A revolution in thought

[naturalist.atheist]

Originally Posted by Dragar

Please compare and contrast. Are you disputing the rules of how light works, or not? Make up your mind.

In peacegirls world the photon doesn't carry any image information. She doesn't understand optics and ray trace diagrams. If she did then this approach might be productive with peacegirl. But you have to realize that she doesn't posses a function brain. It is more like a mess of jello. It's a wonder she appears as coherent as she does. So explaining how the world works to her is futile. Think of peacegirl as being stuck in a massive loop but with massive logic failure as well.

RADIOLAB - Loops

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Then why are people still here if they believe there's nothing to this claim? I would be out of my mind.

I can certainly believe that part.

[davidm]

So, peacegirl, here is what you said:

In order for a camera to work, light has to be striking the lens.

So the light has to be striking the lens. Now according to Lessans, if God were to turn on the sun at noon, we would see the sun immediately, but we would not see the neighbor standing next to us for eight and a half minutes.

So here is the scenario.

1. God turns on the sun at noon.

2. Your neighbor has a camera pointed at the sun.

3. The light has to be striking the lens, according to you, for the camera to take a picture of the sun.

4. However, according to Lessans, even though we would see the sun immediately, when God turned it on, we would not see our neighbor for eight and a half minutes. So the light is not striking the neighbor until that much time has passed. If the light is not striking the neighbor, it’s also not striking the camera.

5. You now say that we take pictures in real time, just like seeing in real time. But you also say that the light has to be at the lens of the camera, in order to take a picture. But according to Lessans, the light will not be at the camera for eight and a half minutes, because that is how long it will take for the light to reach your neighbor, who is holding the camera. So the camera, according to Lessans, cannot take pictures in real time.

Therefore, you have contradicted your father’s claims. It behooves you to return to your original position, which was that while we see in real time, the camera takes pictures in delayed time. If you don’t return to your original position, you are in disagreement with Lessans.

However, if you do return to your original position — that we see in real time, but cameras take pictures in delayed time — this position is wholly refuted by the fact that what we see, and the images made by cameras, are the same. That would be impossible if we saw in real time but took pictures in delayed time.

So either you are making a claim that contradicts plainly observed reality, or you are making a claim that contradicts Lessans.

Which is it, peacegirl? We’re dying to know.

By the way, you can't wriggle out of this jam by dismissing Lessans' claim here as "merely hypothetical." This just shows you don't know the meaning of "hypothesis." He is a making a claim of the fashion that: Assuming what I say is true, if x occuirs, we should expect y to happen. If y does not happen, then what Lessans says about the world is untrue. Since y does not happen, Lessans is wrong.

[davidm]

On brighter news, just seven more pages to the Page 500 Parteh!

[davidm]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I am not misleading anybody. How many times do I have to say that nothing is being received. The lens is focused on the object, so the light will show an exact "mirror image" (for lack of a better word) on the lens of a camera or the lens of an eye.

Hey, peacegirl? Focus: optics.

Now, peacegirl, if you will bother to read the article (which you probably won’t) you will discover the uncomfortable fact that “focusing” is a physical process involving light passing through lenses. But you contend that what a camera focuses is the object. So a lens focuses the object! What does that mean, peacegirl? Are you saying that when a camera on a telescope focuses on the planet Saturn the planet itself passes through the telescope camera?

Because that is the plain and only sense of what “focus the object” can mean. And, of course, it’s absurd.

Would you care to address this point, peacegirl?

[davidm]

Peacegirl, when the eyes see the moon, and focus the object itself, are you saying that the moon passes through the lenses of our eyes? If not, what are you saying?

Did Lessans develop this idea one day when heard the following song lyric?

"When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore!"*

*Thanks to Nullifidian for the song lyric!

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by davidm

On brighter news, just seven more pages to the Page 500 Parteh!

And just what are the plans for the party? Who is invited? What are the requirements for an invitation? I would think honesty should be high on the list, but not Peacegirls kind of High, thats kind of scary. Someone needs to keep Stephen away from the mashed potatos. Are we having music? Will there be popcorn?

[thedoc]

BTW, I prefer wine over beer, but not whine.

[Angakuk]

Originally Posted by davidm

Hey, peacegirl? Focus: optics.

Now, peacegirl, if you will bother to read the article (which you probably won’t) you will discover the uncomfortable fact that “focusing” is a physical process involving light passing through lenses. But you contend that what a camera focuses is the object. So a lens focuses the object! What does that mean, peacegirl? Are you saying that when a camera on a telescope focuses on the planet Saturn the planet itself passes through the telescope camera?

