A revolution in thought

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Show me where this is the typical test that is done to prove that hearing is a sense organ, or tasting is a sense organ. They are only trying to refine their testing, but they do not for a second see a problem. There is a problem with the eyes. but there is a difference in their testing apparatus.

LadySheas's post #35744 included tests for several of the senses.

Of course the apparatus is different, you can't test hearing with the same equipment that you use to test sight. What kind of idiotic straw man are you trying to bash now.

First you complain about levers that were not in the tests. Then you complain that they used rewards to get the dogs to do the test. And now you are complaining that they don't use the exact same test for taste, hearing, and vision. What fiction will you come up with next to complain about? You're grasping at straws, because you know you have nothing real to support your ideas.

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by Dragar

Wild? Like, this is a theory that goes to Ibiza takes its bra off and dances naked while drinking vodka surrounded by adoring theories of the opposite gender, sort of wild?

Nah, it's probably more along the lines of an anything-that-diverges-even minutely-from-peacegirl's-beliefs-regarding-what-Lessans-wrote sort of wild.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Try these

Ooh look. A dog learning symbolic language! There are some videos of this

I do not see people doing tests to determine if dogs can recognize their owners from their smell or the sound of their voices because they already know that dogs recognize from these sources, therefore there's no need for a test to prove it.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

Nah, it's probably more along the lines of an anything-that-diverges-even minutely-from-peacegirl's-beliefs-regarding-what-Lessans-wrote sort of wild.

I like Dragar's version better. But that's just me.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I do not see people doing tests to determine if dogs can recognize their owners from their smell or the sound of their voices because they already know that dogs recognize from these sources, therefore there's no need for a test to prove it.

Of course you refuse to see them because they contradict what you and lessans have said before, and they add to the evidence that Lessans was wrong. These tests don't prove that the abilities exist, they refine our understanding of dog's perception, including recognizing their master from a photograph.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by thedoc

You said we don't test a dog's hearing, and now you post a video of just such a test. Congratulations you have just proven yourself wrong, again. And just because the video didn't show the reward, doesn't mean there wasn't one.

There was no reward system because, as you mentioned, this was a medical test and there was no training required on the part of the dog. I still have not come across empirical tests that try to prove that dogs recognize their owners through the sound of their voice because they already know that dogs can do this. The same goes for smell.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

There was no reward system because, as you mentioned, this was a medical test and there was no training required on the part of the dog. I still have not come across empirical tests that try to prove that dogs recognize their owners through the sound of their voice because they already know that dogs can do this. The same goes for smell.

Do you even read and comprehend the posts you respond to? I did not mention that it was a medical test, that was Ladyshea.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Speaking of deaf dogs, how do you suppose deaf dogs are routinely trained using hand signals, since they don't have visual recognition abilities according to you?

Deaf dogs learn sign language| Latest News Videos | Fox News (no embed available)

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/uUcWNnaoniw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

There is nothing surprising here. The dog associates the hand movement with the command. The leash helps to get the dog in the right position where he is then rewarded. With enough practice, the leash isn't necessary anymore. A dog should not have to be trained to identify his master from a picture, just like he doesn't have to be trained to recognize his master's smell or his master's voice.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Because it's a wild theory and it's trusted only because the people who offer this theory are looked up to as gods. How dare anyone argue with the likes of famous physicists. And you know who they are.

Not to worry, we'll just add this to the list of stupid things that your have posted. The words and statements of these "famous" physicists are accepted as true because the average "Joe" doesn't have the knowledge, expertise, or equipment to preform these tests and experiments. So the specialists search for special knowledge and share it with the rest of us, only a few have studied the subject to be a part of that search. This idea that famous physicists are revered as Gods is just another of your straw men that no-one else believes, but, by disproving, you think will support your cause. You're swinging at the air with little to no effect.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

There is nothing surprising here. The dog associates the hand movement with the command. The leash helps to get the dog in the right position where he is then rewarded. With enough practice, the leash isn't necessary anymore. A dog should not have to be trained to identify his master from a picture, just like he doesn't have to be trained to recognize his master's smell or his master's voice.

Actually the dog must be trained to respond in a specific manner, so the test results will be valid. Dogs that are untrained could have a variety of responses to these stimuli that will make reading the results difficult if not impossible. Your demand that researchers read "Natural" responses is nonsensical and unworkable in a scientific test.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

And the last 2 weeks you've been here after a fairly prolonged absence? Boredom as well? LOL

I've never left , I come back to this thread when it gets bumped up. So I "come back" because of you.

