A revolution in thought

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Dragar

Yes, from all appearances the eyes work the same as the other senses.

You claim Lessans had some deep understanding about how the brain works, but there is no evidence supporting his position.

And there is plenty of evidence suggesting he was wrong.

So why are you fighting so hard for a position that looks wrong from every single angle except placing blind faith in Lessans?

Because I don't believe he was wrong, and there is a lot at stake.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

No matter what I say it's not going to matter to you or anyone else. You believe that the eyes work exactly like the other senses do. Looking at the eye it appears that light is the stimulus that leads to transduction that leads to interpretation. That's the present model. I still believe there's more to it.

Right, we get that. What we do not understand is why you believe there's more to it other than "because Lessans said so"?

You keep saying it's not a faith position, but you cannot point to any reason outside of Lessans to think there is something else going on.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Your statements regarding instant mirror images and interaction at a physical distance directly contradict the principles of optics.

No they don't LadyShea. Not at all.

Originally Posted by LadyShea

As you are still unable to understand the explanation provided by optics as to why we are not able to resolve images when the object is too small/far away also indicates you find there to be holes.

If light traveling in a straight line, shouldn't that pattern eventually strike our eyes if it's traveling towards us?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Right, we get that. What we do not understand is why you believe there's more to it other than "because Lessans said so"?

You keep saying it's not a faith position, but you cannot point to any reason outside of Lessans to think there is something else going on.

It goes back to how he came to his conclusions which had to do with how the brain works when it comes to learning words. It was indirect, but I believe he was right and I also believe science will eventually give this claim another look.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

But there is lots of proof: the fact that the moons of jupiter are where we think they are for a start. The fact that we can stimulate the optic nerve and trigger images in the brain. Etc etc etc - enormous piles of proof, and it all fits together.

Your denials do not change that.

Nor is the efferent model plausible: the only reason to believe it is true is that fact that it was your fathers opinion that it was so. Apart from that, there is not one jot of evidence, nor even anything to suggest it is possible. Funnily enough neither you nor Lessans seem to have noticed this.

I gave the analogy of the moon and the candle and how they both meet the requirements of efferent vision. The distance of the moon has nothing to do with it. The only reason you say it's not plausible is because you don't like his claim. People want to believe they can see things that occurred long ago. It makes the universe more mysterious, I suppose. And if it contradicts special relativity, it must be wrong.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

No they don't LadyShea. Not at all.

Yes they do, there is no mechanism or principle within optics that allows photons to instantly relocate from the emitting or reflecting object at point A to a "mirror image" located at a retina or camera film at point B.

The pattern? No. Patterns do not travel. Light travels.

But yes, it is always possible for our eyes and reflected light to end up in the same location.

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

It goes back to how he came to his conclusions which had to do with how the brain works when it comes to learning words. It was indirect, but I believe he was right and I also believe science will eventually give this claim another look.

But you do not know how he came to his conclusions: you merely know that he claimed to have somehow perceived that it is so. For you, that is evidence enough because you want to believe in him.

If this was not the case, you would require some evidence to believe what he said, and you would be at least open to the possibility of him being dead wrong. But you do not - a good thing too, because he seems to have forgotten to put any support for any of his claims in the book.

[naturalist.atheist]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

No matter what I say it's not going to matter to you or anyone else. You believe that the eyes work exactly like the other senses do. Looking at the eye it appears that light is the stimulus that leads to transduction that leads to interpretation. That's the present model. I still believe there's more to it.

peacegirl, at this point your life would be much easier if you simply asked everyone to take Lessans on faith. Those posting here will of course not do that but it will lead to a simpler mantra. Since your "scientific" explanations are nothing more than a suspicion of missing data, data you don't have, then simply asking for faith until the great day comes is all you can really do. Lessans really screwed up by claiming he had science when he didn't.

[davidm]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I gave the analogy of the moon and the candle and how they both meet the requirements of efferent vision. The distance of the moon has nothing to do with it. The only reason you say it's not plausible is because you don't like his claim.

No, we say it because his claim is wrong. Why would we not like his claim? The only reason we would not "like" it, is because it's wrong. The only person here who has a personal stake in some claim is you, of course. That is why you dislike reality: it contradicts what you want to believe.

People want to believe they can see things that occurred long ago.