Because that is the plain and only sense of what “focus the object” can mean. And, of course, it’s absurd.

Would you care to address this point, peacegirl?

David, where did she say "focus the object"? In the passage that you quote above she wrote "focused on the object". While that is still technically incorrect, it is not nearly as silly as saying "focus the object".

[Vivisectus]

Ah David, you just don't get that the camera detects the light striking it that is already here to detect something that is lightyears away because of focussing lenses and objects in fields of view and the colors that appear from interacting with the atmosphere and light-emitting photons that are like miniature carbon-copies of the objects that emitted them.

Through some unknown means photons emitted a hundred years ago were emitted in such a way that by the time they reach the camera, they are detected in such a way as to form an image of what is there at the time of their reaching the camera.

All the while we ignore the elegant and well-tested other idea that, amazingly, people seem to prefer because it works and does not require magic: the idea that Lessans was completely wrong about sight.

And all this because he was not able to wrap his head around (or was wholly ignorant of) the notion of such things as cultural conditioning, or the age-old problem of the relation between perception and reality.

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

Thank you. Now let's follow through on the implications of this. At time T1 the ball is blue, and film in the camera is forming a real-time blue image on the basis of the wavelength of the blue light present at the lens/camera, correct?

Next question: How did that blue light get there?

Light travels. So at time T-1 (a moment before T1) that light was presumably still blue and had not quite reached the lens/camera, and yet the ball at T-1 was red. So where did that blue light come from?

I am going to go ahead and bump this as it seems to be getting ignored.

[LadyShea]

I've been trying to understand "mirror image at the lens" and "already there" light and light as a conduit, peacegirl.

It seems to me that you understand that travels (at least in space), but that somehow you think once the first light reaches Earth, travel time ceases to be an issue. What I can't figure out is how you're visualizing this permanent connection. Can you come up with any analogy?

Is it like a tunnel that you simply need to look in and you see the source at the other end?

[ceptimus]

I posted the analogy about the piece of string a while back. The string is attached to an object at one end, and then it takes time to carry the other end to your location. But once the string is in position, it provides an instantaneous connection between the two ends.

Shame that light isn't really like that, as numerous experiments have shown.

[LadyShea]

There is a thought experiment about that I read at several physics forums; some people posited real time information transfer by saying if you connect a rigid pole between two very distant points, and push one end forward, the other end should instantaneously move forward too. Of course that's not the case...the force/energy still must travel from atom to atom the length of the rigid pole, which takes time.

[ceptimus]

Absolutely. There is no such thing as a completely rigid object. Even if the 'string' were made of a solid rod of diamond, the effect of tugging on one end would travel along the rod at much less than the speed of light.

Another thing you hear people say is that liquids, such as water, are 'incompressible'.

Tell them that, yes, liquids are hard to compress. But they're not completely incompressible or sound waves either couldn't travel through them or would have to travel at infinite speed.

[LadyShea]

I think the energy would travel at the speed of sound through the pole's material, correct, because it is a compression wave?

[ceptimus]

Yes, that's right.

Scientists originally thought that waves couldn't travel through a vacuum, so they came up with the idea of the Luminiferous aether which was supposed to be a 'fluid' that filled the whole universe, through which the waves of light could travel. Light would then be compression or shear waves travelling at 'the speed of sound' in the aether.

This aether would have had very strange properties - it had to be incredibly stiff and rigid to account for the high speed that light waves propagated through it, but at the same time it had to allow planets, moons, comets and other matter to pass through with no appreciable resistance or friction.

And, of course, the aether would be an absolute reference frame - the aether itself could be considered as stationary (but for the vibrations due to light) and so it would be possible to measure the 'absolute motion' of the Earth with respect to this stationary aether.

The scientists of the day attempted to measure this absolute motion - they measured the speed of light in two directions, at right angles to each other, expecting to find a difference. They would then be able to do the math and work out the direction and speed at which the Earth was travelling, relative to the aether.

They always got the inexplicable result that the Earth was stationary with respect to the aether! Even if the Sun, by some coincidence, were stationary with respect to the aether, the Earth is known to travel at around 85,000 mph on its orbit around the Sun, and the experiments were sensitive enough to pick up speeds as 'low' as 85,000 mph, even though this is just a tiny fraction of the speed of light.

At first, they tried to explain the results by 'aether dragging' - large objects, such as the Earth, were presumed to drag the local aether along with them - in the same way that when your car is travelling through rain it collects a layer of water on the car that travels along with the car itself.

