A revolution in thought

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

How can your conclusions be based on facts if they turn out to be wrong?

Then I will incorporate new facts and evidence into my thinking.

What specifically have I denoted as a fact that you think may be wrong? I am very careful of not calling things facts unless they are. Like it is a fact that camera film or digital sensors must have direct contact with photons to create an image

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Guess I will respond to this now

A) disservice to mankind
B) What am I claiming ownership to? As far as I can tell I took "ownership" of my own conclusions. Who else could possibly "own" my conclusions?
What does "not being privy to" mean, even? I am not privy to my own thoughts?

You have not been privy to this discovery, and you still aren't. You could be if you read it, but you haven't. You act like you have taken ownership of this knowledge. That's how you come off.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Where in the world Lady do you come off being God?

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Where and how am I "being God"? What?

Just a know it all.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I'm being serious.

Originally Posted by LadyShea

You are serious that I am being God? You are serious that I am not being privy to my own conclusions? What?

Nevermind.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Tell me Ladyshea where your scientific investigation usurps the claim that God is in charge

Originally Posted by LadyShea

What does that even mean? Why was God brought into the discussion?

But, since you bring it up, define and describe God, and explain "in charge, and I will tell you my conclusions about the particular deity you define and describe.

God is the force of nature that made you, me and everyone. And please don't tell me your parents made you, and God had nothing to do with it. When I say "in charge" I mean that none of us have ultimate control. We are controlled by the laws of our nature or God, which we cannot escape from.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

or the claim that completely obliterates the proof that God does not exist (which He does), not in the usual sense but in the sense of there being a divine order to this world.

Originally Posted by LadyShea

What claim are you talking about that obliterates what proof that God does not exist?

The claim (by atheists) that there is no God, and that this world is here by chance.

Originally Posted by LadyShea]Did you think this sentence through? I do not believe in the divine or deities.[/quote]

I don't believe in deities either. The word "divine" (as I interpret it) means coming from a source bigger than me.

[quote="LadyShea

Explain what? Your questions make no sense. Perhaps you were in a sputtering rage and that caused the word salad.

Care you rephrase your questions so I can explain whatever it is you want explained?

I was a little histrionic, I must admit. I think I was pretty upset. Looking at this post, I agree that it's pretty lame.

[LadyShea]

Define by chance and explain why "God" can be here by chance but our world cannot be here by chance.

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I have never told people not to question. Why do you think I'm here? It's about how one expresses himself, which lately is just filled with knocks and put downs. Half of this thread is filled with this vitriol. If I have a hard time responding to these posts, it's because of your arrogant tone. You then have the nerve to imply that it is me with small-minded religious mind? Boringgggggg

But every time someone disagrees, they have not understood. Continuing to disagree means you are a) dumb b) Biased or c) malicious. It is not possible, according to you, to disagree with the book and be correct, even when he says things like "There are no afferent nerve-endings in the eye" which is obviously incorrect.

You need to think I have some other motive to disagree with the book: it keeps you from having to actually face the fact that your father was a well-meaning but rather dim person who made himself look rather silly by blowing his own trumpet far to much in his deeply confused book.

The reason I enjoy this discussion is because he was such a pompous ass (please note I am speaking of him as a writer only) and that you are so dishonest in your defence of him. The both of you are so disdainful of anyone else's opinion despite being ludicrously ill-informed that it becomes incredibly funny to have this discussion.

Take, for instance, the marvellous sight debacle. I have already provided you a means to slightly alter the book, remove all the idiocy, and yet retain all the elements that are required to make the point your father was trying to make. There is no need to reinvent sight just to account for the fact that beauty is a cultural norm rather than a real, tangible thing. These are all very well-established ideas. Nor is it required to get the point across that the future and the past have no tangible existence, which I think you said is required for his case for reincarnation.

But I guess that once you start thinking like that, the floodgates open and you start to realize that he never even noticed the enormous holes in his idea.

I notice that in all this time, you have not once responded to the elephant in the room:

He said the work was a step-by-step logical process where each step was as undeniable as 1 + 1 = 2.

But then he did not include any evidence, any reason to believe, that conscience works the way he said.

Was he lying, or did he just not notice?

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Anything other than the eyes could be a cue that could help the mother recgognize her baby. It could be the baby's baaa that distinguishes it from other sheep. It could be the baby's smell if that's how sheep identify (I'm not sure), or his unique gait could be a cue. I am not a sheep expert. The point I'm making is that there are other ways for the animal kingdom to identify it's kin other than sight. I recently saw a movie about penguins. They find their young in the middle of thousands and thousands of baby penguins by sound alone.