Why would people want to believe that? But we know why you want to believe, what you believe: because your father said so, and he is God to you.

It makes the universe more mysterious, I suppose.

On the contrary, science makes the universe less mysterious.

And if it contradicts special relativity, it must be wrong.

Remember how you spent a couple of hundred pages ignorantly asserting that the buffoon's claims didn't contradict special relativity? Lying again, are we?

And, of course, not a single one of us here has the least concern whether SR is true or false. In fact, special relativity, general relativity and quantum mechanics are all false theories. Newton's theories are all false, too.

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I gave the analogy of the moon and the candle and how they both meet the requirements of efferent vision. The distance of the moon has nothing to do with it. The only reason you say it's not plausible is because you don't like his claim. People want to believe they can see things that occurred long ago. It makes the universe more mysterious, I suppose. And if it contradicts special relativity, it must be wrong.

It must be malice, or closed-mindedness! It cannot have anything to do with the fact that there is no evidence, that it does not even explain how sight is supposed to work if even if it WAS correct, the fact that somehow he manages to get all his facts wrong, that he seems to have forgotten to explain WHY he thinks it works that way...

Amazing - supposedly a genius, but apparently unaware of even the basics of scientific writing, or even of how to make a case for something!

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

If light traveling in a straight line, shouldn't that pattern eventually strike our eyes if it's traveling towards us?

Individual photons travel in a straight line unless they are reflected or refracted or absorbed. All the photons reflected from an object will travel straight lines that are at a slightly different angle from each other and the light reflected from that object will eventually disperse and you will need a larger and larger gathering surface to collect enough light to form an image. The pupil of the eye is small but a telescope can have a much larger lens or mirror and can resolve an image much farther away. Photons reflected from one point on an object do not travel in parallel lines. Light from all parts of the object go through the pupil but not in parallel lines and are focused by the lens onto the retina.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Because I don't believe he was wrong, and there is a lot at stake.

There is nothing at stake. World peace, the elimination of hurt and evil, and Lessans 'Golden Age' utopia, are not going to happen because Lessans made up some pretty fiction. We may as well believe that Vivsectus's Pretty Pink Faries will sprinkel 'happy dust' on everyone and all will be well. I'll put my money on Unicorns.

[Angakuk]

My tout down at the track says to bet on the dapple gray with the crooked horn. He is usually quite reliable.

[thedoc]

I'm on the pink bob-tail. Son-of-a-gun is 40 to 1.

[Dragar]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Because I don't believe he was wrong, and there is a lot at stake.

And yet you can't come up with any reason to think he was right, nor convincing arguments to explain all the evidence showing he's wrong.

By the way, are you going to answer my other post any time soon, and tell us all how the inverse square law 'moves with the angle of reflection'? Or are you going to admit you, once again, took words and concepts you didn't understand, and tried to claim they supported you?

[Angakuk]

You should never bet on the bob-tailed nag.

[Angakuk]

Originally Posted by Dragar

By the way, are you going to answer my other post any time soon, and tell us all how the inverse square law 'moves with the angle of reflection'? Or are you going to admit you, once again, took words and concepts you didn't understand, and tried to claim they supported you?

Actually, I think she did address that question, but it was in response to Spacemonkey's version of the same.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Never mind. The two don't relate.

It's that short term memory thing again, isn't it Dragar?

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Never mind. The two don't relate.

Is that why you tried to use the one to prove the other. Or was that just another brain fart?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

You are demonstrating your memory impairment again, Peacegirl. You've asked this before and I've answered it before. I refer you back to post #8885 in the previous thread. You've repeated the exact same question about ten times since then, seemingly having forgotten my answer every single time.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Here was your response:

I answered this but I am adding this: Having a plausible but unpopular model does not make me deluded. If Lessans turns out to be right, then YOU are deluded. Do you see how ridiculous this labeling is?