It took the genius of Einstein to accept that the speed of light would always be a constant, no matter how it was measured and whether the observer was moving or not. He then worked out all the results of this observation - the mind-blowing facts that time isn't constant, objects change their dimensions and mass when they move, mass can be converted into energy and so on.

Compared to Lessans, Einstein was asking people to abandon many more of their common-sense notions of how the universe worked - notions that had worked well for centuries!

Note however that people were prepared to believe Einstein! His theory explained observations better than the existing theories of the time, so even though Einstein's universe certainly seemed weird, people came to accept that this is how things really are!

If Peacegirl could point to one observable fact that can't be explained by current theories, and can be better explained by Lessans' new ones (and the new theories don't contradict other observations known to be correct) then people would quickly abandon the theories of Einstein and accept the new Lessans system.

Of course, she can't point to any such facts - all the 'examples' given by Lessans and Peacegirl are make believe and fly in the face of known accurate observations. Therefore they prove nothing - they are not even self-consistent, so couldn't hold in any logically possible universe, let alone this one!

[Dragar]

Great summary ceptimus.

Of course, it wasn't just Einstein. People like Voigt, Lorentz, Poincaré and Larmor were all working heavily in this field. Einstein's main contribution with regards to Special Relativity was to establish the coherent framework for the somewhat confused initial attempts of the above, as well as make the bold assertion that the different 'time' coordinates that appeared in the works of people like Voight and Lorentz (that Poincaré eventually noted were the time measured by a moving clock) were no less 'correct' than any other observer's clock. In other words, the relativity of time (though many others had voiced the idea or similar, like Poincaré, Mach, Lorentz, Bucherer, etc.).

Major contributions to science are never the project of a sole man's genius, and it's probably another good reason to be skeptical of grandiose claims by an isolated individual - the opposite of Einstein's work.

[davidm]

Originally Posted by Angakuk

David, where did she say "focus the object"? In the passage that you quote above she wrote "focused on the object". While that is still technically incorrect, it is not nearly as silly as saying "focus the object".

Indeed, I was going to bring up this very point.

What does it mean to "focus on the object?" This is just a colloquial way of saying that one focuses light from the object.

There really is no such thing as focusing "on" an object. But if the lens does not focus light, what, then, does it mean to say that the eyes, or a camera, focus on an object? It means nothing.

What would be meant, then, is not that the eyes focus ON the object, but rather that they focus the object.

Therefore, what peacegirl must mean is that the object itself passes through the eye! Holy shit, I just looked up at the moon, no wonder I've got such a headache! The moon itself, the object itself, has just passed through my eyes and is inside my head now!

Oh, that didn't happen, peacegirl? Then what did happen?

[davidm]

Originally Posted by thedoc

And just what are the plans for the party? Who is invited? What are the requirements for an invitation? I would think honesty should be high on the list, but not Peacegirls kind of High, thats kind of scary. Someone needs to keep Stephen away from the mashed potatos. Are we having music? Will there be popcorn?

We have booked a solid block of 50 pages for non-stop partying. All are invited. Bring YouTube videos, NBL's (Doc X, are you listening?), lots and LOTS of alcohol, food of all kinds (guard the mashed potatos) and bring the genitals of your Significant Other (remember, in Lessans' New World, you don't fall in love with another person, you fall in love with their genitals).

Party on!

[davidm]

Originally Posted by ceptimus

I posted the analogy about the piece of string a while back. The string is attached to an object at one end, and then it takes time to carry the other end to your location. But once the string is in position, it provides an instantaneous connection between the two ends.

Shame that light isn't really like that, as numerous experiments have shown.

But even this analogy doesn't quite capture the sheer looniness of Lessans' bizarro claims. If light behaved like that, you would still have to wait eight and a half minutes to see the sun, after God turned it on. But no, according to Lessans, while you would have to wait eight and a half minutes to see your neighbor, you'd see the sun immediately, when God turned it on! The only way to make any logical sense of this inane claim is to suppose that there two different kinds of light -- the source light which is seen immediately, and the reflected light for which one has to wait. Of course, this is utter nonsense, and is further confused by the fact that the Great Man posited that in the scenario above, one would also see the moon instantaneously! Is it possible that Lessans forgot (or never knew) that the moon reflects the light of the sun? Maybe he supposed that the moon is also a source light, and when we see a half-moon, for instance, only half the moon has been turned on!

[Stephen Maturin]

Maybe so, davidm, but I don't see how any of that negates efferent vision.

Entertainingly enough, the term "efferent vision" appears to be a heresy of peacegirl's manufacture. The term appears nowhere in The Sacred Text.

