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

[peacegirl]

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

Pg. don't go outside on Tuesday.

I didn't know you were psychic!

 

[peacegirl]

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.

QM does not prove that we have free will.

<snip<

I will now refute two common mechanisms proposed by free will advocates to allow for free will. Firstly, the stochastic nature of quantum mechanics is often cited as a means by which the universe can be considered non-deterministic. This is true, at least for very small systems. However, it is actually unimportant whether or not quantum mechanical fluctuations result in any appreciable uncertainty in macroscopic systems. This is because the argument is based on the notion that a lack of determinism would prove the existence of free will. However, more accurately an agent being non-deterministic is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for free will. This mechanism merely introduces randomization into the decisions and will of the agent, this is not the same thing as freedom of will or choice. In fact, this randomization could potentially infringe upon their freedom of choice. To make this idea clearer, consider a game of roulette. Suppose that each number on the wheel is assigned to a different choice. The roulette wheel in spun and the agent makes the choice corresponding to the number the ball stops on. We could also play this game to determine the state of will of an agent, to the same effect. It is clear to our intuition that the choice and will of the agent are not free, though the outcome is unpredictable. This analogy could be criticized on the basis that it does not properly capture the nature of our non-deterministic decision-making. In particular, the spinning roulette wheel is independent of the agent, whereas the uncertainty of quantum mechanics directly involves the agent since it acts directly on their brain. Nevertheless, whether or not the random event directly involves the agent does not change the situation in any meaningful way. We could involve the agent directly in the random event by having them spin the roulette wheel, for instance. To our intuition it is clear that the outcome selected by the wheel would still be random and not represent free will.

<snip>

An argument against free will: freedom of choice, but not of will

A central issue in the free will debate is confusion and disagreement about how the term is defined. The topic is clarified considerably when we distinguish freedom of choice from freedom of will. I...

www.sciencesnail.com

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.

No it doesn't. We see our surroundings brightly lit in direct sunlight that is already here. It doesn't take 8 and a half minutes for the sunlight to light up our surroundings.

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

You are unfortunately doing the very thing you rail against by not even showing any interest in why he claimed the eyes aren't a sense organ. No interest at all.

 

[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.

The theory of relativity is wrong, then. Time is not a dimension. It cannot bend due to gravitational pull. Time allows us to measure change. This is a good thing because it leads into why we are born again and again and again. I posted this once, but it seems that people need to hear things over and over to have a chance at understanding.

Now to solve this apparently unsolvable problem, it is first necessary to establish certain undeniable facts. Therefore, let me begin by asking you if there is such a reality as the past? Does this word symbolize something that is a part of the real world?

“Of course… yesterday is the past, today is the present, and tomorrow is the future. And this is a mathematical relation.”

“It is true that yesterday was Thursday and the day before was Wednesday, and there isn’t any person alive who will disagree. But this does not prove whether the word past is an accurate symbol. Can you take it, like you can the words ‘apple’ and ‘pear,’ and hang it up on something so I can look through it at the real McCoy? When does the present become the past? I want you to demonstrate how the present slips into the past. That cannot be done by God Himself. The reason man cannot do what I asked is because there is no such thing as the past. The past is simply the perception of a relation between two points. As I move from here to there, the past is what I leave behind while in motion; it is my ability to remember something that happened. In actual reality you are not moving between two points, a beginning and an end, you are in motion in the present. I know that we were talking yesterday, and that I was talking a fraction of a second ago, and that I am still talking. The word ‘past’ is obviously the perception of a relation that appears undeniable because it has reference to the revolution of the earth on its axis in relation to the sun. You are conscious that it takes a certain length of time to do something and because you are also conscious of space, you perceive that as you traverse a point from here to there what is left behind as you travel is called the past and your destination is the future. Here lies a great fallacy that was never completely understood, for how is it humanly possible for there to be such a thing as the past and future when in reality all we ever have is the present? Yet we have a word to describe something that has no existence in the real world. Socrates never lived in the past — he lived in the present, although our recollection of him allows us to think back to this time period. The reason we say that Socrates lived in the past is because this particular individual is no longer here. But is it possible for you to say that God existed in the past? Does anyone ever sleep in the past; does the sun ever shine in the past; is it possible for you to do anything in the past? If you were sitting on a high cloud these last ten thousand years, never asleep, you would have watched Socrates in the present, just as you are watching me write this book in the present. In order for me to prove what seems impossible, it is absolutely necessary that I deconfuse the mind of man so we can communicate.

