A revolution in thought

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

No it wasn't, but I wish they would be more clear when explaining the concept of smooth, involuntary, skeletal, voluntary in these abstracts. It's no wonder I'm getting confused. I hope I don't forget what you've taught me, or you'll crucify me if there is a next time.

This was explained to you some time ago, and you claimed to understand then, just as you claim to understand now.

I didn't say they were. I just read that the extraocular muscles were under voluntary control in contrast to the ciliary muscle.

Go back up the page and read your own posts. You've referred to the ciliary muscles as extraocular muscles in at least two posts just in the past few minutes.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

This was explained to you some time ago, and you claimed to understand then, just as you claim to understand now.

Because she isn't even interested in it. All this evidential discussion is just something she puts up with and tolerates in order to be able to continue exercising her faith in Lessans against the opposition of others, which for her is all this has ever been about.

[naturalist.atheist]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

Indeed. Her faith is more important to her than learning, honesty, or even promoting Lessan's own work.

I doubt it is about faith. Nobody here cares what she chooses to believe and she obviously doesn't care about what others think. And you are right, it's not about the book.

This is about her illness and it appears Lessans had it to. She needs attention to the point where she is willing to do dreadfully stupid things to get it.

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by naturalist.atheist

I doubt it is about faith. Nobody here cares what she chooses to believe and she obviously doesn't care about what others think. And you are right, it's not about the book.

This is about her illness and it appears Lessans had it to. She needs attention to the point where she is willing to do dreadfully stupid things to get it.

Most religious fanatics need attention more than anything, and negative attention feeds their fervor if positive attention is not there, or is not intense enough. Give up the faith and you are just an ordinary person. For some, that is not enough.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

If the camera forms an image from the specific properties of the light AT THE CAMERA, then the image will be dated and would differ from what you think the eyes will see. So if cameras form real-time images indistinguishable from what is seen with the eyes, then cameras cannot operate by forming their images from the properties of the arriving light. Which would mean cameras don't work the way they are known to do. Cameras would have to magically 'look out' the way you think our brains do.

Any object that is being photographed indicates that the light has already arrived, therefore a camera is taking a picture of that object in real time just as the eyes see that object in real time. Cameras operate the same way they always have and what they are known to do. They would not have to magically do anything.

Originally Posted by spacemonkey

This is incredibly simple, and has been explained to you a billion times on multiple forums over a span of several years. And you still refuse to comprehend.

It's not that I refuse to comprehend. I just don't see where efferent vision contradicts the way cameras work if the light has already traversed the distance and is striking the lens. The fact that a camera takes the exact photograph of what the eyes see doesn't negate efferent vision; it supports it.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

Another word you don't know the definition of, but for some reason feel qualified to use: "imprinting."

[Here's a hint for you: imprinting is a form of learning.]

This article might clear things up.

Instinct and Learning: Information from Answers.com

Originally Posted by peacegirl

It is stated very clearly in this video that the ciliary muscle is composed of smooth muscle and is under involuntary control.

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: you can't be as stupid as you pretend to be. How could anyone as stupid as you pretend to be manage to function?

I don't know what's so funny. I just checked and in that video he uses the term "involuntary control." You can listen for yourself. You just can't resist joining in the fray as any schoolboy would do.

How the Body Works : Exploring the Eye -...

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

It is also a claim about time and information that directly contradicts Relativity and Causality

That would be taking out his entire claim. Of course you want me to take it out. You want me to erase his entire second discovery because you feel it's nonsense.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

Yes, cameras create an image from light. FROM THE PARTICULAR QUALITIES OF THE LIGHT PRESENT AT THE CAMERA. So the resulting image cannot possibly be a real time image.

Once again, that's not true if the object or light source is reflecting or emitting the light that has already arrived. That would mean seeing the object out there would be the same as the light being detected and forming an image on a camera's lens.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Oh really? How so?