No, you come back because you want to. I'm not making you come back.

as if to say I need to leave in order for you to stay away?

Originally Posted by LadyShea

No, I stated pretty clearly you need to leave if you don't want to listen to Lessans ideas being "bashed". You know we will do so, so why do you come back for more of the same? Unlike you, I don't loudly wail about crucifixion and burning at the stake and gang rapes and all your martyr shit. If you think that is truly what is happening here, and voluntarily expose yourself to it repeatedly, then you must enjoy it, or maybe appreciate it because it feeds a persecution complex. If there are other rational motivations for subjecting yourself to people you think are small minded and cruel and unable to grasp the information you are presenting, to throw your pearls before swine (to use a colorful homily like you are fond of), I'd love to hear it.

I'm actually thinking the same thing. I only posted one article, and it started up again. That was not my intention. Why people are wasting so much time here is beyond me. Don't they have better things to do than to sit around conjuring up nasty responses all day long? Regardless, there are less than a handful of people I'm actually engaging with, so the conversation is not likely to last much longer.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Why people are wasting so much time here is beyond me. Don't they have better things to do than to sit around conjuring up nasty responses all day long?

Yes why are you wasting so much time here? Don't you have better things to do, than to sit around conjuring up stupid stuff to post? Like spend some time with your grandchildren, (mine are coming over later today).

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Dragar

Wild? Like, this is a theory that goes to Ibiza takes its bra off and dances naked while drinking vodka surrounded by adoring theories of the opposite gender, sort of wild?

What the heck?

I'm glad you think of me this way, but I'm not a god, nor are most people who talk about it.

I'm sure I do. That's what famous means.

How does this answer the question I posed, peacegirl? You lied because the theory is 'wild' (wey-hey!) and, charitably interpreted, because famous physicists are regarded highly and are the ones telling people it's true? How is this possibly a good answer for your blatant dishonesty?

There are many wild theories floating around. It is no surprise that these theories --- theories that have little observational evidence to back them up --- begin to take hold and are treated as if they were facts. To me, much of these theories are equivalent to science fiction but because they are endorsed by well known physicists such as Stephen Hawking or Michio Kaku, they are less likely to be refuted.

A Call to Arms

What Is So Wrong With Time Travel Speculations?

Time travel is a symptom of a deeper malady. It is part of a chronic malformation of our collective scientific understanding of the fundamental underpinnings of nature. It is the end result of an incestuous intellectual orgy that has been going on for over a century. It is also the culmination of a scientific coup d'état that took place in the early part of the twentieth century. A group of revolutionaries, fresh from the resounding empirical victories of Einstein's theory of relativity, established themselves as the sole interpreters and oracles of the new science. They fended off all public scrutiny by encircling themselves within an unassailable wall of scientific jargon and mathematical formalism. Any criticism of their world view is met with the usual sneering retort that relativity is one of the most corroborated theories in the history of physics. Dissenting views are given little exposure.

Nasty Little Truth About Spacetime Physics

Stop Acting Like Drones

The whole time dimension and time travel nonsense that is being fed to us by the aforementioned individuals (and their followers all over the world) is part of a world view that has clouded and is clouding our thinking. Having an erroneous understanding of such fundamental concepts as motion and time is like having a monkey wrench in the works. Generations of bright young researchers have wasted valuable time chasing after wild geese when they should have been looking for real causal explanations of gravity and motion. And if they got time wrong, one is left to wonder how many other things they got just as wrong or worse. We need to discard our primitive and sterile notions of space and time and embrace a new clear-headed physical science, a science worthy of the twenty-first century. We need to break away from the hive and stop acting like mindless drones.

Entrenched Orthodoxy

Can we expect the spacetime physics orthodoxy to just accept that its understanding of time is flawed? Does anybody really believe that Dr. Kip Thorne, Sir Stephen Hawking, Dr. John A. Wheeler and the others are suddenly going to announce to the world that they were wrong about time? Do not hold your breath. You can catch a science fiction writer in an error and that is no big deal. But a scientist is betting his or her career. Still, should humanity suffer through hundreds of years of ignorance just because a few careers are at stake? The current scientific belief in the existence of a time dimension has been around for over a hundred years. Even though many people realized from its inception that spacetime was motionless, it has not stopped generations of physicists from believing in a time dimension on a par with the other three spatial dimensions. It is now a religious institution and its practitioners are entrenched more than ever. They will not accept defeat easily. It is a matter of prestige, authority, credibility and the fear of being displaced. They will fight teeth and nails all the way to the end.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Dragar

That's nothing to do with special relativity, and nor do I hate you. I do hate that you lie though: there's huge amounts of evidence for time-dilation, you know that, so why did you claim otherwise?