But they used digital images of sheep, not sheep... and you knew this, because you remarked on it. You are not making a lot of sense right now.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

You are wrong, not me. Demonstrably wrong. I spent my summers near the Naval weapons testing center and saw jets every day, I grew up outside the Air Force Academy and so have seen the Thunderbirds many times, lived in the flight path of one of the busiest airports in the world for over a decade, and have seen the Blue Angels fly as well. Planes can even fly faster than sound travels, so even without the speed of light being the factor it is, you could easily see them before you hear them in many circumstances.

If the plane is reflecting light, we should see airplanes at far distances before we ever hear them in every single circumstance.

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Sometimes they are already past you and out of your range of vision before you hear them. Sometimes you can hear them but they are too far away because of high altitude to see them.

Isn't that the point I'm making? If light is traveling so fast, altitude wouldn't even be a factor. The light would be traveling so fast that it would strike our eyes before the sound strikes our ears, but this is not what occurs. The reason we hear the airplane and don't see it is because the airplane is too far away, or is out of our visual range because it's too small to be seen at that distance.

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Some sounds can be heard from further away than we can see the source of the sound (a loud owl), or the source of the sound is obstructed or too small to to see, so there are circumstances where we hear but don't see.

I'm not talking about obstructions where it's obvious that we wouldn't be able to see the source. I'm talking about a clear path to our eyes, and we still hear the sound before we see where the source of the sound is coming from.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

But they used digital images of sheep, not sheep... and you knew this, because you remarked on it. You are not making a lot of sense right now.

The cue would be the light and dark patterns that could (I'm not even sure if it's even possible) let the sheep identify something familiar in the image. Maybe if it was a video of a sheep running, there might be some recognition that this is another sheep. I know my dog can distinguish between dogs and people. She never barks at people but she will bark at another dog. She also use to run up to the t.v. when she saw a group of animals running, but when she ran up to the screen and couldn't identify anything through her sense of smell, she just went back and layed down.

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

The cue would be the light and dark patterns that could (I'm not even sure if it's even possible) let the sheep identify something familiar in the image. But I don't even think that's possible. Maybe if it was a video of a sheep running, there might be some recognition that this is another sheep. I know my dog can distinguish between dogs and people. She never barks at people but she will bark at another dog.

No - a still. Of a sheep. Which they can only see.

So recognizing the "light and dark patterns" of the image a familiar sheep is not recognizing them by sight?

You move goalposts like it is a game of three cup shuffle. How can you expect anyone to take you seriously when you say things like that?

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

If the plane is reflecting light, we should see airplanes at far distances before we ever hear them in every single circumstance.

Isn't that the point I'm making? If light is traveling so fast, altitude wouldn't even be a factor. The light would be traveling so fast that it would strike our eyes before the sound strikes our ears, but this is not what occurs. The reason we hear the airplane and don't see it is because the airplane is too far away, or is out of our visual range because it's too small to be seen at that distance.

I'm not talking about obstructions where it's obvious that we wouldn't be able to see the source. I'm talking about a clear path to our eyes, and we still hear the sound before we see where the source of the sound is coming from.

So you have reset all the way back to not understanding what resolution is.

Goddamn, don't you get tired of making the same stupid mistake over and over and sounding like a moron?

If a plane is too far away for our eyes to resolve the image, we can't see it....remember? Resolution has nothing to do with the speed of light. Sometimes we cannot see the plane because it is too far away to resolve (altitude is distance too, you know).

[LadyShea]

Bump

Originally Posted by LadyShea

The studies under discussion, the ones indicating sheep recognition of faces, used photographs.

Here's one from 2001. It didn't even require training the sheep to make a choice, they directly measured brain cell activity

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com...bilities-sheep

Another earlier study showed that even with the other cues, ewes would avoid their white lambs if the lamb had been colored black.

[Dragar]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

So you have reset all the way back to not understanding what resolution is.

Goddamn, don't you get tired of making the same stupid mistake over and over and sounding like a moron?

If a plane is too far away for our eyes to resolve the image, we can't see it....remember? Resolution has nothing to do with the speed of light. Sometimes we cannot see the plane because it is too far away to resolve (altitude is distance too, you know).

Frankly if it's too far away to resolve, we can't hear a jet engine. So I'm willing to say: we always, in every circumstance, can see planes before we hear them, given a clear unobstructed view.

I've no idea why peacegirl is even arguing this way around; surely if she was arguing for her position, she'd say we can see planes first because vision is instant?

The crazy world of peacegirl...

[Dragar]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

If the plane is reflecting light, we should see airplanes at far distances before we ever hear them in every single circumstance.

We do. This falls under your 'making shit up' thing again.

[The Lone Ranger]

You've gotta be impressed by the monumental arrogance and stupidity of Lessans to declare something like that there are no afferent nerve endings in the eye.

After all, it's an easily-tested claim. And the consequences of him being wrong about such a sweeping and easily-tested claim are monumental -- he looks like a world-class buffoon.