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

Because you knew before you even began here that Lessans would become a laughing stock to anyone even remotely familiar with science as soon as readers got to the "eyes are not a sense organ" part. So if you really believed in his first 'discovery', and if getting that message recognized were more important to you than maintaining your own deluded belief in Lessans' infallibility, then you would have removed that section so as to prevent it from discrediting him whether you personally believed that part to be wrong or not.

Spacemonkey, I really don't have that right. It's not my work and to just discard a huge section of his book would be unethical, in my eyes. If people can't overlook their bias and would reject all of his book on account of this, what can I say? It's not just that part that people don't like. They don't like the idea that man's will is not free either. In fact, some people resent his discovery on death. They would burn up all of his books so there would be no trace of his writings left, if they had the opportunity. Thank goodness they won't have that opportunity.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by davidm

She is an extreme narccisist, and we are her oxygen supply. Her supply ought to be cut off, but that's up to each individual, obviously.

I think people continue to rubberneck here out of a sense of astonishment. I can speak only for myself in saying that I have never before witnessed such a combination of density and dishonesty as in peacegirl, but I suspect that is true of others too, and we linger here like voyeurs, wondering what new astonishing idiocy she will come up with as her delusions are deconstructed.

She makes Young Earth Creationists look like paragons of honesty and rationality.

But this thread has been valuable, just not in any ways that reflect credit on peacegirl. A lot of info has been put out there, from the theory of relativity to optics to experiments showing that dogs can recognize their masters by photographs to how babies see to philosophical conceptions of time (eternalism vs. presentism). So the thread is wothwhile for those reasons.

I don't see a conflict with eternalism, as if presentism denies that the world is eternal. It's a false distinction and only serves as an intellectual debate but has no truth in reality.

Decline and Fall of All Evil: Chapter Ten: Our Posterity pp. 501-503

If I should die this instant it only means that I, not the individual
Seymour Lessans, but someone of two new parents, would start my
life over again because this consciousness of individuality is given to
each person at birth and has nothing to do with the individual
characteristics themselves. Therefore, death is a mirage to those who
die and a reality only to the living. It is our ability to recognize these
deeper relations that give us our knowledge of personal immortality
and our freedom from the fear of death, for then we know that even
though God sweeps away our aging flesh, and our body and
consciousness are gone, we will be born over and over again to see this
miraculous world.

This is an actual reality, not a figment of the
imagination, and can easily be verified when you realize that with all
the millions of years you, of all people, are born right now to see the
universe. The truth is, you will also be born a million years hence
because all we have is the present, and this universe can only be seen
through your consciousness, not the consciousness of another.
Soon it will dawn on you, as you fully understand these relations,
that consciousness is the eternal window of God through which we, all
mankind, look out upon this magnificent universe in all its glory and
mathematical harmony.

It should be further obvious that God can
have absolutely no recognition for His existence and achievements
unless through the consciousness of man who is an eternal attribute
of God Himself. Once it is fully realized that we are the conscious
expression of God who exists eternally because there is no such thing
as the past or future, only the present which is eternal, we will become
completely conscious of our own eternal life, otherwise, we will be
eternal unconsciously.”

“I liked that very much, and I’m beginning to understand it more
clearly.”

“The perception of these relations make it obvious that the same
general experiences we have gone through of being little boys and girls
with a mother and father, growing up, getting married, raising a
family in the new world and remarking about the time way back in the
olden days when man used to believe the earth was flat, his will free,
and his eyes a sense organ, will continue throughout eternity as long
as man is able to reproduce himself because there is no such thing as
a beginning and end since time, space, and consciousness are infinite
and eternal attributes of the present.

The full realization of what
death actually is will destroy the desire to preserve corpses in
cemeteries, for this is only a waste of land and the bodies of the
deceased. Satisfaction in preserving this lifeless bit of matter can only
be gotten when ignorance of the truth engenders the desire. No one
will deny that it is sad to lose a loved companion, and it is also true
that when someone dies he is gone and will never return in our
lifetime because these relations are also undeniable; but through
God’s infinite wisdom, by revealing what it means that man’s will is
not free and what this means, it prevents in 90% of the cases any
premature deaths by eliminating all war, crime, economic insecurity,
jealousy, hate, and every other form of hurt that gave rise to a
justifiable retaliation which was necessary up until now, while
endowing man with the will, the freedom, and the ability to discover
the remaining laws that will wipe away the other 10%.”

