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

[bilby]

He did not say that light isn't necessary. It is a vital condition in order to see anything.

Is it? Why? What is the light doing that makes it vital, and how does it do it?

In particular, how does it do it before it arrives?

 

[pood]

Let me amend what I wrote above.

If peacegirl’s claim that we saw in real time were correct, because light does travel through spacetime to get to the eye, then red-shifting and universal expansion would be totally irrelevant.

We would see every star in the sky, which would likely be an infinite number of stars, since our best evidence suggests that the universe is spatially infinite and hence there are an infinite number of stars.

Of course we would not actually see anything, since we would not exist because the surface temperature of the earth would be that of the sun.

 

[bilby]

Harsh punishment works when the consequence could be death

No, it observably doesn't.

Harsh punishment works ONLY when criminals expect to be caught; Criminals generally do NOT expect to be caught.

That is very true...

Then why the everlasting fuck did you just confidently assert that "Harsh punishment works when the consequence could be death"?

Are you in the habit of confidently asserting things you know to be untrue?

Oh, wait, there's no need for you to answer that; I have access to over 4,000 posts (just in this thread alone) that can provide me with an objective answer to my question.

 

[pood]

Why are we doing this?

I think it is because educated and informed people are often afflicted with the misconception that if we explain stuff in a rational, evidence-based, step-by-step manner to others, then the others, like peacegirl, will see the light (pun intended).

But it is a misconception. You cannot reason people out of positions that they did reason themselves into.

If people were educable, Trump would not be president.

 

[bilby]

No, I'm not neurotic, but a psychiatrist may think I'm psychotic if I tell him I have a discovery that can change the world. He might think I have delusions of grandiosity and want to put me on meds!

That's a suspiciously detailed "might". Are you sure it's entirely hypothetical?

 

[bilby]

Uhhh...I debunked his example of seeing lips move on the moon frmo Earth versus voice by radio.

You would see his lips move before hearing his voice on a radio.

Nope. Wrong.

Do you not know that radio is light?

I know that radio waves are light. This wouldn't be a good experiment because no one can see astronauts that close where they could see their lips move. It was another hypothetical example.

If you are watching the Moon you see its position as it was about three seconds in the past.

Why are you repeating the very thing being disputed?

Cuz it is correct.

That's a non-answer.

Over three sends it takes reflected Sunlight to reach the Earth the Earth has rotated, the Moon has moved in its orbit, and the Earth has moved in its orbit.

Any objections?

If the image is not in the light, it doesn't matter if the Earth has rotated, or the Moon has moved in its orbit, because we are not seeing a delayed image in the light (if he is right).

Nobody ever said the “image is in the light.” This has been explained to you uncountable numbers of times.

I have explained countless times that the light is not bringing the image (the object's reflection) to the retina through space/time. There is no other way to explain the concept without using the word "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" which anyone would understand if they wanted to.

The word above was a perfect example of nonsense because it had no definition. It was pure gibberish, which was the point of the song.

FTFY.


People can't just understand nonsense, if only they want to hard enough. Language doesn't work like that.

First of all, it's not nonsense.

Yeah, it is.

You just can't wrap your head around what appears to be logically impossible.

Indeed.

But it isn't impossible.

Yeah, it is.

Secondly, the language he used was not some nonsensical word. It was a word to describe the direction we see. Efferent is a going out, and afferent is a going in. That's all he needed to get his point across, but of course, you're making too much out of it.

You need to pay attention. The words I am objecting to are not "efferent" or "afferent".

There is no other way to explain the concept without using the word "image," or "lightwave,"

Dictionaries change all the time due to words that come into existence when there is a new concept, and words go out of style when they don't work anymore.

Perhaps. But both "image" and "lightwave" are words that have meanings that render your use of them nonsensical, and no dictionary can fix that.

Still, you aren't even paying attention to the posts to which you claim to be responding, and are instead just giessing what it was that you yourself said, that I then accused of being nonsense.

When you don't feel any need to make sense, paying attention to your own claims is a bit pointless, I guess.

 

[bilby]

Solar flares are hard to see, even with telescopes. This phenomenon does not prove that we see in delayed time.

Observing solar flares with a telescope is not hard

Are you really citing a source that directly contradicts you??

Of course you are. Contradictions mean nothing to you, you just ignore them, as you ignore everything that could in any way challenge your incoherent beliefs.

Where is the contradiction?

Seriously? You don't see a contradiction between your saying "Solar flares are hard to see, even with telescopes", and your cite that leads with "Observing solar flares with a telescope is not hard"??

