A revolution in thought

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

How long is the list of crackpots who were actually crackpots do you think?

Or how long is the list of discoveries that were not ridiculed at first?

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

If nobody is looking at the object, it would be the same thing as if we were looking.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Photons are present as a mirror image only when we're looking at the object.

That's another flat contradiction, Peacegirl. Well done.

Your first quote says that nonabsorbed photons behave the same regardless of whether anyone is looking or not. Your second says that they behave differently when the object is looked at.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

Peacegirl, here's a very simple disproof of efferent vision and real-time photography. Both require a camera to be able to record the color change of a distant object in real-time. So when a distant ball changes from blue to red, a camera must be able to photograph it as red as soon as it has become red. But if the camera is inside the range where the traveling non-absorbed light has yet to return to 'white full-spectrum' light, then all that light will be blue before the color change. And at the very moment the ball changes to red (i.e. has turned into a ball that absorbs all but red photons) there are no red photons at the camera. They were previously all being absorbed by the ball, and are only now free to bounce off the ball and begin traveling towards the camera. So none of them can be at the camera yet. But the camera cannot produce a red image on film without any red photons there to chemically interact with the film. So the camera cannot produce a real-time image of the newly red ball, and real-time photgraphy and efferent vision are thereby disproved. QED.

How do red photons get to be at the camera film when at the immediately preceding moment there were no red photons anywhere near the camera? Where were those same photons a moment before the photograph was taken, what were they then doing, and were they still of red wavelength?

[But]

Originally Posted by davidm

That the solution to the ontology of the universe was discovered in 1925, via quantum mechanics. Nothing exists outside of mental states. The first quantum experiments showed that absent a measurement, a "particle" had no properties. Therefore, this physicist concludes, the "properties" of the external world are entirely mental, and there is no external reality. This is pure philosophical idealism, going to back to Berkelely who believed that to exist is to be perceived. The author believes QM vindicates philosophical idealism, and that there is no external world.

I don't quite get what the use of this is, as with other forms of solipsism. It doesn't buy you anything in terms of complexity. Everything is still as complicated as it was, except maybe plus the meaningless idea that it's all in your (or some) mind. If everything is in your head (or mind, or mental) then that doesn't contain any information.

Originally Posted by davidm

According to QM, the photons are in superposition, being in every possible location simultaneously, some of them on the other side of the universe. When we look, the wave function describing the photon immediately collapses to a single point that arises at random.

There's a problem. Can you see what it is? If the photons are everywhere simultaneously, then you are looking.

At least, some of you are.

[naturalist.atheist]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

No it isn't; it's just harder to wrap your mind around because you're so use to thinking one way.

I sure hope not, but that's beyond my ability to predict.

Here is a link to people who were considered crackpots but who were later vindicated. It might make you think twice.

Ridiculed science mavericks vindicated

peacegirl, this is progress. You are able to admit that Lessans looks like a crackpot. However to get to this point you have made yourself look like a lunatic.

[davidm]

Here is Richard Conn Henry's review of the book "Quantum Enigma." The main points that Henry makes are as follows:

Scientists have known since 1925 that the external world does not exist, and that philosophical idealism is true. But they are too chickenshit to face up to this fact and simply announce it to the public.

The 1925 discovery that the external world does not exist overturns the Copernican Revolution, restores man to the center of reality and is the greatest discovery ever.

Galileo was never afraid of the church in announcing his discoveries. He simply couldn't believe what he had discovered, and he was actually afraid of ridicule by his intellectual peers (or near-peers). Likewise Copernicus. But (says Henry) Galileo followed the evidence where it led, and so was heroic in announcing what he himself had such trouble believing: that the earth rotated on its axis and revolved around the sun. By contrast, Einstein, "the Galileo of quantum mechanics," wimped out and did not follow the evidence where it led: that the external world does not exist, and only mental states exist.