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

No empirical test can be set up to test whatever you are talking about if we don't even have the same definitions for the things we are trying to test.

I didn't say anything at all about light. Read it again and answer each question. It's the only way to find a common language since regular old definitions don't seem to work for you....and I added a third question.

I am not running an empirical test, I am trying to figure out what language you are using. Since you won't accept the standard English definitions, let's try your criteria of "description of reality".

Here's my argument you need to refute once we agree on definitions

There is no separation which you base your premise on.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

Ah, but you most-certainly have claimed that newborns cannot see. You've done so on quite a few occasions.

Let me remind you what Lessans said. He believed sight was indistinguishable from focus, thus he used the two words interchangeably.

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

And have you forgotten how you spent pages insisting that because humans see directly but cameras do not, we should be able to see things that we cannot photograph?

That would be truth hypothetically, and I maintain what I said.

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

You spent pages claiming that we would not be able to photograph things like supernovae until their light reached us, even though we would be able to see them as soon as they occurred.

Again, that is hypothetical because there is never a situation where the light is not impinging on the retina for the camera to take a picture and the eyes to see simultaneously. So if we saw them, that would be a tiny window of time where the camera would not be able to photograph. I don't think there has ever been a time that a discrepancy would occur. That is the crux of the problem. Is light carrying the image to the brain, or is it not?

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

When it was pointed out to you that we have photographed supernovae within minutes of them first becoming visible to the eye, you claimed that this simply means that the supernovae were much closer to us than was thought to be the case. As if a supernova could possibly be only a few light-minutes distant (which would put it well within our Solar System). And as if a supernova that was so close wouldn't destroy all life on Earth when it went off.

Who said that a supernoae were light minutes away other than YOU? This whole discussion is getting screwy the longer we talk, and Lessans will lose not because he's wrong, but because your premises are wrong. If your premises are wrong, your conclusions will be wrong and you will go on the attack to support your ideas. It's as simple as that Lone Ranger.

The Question

(Submitted March 29, 1998)
It's probably a really easy question (its just for curiosity's sake), but how far away, in light years, is the furthest star visible from the earth? (by any means possible). The name of this star is not important. Do you think there are stars in the outer regions of the universe that we can not see? What are your theories why this is so?

The Answer

The intrinsically brightest star [a supernova] is thought to be about a million times brighter than our own Sun. In astronomy, the brightness of stars is expressed in "magnitudes". This is a logarithmic scale, that works as follows. Our Sun has an intrinsic or absolute magnitude of about 5. This is the apparent magnitude our Sun would have if it were 32.6 light years away. A star 100 times brighter would have a magnitude of 0; a star 10000 times brighter would have a magnitude of -5; a star 1000000 (i.e. a million) times brighter would have a magnitude of -10.
With the Hubble telescope, using an exposure time of several hours, one can see stars to about 30th magnitude. This is about 10 billion times fainter than our Sun, if it were 32.6 light years away. The brightness of any object falls off as the square of the distance from the observer, so the Hubble telescope could just see our Sun if it were 3.26 million light years away. If you were to replace our Sun with a star a million times brighter, it could be seen about a thousand times further away, i.e., about 3 billion light years.

In answer to your last question, since this estimate is only for the very brightest stars, and since the distance I obtained is still less than the size of the visible Universe (about 15 billion light years), there are surely many faint stars at great distances which we cannot see.

J.K. Cannizzo
for Ask an Astrophysicist

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/as...s/980329a.html

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by specious_reasons

I'm only telling you what you don't want to hear, peacegirl. Lessans book is not compelling enough to convince the world to change, and the changes in the book are too significant for people to think it's a harmless change. No one is just going to try Lessans ideas.