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.

Some things considered science fiction turned into reality. But some things can never be reality, no matter how possible it sounds.

All the theories out there can't be right.

Indeed. But how to tell which are wrong?

Looking at the proof.

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?

Looking at the proof, which doesn't always involve experiments that start with a hypothesis.

The past does not exist.

How do you know this?

I gave my reasons.

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.

A person can reminisce about the past, and another person can be waiting to experience the same thing, but this has no relationship to living in a block world with different futures or pasts. And it certainly can't be proven. It's all gobbledegook.

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.

Yes!

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.

Please remind yourself of this from time to time.

Nothing else is stupid; reality is often counterintuitive, and occasionally absurd.

True. So why not give the author a chance, which you have failed to do.

 

[pood]

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?

Bilby, that's what you're missing. If the brain looks through the eyes, as a window,

The eyes are not windows.

to the outside world, then his explanation would make sense,

No, it makes no sense under any circumstance. It is completely and utterly and hopelessly wrong.

but what you're doing is trying to apply your understanding regarding the speed of light traveling with the object's light or wavelength (call it either one, just as long as you understand the concept) to the eye.

Light does not carry an object’s “wavelength” or “light” to the eye. Light is light, it does not carry or bring a wavelength, it HAS a wavelength.

I have said over and over that light strikes the object and that light follows the angle of incidence, but it does not travel with the wavelength of the object.

An object does not have a wavelength to carry. (Well, actually, it does have a wavelength, but light does not carry it).

It reveals the object when we are looking at it, as long as it meets the requirements for sight, which are enough light and size.

The requirements for sight are unequivocally that light from a source or from a reflection reaches the eye, which takes time. It takes light from the sun about 8.5 minutes to reach the eye, so we always see the sun some 8.5 minutes as it was in the past. It takes light from the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest galactic neighbor, about 2.5 million years to reach the eye, so we always see that galaxy as it was 2.5 million years ago.

If it's too small, we won't see it. If it's too dim, we won't see it. Telescopes magnify, which doesn't turn real time into delayed time.

We can see the earliest moments of the universe in our most powerful telescopes, as it was some 13 billon years ago. It looked very different then, from what it does now.

No one seems interested in whether his version of sight is correct.

We are not interested because it is not correct. It is total rubbish.

They just don't like his claim because it would upset the applecart.

Yes, here you go again. I already noted your M.O. in this regard. It’s all our fault because we don’t want our world view challenged. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the fact that your author’s claims are total rubbish.

I would LOVE to have my interpretations of reality challenged by a stunning new theory backed by evidence. Your father’s crap ain’t it.

People are trying to prove him wrong by using astronomy. That's not how it works.

It is not just astronomy that proves him wrong, it is everything — physics, chemistry, biology, cosmology, etc. Everything proves him wrong.

If he is correct, then anything that would be amiss in astronomy would need to be reevaluated.

He isn’t correct and nothing needs to be reevaluated.

 

[pood]

Telescopes detect 13-billion-year-old signal.

Yet again, so much for real-time seeing, as if further disproofs were needed

 

[peacegirl]

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?

Bilby, that's what you're missing. If the brain looks through the eyes, as a window,

The eyes are not windows.

Well, that’s yet to be determined, and you’re not the one to do it.

to the outside world, then his explanation would make sense,

No, it makes no sense under any circumstance. It is completely and utterly and hopelessly wrong.

No it is not hopelessly wrong. I gave so many examples of how words influence what we see, which only occur if the brain acts as a movie projector. You can’t stand that he could be right. I think it would destroy the fictional world you reside in!

but what you're doing is trying to apply your understanding regarding the speed of light traveling with the object's light or wavelength (call it either one, just as long as you understand the concept) to the eye.

Light does not carry an object’s “wavelength” or “light” to the eye. Light is light, it does not carry or bring a wavelength, it HAS a wavelength.

