A revolution in thought

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by But

You're looking at the Sun. Light travels in a straight line, so along that straight line there must be a position where the Sun was at some point in the past. Let's say you're right and the Sun isn't where you see it. But light is hitting you from that direction. It must have traveled in a straight line. Draw that line. In your mind or in a a diagram where you look at the solar system from above. The line misses the Sun. But the Sun was never on that line, not 8 minutes ago, not a hundred years ago. Contradiction.

Yes, I can see how you would misunderstand that post. "Both the photons and the observer are traveling to that point but 8.5 minutes before that they are not in that position" where they will be when the light arrives. "the apparent position of the Sun was not in the same place" that is was when the photons left the Sun. Perhaps this will clear things up for you.

[GdB]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

I wonder why you never provide a link, or, as the questions are easy to answer, just answer them again. 5 Minutes of your time, and you are ready with Spacemonkey's 'bumps'.

[GdB]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Let that part go GdB. We're talking about something else. You can't use his other claim to disregard his first discovery, which is a lousy and lazy effort on your part.

I already said I am done with you about free will. You do not have the flexibility of mind to see through words, otherwise you would never say such things as 'any definition of free will', or 'Definitions mean nothing when reality is concerned'.
You understand nothing, Peacegirl.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I am not saying to have an open mind with nothing to offer. Again, you are trying to compare me with people who may use this phrase to fool you into agreement.

But it is exactly what you are doing.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I am sharing a discovery with clear explanations that defy "proof" to the contrary, but you refuse to listen. In your mind you are right, end of sentence.

Here, a mirror.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by GdB

I wonder why you never provide a link, or, as the questions are easy to answer, just answer them again. 5 Minutes of your time, and you are ready with Spacemonkey's 'bumps'.

It isn't 5 minutes of my time. I already said that light travels and therefore it takes time to get to a destination. But the eyes work differently if Lessans is right. We see the object directly if there is enough light present. But this knowledge, although important, is secondary to his first discovery. I wanted to discuss the knowledge that lies behind the door of determinism. But you won't let me continue. You are so sure you are right and I am wrong that your mind is already made up. There's nothing I can do.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by GdB

I wonder why you never provide a link, or, as the questions are easy to answer, just answer them again. 5 Minutes of your time, and you are ready with Spacemonkey's 'bumps'.

I believe that she realizes that there is a contradiction if she were to honestly answer the questions, so she avoids them and then lies about answering them.

[GdB]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I did. Nothing he said is in contradiction. He said to let go of the semantics so progress can be made. You're not doing that.

I am doing that. How do you explain the high level of agreement between 'Trick and I?

And in contradiction with what? Or whom?

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

It isn't 5 minutes of my time. I already said that light travels and therefore it takes time to get to a destination. But the eyes work differently if Lessans is right. They see the object directly if there is enough light present. This is not the most important discovery. I wanted to discuss determinism with you and what lies behind this important knowledge. But you won't let me continue. There's nothing I can do.

Just curious, how is anyone preventing you from posting your ideas on determinism on this, or any other forum. I don't understand how anyone can prevent you from posting anything you want. Surely your posting is not dependent of other's agreeing with you. You can proceed any time you like, regardless of what other people think, whether they agree with you or not.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by GdB

I already said I am done with you about free will. You do not have the flexibility of mind to see through words, otherwise you would never say such things as 'any definition of free will', or 'Definitions mean nothing when reality is concerned'.
You understand nothing, Peacegirl.

If that's your mindset, we cannot go on. Definitions can be useful to serve one's purpose but that does not mean the definition itself reflects reality in any way.

Definitions mean absolutely nothing where reality is
concerned. Regardless of what words I use to describe the sun;
regardless of how much there is I don’t know about this ball of fire
does not negate the fact that it is a part of the real world.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I am not saying to have an open mind with nothing to offer. Again, you are trying to compare me with people who may use this phrase to fool you into agreement.

Originally Posted by GdB

But it is exactly what you are doing.

I'm not trying to fool you into agreement. I am trying to share what I know to be true based on sound reasoning, but you won't give me that chance.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I am sharing a discovery with clear explanations that defy "proof" to the contrary, but you refuse to listen. In your mind you are right, end of sentence.