Asking, "What's the risk?" is just a variant on the Pascal's Wager-type argument you keep trotting out. It's a poor argument, and you probably should stop it.

It is not just a variant on Pascal's Wager because there is empirical proof if people would only give him a chance. The empirical proof that is suppose to give supportive evidence on the premises that already exist, is a lie. This whole thing is a big lie as far as I'm concerned because there is no real proof, yet that is what you are counting on.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

I gave links to abstracts/summaries and or news stories about various published studies. These do not include the data found in the full articles/papers and the full articles are only available in scholarly journals. I am not paying for the full articles, which you probably wouldn't understand even if you didn't ignore it. You have no basis on which to base a reliability assessments because you didn't see anything but summaries.

Additionally for every link I posted there are many hundreds of studies and papers I didn't find or link to or know about.

If you are truly interested, you need to visit a University library and/or scour the appropriate various journals for likely papers and either pay for them or request a copy for review.

Your son, as a doctor or medical student, probably has a subscription that allows him to get full articles easily and for free. Just send him a citation, or tell him what you are looking for.

Oh my Lord, so you actually believe these faulty articles are going to disprove Lessans' claims? It won't happen LadyShea because Lessans' claims are mathmatically derived. But you don't get that, so keep on arguing until you're blue in the face. I can't change your deep-seated opinions which have no basis in reality.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

It is not proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, that dogs can recognize people on photographs by being trained to push a lever. This is not proof even if they happen to push a lever more times in a picture with their owner than not.
------------------
Color vision is probably immature at birth. Color discrimination is learned early, starting with yellow and ending with blue. By four months, babies can see all colors well and often prefer red.

TLC Family "The Newborn\'s Five Senses"

What the hell does this post prove? Nothing whatsoever except to distract me from the reason I'm here.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Spacemonkey, I really don't have that right. It's not my work and to just discard a huge section of his book would be unethical, in my eyes. If people can't overlook their bias and would reject all of his book on account of this, what can I say? It's not just that part that people don't like. They don't like the idea that man's will is not free either. In fact, some people resent his discovery on death. They would burn up all of his books so there would be no trace of his writings left, if they had the opportunity. Thank goodness they won't have that opportunity.

This is pure persecution fantasy. Nobody wants to burn books or "resents" his "discoveries". They think they are nonsense, that does not mean the same thing as hate and resentment and a desire to censor. Most people that continue to argue with you find you an interesting specimen from some viewpoint. Nobody except you feels strong emotions towards Lessans work. I promise.

Get over yourself.

[LadyShea]

Is light carrying the image to the brain, or is it not?

No, it's not. We have told you many times that nobody claims light "carries an image". You said you understood, but you don't.

Light is just being light, it carries information about itself only. Our eyes collect that light with its information about itself, and the brain interprets that information and creates an image.

[LadyShea]

Let me remind you what Lessans said. He believed sight was indistinguishable from focus, thus he used the two words interchangeably.

OMG this takes the cake as far as Weasels. He certainly did not think sight and focus were synonyms. I still have a copy of the book, you know.

[But]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

No, it's not. We have told you many times that nobody claims light "carries an image". You said you understood, but you don't.

Light is just being light, it carries information about itself only. Our eyes collect that light with its information about itself, and the brain interprets that information and creates an image.

I don't think it would be unreasonable to say that light carries the image. When we describe the physics that's involved using ordinary language we are in fuzzy metaphor country anyway, so I think for all intents and purposes light "carries" the image as much as it "carries" information.

[LadyShea]

But, peacegirl's idea of "carrying an image" and understanding it as a sort of shorthand for the actual processes are very different things.

She doesn't understand, at all, how light works, how it travels, or why the light we collect is necessarily from the past.

For example, she thought it the height of improbable coincidence that the Hubble was able to gather the light it did to create the Deep Field image, because what are the chances that the light "just happened to be there" at the same time we pointed the Hubble at that seemingly empty piece of sky?

Look at her "The light has already arrived" claims. What does that even mean?