As this physicist puts it:

No, I think that the explanation lies in particular history. In the Copernican case, the man of character and strong opinion, Galileo, came to the right conclusion, and carried society with him. In the case of the quantum, the man of character and strong opinion, Einstein, came to the wrong conclusion, yet nevertheless, he carried society with him. Leaving me in the pickle that I find myself in. As a person of iron integrity, I cannot participate in the dereliction of social duty that is going on among scientists today. I must speak up, and, by gum, I am!

I must say that passage sounds SO Lessans-like to me, but I have no intention of going all ad hom here! I think the points THIS person makes are well worth considering, regardless of the self-important tone.

If only mental states exist, then solipsism is true. But if solipsism is true, there are no other minds except yours. This is circumvented by conceding that while bodies (and all other physical things) fail to exist, all minds exist, not just YOUR mind. So solipsism is false. However, since physicalism is also false, it follows that theism (specifically deism, says Henry) is true. This sounds to me straightforwardly like Berkeleyian idealism. Thoughts?

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Here is a link to people who were considered crackpots but who were later vindicated. It might make you think twice.

Ridiculed science mavericks vindicated

The problem is that most of these people were not ridiculed by the scientific community and regarded as "crackpots." That website exaggerates quite a bit. And you'd know this if you bothered to do a bare minimum of research -- as opposed to uncritically accepting the claims of some anonymous website that you think support your prejudices.

It's true that most of these people didn't have their ideas immediately and unquestioningly accepted by the scientific community. But that's utterly proper -- science demands evidence, and until there was convincing evidence to support these claims, it was utterly proper to withhold acceptance.

But even if the website didn't exaggerate at all, as it quite rightly points out, 99% of the people who look and act like crackpots turn out to be ... crackpots. Funny how peacegirl seems to have ignored that point.

The scientific community is well-aware that notions which seem counterintuitive -- even bizarre -- sometimes turn out to be true. But if a claim has exactly zero evidence to support it, is flatly disproved by experiment and observation, and flat-out violates physical laws -- then it's very safe to conclude that it is indeed the work of a ... wait for it ... crackpot.



But none of this is new. This is hardly the first time that peacegirl has made false claims -- claims that she would know were false if she made even the slightest effort to do a little honest investigation.

Like Lessans before her, peacegirl has demonstrated time and again that she's willfully ignorant (just a teensy bit of honest investigation would reveal that most of that website's claims are false); that she'll uncritically accept anything that she thinks supports her claims while flat-out rejecting the mountains of evidence which contradict her claims (which is exceptionally dishonest, since she claims to be interested in the truth); and that, when all else fails, she won't hesitate to lie.

[But]

Originally Posted by davidm

Here is Richard Conn Henry's review of the book "Quantum Enigma." The main points that Henry makes are as follows:

Scientists have known since 1925 that the external world does not exist, and that philosophical idealism is true. But they are too chickenshit to face up to this fact and simply announce it to the public.

The 1925 discovery that the external world does not exist overturns the Copernican Revolution, restores man to the center of reality and is the greatest discovery ever.

Galileo was never afraid of the church in announcing his discoveries. He simply couldn't believe what he had discovered, and he was actually afraid of ridicule by his intellectual peers (or near-peers). Likewise Copernicus. But (says Henry) Galileo followed the evidence where it led, and so was heroic in announcing what he himself had such trouble believing: that the earth rotated on its axis and revolved around the sun. By contrast, Einstein, "the Galileo of quantum mechanics," wimped out and did not follow the evidence where it led: that the external world does not exist, and only mental states exist.

I've read the mental universe essay again and he seems very confident, but I can't find a place where he actually explains what he means and why it is true. I'm more than ready to accept conclusions like his, but I don't think he has a good argument.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

That's another flat contradiction, Peacegirl. Well done.

Your first quote says that nonabsorbed photons behave the same regardless of whether anyone is looking or not. Your second says that they behave differently when the object is looked at.

If you're looking directly at the object, the photons that are revealing that object can be replaced by the Sun's constant energy, but the problem stems from the idea that it is not the object that the eyes are seeing, but the light that is traveling to the eye and causing the image to be seen. If you separate the photons from the object, as if they are like drops of water that go downstream until they reach you, you're going to continue to argue with me.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

You haven't offered a possible mechanism by which light can be located at the retina without having traveled or teleported from it's source (the object in the case of reflected light) to the retina.