Originally Posted by GdB

Here, a mirror.

You won't know who is right if you don't hear the explanation. How can you?

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by GdB

I am doing that. How do you explain the high level of agreement between 'Trick and I?

And in contradiction with what? Or whom?

You have to understand that Peacegirl lives in a fantasy dream world, and only sees and reads what she wants to see or read. If she believes that your posts are in contradiction with some-one else's, that is what she will see, regardless of what you write in a post.

Unfortunately this is a common occurrence on the internet, you are one of the few who are accurate in what you post.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by GdB

I am doing that. How do you explain the high level of agreement between 'Trick and I?

And in contradiction with what? Or whom?

Trick is trying to find a common ground. That common ground is that, as determinists, you both can agree that a person could not have done otherwise if the circumstances were exactly the same. He wants to start the conversation there. Even if you use the term "free" in the way you define it, he doesn't want your semantic to get in the way of a fruitful discussion so he's trying to avoid using this term altogether.

[But]

Originally Posted by thedoc

When the light left the Sun to travel to the Earth, or anywhere else, it was at the position where the light left it. Now you are saying that the Sun was never at the position where the light from the Sun left the Sun?

Please explain how the light can leave the Sun when the Sun was never in the position where the light left it?

It's really not that hard. Read my post again until you get it.

I'm assuming that what you're saying is true and I'm deriving a steaming contradiction from it.

[davidm]

Originally Posted by GdB

Yeah, I know of some science fiction stories around this theme. But I think I've never read one single story that was able to be consistent. (The time jumps of Captain Janeway are legendary. However, there is always either an inconsistency (mostly a variation of the grand father paradox), or a causal gap (i.e. an uncaused none-trivial event) in it.)

My intuition tells me that if time travel would be possible in the sense you are suggesting, then some kind of 'super determinism' would be true, which means that every event is causally dependent on every other event in the universe (at least every event in the event's past light cone).

I don’t think sci-fi has a very good track record of handling back to the past time travel stories in terms of the logic of such situations. Once it’s realized that no one will change the past, even if he or she is able to travel there, backward time travel becomes pretty mundane as a fictional device.

A good example is Stephen King’s 11/22/63, in which the protagonist goes back to the past and, after a series of struggles, manages to change the past by preventing the assassination of JFK. King does not notice, or probably chooses not to notice, that this is impossible. It’s not impossible (logically) that one may travel to the past. It’s impossible that one may travel to the past and also change it.

Early in the novel one of King’s characters invokes the Grandfather’s Paradox and dismisses it by saying something to the effect of, “why would anyone want to go back in time and kill his grandfather?” Which, needless to say, is not a very sophisticated philosophical analysis of the problem.

What King does not see (or chooses to ignore, as I suspect, since he’s not dumb) is that the Grandfather’s Paradox is an extreme case of the very same paradox that contaminates all accounts of traveling to the past and changing it. It can be stated this way in terms of King’s novel:

If one travels to the past and prevents the JFK assassination, then there is no reason later on to travel to the past and prevent his assassination, since he was not assassinated.

But if there is no reason to travel to the past to prevent his assassination, then he will be assassinated. But if he is assassinated, then there will be a reason to travel to the past to prevent his assassination. This quickly reduces to the logical contradiction:

Time traveler goes back in time iff time traveler does not go back in time.

This is the same logical structure of the Grandfather’s Paradox, which obviates all efforts to travel to the past and change it.

It should not be construed from this, however, that time travel to the past by itself is logically impossible. What is logically impossible is, jointly, that one travels to the past and changes it.

But this is not a very remarkable finding. Travel to the past is just an outlier case of our mundane, everyday travel to the future. In exactly the same way it is not logically possible to change the past, so too it is not logically possible to change the present or future (which should not be construed an example of superdeterminism — though that word has applicability to the Strong Free Will theorem.) What we actually do with our (free) acts is not change past, present or future; but make them be exactly what they were/are/will be.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by But

Read my post again until you get it.