However, what does appear in The Sacred Text is no less foolish or incorrect. Lessans describes sight as an "efferent experience" and follows up with a laughably inaccurate description of the physiology involved:

The eyes are the windows of the brain through which experience is gained not by what comes in on the waves of light as a result of striking the optic nerve, but by what is looked at in relation to the afferent experience of the senses. What is seen through the eyes is an efferent experience. If a lion roared in that room a newborn baby would hear the sound and react because this impinges on the eardrum and is then transmitted to the brain. The same holds true for anything that makes direct contact with an afferent nerve ending, but this is far from the case with the eyes because there is no similar afferent nerve ending in this organ.

Lessanetics at 118.

Of course, as TLR and others have pointed out repeatedly, there are nothing but afferent neurons in the human optic nerve. Lessans apparently never learned or had no truck with at least one fundamental precept of human discourse, namely that when you pontificate (i.e., make stuff up and summarily blow it out your shitter) you'll more likely than not be wrong, often spectacularly so.

On a more serious note, the upcoming 500-Page Parteh will be a momentous event for . Please rest assured that I'll treat the event with the respect it deserves by keeping President Johnson in the White House throughout the proceedings. The mashed potatoes are safe this time around.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by davidm

So, peacegirl, here is what you said:

So the light has to be striking the lens. Now according to Lessans, if God were to turn on the sun at noon, we would see the sun immediately, but we would not see the neighbor standing next to us for eight and a half minutes.

So here is the scenario.

1. God turns on the sun at noon.

2. Your neighbor has a camera pointed at the sun.

3. The light has to be striking the lens, according to you, for the camera to take a picture of the sun.

4. However, according to Lessans, even though we would see the sun immediately, when God turned it on, we would not see our neighbor for eight and a half minutes. So the light is not striking the neighbor until that much time has passed. If the light is not striking the neighbor, it’s also not striking the camera.

5. You now say that we take pictures in real time, just like seeing in real time. But you also say that the light has to be at the lens of the camera, in order to take a picture. But according to Lessans, the light will not be at the camera for eight and a half minutes, because that is how long it will take for the light to reach your neighbor, who is holding the camera. So the camera, according to Lessans, cannot take pictures in real time.

Therefore, you have contradicted your father’s claims. It behooves you to return to your original position, which was that while we see in real time, the camera takes pictures in delayed time. If you don’t return to your original position, you are in disagreement with Lessans.

However, if you do return to your original position — that we see in real time, but cameras take pictures in delayed time — this position is wholly refuted by the fact that what we see, and the images made by cameras, are the same. That would be impossible if we saw in real time but took pictures in delayed time.

So either you are making a claim that contradicts plainly observed reality, or you are making a claim that contradicts Lessans.

Which is it, peacegirl? We’re dying to know.

By the way, you can't wriggle out of this jam by dismissing Lessans' claim here as "merely hypothetical." This just shows you don't know the meaning of "hypothesis." He is a making a claim of the fashion that: Assuming what I say is true, if x occuirs, we should expect y to happen. If y does not happen, then what Lessans says about the world is untrue. Since y does not happen, Lessans is wrong.

David, with all do respect, do you have OCD?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by davidm

On brighter news, just seven more pages to the Page 500 Parteh!

You are good for something David. I hope you know I'm playing with you. That being said, could you please make a party that goes on for at four days instead of one? I need time to regroup. My energizer battery is running low.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by davidm

Hey, peacegirl? Focus: optics.

Now, peacegirl, if you will bother to read the article (which you probably won’t) you will discover the uncomfortable fact that “focusing” is a physical process involving light passing through lenses. But you contend that what a camera focuses is the object. So a lens focuses the object! What does that mean, peacegirl? Are you saying that when a camera on a telescope focuses on the planet Saturn the planet itself passes through the telescope camera?

Did you catch it?

In geometrical optics, a focus, also called an image point, is the point where light rays originating from a point on the object converge.

This only confirms what I've been saying all along. There is a geometric form that comes together to make a mirror image. It's called the image point. I'm kind of winging this, and I will admit to this, so don't go blasting me for not being a physicist, ok? This has nothing whatsoever to do with what Lessans is claiming, so please don't sidetrack the conversation so you can say, "see, he is a nutcase." If you actually believe this, what am I supposed to do? Seriously, I'm not being defensive for no reason. I will ask again: What am I supposed to do if Lessans is right? It makes me very sad, and I'm trying to hold on so that you won't lose this knowledge. But it's so very hard because of all the ridicule. I just hope there will be people who will not give up on these claims.