A revolution in thought

[thedoc]

Well on our way to 200, I wonder how many books she'll sell from this?

[LadyShea]

Also, Mendel had hard evidence, actual plants and stuff. A whole garden full. Lessans isn't analogous to Mendel anymore than can be compared to Socrates.

And anyway, even superstar scientists can't get away with bullshit. Many of his colleagues criticized Hawking's theory that information was destroyed in black holes. It took him 30 years to admit he was wrong.

It's not like nobody questions "the establishment", many people do. And disproving an established theory is a surefire way to fame and fortune.

[Doctor X]

Originally Posted by thedoc

Well on our way to 200, I wonder how many books she'll sell from this?

Twice as many as before!

--J.D.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Doctor X

Twice as many as before!

--J.D.

Damn, who bought the other one?

[Doctor X]

⒳ 0 =

--J.D.

[Kael]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

And anyway, even superstar scientists can't get away with bullshit. Many of his colleagues criticized Hawking's theory that information was destroyed in black holes. It took him 30 years to admit he was wrong.

It's not like nobody questions "the establishment", many people do. And disproving an established theory is a surefire way to fame and fortune.

Precisely. Sir Richard Owen was a member of the establishment, he ran the British Museum, was a member of the Zoological Society and the Royal Society, eminent and prestigious by any standards. Yet this did not save him from being indicted for perjury when he continually lied about the anatomy of the brains of humans and other apes, nor from being removed from the councils of the Royal and Zoological Societies when it became apparent that he had essentially plagiarized the work of someone else.

There are far more examples of prominent scientists earning ridicule and shame for trying to hold up the status quo in the face of new knowledge than there are of the words and opinions of such people being viewed as infallible and unquestionable.

[davidm]

His comparison of himself to Mendel is doubly stupid. Unlike Mendel, Lessans has no evidnece. But worse, he does not even have a theory!

Peacegirl, what is Lessans' theory of how we see?

Saying stuff like "Light is a condition of seeing, and not a cause," or, we "project" stuff onto "screens of undeniable substance" is gobbledygook. What does it mean?

We know that light is a condition of seeing! What we need to know is how it is! The Lone Ranger has spelled out for you the correct theory about how light is a condition for seeing: It is the correct theory because it has repeatedly been empirically verified. But Lessans denies it is correct, but presents no competing theory.

What, exactly, is being "projected" and how? He does not say! There is no theory here, no explanation, there is literally nothing to test.

Explain how we see, Peacegirl, in detail. If you can't do that you've got no theory! And of course you can't do it, but you don't care: You think that if Lessans said it, then "it" must be right, whatever "it" is!

[But]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

And anyway, even superstar scientists can't get away with bullshit. Many of his colleagues criticized Hawking's theory that information was destroyed in black holes. It took him 30 years to admit he was wrong.

Well, you can't really call that bullshit. He was wrong, but it highlighted a big problem in the prevailing theory, something that's still not nearly solved. Hawking was the first to find out that black holes must emit radiation, and based on the current theory, he concluded that information is lost. Susskind and others felt that this had to be wrong, but it took them almost 30 years to prove it. Bullshit is the wrong word in that case, I think.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

For goodness' sake make some effort to educate yourself on the matter! There are thousands and thousands of carefully-conducted studies which have tested the notion that the brain relays impulses to the retina, rather than vice versa. If there were any evidence to support the notion that the eyes are not sense organs, it wouldn't be kept hidden. Far from it -- any scientist who discovered such evidence would be guaranteed a Nobel Prize.

Why does the brain have to relay impulses to the retina? All we can say for sure is that there are impulses coming into the brain. Those impulses could allow the brain to see (the mechanism as to how the brain does this may not be something that can be seen; just as we can't see how the brain (if it were true) to convert signals into images. That's a leap of faith that this is what the brain is doing. Maybe we can't find the truth with this method because there is nothing that can be mapped directly; we have to find it indirectly, which is the whole point of the experiments that would confirm what Lessans knew all along.