Why do I claim otherwise? I think this guy hit the nail on the head.

Not Against Relativity

I get angry emails from people accusing me of badmouthing relativity, one of the most corroborated theories of physics. I am not. In my opinion, the special and general theories of relativity are mathematically correct and make correct predictions. What is wrong are all the obviously false claims made on the basis of their correctness. Relativity does not allow motion in spacetime or time travel, as Dr. Wheeler, Sir Stephen Hawking, Dr. Kip Thorne and the others claim. It forbids motion in spacetime!

It is important that people see relativity for what it is, a mathematical trick for the prediction of macroscopic phenomena involving the motion of bodies in a spatial coordinate system. Spacetime is an abstract mathematical construct, that is all. The other stuff (motion in spacetime, time travel, advanced and retarded waves, wormholes, etc...), is pure hogwash. This stuff is so trivially proven wrong in fact, that it is insulting to the lay public, the same public that funds most scientific projects. Even the relativity-derived notion of time dilation is hopelessly misleading. Time does not dilate (as if time could change!). On the contrary, it is the clocks that slow down (for whatever reason) resulting in longer measured intervals.

Nasty Little Truth About Spacetime Physics

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Why do I claim otherwise? I think this guy hit the nail on the head.

Not Against Relativity
I get angry emails from people accusing me of badmouthing relativity, one of the most corroborated theories of physics. I am not. In my opinion, the special and general theories of relativity are mathematically correct and make correct predictions. What is wrong are all the obviously false claims made on the basis of their correctness. Relativity does not allow motion in spacetime or time travel, as Dr. Wheeler, Sir Stephen Hawking, Dr. Kip Thorne and the others claim. It forbids motion in spacetime!

Oh My Goodness! One scientist disagrees with everyone else, and is persecuted for it, that must make it true.

[Dragar]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Why do I claim otherwise? I think this guy hit the nail on the head.

That doesn't explain why there is so much supporting evidence. That creates a puzzle: why is there so much supporting evidence if this guy is right?

But we've been here before. I told you earlier in this thread he's a crackpot. He defines four velocity completely wrong. He defines it as the derivative of the position coordinate with respect to the time coordinate. That's obviously useless, because the coordinate is just that: a coordinate. It's meaningless outside that coordinate system. He should use the proper time, usually denoted with a Greek symbol tau. That's an invariant, and meaningful. But he doesn't. Because he doesn't understand any of this. And that's why there's so much supporting evidence for relativity, contradicting this guy. No more puzzle.

He doesn't prove anything. He's a crackpot. He's not a scientist at all, and seems to struggle with mathematics. So why do you believe him?

[Dragar]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

There are many wild theories floating around. It is no surprise that these theories --- theories that have little observational evidence to back them up --- begin to take hold and are treated as if they were facts. To me, much of these theories are equivalent to science fiction but because they are endorsed by well known physicists such as Stephen Hawking or Michio Kaku, they are less likely to be refuted.

No, they're believed because of the huge amounts of supporting evidence. Why do you think there isn't any? It's one of the most well tested theories in all of science, not just physics. The precision it has been tested to is astonishing.

So why do you think that it's only believed because famous people talk about it? Have you not read any of the (tens of?) thousands of papers describing the experimental support?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Dragar

That doesn't explain why there is so much supporting evidence. That creates a puzzle: why is there so much supporting evidence if this guy is right?

But we've been here before. I told you earlier in this thread he's a crackpot. He defines four velocity completely wrong. He defines it as the derivative of the position coordinate with respect to the time coordinate. That's obviously useless, because the coordinate is just that: a coordinate. It's meaningless outside that coordinate system. He should use the proper time, usually denoted with a Greek symbol tau. That's an invariant, and meaningful. But he doesn't. Because he doesn't understand any of this. And that's why there's so much supporting evidence for relativity, contradicting this guy. No more puzzle.

He doesn't prove anything. He's a crackpot. He's not a scientist at all, and seems to struggle with mathematics. So why do you believe him?

I believe what he is saying makes sense, a lot more sense than the far out theories that are accepted. I do not believe in a block universe where time dilates or where there are wormholes that can take us back in time. Sorry. BTW, he was very clear that he was not rejecting or badmouthing special or general relativity. He was refuting the claims made on the basis of their correctness.