But I have. Again, you are failing to understand how efferent vision would make this possible. You are just scoffing the entire claim away and saying that it doesn't matter how the brain and eyes work. It only matters how light works. That is wrong.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

You haven't offered a possible mechanism by which light can be located at the retina without having traveled or teleported from it's source (the object in the case of reflected light) to the retina.

There you go again, focusing on the afferent view. You are not coming from the position of the brain looking through the eyes, as a window, which is the efferent view. If you can't separate these two models, you will never get it and you will continue to believe that this violates the laws of physics.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

The first sentence reads, in part "at least 99% of revolutionary announcements from the fringes of science are just as bogus as they seem"

This is what the first paragraph says. You are doing exactly what you tell me I do, read only parts of a tract.

While it's true that at least 99% of revolutionary announcements from the fringes of science are just as bogus as they seem, we cannot dismiss every one of them without investigation. If we do, then we'll certainly take our place among the ranks of scoffers who accidentally helped delay numbers of major scientific discoveries throughout history. Beware, for many discoveries such as powered flight and drifting continents today only appear sane and acceptable because we have such powerful hindsight. These same advancements were seen as obviously a bunch of disgusting lunatic garbage during the years they were first discovered.

Ridiculed science mavericks vindicated

Originally Posted by peacegirl

The point was not how many crackpots there are, but how many crackpots turned out to be true discoverers.

Originally Posted by LadyShea

That is meaningless then because they had maybe 50 people on that list...out of how many? Thousands? Millions? Should we examine Scientology and Dianetics more closely just in case L. Ron Hubbard was a true discoverer? What about the Time Cube guy's claims?

Yes, that's par for the course but you can't throw out the gem that is amidst the garbage claims.

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Also note that all the people on that list had hard evidence, data, empirical observations, testable hypotheses, working models and/or demonstrable prototypes. Lessans has...zilch

You're missing the point. You are extremely stubborn in order to hold on to your position that Lessans was wrong. You have committed yourself to this belief, so now you have to defend it.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

If you're looking directly at the object, the photons that are revealing that object can be replaced by the Sun's constant energy, but the problem stems from the idea that it is not the object that the eyes are seeing, but the light that is traveling to the eye and causing the image to be seen. If you separate the photons from the object, as if they are like drops of water that go downstream until they reach you, you're going to continue to argue with me.

What does any of this have to do with the contradiction I pointed out?

And physics says that photons are quanta of electromagnetic radiation that are separate from the object and travel independently. Are you disagreeing with physics?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Also, please note how many times you flip flopped and had to clarify in this exchange and still haven't answered the question asked.

According to your statement (above in red), photons "become" mirror images when we are looking at something, what does the reflected light do when we are not looking at that same thing?

Is your answer "traveling"?

By what mechanism could light determine when to merely travel, and when to "become" a mirror image? How does it "become" a mirror image...what is that process?

It doesn't become anything LadyShea. You are again focusing on light, as if light does something that is different than what its properties actually are. It is the eyes that capture the light, which provides a mirror image because of what the ability of the brain, looking through the eyes, can do, which then extends to cameras because it's the same phenomenon regardless.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

But I have. Again, you are failing to understand how efferent vision would make this possible. You are just scoffing the entire claim away and saying that it doesn't matter how the brain and eyes work. It only matters how light works. That is wrong.

What was the mechanism you think you provided? (Keep in mind that specifying conditions is not the same as providing a mechanism.)

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

But I have. Again, you are failing to understand how efferent vision would make this possible. You are just scoffing the entire claim away and saying that it doesn't matter how the brain and eyes work. It only matters how light works. That is wrong.

You haven't explained a mechanism, a process, you've only asserted that it happens, not how it happens.

The brain and eyes don't matter in photography, only light matters in photography, yet you keep asserting it works in real time too, and still refuse to offer a mechanism that is possible.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

That's a 10.0 on the weasel scale. Where do my questions say that non-absorbed light is all there is to it? The questions themselves establish that they only ask about what you have explicitly agreed to. Did you even read the questions? I doubt that you did.