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

It is not just a variant on Pascal's Wager because there is empirical proof if people would only give him a chance. The empirical proof that is suppose to give supportive evidence on the premises that already exist, is a lie. This whole thing is a big lie as far as I'm concerned because there is no real proof, yet that is what you are counting on.

It's just like Pascal's Wager because you believe Lessans ideas will be proven empirically. There's currently no actual evidence Lessans is correct on anything.

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Who said that a supernoae were light minutes away other than YOU?

Why you did. Have you forgotten -- yet again -- you own claims? Want me to go back and link you to your own posts?

When it was pointed out to you that we've photographed supernovae -- supernovae that were outside our galaxy -- within minutes of them becoming visible to the eye, your "explanation" was that the supernova in question must be much closer than we'd thought. So close, in fact, that the light from it took only a few minutes to reach us, thus rendering it photographable.

Now then, try to keep up: the definition of "five light-minutes distant" is "at a distance such that it takes light from the object five minutes to reach us." The definition of "ten light-minutes distant" is "at a distance such that it takes light ten minutes to reach us." And so forth.

So if the supernova is close-enough that light from it takes only a few minutes to reach Earth -- something that you repeatedly insisted was the case -- then it's only a few light-minutes distant by definition. Which, as was pointed out to you at the time, would put it well within the Solar System.



ETA: You're not still making the idiotic claim that imprinting isn't learning, are you? Go back and read the very article you linked, which points out that it is. The only thing that makes imprinting unique is that it's a form of learning that can only take place within a narrow window of opportunity, and that is very difficult to undo.

[But]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

But, peacegirl's idea of "carrying an image" and understanding it as a sort of shorthand for the actual processes are very different things.

I don't know what her idea of "carrying an image" is.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

See? In one breath Lessans claimed that "it will be mathematically impossible henceforth for a husband and wife to ever desire one bed for the two of them" and in the very next breath he acknowledged exactly the opposite, namely that it will indeed be possible to desire sleeping together. The fact that he couldn't go a whole page without stepping on his own weh-weh obviously doesn't bother you, but surely you can understand how it might bother folks accustomed to .. well, to thinking.

Dam it Stephen, he never said it would be mathematically impossible henceforth for a husband and wife to ever desire to sleep together. He said that we would have an extra bed so no one would impose their wishes on the other partner if they chose not to sleep together. Why are you so intent on twisting his words? I don't get it.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

They gather light. Full stop.

The image recorded is based only on the intensity and wavelengths and distribution of that light, as Spacemonkey pointed out, and those qualities speak to the distance the light has traveled, the angle, and any materials it interacts with on the way.

All the rest of your "present" stuff is you trying to shoehorn the way things actually work into Lessans ideas.

It's the exact opposite. You are shoehorning the way things actually work into your idea of how you believe the world works.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by davidm

Wow. Just, wow.



I'll ask you again: don't you understand what "hypothetical" means? Here are you father's own fucking words:

Decline and Fall of All Evil: Chapter Four: Words, Not Reality p. 120

To paraphrase this another way; if you
could sit upon the star Rigel with a telescope powerful enough to see
me writing this very moment, you would see me at the exact same
time that a person sitting right next to me would — which brings us
to another very interesting point. If I couldn’t see you standing right
next to me because we were living in total darkness since the sun had
not yet been turned on but God was scheduled to flip the switch at 12
noon, we would be able to see the sun instantly — at that very
moment — although we would not be able to see each other for 8
minutes afterwards.


See? he is making a claim: if x obtains, y will follow. The claim is false. Ergo his hypothesis was incorrect. This means that the world does not work the way that he claimed.

His hypothetical turning on of the sun was intended to be a thought experiment to illustrate the way that he incorrectly thought that the world actually worked. It doesn't work that way. He is wrong.

Q.E.D.

My answer was in response to your attack. It was probably meant to be "hypothetical" because he used the word IF which you claimed he did not. If...Then, remember? I don't care what you think at this point because you can't even talk normal.