And it's not like he had ever dissected an eye or taken an A&P course, or read anything at all on the subject, apparently. Yet he decided -- without making the least bit of effort to investigate the idea -- that the eye contains no afferent nerve endings. Because it fitted with his notions of how things should be it apparently never occurred to him to check whether or not the claim was actually true. And surely even he couldn't possibly have been so clueless as to think that this was something that no one had ever-before bothered to check.



But then, it's entirely in-character. Since Lessans' notion of "scientific research" was "stuff I pull out of my fundament," it probably never occurred to him that this isn't how actual scientific research is done.
no evidence -- it not like he had done any dissections


The funny part is that it's totally unnecessary. His claims about sight would work just as well if the optic nerve was a mixed nerve with both afferent and efferent fibers. If he's said that he'd still have been wrong, but at least he wouldn't have looked like a complete moron.

That any idea which occurred to him could possibly be mistaken doesn't seem to have ever occurred to him. So of course he felt no need to justify any of his claims. The mere fact that he had made them was "undeniable proof" of their correct-ness.

[Vivisectus]

Perhaps we need to take a small explanatory break and explore the magic of Peacegirl-world.

Firstly, to her mind, efferent vision has a perfect explanation for why sometimes we cannot see something, even though it directly in from of us: it is too small, or too dim! No need for messy mechanisms, or complicated explanations. Voila, we don't see!

She feels optics does not have such an explanation. All this stuff about resolution, background radiation and focal length just slides off her like water off a duck's back. So, she reckons, if sight were just light reflecting, we should see the airplane before we hear it, because we would be able to see it a long, long way away!

The snag is, of course, that we can. You can see an airplane from a lot further away than you can hear them. Generally you can hear a cruising airliner when it is right overhead at 45k feet, providing you are in fairly quiet surroundings and there is no wind to scatter the airwaves. But you can easily spot them much further out.

But the really interesting thing is that she thinks "We cannot see something because it is too small for the brain, looking out of the eyes, to see!" is actually a better explanation that "Either too much background light drowns out the reflected light, or the reflected light comes from too small an area to cover enough of a receptor to trigger it".

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

It was a lie. I showed it to be a lie by quoting you evading my questions instead of answering them. You have evaded them again in this post. Therefore you lied when you said you never do this.

IOW, you never ignore questions... except for when you do. If you purposefully ignore questions when you are feeling frustrated, then it is a lie to claim that you never do so.

Where are you evading anything? See above! Neither of your above responses to the question actually provide any kind of answer to it. Your first quoted response was an evasion. Your new response above is also an evasion. Telling me that I am lost or don't understand is a weaseling evasion. Telling me that it is clear in the book is a weaseling evasion. Anything that does not consist of providing actual support from Lessans for your claim (that under his changed conditions, people will be unable to harm others without justification) is a weaseling evasion. And claiming that we will be unable to justify harm is not the same as showing that we will be unable to harm without a justification.

Again, both of these responses are weaseling evasions. Neither of them answer the question by explaining how it could be that NASA does not miss while using delayed vision calculations, if vision is real-time. Explaining why you are not answering the question is simply explaining why you are evading it. Appealing to a need for further empirical testing is a weaseling evasion. It does not answer the question. And no correction is made. You have even been shown the calculations. So this is another weaseling evasion. The only legitimate part of your reply is where you admit that you don't really know how it is possible for Lessans to still be right. But of course, you are still certain that he is.

I'm not going to apologize for telling you that you are mentally ill. You are. I am not using this as an insult. I am seriously concerned about your mental health, as are most of your audience here. My conclusion concerning your mental state is one based upon the evidence of your posts. When I say that you are crazy, I can support this by showing where you have said or done crazy things. Whereas you asserted that I had contradicted myself when I had not (merely because I have not agreed with your unsupported claim that compatibilism is wrong), and still refuse to retract the accusation.

Like I already told you, I already did explain this. But I'll be happy to explain it to you again just as soon as you retract and apologize for your lies and false accusations. You were wrong to say that I had contradicted myself. You were wrong to say that I had claimed that we both have and do not have free will. And you are blatantly lying every time you claim that you never weasel or evade anything.

Bump.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

Yes, and that is the claim he was flat wrong about. There are afferent nerve endings in the eye. Yet whenever pressed on this you change the topic to defend a different claim about vision. You know Lessans was wrong in his above claim, yet you will continue to weasel instead of admitting it.

You will hear the plane first if you are not looking in the right direction, if you have particularly poor eyesight, or if the aircraft is occluded by cloud. Otherwise we all can and do see the aircraft before we hear it. But as always, you see no problem with merely inventing your own facts whenever pressed, and to then weasel whenever reality disagrees.

Bump.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

If the plane is reflecting light, we should see airplanes at far distances before we ever hear them in every single circumstance.