Not Against Relativity

I get angry emails from people accusing me of badmouthing relativity, one of the most corroborated theories of physics. I am not. In my opinion, the special and general theories of relativity are mathematically correct and make correct predictions. What is wrong are all the obviously false claims made on the basis of their correctness. Relativity does not allow motion in spacetime or time travel, as Dr. Wheeler, Sir Stephen Hawking, Dr. Kip Thorne and the others claim. It forbids motion in spacetime!

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Because it's a wild theory...

This has been explained to you about a million times now, by the way. The fact that you still don't get it very clearly indicates that your ignorance is completely intentional.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Dragar

No, they're believed because of the huge amounts of supporting evidence. Why do you think there isn't any? It's one of the most well tested theories in all of science, not just physics. The precision it has been tested to is astonishing.

I am not debating the results of the tests. I am debating the inferences that are drawn based on what they believe the evidence shows.

Originally Posted by Dragar

So why do you think that it's only believed because famous people talk about it? Have you not read any of the (tens of?) thousands of papers describing the experimental support?

To draw up a comparison, there are tens of thousands of papers describing the experimental support for afferent vision, but the conclusion is still an inference, and inferences can be logically valid but unsound. The same holds here. I'm sorry Dragar but I do not believe in time machines or wormholes or a space/time dimension. We only have the now or the present. There is no timeline whereby we can access the past or future. These are abstract constructs that are based on memory but they do not correlate with anything in reality. Time is a measurement of change based on the earth's rotation, that's all. Time itself does not bend or dilate or move. This is my opinion and I'm entitled to it. I hope you don't think I'm being disrespectful. That's not my intention.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

This has been explained to you about a million times now, by the way. The fact that you still don't get it very clearly indicates that your ignorance is completely intentional.

I know what a theory is. It's accumulated evidence that supports a certain way of looking at something. A scientific theory is subject to change if there is enough evidence to support an alternate model, but for all intents and purposes a theory that has been around for a long time is considered factual and non-negotiable.

[The Lone Ranger]

When you say this ...

It's accumulated evidence that supports a certain way of looking at something. A scientific theory is subject to change if there is enough evidence to support an alternate model, but for all intents and purposes a theory that has been around for a long time is considered factual and non-negotiable.

You're proving beyond any shadow of a doubt that the following is a big, fat, lie:

I know what a theory is.

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I believe what he is saying makes sense, a lot more sense than the far out theories that are accepted.

You believe a lot of stuff that isn't correct. Your belief is based on nothing whatsoever beyond your dim apprehension that Savain's musings support your preconceived ideas about how things work.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

BTW, he was very clear that he was not rejecting or badmouthing special or general relativity.

I have doubts that the nutjob Savain knows any more about special or general relativity than you do, which is to say nothing.

[Dragar]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I believe what he is saying makes sense, a lot more sense than the far out theories that are accepted. I do not believe in a block universe where time dilates or where there are wormholes that can take us back in time. Sorry.

What you mean by 'make sense' is just that the universe doesn't behave how you expect it to, based on your everyday experiences.

How naive and self-important of you to think it would! You're of course, entitled to your opinion - but it's pretty clear your opinion is not founded on actually going out and looking at the world to see how it is, but instead looking for anything you can grasp hold of to confirm the world works the way you expect it to. A recipe for self-delusion, and hardly a wonder you prefer crackpots to actual science.

BTW, he was very clear that he was not rejecting or badmouthing special or general relativity. He was refuting the claims made on the basis of their correctness.

I didn't say otherwise. I said his claims about correctness are stupid - he's an idiot, and doesn't understand the basic mathematics he's referring to. He's a crackpot.

[Dragar]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I am not debating the results of the tests. I am debating the inferences that are drawn based on what they believe the evidence shows.

But you're not debating at all. You're just asserting, and quoting a crackpot. You don't even understand any of the evidence, because you don't even take the time to study it.

I'm sorry Dragar but I do not believe in time machines or wormholes or a space/time dimension. We only have the now or the present. There is no timeline whereby we can access the past or future. These are abstract constructs that are based on memory but they do not correlate with anything in reality. Time is a measurement of change based on the earth's rotation, that's all. Time itself does not bend or dilate or move. This is my opinion and I'm entitled to it. I hope you don't think I'm being disrespectful. That's not my intention.

I don't think you're being disrespectful. I think you have your own idea how the world works, and ignore anything that possibly tells you otherwise. You've no interest in learning how the world actually works, and you reject anything that contradicts your world view immediately - simply because you don't like the conclusions.