Leave it alone, Pood. We will get nowhere.

I have said over and over that light strikes the object and that light follows the angle of incidence, but it does not travel with the wavelength of the object.

An object does not have a wavelength to carry. (Well, actually, it does have a wavelength, but light does not carry it).

You know what I meant.

It reveals the object when we are looking at it, as long as it meets the requirements for sight, which are enough light and size.

The requirements for sight are unequivocally that light from a source or from a reflection reaches the eye, which takes time. It takes light from the sun about 8.5 minutes to reach the eye, so we always see the sun some 8.5 minutes as it was in the past. It takes light from the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest galactic neighbor, about 2.5 million years to reach the eye, so we always see that galaxy as it was 2.5 million years ago.

Believe what you want.

If it's too small, we won't see it. If it's too dim, we won't see it. Telescopes magnify, which doesn't turn real time into delayed time.

We can see the earliest moments of the universe in our telescope, as it was some 13 billon years ago. It looked very different then, from what it does now.

Whatever!

No one seems interested in whether his version of sight is correct.

We are not interested because it is not correct. It is total rubbish.

Not if you understood it. We cannot be conditioned without words that are projected. You tried to dismiss it by talking about different beliefs and ways of thinking, but nothing could explain how our eyes are conditioned to seeing values that have turned into standards.

They just don't like his claim because it would upset the applecart.

Yes, here you go again. I already noted your M.O. in this regard. It’s all our fault because we don’t want our world view challenged. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the fact that your author’s claims are total rubbish.

I would LOVE to have my interpretations of reality challenged by a stunning new theory backed by evidence. Your father’s crap ain’t it.

Of course not. You want challenge that supports your basic beliefs but brings new ideas added on.

People are trying to prove him wrong by using astronomy. That's not how it works.

It is not just astronomy that proves him wrong, it is everything — physics, chemistry, biology, cosmology, etc. Everything proves him wrong.

It actually doesn’t but it’s counterintuitive to think that the entire scientific consensus of how the world works rests on thin ice.

If he is correct, then anything that would be amiss in astronomy would need to be reevaluated.

He isn’t correct and nothing needs to be reevaluated.

Says Poid, I mean Einstein! Haha

 

[pood]

With our most powerful telescopes we can view the universe as it was some 13.6 billion yeas ago, shortly after cosmic dawn. This of course would be totally impossible if we saw in real time. This was explained to you in great detail at FF.

We are not the ones afraid of having our “applecart” upset, or our “precious world view” challenged. That would be YOU.

You cannot abide anything that would prove your author incorrect. But he is incorrect.

 

[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.

I'm not sure where this proves 8 minutes and 20-second delay. Can you show me a video of this?

The speed of light is measurable. It has been measured. The distance to the sun has been calculated, parallax, etc.
quote
"The Earth is on opposite sides of the Sun every six months. From these different vantage points, a celestial object will appear to be in different parts of the sky. Scientists can calculate the distance to a heavenly object by measuring the angle between those two positions. The greater the shift in the position, the closer the object is to Earth. The smaller the shift, the farther away it is. This method, formally described by the Greek mathematician Hipparchus in the second century B.C.E., laid the groundwork for future advances."

So given the distance to the sun and the speed of light, it comes to eight minutes and twenty seconds, give or take, depending on orbital variations.

 

[pood]

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?

Bilby, that's what you're missing. If the brain looks through the eyes, as a window,

The eyes are not windows.

Well, that’s yet to be determined, and you’re not the one to do it.

Not me, but well known facts, with which you are blissfully and ignorantly unacquainted.

to the outside world, then his explanation would make sense,

No, it makes no sense under any circumstance. It is completely and utterly and hopelessly wrong.

No it is not hopelessly wrong. I gave so many examples of how words influence what we see, which only occur if the brain acts as a movie projector.

Ah, that’s right. The eyes are windows and the brain is movie projector! Wow! I now recall your idiot author writing something about how the brain projects something or other onto a “screen of undeniable substance.” Can you tell us what the hell that even means? Of course not.

And, if the eyes are windows and the brain is a movie projector, can I project my favorite movies onto this unspecified “screen of undeniable substance?” That way I would not have to pay for them!