 

[bilby]

This discovery will be presented in a step-by-step fashion that brooks no opposition.

Yeah, he said that. He went on to demonstrate that he was either lying, or too stupid to notice that he did no such thing.

 

[bilby]

It is unfortunate because once people don't believe a claim is true, they make a quick determination that the book has no value.

Quick and accurate.

If you want them to take longer, you need to make claims that are less easily demonstrated to be false.

 

[peacegirl]

Pg
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

Nonsense.

Light and sound both follow the inverse square law. Sound and light are specific cases or wave propagation.

Again, you keep going back to light when I'm referring to the eyes.

law of reflection for sound states that the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence (
). This means that when a sound wave strikes a surface, it bounces off at the same angle it arrived, measured from a line perpendicular to the surface

How a wave reflects has to do with wavelength versus size of object.

Yes, but when we see in reverse, the wavelength is already at the retina the moment our gaze is focused on the object, which allows us to see its size in exact proportion. It's no different than afferent vision, other than travel time, which, in his account, there is none.

Reflection (physics) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Reflection of Waves

No one ever says sound and light are physically the same.

Eyes, ears. tongue, touch, nose in engineering are called traducers or sensors. Converts one form of energy to another. Each of the five senses can be and are emulated by technology.

There has to be a connection between the outside world, the retina, and the optic nerve, which obviously allows for sight, but the exact mechanism as to how the connection works, and exactly how we interpret what we see, is still not clear or proven (even though you think otherwise). It's a description of what science believes is happening, and it appears to fit neatly with their theory of delayed vision like a jigsaw puzzle, but descriptions are not proof. And explaining a mechanism that sounds good on paper isn't proof either.

Pop quiz, what is the largest human sense organ?

I thought it was our skin.

Spoiler

Skin

By the way I once called Hawking to talk about using telekinesis to travel to stars. He hung g up on me and I never got over it.

Clark didn't hang up on me, but he really wasn't listening. It's hard to create interest when you're an unknown, unfortunately. There are so many fraudulent claims that it is almost impossible to break through the barrier of incredulity. Suspicion reigns. The good news is I got over that he didn't give me the time of day, but I never did join his Facebook page.

A video showed up on my feed, which described how a man, who was in an accident, could not recognize what certain objects were, like animals and vegetables, because he could not recall the words that were associated with them. They said he ended up with damage to his fusiform gyrus (part of his temporal lobe) that has to do with object identification. He couldn't even recognize his daughter when she walked past him. They said his stored memory could not be retrieved. This gives support to what my father was saying: Humans identify through word/object relationships, where animals use other ways of identification, such as smell or even sound. If you go to 14.53 in the video, you'll see what I'm talking about.

https://youtu.be/UVQhA2iOILs?si=UXs1XStU30GSSNeQ

 

[bilby]

Let me amend what I wrote above.

If peacegirl’s claim that we saw in real time were correct, because light does travel through spacetime to get to the eye, then red-shifting and universal expansion would be totally irrelevant.

We would see every star in the sky, which would likely be an infinite number of stars, since our best evidence suggests that the universe is spatially infinite and hence there are an infinite number of stars.

Of course we would not actually see anything, since we would not exist because the surface temperature of the earth would be that of the sun.

Surely it would be the average temperature of the surfaces of all the stars in the universe?

The vast majority of stars are class M, and the hottest stars are relatively few in number, so I would estimate an Earth surface temperature of around 4000 Kelvins, which is only about two thirds of that of the Sun's surface.

Still a touch warm though. It would be even worse than summer in Western Australia.

 

[DBT]

Peacegirl, try inverting a monocular so you can project an image of the sun onto a blank white surface, where the image is sharp enough to see sunspots. Where the eyes are detecting the light of the sun as its being projected onto the screen forming an image, light that was radiated by the sun, which took eight minutes and twenty seconds to arrive.

 

[pood]

Yes, but when we see in reverse, the wavelength is already at the retina the moment our gaze is focused on the object,

No, it’s not. Duh.

I can see the Andromeda galaxy, the Milky Way’s nearest galactic neighbor, as a smudge in the sky.

I am seeing it as it was some 2.5 million years ago, because it is 2.5 million light years away.

Simple as that.

 

[bilby]

Why are we doing this?

I think it is because educated and informed people are often afflicted with the misconception that if we explain stuff in a rational, evidence-based, step-by-step manner to others, then the others, like peacegirl, will see the light (pun intended).