Peacegirl, in real-time photography, in a scenario involving only an object, a camera, and light (and no eyes, brains, or vision)...

1) You agree that some of the light which hits the object is not absorbed, still exists 0.0001sec after hitting the object, and must have a location at that time. So what is the location of these nonabsorbed photons 0.0001sec after they have hit the object? Are they about 30 meters from the object and traveling away from it at light speed? Yes or No? If no, then where are they located at this time?

2) You agree that there are photons at the camera film (interacting with it to determine the color of the resulting image) when the photograph is taken, that this light also existed 0.0001sec before the photograph was taken, and that it must have had a location at this time. So what is the location of these photons 0.0001sec before they are at the camera film (i.e. 0.0001sec before the photograph is taken)? Were they about 30 meters away from the camera film and traveling towards it at light speed? Yes or No? If no, then were were they located at this time?

Bump.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

It doesn't become anything LadyShea. You are again focusing on light, as if light does something that is different than what its properties actually are. It is the eyes that capture the light, which provides a mirror image because of what the ability of the brain, looking through the eyes, can do, which then extends to cameras because it's the same phenomenon regardless.

The question was what does nonabsorbed light do after hitting an object when no-one is looking at it.

Why does your answer yet again involve eyes and the brain?

Making this mistake once would be odd. Doing it over and over again over a period of not only months but years suggests something far more serious.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

It doesn't become anything LadyShea.

See your red statement at the top of this discussion? What did you really mean this time?

You are again focusing on light, as if light does something that is different than what its properties actually are.

Because your description has light doing something it doesn't do according to its known properties

It is the eyes that capture the light, which provides a mirror image because of what the ability of the brain, looking through the eyes, can do, which then extends to cameras because it's the same phenomenon regardless.

The light still needs to come to be at the location of the eyes or camera film to be captured. You have not yet offered a mechanism for that.

Also how does the ability of the brain work for a camera? If it's the same phenomenon then the brain is not needed.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Continuing on crackpots

I'd also add that several of Lessans direct claims have been shown to be completely false.
He claimed trillions of babies have been born

He actually did not put that in the book, but even so, it's hard to calculate how many babies have been born since time immemorial. If he was off in his calculations, that does not in any way discredit his third discovery. Again, you are focusing on these stupid technicalities, and then rushing to a wrong conclusion that his actual claims are flawed. That's is not good science LadyShea.

Originally Posted by LadyShea

He claimed light is molecular in structure

Again, that does not in any way discredit his discovery. He would have admitted he didn't use the right word, but the concept remains untouched. You really don't see what you're doing, do you? You are trying to find little nothings to discredit him, which have absolutely nothing to do with anything.

Originally Posted by LadyShea"He claimed there are no afferent structures in the eye
He mischaracterized what optics states on several occasions including the "images traveling on wings of light" and that scientists and encyclopedias claimed we would see Columbus discovering America from Rigel[/quote]

Saying "images traveling on the wings of light" was a metaphor and it still holds. Patterns in the light (which is what he meant) do not bounce and travel away from the object. As far as scientists claiming that we would see Columbus discovering America from Rigel, was a hypothetical example, but it also holds if science believes images could be seen thousands of years later if the conditions were right. He was trying to make it very clear that there would never be a time that an event like this could occur.

[quote="LadyShea

You have further claimed that Lessans "germinal substance" was physical matter that had mass and weight and could be located in the body, and you posited protoplasm as the possible substance and only much later, when pressed about this substance, you decided that the germinal substance is nothing more than gametes.

Germinal substance is that substance that never dies. It is carried along from generation to generation in the ovaries and testes. That's what he meant. Call it what you want, but don't criticize what you have absolutely no understanding of.

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Your attempts at demonstrating that efferent real time seeing is possible have resulted in claims that violate the laws of physics

This is crackpot stuff with nothing to vindicate it, dude.

There is everything to indicate it, and you are not the final word. Get off of your high horse, dude!

[Spacemonkey]

Are you really just here for the attention?