You have no idea what he meant and you have no idea what you are talking about, and you know it.

You can’t stand that he could be right. I think it would destroy the fictional world you reside in!

Pure projection, as usual. You are the one who is terrified of having your idiot author proved wrong, as he has been proved wrong for 25 years.

but what you're doing is trying to apply your understanding regarding the speed of light traveling with the object's light or wavelength (call it either one, just as long as you understand the concept) to the eye.

Light does not carry an object’s “wavelength” or “light” to the eye. Light is light, it does not carry or bring a wavelength, it HAS a wavelength.

Leave it alone, Pood. We will get nowhere.

Just another inadvertent confession that you have no idea what you are talking about. That is why you want me to “leave it alone.”

I have said over and over that light strikes the object and that light follows the angle of incidence, but it does not travel with the wavelength of the object.

An object does not have a wavelength to carry. (Well, actually, it does have a wavelength, but light does not carry it).

You know what I meant.

I have no clue what the fuck you are talking about, and more important, neither do you.

It reveals the object when we are looking at it, as long as it meets the requirements for sight, which are enough light and size.

The requirements for sight are unequivocally that light from a source or from a reflection reaches the eye, which takes time. It takes light from the sun about 8.5 minutes to reach the eye, so we always see the sun some 8.5 minutes as it was in the past. It takes light from the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest galactic neighbor, about 2.5 million years to reach the eye, so we always see that galaxy as it was 2.5 million years ago.

Believe what you want.

These are not beliefs but facts. Your author was wrong.

If it's too small, we won't see it. If it's too dim, we won't see it. Telescopes magnify, which doesn't turn real time into delayed time.

We can see the earliest moments of the universe in our telescope, as it was some 13 billon years ago. It looked very different then, from what it does now.

Whatever!

Oh, what an impressive rebuttal!

No one seems interested in whether his version of sight is correct.

We are not interested because it is not correct. It is total rubbish.

Not if you understood it. We cannot be conditioned without words that are projected. You tried to dismiss it by talking about different beliefs and ways of thinking, but nothing could explain how our eyes are conditioned to seeing values that have turned into standards.

Absolute gobbledygook. WTAF are you talking about? You yourself have no idea.

They just don't like his claim because it would upset the applecart.

Yes, here you go again. I already noted your M.O. in this regard. It’s all our fault because we don’t want our world view challenged. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the fact that your author’s claims are total rubbish.

I would LOVE to have my interpretations of reality challenged by a stunning new theory backed by evidence. Your father’s crap ain’t it.

Of course not. You want challenge that supports your basic beliefs but brings new ideas added on.

Wrong again.

And of course it is you who can’t stand to have your beliefs challenged, even though you don’t have the slightest idea how to explain them other than posting copy-pasta from your father’s book.

People are trying to prove him wrong by using astronomy. That's not how it works.

It is not just astronomy that proves him wrong, it is everything — physics, chemistry, biology, cosmology, etc. Everything proves him wrong.

It actually doesn’t but it’s counterintuitive to think that the entire scientific consensus of how the world works rests on thin ice.

Yes, it does. Every branch of science rejects your father’s claims. They cannot survive ANY scientific test, whether astronomical, cosmological, mathematical, biological or chemical.

If he is correct, then anything that would be amiss in astronomy would need to be reevaluated.

He isn’t correct and nothing needs to be reevaluated.

Says Poid, I mean Einstein! Haha

Yeah, it’s funny how your author mentioned Einstein in his book while being blissfully ignorant of how Einstein’s relativity already invalidated his claims about light and sight years before he wrote them down.

Here’s what I think. By now you know perfectly well that his claims about light and sight were false. You just can’t admit that.

 

[DBT]

It appears that Faith, no matter what it relates to, is hard to relinquish.

 

[steve_bank]

Astronomy for Dummies, by Stephen P. Maran, is an accessible guide for beginners to the universe, covering topics from our solar system to distant galaxies, black holes, and the Big Bang. It includes star maps, charts, and photos, with updated editions featuring the latest research, exoplanet discoveries, and online resources like quizzes and apps for amateur astronomers. The book aims to make complex concepts easy to understand for anyone curious about the night sky, from backyard skywatchers to students.