But it is a misconception. You cannot reason people out of positions that they did reason themselves into.

If people were educable, Trump would not be president.

Why do people ride stationary bikes at a gym? They know that they won't go anywhere, no matter how hard they pedal.

 

[pood]

Let me amend what I wrote above.

If peacegirl’s claim that we saw in real time were correct, because light does travel through spacetime to get to the eye, then red-shifting and universal expansion would be totally irrelevant.

We would see every star in the sky, which would likely be an infinite number of stars, since our best evidence suggests that the universe is spatially infinite and hence there are an infinite number of stars.

Of course we would not actually see anything, since we would not exist because the surface temperature of the earth would be that of the sun.

Surely it would be the average temperature of the surfaces of all the stars in the universe?

The vast majority of stars are class M, and the hottest stars are relatively few in number, so I would estimate an Earth surface temperature of around 4000 Kelvins, which is only about two thirds of that of the Sun's surface.

Still a touch warm though. It would be even worse than summer in Western Australia.

Warmer than I would like, but I do like to hang out at Coney Island in the summer and always root for higher temps.

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

Winter and I do not get along.

 

[bilby]

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.

 

[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.

 

[pood]

Why are we doing this?

I think it is because educated and informed people are often afflicted with the misconception that if we explain stuff in a rational, evidence-based, step-by-step manner to others, then the others, like peacegirl, will see the light (pun intended).

But it is a misconception. You cannot reason people out of positions that they did reason themselves into.

If people were educable, Trump would not be president.

Why do people ride stationary bikes at a gym? They know that they won't go anywhere, no matter how hard they pedal.

I actually had to ponder this for a bit.

Riding stationary bikes presumably helps keep one physically fit. I don’t do that, but in warmer weather I walk several miles day, up to 10 miles. I know it keeps me physically fit.

You don’t *go* anywhere riding a stationary bike, but you do get more fit.

Similarly, if I walk up to 10 miles a day, I do go places, but always end up where I started.

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.

So now I know why I’m here, because lately I have been wondering, “Why the fuck am I here?”

I have other ways to keep mentally fit but I realize that this place is one of them.

Meanwhile, I am preparing for a “life-threatening” winter storm, which means I ain’t gonna be walking 10 miles anytime soon.

 

[peacegirl]

Objects reflect light, but not in the way you think.

You don't seem to have a good grasp on what you purport to think, so understanding what I (or anyone else) thinks may be a touch overambitious for you.

Light travels, there is no argument here,

Good.

but if the eyes are a sense organ,

They are. And I am glad to see that you are beginning to consider the possibility.

they don't see the past. They see the present.

Time is not absolute; There is no "The present", because there are no preferred reference frames.

An individual observer sees only what is in her past; This is an unavoidable consequence of the fact that information cannot travel faster than lightspeed.

If it did, we could use that fact to determine what was going to happen in our future. Which we observably can't.

An observer can detect only those events in her past lightcone, and influence only those events in her future lightcone.

View attachment 53643
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone

The entire hypersurface of any observer's present is inaccessable; We cannot see the present, only the past.

Distance and time are relative. All observers measure the speed of light in a vacuum to be a constant, regardless of how they move relative to each other.

This idea is as bizarre and as counterintuitive as your idea that vision is instant, but differs from your idea in that it can be demonstrated to be true.

Crazy ideas are not a problem for science and technology. We can and do profit from them. But only if they are true, which your crazy idea is not.

View attachment 53642
https://xkcd.com/808

Why did you use this chart by implying my father’s ideas fit into no proven crazy thinking that have no scientific backup? It actually does. He, nor I, subscribed to alternative therapies that are not scientific and could actually cause harm, so stop putting his ideas into a false classification!

The book is on the sane order as the pseudoscience wellness industry.

As I siad before, they konw how to market pseudoscience. Your father did not.

Time for me to regenerate in my Orgone Machine. Then I have an appointment for Reichian massage.

Orgone - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I am very skeptical when it comes to people marketing pseudoscience. They prey on people's dreams of becoming better versions of themselves, especially creams and supplements that become empty promises. But now, there are many more gadgets being marketed that are very expensive. Now you have to justify the cost. It's almost impossible to know which products have any value and which ones are just scams after you've already paid, of course, and you've missed the return window, which always falls after the time they said you needed to keep the product to see if it worked. I had a childhood friend who got cancer. She had done all the conventional treatments, but her cancer kept spreading. As a last resort, she went to a spiritual healer who charged her a fortune. She died anyway.

 

[bilby]

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 )