Is there a way to identify conscience in the brain? No, there isn't. We can only observe how conscience works under specific conditions. Sometimes what we see as far as structure does not fully answer what the brain is capable of doing with that structure. There is some mystery left as to how the brain actually functions. It's one of our last frontiers.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Kael

Reading comprehension: not your strong suit.

The 50% is what the average figure would be if the dogs were picking at random.

As I said earlier, something is off. That extra 30% could still be random. There has to be more tests done with the hypothesis that dogs cannot identify their owners through sight alone. The test was biased because the belief was that dogs can do this, therefore the interpretation of the results would lean toward reinforcing that belief.

[The Editor]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Why does the brain have to relay impulses to the retina?

He does not imply it does

All we can say for sure. . . .

No, only you because you remain too much the coward to read what everyone else has known for over a century.

You wallow in your personal ignorance and wonder why only you are dirty.



--Ed.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by The Editor

Humans have not been around for "billions of years."

We will add "does not understand like really really big numbers" to your and Lessans' extraordinary caldron of willful ignorance.

Thousands? Quite the litter. . . .

Your stupidity approaches that of Killick who could not master the concept of "north."

--Ed.

I already said that if he was wrong, he would have admitted it, and I'm not going to defend what I myself am not sure of. He was trying to make a point that did not require him to have an absolute figure, therefore he could have overestimated the number of people born since time immemorial. That doesn't take away his credibility, which is what you are trying to do.

[Doctor X]

Yes . . . it is ALL our fault she is too lazy to learn.

--J.D.

[The Editor]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I already said that if he was wrong, . . .

There is no qualifier: he proved embarrassingly wrong.

. . . he would have admitted it, . . .

Doubtful: he lacked the integrity and even curiosity to study the required subjects. It appears he simply made up fantasies based on his ignorance. This proves a most common problem with the crank

and I'm not going to defend what I myself am not sure of.

Because you cannot--no one can defend the disproven--because you are also too lazy to learn.

He was trying to make a point. . . .

That proved based on an incorrect claim. As were, it seems, all of his major claims.

. . . absolute figure, therefore he could have overestimated. . . .

By mere orders of magnitude.

That doesn't take away his credibility, . . .

One cannot take away from another what another never had.

. . . which is what you are trying to do.

We do not have to try.

--Ed.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Are you seriously this dense?

All the test givers try to get them to do is look at pictures and choose one. A lever was one of several types of indicators of choice I came up with, but it may mean nothing more than putting the different pictures on two difference screens apart from each other, and training the dog to sit in front of one or the other. If the dog sits somewhere other than in front of one the screens they do not get a treat. If they choose a screen they get a treat.

That's it. They have to choose a picture. That's all they're trained to do.

The indication of recognition is in the dogs choices of their handlers picture over other humans pictures. If the dog were simply choosing a screen at random without understanding the pictures, they would choose their handlers approx 50% of the time. They chose their handler 88% of the time. It demonstrates the dog has a strong preference for its handlers picture. How can they prefer their handlers picture over a strangers picture if they can't recognize the face?

I have already said that to train a dog to push a lever and get a reward regardless of which picture he chooses only gets a dog to push a lever. It does not indicate that he is making a purposeful choice. And just because out of the two choices, he hit the lever of his handlers 30% more of the time, does not mean that he recognized his handler.

This may shed some light. I got this from physicsforums.com.

No, it stands to reason that if, after X number of coin tosses, the result is 0/100 (you mean 0% one heads, 100% tails for example), it is not necessary that it ever get back to 50%/50%. That is not true and I hope it is not what you were taught. Saying that the chance of heads on a coin flip is "50/50" (or 50%) means that on ANY flip, the chances of heads or tails are equal- "the coin has no memory". What happened in the past has absolutely no affect on what will happen.

[thedoc]

A coin is a nonliving piece of metal, a dog is a living animal with a brain, there is a difference. Can you understand that?