Pg
search on how distance to sun us found, you will find video.

The distance to the Sun (about 93 million miles or 149.6 million km) is determined
using triangulation (parallax), by measuring the angle of the Sun from different spots on Earth, and through radar ranging of planets like Venus. Historically, observing the transit of Venus across the Sun allowed astronomers to calculate the distance using geometry.

Transit of Venus (Parallax Method): In the 18th century, astronomers in different parts of the world measured the time it took for Venus to cross the Sun. By knowing the distance between the observers, they calculated the parallax (apparent shift) of Venus, which was used to compute the Sun's distance.
Radar Ranging: Modern scientists use radar to bounce radio signals off Venus and other nearby planets. The time it takes for the signal to return, combined with the known speed of light, provides an extremely precise distance, notes this article on the Profmattstrassler site.
Triangulation (Historical): Aristarchus of Samos (3rd century BC) used the angle between the Moon, Sun, and Earth during half-moon phases to create a right triangle to estimate the distance.
Defining the Astronomical Unit (AU): Today, the average distance from Earth to the Sun is defined as one Astronomical Unit, which is officially set as exactly 149,597,870,700 meters.

Because Earth's orbit is an ellipse, the distance varies throughout the year, with the Sun being closest in January (perihelion) and farthest in July (aphelion).

Stellar parallax - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Stellar parallax is the apparent shift of position (parallax) of any nearby star (or other object) against the background of distant stars. By extension, it is a method for determining the distance to the star through trigonometry, the stellar parallax method. Created by the different orbital positions of Earth, the extremely small observed shift is largest at time intervals of about six months, when Earth arrives at opposite sides of the Sun in its orbit, giving a baseline (the shortest side of the triangle made by a star to be observed and two positions of Earth) distance of about two astronomical units between observations. The parallax itself is considered to be half of this maximum, about equivalent to the observational shift that would occur due to the different positions of Earth and the Sun, a baseline of one astronomical unit (AU).

Parallax has a limit. Using parallax distance to nearby stars are fund and the luminosity is resumed. Then luminosity for stars out past parallax is fused to determine distance. There is moreo it butthat is it.

 

[steve_bank]

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

Pg. don't go outside on Tuesday.

I didn't know you were psychic!

It does not take a psychic to read you.

 

[steve_bank]

Pg
The universe's expansion is a theory, but redshift is not.

Wow, that is the first point on science I actually agree with you on.

Big Bang is a theory not fact.

 

[bilby]

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

Not really. I'm using them in the same way.

Oh, really? Let's see:

An image is a representation of something.

So, not an electromagnetic wave by which light travels through a medium or a vacuum.

A lightwave is an electromagnetic wave by which light travels through a medium or a vacuum.

So, not a representation of something.

So, when you said "I am using them in the ssme way", you went on to immediately contradict yourself.

That's literally insane.

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.

That's because you rearrange my posts to suit you.

I never do that. I may cut in halfway through a sentence to comment on the first part, but no rearranging takes place; I respond only to what you write.

Half the time they are half-sentences, and you expect me to know what you're talking about?

I expect, at the very least, that you will know what YOU are talking about. That expectation is, sadly, often dashed.

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

It isn't that I don't make sense.

Yes it is. Demonstrably, obviously, and unarguably.

It's that you aren't even trying.

I am trying very hard indeed. Because you are making everything needlessly difficult, which I suspect to be deliberate.

You've already concluded that he's wrong

Indeed. I studied what he wrote, and reached that conclusion.

, and there's no meeting of the minds if that's the case..

There's only one rstionsl mind here, and as you demonstrate above, it ain't yours.

Here it is again, without interruption, so the contradiction is obvious even to you:

I'm using them in the same way. An image is a representation of something. A lightwave is an electromagnetic wave by which light travels through a medium or a vacuum.

The ONLY way for the first sentence there to be true, would be for the second and third sentences to be the same. They are not even similar; They are totally different in every way.

 

[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?

This is getting nasty. Please stop bilby if you want to continue this conversation.

There's nothing nasty about it, but if you want to stop peddling your nonsense, I will be the last person to ask you to continue.