I'm assuming that what you're saying is true and I'm deriving a steaming contradiction from it.

Just like Peacegirl, "read the book again till you agree with it".

FYI, I understand what you are trying to say, it's just that you are wrong.

Try reading the amended version, perhaps it will be easier to understand, and will not be a contradiction.

[davidm]

btw, you live in Switzerland, right GdB? I just recently discovered (pardon my prior ignorance!) that smack dab in the middle of Bern, there is a lovely 500-year-old sculpture of a man gobbling down helpless infants:



I’m thinking this must be an early incarnation of today’s anti-vax nutters, like peacegirl, who want to see children suffer and die.

I’m also wondering why we can’t have nice stuff like this here in the states.

[But]

Originally Posted by thedoc

Just like Peacegirl, "read the book again till you agree with it".

FYI, I understand what you are trying to say, it's just that you are wrong.

Try reading the amended version, perhaps it will be easier to understand, and will not be a contradiction.

The Sun is exactly where we see it, and that position has nothing to do with the speed of light. If you disagree with that, you're wrong. Simple as that. Dragar understands it, I understand it, Ari understands it, The Lone Ranger understands it, Spacemonkey understands it. You seem to have some trouble there.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by davidm

btw, you live in Switzerland, right GdB? I just recently discovered (pardon my prior ignorance!) that smack dab in the middle of Bern, there is a lovely 500-year-old sculpture of a man gobbling down helpless infants:



I’m thinking this must be an early incarnation of today’s anti-vax nutters, like peacegirl, who want to see children suffer and die.

I’m also wondering why we can’t have nice stuff like this here in the states.

I would think that this is part of a cautionary tale of what young children shouldn't do.

You can never tell how Peacegirl will interpret the image relative to the anti-vaxx movement.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by But

The Sun is exactly where we see it, and that position has nothing to do with the speed of light. If you disagree with that, you're wrong.

Yes I disagree with that, because it's wrong, and it doesn't matter how many others you claim agree with you, if that idea is wrong.

[But]

Sorry, you have no fucking clue what you are talking about.

I think my explanation was pretty clear. Read it again and tell me what part you don't understand.

You're looking at the Sun. Light travels in a straight line, so along that straight line there must be a position where the Sun was at some point in the past. Let's say you're right and the Sun isn't where you see it. But light is hitting you from that direction. It must have traveled in a straight line. Draw that line. In your mind or in a a diagram where you look at the solar system from above. The line misses the Sun. But the Sun was never on that line, not 8 minutes ago, not a hundred years ago. Contradiction.

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Definitions mean absolutely nothing where reality is
concerned. Regardless of what words I use to describe the sun;
regardless of how much there is I don’t know about this ball of fire
does not negate the fact that it is a part of the real world.

The Sun is not a ball of fire.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

The Sun is not a ball of fire.

There you go nitpicking again. Saying the Sun is a ball of fire was perfectly fine in the context of that paragraph. He didn't have to get into detail; that wasn't the purpose. He was trying to help people see that it doesn't matter what word we use to describe an object; what matters is that the word is describing something real. These answers are close enough for me and would have been close enough for him. You will continue to criticize me because that's why you're here. It gives you great satisfaction to call me a liar and join in with everyone else.

Is the Sun really a ball of fire?

Answer A: Yes the sun is constantly "on fire" Though actually, the word "fire" does not do it justice. The sun is in a state of Plasma. The 4th state of matter. At extreme pressures and temperature matter becomes plasma. Extreme nuclear reactions are happening. Many of the complex elements on the periodic table are created within the burning center of a star, such as Uranium and other hvy matter.
Fire as we know it needs oxygen to burn, but in this situation oxygen is not needed. The extreme temperatures and pressures, Hydrogen nuclear reactions fuel a star, the byproducts being the heavier elements.

Answer B: The sun is very massive and very hot. Its mass comes from the hydrogen of which it is mostly composed, and the heat comes from the fusion of hydrogen into helium. As it was mentioned before, there are some metals in the sun, resulting from the fusion of hydrogen and helium into heavier elements.