[LadyShea]

How is a model you can't explain without invoking new physics, and don't even offer a mechanism for, considered "plausible"?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

The non-absorbed photons do travel. I said they are constantly being replaced by light energy, which means they travel. You are imagining that the photons are traveling toward the film and therefore the non-absorbed red photon would come before blue. That is the afferent account. You are separating the light from the object. But if the camera works like the eye, and if sight is efferent, then it would work the same way. If the requirements are met, which is that the object is bright enough and large enough, we would get a mirror image because the light that is captured and shows up on film does not require that the light travel all the way to Earth. Going back to the eyes, if our eyes are able to view the actual object, doesn't it follow that in order for this to occur, a mirror image has to show up? Light does not travel independently which is why this account is so opposite from the afferent account.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

This doesn't answer my objection. You agree that the non-absorbed photons are traveling. Then you say that because I am saying they travel, that I am assuming the afferent account. That makes no sense. I am assuming only what YOU just agreed with.

That's not why I say you are assuming the afferent account. It's the fact that you are not understanding that when the eyes are looking at the object (premise #1), then the light that is captured on the retina is virtually instant.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

You then say that I am separating the light from the object, but my objection doesn't say anything at all about whether or not the object must still be present. The object IS still present at all points in the scenario my refutation describes, so this cannot be the problem with it.

It is the problem because you are not putting the object together with the eyes. You are assuming that the light that is at the retina must travel through space and time, which then goes back to the afferent position.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

You go on to say that a real-time mirror image must be present if your account is to work. I agree, but this is not possible given what you have just previously agreed to. If the newly non-absorbed red photons (at the object) do indeed travel away from the object towards the camera (as you just agreed) then they cannot also be instantly forming a mirror image at the camera film.

Obviously you did not understand my analogy of the moon and a candle.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

At no point have you said anything to counter my refutation. You've simply agreed with me by saying that the nonabsorbed photons travel, and then contradicted this agreement by saying they must also be instantly at the film - when the whole point of the objection is that this can't be the case if they are instead traveling.

It's not a contradiction if you are thinking in terms of efferent vision. It is a contradiction if you are thinking in terms of afferent vision.

[LadyShea]

It's a contradiction if you are thinking in terms of the properties of light and the known workings of cameras, ie optics. Vision isn't what he asking about....it's optics/photography

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

We know how light works. We know its properties and the laws of physics it follows
We know how cameras work, they directly physically interact with light and only light.

If efferent vision is correct, and if it doesn't require changes to light physics (which includes photography) then it needs to explain what light is doing and where it is at any given point in time whether or not it is being seen by organisms with vision.

You are being asked to account for light and its interaction with an object and with camera film in a given scenario, you are not being asked about seeing anything.

Bump

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

If you are agreeing that the nonabsorbed photons at the object move forward at light speed, then you are admitting that real-time photography is impossible. When the object first turns red, the first nonabsorbed red photons cannot instantly interact with the film if they are only just beginning to travel towards the camera. And they can't be instantly forming a mirror image at the film if they are also moving forward from the object at light speed as they get replaced.

In my questions about light and photography, in the scenario involving the Sun, a ball, and the camera, the ball is present and existing the whole time, so these questions do not make the light independent of the object.

And I haven't weaselled out of answering any of your questions. You refused to tell me what was allegedly inadequate about my answers. You never raised any concerns. You simply dropped the subject.

You're now confusing two completely distinct discussions. Of course my answers to your questions are based upon the afferent model. They are supposed to be. They are the correct answers. But my questions to you concerning light and photography do not presuppose any of these afferent assumptions at all.

Of course I repeated my answers. That's what you asked me to do. My answers distinguished three related questions. To the first two you did nothing but assert that they were unsatisfactory without any explanation as to why.

If an object is slightly out of range but in a straight line with the lens, the light that has this person's pattern should strike the eye, and it never does. That's because the object must be in visual range.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

And to the third you merely repeated your unsupported (and refuted) claim that the object must also be present in addition to the light. This is flatly disproved by the Hubble images, but even if it weren't you have no evidence at all that it is true, and our answers do not have to account for your own made up 'facts' in order to be satisfactory.

If you feel that objects don't have to be in visual range, then hold onto your ideas. But your ideas are no more valid than mine, even if you believe that this is conclusive evidence.

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I answered this but I am adding this: Having a plausible but unpopular model does not make me deluded.

You don't have a plausible model, regardless of its popularity. That is what makes you deluded.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

If Lessans turns out to be right, then YOU are deluded. Do you see how ridiculous this labeling is?

I'm not very worried about Lessans turning out to be right, as he's already been proven false.