 

[bilby]

That was my error.

One of many.

 

[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.

QM does not prove that we have free will.

Not one person anywhere in this thread has suggested that it did, certainly not me.

<snip<

I will now refute two common mechanisms proposed by free will advocates to allow for free will. Firstly, the stochastic nature of quantum mechanics is often cited as a means by which the universe can be considered non-deterministic. This is true, at least for very small systems. However, it is actually unimportant whether or not quantum mechanical fluctuations result in any appreciable uncertainty in macroscopic systems. This is because the argument is based on the notion that a lack of determinism would prove the existence of free will. However, more accurately an agent being non-deterministic is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for free will. This mechanism merely introduces randomization into the decisions and will of the agent, this is not the same thing as freedom of will or choice. In fact, this randomization could potentially infringe upon their freedom of choice. To make this idea clearer, consider a game of roulette. Suppose that each number on the wheel is assigned to a different choice. The roulette wheel in spun and the agent makes the choice corresponding to the number the ball stops on. We could also play this game to determine the state of will of an agent, to the same effect. It is clear to our intuition that the choice and will of the agent are not free, though the outcome is unpredictable. This analogy could be criticized on the basis that it does not properly capture the nature of our non-deterministic decision-making. In particular, the spinning roulette wheel is independent of the agent, whereas the uncertainty of quantum mechanics directly involves the agent since it acts directly on their brain. Nevertheless, whether or not the random event directly involves the agent does not change the situation in any meaningful way. We could involve the agent directly in the random event by having them spin the roulette wheel, for instance. To our intuition it is clear that the outcome selected by the wheel would still be random and not represent free will.

<snip>

An argument against free will: freedom of choice, but not of will

A central issue in the free will debate is confusion and disagreement about how the term is defined. The topic is clarified considerably when we distinguish freedom of choice from freedom of will. I...

www.sciencesnail.com

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.

No it doesn't. We see our surroundings brightly lit in direct sunlight that is already here. It doesn't take 8 and a half minutes for the sunlight to light up our surroundings.

It observably takes the same time to arrive and light up our surroundings as the light from the Sun takes to arrive and make the Sun visible. Instant vision is nonsense. Instant vision in a universe where (as you agree) the speed of light is finite is nonsense on stilts.

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

You are unfortunately doing the very thing you rail against by not even showing any interest in why he claimed the eyes aren't a sense organ. No interest at all.

I am fascinated and deeply interested in why he did that, but sadly no reason is forthcoming, only nonsense and contradiction.

It seems that the only reason why he claimed that the eyes aren't a sense organ was because he didn't feel in any way constrained by reality, logic, or reason.

I have pleaded in vain for you to provide any other reason why; But you don't, so I increasingly strongly suspect that you can't.

 

[DBT]

Given all the evidence to the contrary, that anyone would make the claim that the eyes are not sense organs is more than a little odd.

 

[steve_bank]

Interpreting of Pg’s recent posts.

1. Free will equates to evil.
2. Therefor replacing free will with determinism gets rid of evil, aka war.
3. We don’t have free will but we sort of do, I can make choices and I may not make tH same decision twice in similar circumstances.
4. We have determinism, sort of.


Sounding like some form of compatibilism.

So Pg, is the great idea that free will leads to evil and determinism is the cure?

 

[peacegirl]

With our most powerful telescopes we can view the universe as it was some 13.6 billion yeas ago, shortly after cosmic dawn. This of course would be totally impossible if we saw in real time. This was explained to you in great detail at FF.

We are not the ones afraid of having our “applecart” upset, or our “precious world view” challenged. That would be YOU.

You cannot abide anything that would prove your author incorrect. But he is incorrect.

Um, you just described yourself, and it went right over your head. You cannot abide by anything that would prove your god (Einstein) incorrect. But he MAY be incorrect with some of his theories. His stature, though, doesn't allow anyone to question. They are looked at as fools. Who is right and who is wrong would depend on whether there is an actual conflict with some of Einstein's theories and Lessans' take on how we see, and if there is, to determine who is right by studying both, not leaving Lessans out in the cold because it conflicts with Einstein. Remember, there are no sacred cows.