To more directly answer your question, the sun is a ball of fire, but the fire does not come from the kind of combustion reactions that we are used to on earth. Normal combustion involves a flammable substance combining with oxygen, producing carbon dioxide, water, and heat. This heat excites the particles in the air to the point that their electrons separate from their nuclei, forming a plasma. In the sun, the plasma forms from the heat that comes from the sun's nuclear fusion.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

It isn't 5 minutes of my time. I already said that light travels and therefore it takes time to get to a destination. But the eyes work differently if Lessans is right. We see the object directly if there is enough light present. But this knowledge, although important, is secondary to his first discovery. I wanted to discuss the knowledge that lies behind the door of determinism. But you won't let me continue. You are so sure you are right and I am wrong that your mind is already made up. There's nothing I can do.

It would take less than 5min of your time to give simple Y/N answers to these questions. Instead, you've spent literally YEARS weaseling and evading them, and then LYING about having already answered them.

Yes, you've said that light travels and takes time to arrive at a destination. But you have also contradicted this by claiming that light will be at the retina/film 8min before it has had time to travel there.

Claiming the eyes work differently is a red herring, as my questions concern ONLY the behaviour of light. My only assumption here about the functioning of the eyes is one you have agreed with—that light has to be in contact with the retina for it to work.

Why you prefer to lie and weasel makes no sense to me. It's as if you actually prefer the negative attention and name-calling it provokes than the civil discussion that would result from a little bit of honesty on your part.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

There you go nitpicking again. Saying the Sun is a ball of fire was perfectly fine in the context of that paragraph. He didn't have to get into detail; that wasn't the purpose. He was trying to help people see that it doesn't matter what word we use to describe an object; what matters is that the word is describing something real. These answers are close enough for me and would have been close enough for him. You will continue to criticize me because that's why you're here. It gives you great satisfaction to call me a liar and join in with everyone else.

Maybe you could provide a list explaining which parts of the Lessianic holy text are 'spot on' astute observations and which are merely 'close enough'.

And if don't like being called a liar, stop fucking lying all the time.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

Maybe you could provide a list explaining which parts of the Lessianic holy text are 'spot on' astute observations and which are merely 'close enough'.

And if don't like being called a liar, stop fucking lying all the time.

You just want to start Spacemonkey. You're on the anti-Lessans bandwagon and you don't know how to get off. The answers these people gave as to whether the Sun is a ball of fire was good enough. There was nothing wrong with my father using this expression. If he was talking about the make up of the Sun, then his statement would have been inadequate. In the following excerpt, these people are defining how they are using certain terms interchangeably in a specific context. Lessans also stated that he was using certain words interchangeably in a specific context. He did nothing wrong. Keep nitpicking. It doesn't change the truth of his words.

The (Strong) Free Will Theorem

Our theorem is a strengthened form of the original
version of [1]. Before stating it, we make our terms
more precise. We use the words “properties”,
“events”, and “information” almost interchangeably:
whether an event has happened is a property,
and whether a property obtains can be coded by
an information-bit. The exact general meaning of
these terms, which may vary with some theory
that may be considered, is not important, since we
only use them in the specific context of our three
axioms.

http://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200226p.pdf

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

You just want to start Spacemonkey. You're just on the anti-Lessans bandwagon and you don't know how to get off. The answers these people gave as to whether the Sun is a ball of fire was good enough. There was nothing wrong with my father using this expression. If he was talking about the make up of the Sun, then his statement would have been inadequate. In the following excerpt, these people are defining how they are using certain terms interchangeably in the context that they were using them. Lessans also stated that he was using certain words interchangeably in the context of his writing. He did nothing wrong. Keep nitpicking. It doesn't change the truth of his words.

Again, how are we meant to distinguish which parts of the Lessianic text are 'spot on' astute observations and which are merely 'good enough'? Do you think that lying is acceptable behaviour, or do you just prefer the negative responses it generates to actually having to be honest?

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by But

Dragar understands it, I understand it, Ari understands it, The Lone Ranger understands it, Spacemonkey understands it. You seem to have some trouble there.

Argument from authority, a logical fallacy and just as wrong.