, it must have been part of their reasoning since, from all appearances, the eyes and ears would work the same way: sound sending vibrations through the air, and light sending photons through the air.

 

[bilby]

Here is Clark’s essay at naturalism.org:

Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity

Maybe someone else can read it and tell my why I should take it seriously.

IMO it runs off the rails in the fifth paragraph and never gets back on the rails. I think it’s easy to identify the error in the fifth graph.

As I have previously noted, I do take (somewhat, provisionally) seriously Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, because if the block universe model is correct, it may imply (even entail?) eternal recurrence.

You're completely out in left field. There is no block universe.

And you know this how?

The theory of relativity clearly indicates a block universe, that past present and future all exist. And the theory of relativity has passed every test for more than a hundred years.

Because it's science fiction, that's why.

No. Lots of things are both science fiction and real.

Verne (and many others) wrote science fiction about men travelling to the Moon.

That doesn't in any way imply that men have never travelled to the Moon.

All the theories out there can't be right.

Indeed. But how to tell which are wrong?

You can imagine anything you want, but it doesn't make it true.

Indeed. So how do we tell what is true and what isn't?

The past does not exist.

How do you know this?

The future never arrives.

How do you know this?

We look back at our past, and we make plans for the future, but in actuality, the past is a bunch of stored memories, and the future is just a thought of things that could be, but it actually has no reality.

How do you know?

We don't live in the future. We live in the here and now.

That's tautologically true. A single observer lives only in their present. But other observers, who are moving differently, needn't agree with his opinion.

Different observers can disagree on the sequence of events, and an event in your future could be in some other observer's past.

But who am I to change your stupid beliefs?

You? You are nobody, as am I, and as is everybody else. The arbiter of which beliefs are stupid is REALITY. That which we can test and observe to be false is false. That which we continue to believe after it has been shown to be false is stupid. Nothing else is stupid; reality is often counterintuitive, and occasionally absurd.

 

[aupmanyav]

But you will go to your grave believing in this nonsense, because it makes you feel good I guess.

Perhaps all people go to their graves (or all cremated, bodies disposed in other ways) with a lot of non-sense in their mind. Does it make a difference/?

 

[pood]

Here is Clark’s essay at naturalism.org:

Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity

Maybe someone else can read it and tell my why I should take it seriously.

IMO it runs off the rails in the fifth paragraph and never gets back on the rails. I think it’s easy to identify the error in the fifth graph.

As I have previously noted, I do take (somewhat, provisionally) seriously Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, because if the block universe model is correct, it may imply (even entail?) eternal recurrence.

You're completely out in left field. There is no block universe.

And you know this how?

The theory of relativity clearly indicates a block universe, that past present and future all exist. And the theory of relativity has passed every test for more than a hundred years.

All the theories out there can't be right.

That;s true. Real-time seeing, for example, if false, although it’s strictly is not a theory, just a daft claim by a crackpot.

You can imagine anything you want, but it doesn't make it true. The past does not exist. The future never arrives. We look back at our past, and we make plans for the future, but in actuality, the past is a bunch of stored memories, and the future is just a thought of things that could be, but it actually has no reality. We don't live in the future. We live in the here and now. But who am I to change your stupid beliefs?

Indeed, who am I to change YOUR stupid beliefs? And your beliefs in general are incredibly stupid.

I don’t have beliefs. I go where the evidence leads and provisionally accept the evidence until new evidence comes along to challenge what I accept.

Relativity theory (which would be impossible under real-time seeing, but is correct, ruling out real-time seeing) shows that an event in my present may lie in your future. An event in my present may lie in someone else’s past.

Hence past, present and future all exist.

Which is really not all that amazing. No one has any problem with the idea that all locations in space, no matter how far apart, exist. Now relativity extends the idea to time, that all moments in time, no matter how far apart, exist.

Sorry you can’t wrap your mind around actual reality as opposed to a crackpot’s version of it.

 

[steve_bank]

Pg

I do not care out in the world what you or anyone else believes.