[davidm]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I already said that if he was wrong, he would have admitted it, and I'm not going to defend what I myself am not sure of. He was trying to make a point that did not require him to have an absolute figure, therefore he could have overestimated the number of people born since time immemorial. That doesn't take away his credibility, which is what you are trying to do.

Wow, hey, how about this: What if he was wrong, but did not know that he was wrong? Is that possible? If not, you are saying that he is not only right, but infallible, because he never admitted that he was wrong!

It is impossible for there to have been trillions and trillions of humans born on the earth! This is because we know the duration on earth of modern humans (NOT billions of years!) and we can make reliable population estimates from the numbers of people on earth now and by extrapolating backward to diminishing numbers in the past (you do know that there were many FEWER people on earth in the past then there are now, right? Probably not; chalk that up to more of your overweening ignorance.)

And, what point was he trying to make with this stupid and wrong observation about his "trillions and trillions" of people? You don't even know, do you?

[davidm]

Hey, Peacegirl, here is a post for you to address.

[erimir]

Originally Posted by thedoc

A coin is a nonliving piece of metal, a dog is a living animal with a brain, there is a difference. Can you understand that?

Also, it doesn't mean that the results aren't significant. I don't even know what peacegirl thinks it means.

If you flip a coin a hundred times, and it comes up heads a hundred times, the chances of it doing that are so infinitesimal, that it's much more likely that it isn't a fair coin than it is that it happened by chance. You would be smart to investigate the coin's weighting and so forth to determine whether it was, in fact, fair.

In the same way, these studies take into account how likely they are to achieve such results by chance. You can be sure that the study actually TELLS you the relevant statistical information, such as how likely the dogs were to have made the choices they did by chance alone. I'm certain that since the study was published with an abstract claiming that dogs can, in fact, recognize their owners, that the p-value is lower than .05, and quite likely significantly lower than that, even.

Of course, in spite of peacegirl claiming to know things with all sorts of "mathematical certainty", I rather doubt she understands what statistical significance means, and how to interpret scientific data.

[davidm]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

This may shed some light. I got this from physicsforums.com.

No, it stands to reason that if, after X number of coin tosses, the result is 0/100 (you mean 0% one heads, 100% tails for example), it is not necessary that it ever get back to 50%/50%. That is not true and I hope it is not what you were taught. Saying that the chance of heads on a coin flip is "50/50" (or 50%) means that on ANY flip, the chances of heads or tails are equal- "the coin has no memory". What happened in the past has absolutely no affect on what will happen.

No, it does not "shed any light," except on your impregnable density.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

This may shed some light. I got this from physicsforums.com.

No, it stands to reason that if, after X number of coin tosses, the result is 0/100 (you mean 0% one heads, 100% tails for example), it is not necessary that it ever get back to 50%/50%. That is not true and I hope it is not what you were taught. Saying that the chance of heads on a coin flip is "50/50" (or 50%) means that on ANY flip, the chances of heads or tails are equal- "the coin has no memory". What happened in the past has absolutely no affect on what will happen.

I get this, so the past has no bering on the present, and that is why a dog cannot recognize its owner, a dog has no memory. The dogs total lack of memory should certainly proove that lessans was right.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

__________________

What makes the others incorrect? You are aware that there might be multiple combinations that are equally correct? That's why we are hounding you to clarify the rules

Cannot be twice with any other letter in the groups of 3, or twice with any other letter on a line, or both?

Cannot be twice with any other letter in any of the 35 cominations, which means in any of the lines.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Fine, I'll ask. Are you admitting that light reaches the optic nerve?

LadyShea, I'll answer david directly, but he has a couple more hours of ignore time left. I hate to do this, but I hate being called names even more. And thanks to you explaining to me what choices I have, I feel empowered that I don't have to take the abuse.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Adam

Leaving aside the sad fact that I can't solve the puzzle because I don't possess any alphabetical blocks to arrange, this still isn't clear. Can you answer erimir's question? Do all 15 letters have to appear once, and only once, on each line?

I thought I answered that. Once only.

[davidm]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

LadyShea, I'll answer david directly, but he has a couple more hours of ignore time left.