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

There you go again, focusing on the afferent view. You are not coming from the position of the brain looking through the eyes, as a window, which is the efferent view. If you can't separate these two models, you will never get it and you will continue to believe that this violates the laws of physics.

There you go again, weaseling and avoiding.

If efferent vision has light located at the retina, or on the surface of camera film, which you've stated it does (and which is a requirement for photography), you must offer a possible mechanism for that light to come to be located at the retina, or camera film.

You stated it doesn't travel or teleport, so you are still in need of an explanation for that change in location of light photons without teleporting or traveling from it's source or previous location to that location at the retina or camera film surface.

Location changes cannot happen without a physical mechanism or process. You can't get your car from your driveway to the neighbors driveway without it traveling, right? Same thing here.

[naturalist.atheist]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

Are you really just here for the attention?

Just about any kind of attention except genuine direct concern for her mental health. She doesn't want that kind of attention.

[naturalist.atheist]

Originally Posted by davidm

Here is Richard Conn Henry's review of the book "Quantum Enigma." The main points that Henry makes are as follows:

Scientists have known since 1925 that the external world does not exist, and that philosophical idealism is true. But they are too chickenshit to face up to this fact and simply announce it to the public.

The 1925 discovery that the external world does not exist overturns the Copernican Revolution, restores man to the center of reality and is the greatest discovery ever.

Galileo was never afraid of the church in announcing his discoveries. He simply couldn't believe what he had discovered, and he was actually afraid of ridicule by his intellectual peers (or near-peers). Likewise Copernicus. But (says Henry) Galileo followed the evidence where it led, and so was heroic in announcing what he himself had such trouble believing: that the earth rotated on its axis and revolved around the sun. By contrast, Einstein, "the Galileo of quantum mechanics," wimped out and did not follow the evidence where it led: that the external world does not exist, and only mental states exist.

As this physicist puts it:

I must say that passage sounds SO Lessans-like to me, but I have no intention of going all ad hom here! I think the points THIS person makes are well worth considering, regardless of the self-important tone.

If only mental states exist, then solipsism is true. But if solipsism is true, there are no other minds except yours. This is circumvented by conceding that while bodies (and all other physical things) fail to exist, all minds exist, not just YOUR mind. So solipsism is false. However, since physicalism is also false, it follows that theism (specifically deism, says Henry) is true. This sounds to me straightforwardly like Berkeleyian idealism. Thoughts?

Philosophy is so dead.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

The problem is that most of these people were not ridiculed by the scientific community and regarded as "crackpots." That website exaggerates quite a bit. And you'd know this if you bothered to do a bare minimum of research -- as opposed to uncritically accepting the claims of some anonymous website that you think support your prejudices.

It's true that most of these people didn't have their ideas immediately and unquestioningly accepted by the scientific community. But that's utterly proper -- science demands evidence, and until there was convincing evidence to support these claims, it was utterly proper to withhold acceptance.

But even if the website didn't exaggerate at all, as it quite rightly points out, 99% of the people who look and act like crackpots turn out to be ... crackpots. Funny how peacegirl seems to have ignored that point.

The scientific community is well-aware that notions which seem counterintuitive -- even bizarre -- sometimes turn out to be true. But if a claim has exactly zero evidence to support it, is flatly disproved by experiment and observation, and flat-out violates physical laws -- then it's very safe to conclude that it is indeed the work of a ... wait for it ... crackpot.



But none of this is new. This is hardly the first time that peacegirl has made false claims -- claims that she would know were false if she made even the slightest effort to do a little honest investigation.

Like Lessans before her, peacegirl has demonstrated time and again that she's willfully ignorant (just a teensy bit of honest investigation would reveal that most of that website's claims are false); that she'll uncritically accept anything that she thinks supports her claims while flat-out rejecting the mountains of evidence which contradict her claims (which is exceptionally dishonest, since she claims to be interested in the truth); and that, when all else fails, she won't hesitate to lie.

You're so completely off target as far as Lessans is concerned. I'm not going to waste my time on each of your points because they don't apply in this case.