Even if we are looking in the wrong direction, or if the plane is occluded by cloud, or if one has poor eyesight, or if the plane is too small and far away to be resolved? This is what "every single circumstance" means.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Isn't that the point I'm making? If light is traveling so fast, altitude wouldn't even be a factor. The light would be traveling so fast that it would strike our eyes before the sound strikes our ears, but this is not what occurs. The reason we hear the airplane and don't see it is because the airplane is too far away, or is out of our visual range because it's too small to be seen at that distance.

If it is too small to be seen then this is due to resolution. This is the same explanation that you use yourself, and it is the same explanation that works perfectly well under regular afferent vision. So your invented facts don't help to support your position in any way whatsoever.

[ceptimus]

How do spectacles (eyeglasses) work in Lessans' world? Why are they even necessary if vision is efferent?

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by ceptimus

How do spectacles (eyeglasses) work in Lessans' world? Why are they even necessary if vision is efferent?

Oohh! OOOh! I know! I know!

They work the same as normal only... the other way around!!!

No-one knows what that means, though, and that includes Peacegirl.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Then I will incorporate new facts and evidence into my thinking.

What specifically have I denoted as a fact that you think may be wrong? I am very careful of not calling things facts unless they are. Like it is a fact that camera film or digital sensors must have direct contact with photons to create an image

It's also true that if we see in real time because the eyes are not a sense organ, a camera would work the same way. You really think you have it all figured out, but you don't.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Oohh! OOOh! I know! I know!

They work the same as normal only... the other way around!!!

No-one knows what that means, though, and that includes Peacegirl.

What does needing spectacles have to do with the claim of efferent vision. If the eyeball is not curved perfectly, there will be refractive problems, but this has to do with with the mechanics of the eye (the window of the brain) rather than with the brain itself. It would be like looking through a window that has a crack in it, or that has some other defect.

Refractive errors are optical imperfections that prevent the eye from properly focusing light, causing blurred vision. The primary refractive errors are nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism.

Refractive Errors and Refraction - How the Eye Sees

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

If the plane is reflecting light, we should see airplanes at far distances before we ever hear them in every single circumstance.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

Even if we are looking in the wrong direction, or if the plane is occluded by cloud, or if one has poor eyesight, or if the plane is too small and far away to be resolved? This is what "every single circumstance" means.

Every single circumstance means that there should be no exceptions if the eyes are a sense organ. But there are exceptions, and they are very obvious to the astute observer. The plane is too small to be resolved indicates that the plane is out of visual range. Due to its small size, the image won't show up on our retinas. If we use a telescope, we can see it because it magnifies its size to where its within our field of view and therefore it does show up on our retinas.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Isn't that the point I'm making? If light is traveling so fast, altitude wouldn't even be a factor. The light would be traveling so fast that it would strike our eyes before the sound strikes our ears, but this is not what occurs. The reason we hear the airplane and don't see it is because the airplane is too far away, or is out of our visual range because it's too small to be seen at that distance.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

If it is too small to be seen then this is due to resolution.

Use whatever term you want, the fact remains that light should be traveling over long distances to reach our eye in nano-seconds, but this doesn't occur. If the plane is too far away (out of our visual field) or the light the plane is reflecting is too dim from where we are, we won't see it because the conditions that would allow us to see it are not present.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

This is the same explanation that you use yourself, and it is the same explanation that works perfectly well under regular afferent vision.

No, it actually doesn't work perfectly under regular afferent vision.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

So your invented facts don't help to support your position in any way whatsoever.

These are not invented facts.

[Vivisectus]

It's also true that if we see in real time because the eyes are not a sense organ, a camera would work the same way.

Ermmm... no. Cameras do not have brains to "look out" of eyes. We have built them to work only with incoming light, and to interpret this light as an image.

Each receptor measures the amount and colour of light it receives, and sends a signal to a memory bank, which records a little dot of the appropriate colour in the place that corresponds with where the receptor is placed on the sensor. If you look at lots and lots of those little dots in the right places, you see an image!

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

What does needing spectacles have to do with the claim of efferent vision. If the eyeball is not curved perfectly, there will be refractive problems, but this has to do with with the mechanics of the eye (the window of the brain) rather than with the brain itself. It would be like looking through a window that has a crack in it, or that has some other defect.

Refractive errors are optical imperfections that prevent the eye from properly focusing light, causing blurred vision. The primary refractive errors are nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism.

Refractive Errors and Refraction - How the Eye Sees

So what is being refracted?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

I didn't say he was an eye doctor. As a radiologist he uses optics in his work... medical imaging.

Medical imaging means he can read cat scans. He doesn't have to determine how the brain works in relation to the eyes. No opthamologist knows this, so why would he be expected to. Anyway, this is out of his realm of expertise. This was grandfather's expertise, not his.