Here on the forum you present a book and strongly argue you are right and we are all wrong. You claim your philosophy will end war.

Christians proselytize on the forum trying to convince others they are absolutely right,and they get picked apart.

Your book and arguments get picked apart. That is what happens on the for.um.

Somebody's views like block universe are irrelevant to making your case.

I started a thread on block universe on,metaphysics out of curiosity. You can have at it. Tear it apart.

You have the freedom to make a free choice to post or not.

S

Thread 'Block Universe'

Nov 8, 2025

Pood periodically brings it up so I looked at it.

Time is clicks on a clock. Time has no more relity than mters and kilograms.

Time is a quantifiable measurement of rate of change. Instead of time say rate of change.

The universe changes, we measure in seconds and meters.

Perception of passage of time on a clock or passage opf Moon is subjective.

The four dimensional block is just space-time, (x,y,z,t).

Observed charge is not an illusion neither is time in seconds..

Sounds like he philosophized on AE.

AI Overview
Einstein's block universe fact or fiction | Unifying Quantum...

• steve_bank
• Replies: 50
• Forum: Metaphysics

There is a lot mre dissscussion than your book. Scroll through metaphysics.

 

[pood]

It would be silly to argue that because I exist HERE, on earth, that Mars does not exist THERE, just not HERE.

Similarly, relativity, fusing space and time, shows that dinosaurs exist EARLIER than me, and future entities exist LATER than me. But we all exist on equal footing. And the problem is?

 

[bilby]

It would be silly to argue that because I exist HERE, on earth, that Mars does not exist THERE, just not HERE.

Similarly, relativity, fusing space and time, shows that dinosaurs exist EARLIER than me, and future entities exist LATER than me. But we all exist on equal footing. And the problem is?

Well, if places that are a long way away actually exist, why can't I see them?

When I travel "between" England and Australia, they make me spend a day in a closed metal tube, which they tell me is a "flying machine", but as they only have tiny windows, and even those are covered up for much of the "flight", I have no reason to believe the thing actually flies*. They could easily arrange to project images onto the "windows", and just jolt the tube every so often to simulate "turbulence". While I am inside they have a whole day to get rid of the towns and cities, bring in some kangaroos and kookaburras, and turn up the thermostat.

If you try to open the window shade, the staff will make you close it again, which is a dead giveaway.

It's obvious that the only place that exists is where I am, and that "other places" are a conspiracy invented to sell airline tickets.







* I discretely tried to push one once, and it didn't budge at all. So they are obviously too heavy to fly. Of course, they got wise to that, and if you try to get close enough to try to push one of these so-called "airliners" these days, they arrest you and accuse you of being a terrorist. It's obvious they have something to hide.

 

[pood]

Nice point!

 

[pood]

Maybe the biggest subjective difference between space and time is that there are three dimensions of space but only one of time. So while we can (more or less) move freely in all spatial directions, we are confined to one time direction.

But what if that were different? What if, for example, there were three temporal directions and only one spatial direction? Or some other dimensional configuration?

The physicist Mex Tegmark examines this idea in an interesting article, On the Dimensionality of Spacetime.

His intriguing claim is that only dimensionality 3+1 (space/time) is likely to admit of observers, indicating our apprehension of this configuration is likely an anthropic effect. He says a world of three temporal directions and one spatial direction would consist of tachyons only, though would not necessarily rule out observers. However, it seems they would have all sorts of problems. Most other configurations would be barren, he says.

 

[bilby]

Maybe the biggest subjective difference between space and time is that there are three dimensions of space but only one of time. So while we can (more or less) move freely in all spatial directions, we are confined to one time direction.

But what if that were different? What if, for example, there were three temporal directions and only one spatial direction? Or some other dimensional configuration?

The biggest technical difference between space and time is that time has a negative metric signature.

What a universe could be like if time had the same signature as the space dimensions is explored in Greg Egan's excellent hard sci-fi Orthogonal trilogy, which begins with The Clockwork Rocket.