Biocentrism and the illusion of out there

reply to post by swanne


So basically skeptics use ad homs to explain away results they don't like?

nope

reply to post by neoholographic


I really dislike the term "woo" also. It's very condescending in all terms of usage and discourages creativity. As if the current scientific dogma that reigns supreme has it all figured it out. I like to think of it as a form of intellectual terrorism. I read that somewhere... So the next time someone throws "woo woo" at you during a scientific debate, refer to them as an intellectual terrorist and see how they like it.

reply to post by neoholographic

Your agruments don't really show any logical train of thought, as you just plastered a series of quotes, as if they support Lanza's hypothesis, which they don't. For example, Einstein's quote is merely a restatement of relativity, and refers to phenomena like the relativity of simultaneity. Obviously we have a lot of evidence in support of relativity so that's not woo.

But some of the other statements are speculative conjecture with no supporting evidence. If it's just presented as a speculative hypothesis, then I don't call that woo, because people are allowed to have speculative hypotheses and test them...some end up being true.

When it crosses over into being woo is when said speculative hypotheses are presented as scientific fact, when they are only speculative hypotheses. This is precisely what makes some of Lanza's claims, and some of your claims woo (such as that a conscious observer is needed to make the wave function collapse and science says so, when the science consensus is the opposite of that, that no consciousness is needed).

Now if you called the claim that consciousness is needed to collapse the wave function a speculative hypothesis that's yet to be proven, then I'd be less inclined to refer to that as "woo". Do you see the difference?

PhotonEffect
reply to post by neoholographic

 

I really dislike the term "woo" also. It's very condescending in all terms of usage and discourages creativity. As if the current scientific dogma that reigns supreme has it all figured it out. I like to think of it as a form of intellectual terrorism. I read that somewhere... So the next time someone throws "woo woo" at you during a scientific debate, refer to them as an intellectual terrorist and see how they like it.

edit on 1-2-2014 by PhotonEffect because: (no reason given)

Great points!

When a pseudoskeptic starts yelling woo, they're simply saying that I can't debate the issue so I will just call it woo.

reply to post by neoholographic


Or, in the case of swanne, when they start yelling 'it's a site about, basically, magic'. If he had bothered to look closer, he would see a link to the mainstream physics journal that the paper is published in.

The problem with skeptics is they think with their biases. Shoot first ask questions later.

reply to post by BlueMule


Exactly and this is because most don't bother to actually read the things they're debating against. Swanne even said he has no time to read books.

They just call it woo and think it means something.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


You post just sounds like more silly rambling and woo is just a silly term that James Randi disciples say when they can't debate the issue.

First Einstein's quote went much deeper than that. He was saying this to a friends family at his death. This wasn't a lecture on Relativity. Just imagine, your good friend dies and you talk to his family and say the distinction between the past, present and future is a persistent illusion. Why would you say this at someones death if it's meaning only pertains to Relativity? Let me expand the quote:

“He has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me,” Einstein wrote to the Besso family. “That means nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubborn illusion.”

Again, this goes to Einstein understanding that the universe is a unified whole and the distinction between events we label past, present and future is just an illusion. He also said this:

“It is a magnificent feeling to recognize the unity of complex phenomena which appear to be things quite apart from the direct visible truth.”

And this:

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Again, it wasn't a lecture on Relativity. It was a much deeper statement that he said to his good friends family at his death.

You should have taken the time to read what I said:

It's not just the act of observation. A lot of people say the wave function collapses when the observer looks at it. We're not talking about just looking at it. Experiments show that particles change the way they behave based on what we will know.

The conscious observers knowledge about the state of the particle is linked to the behavior of the particles state. I then gave this example.

For instance, if you have an entangled particle pair and one goes to Detector A and the other to Detector B and you put a QWP (Quarter Wave Plate) in front of Detector A then the pair will behave like a particle and this will show up on the coincidence counter.

Let's change it up. We now will put a polarizing window in the path of the particle going to the B Detector. This will stop the Detector from registering any coincidences. What happens?

A wave pattern shows up for the particle going to Detector A because we can't know which path information. It goes even deeper.

Let's say you move Detector B back further so it takes particle B longer to reach the Detector. Remember, the particle going to Detector A has a QWP in front of it and particle A will be measured before particle B reaches the polarizing window

What happens?

Even when there's a QWP there to measure which path information it still behaves as a wave because in the future we cannot know which path information. So the perceived separation of time can't even break the link between what a conscious observer will or will not know and the behavior of subatomic particles.

This occurred even though a measuring device was there to detect which path information. When the conscious observer couldn't know which path information the measuring device couldn't measure which path. This occurred even after the particle passed the measuring device and the conscious observer couldn't know which path information in the future.

How could the universe come into being if it didn't first know that conscious observers would be there to know it? How could it be reduced from it's superimposed state if it didn't first know that we would exist? Even when the measuring device was there to measure it, it couldn't because there wasn't any possibility for the observer to know which path information.

Also, how can the overall consensus be that no consciousness is needed when they don't even know what consciousness is or how it's supposed to "emerge."?

reply to post by neoholographic

You would probably really like Science and Sanity by Alfred Korzybski.

Korzybski says;

1. The word is not the thing it represents - to know is to know structure

2. There is no such thing as an object in perfect isolation - there must at the very least be an observer

These are undeniable negative premises because obviously one cannot produce a word which IS the thing or an object without himself as an observer.

neoholographic
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

Atheist David Deutsch said this:
Einstein said this to his family.
Max Planck said this:
Werner Heisenberg said this:

i find your arguing tactics incredibly disingenuous. so, which is it?...

1- dont believe all those derned authoritarian opinions.
or
2- here are some authorities with opinions you should believe.

reply to post by BlueMule

So basically skeptics use ad homs to explain away results they don't like?

No, we cut the crap.

Would you trust a Big Oil corporation to give you accurate climate graphs?


The presence of an-falsifiable theory (even in a scientific paper) is not a proof of the validity of such theory. It's like me saying to you, "I have a tail, but only when you're not looking". You can't prove me wrong, but that doesn't mean that it's not BS.

BlueMule
The problem with skeptics is they think with their biases. Shoot first ask questions later.

As if you're not biased yourself.

I read the paper, and to be honest there is many things that they simply do not make sense in the interpretation.

It is like they did the experiment and hoped to see that the attention towards and away would result in an instant shift. Which is actually what you would expect given the way that quantum mechanics has a nack for timescales being extremely short. So it makes no sense that the influence would exhibit any kind of lag, and yet thats what their data appears to hinge on.

The plot in figure 4, showing an example session shows actually something else happening, that is completely different to what they report on. There appears oto be no bulk correlation between the attention twards and away conditions to the normalised R... ZERO. What is present is something a little different. The plot actually shows the normalized R as being roughly decreasing as the experiment goes on. There is also a frequency drop towards the latter part of the testing. Further more, if the end of the experiment attention is basically set to away, you would expect that there would be an increase at the end of each session... this example plot does not back up any of the claims of the analysis.

As an experimentalist it doesn't appear to show anything, it shows noise and a none understanding of the experimental apparatus itself. They report on temperature being fixed at 16C... 16? really? it is quite a cold room to be running a laser. And typically lasers run hot. A HeNe laser is extremely monochromatic, but everything else can move and shift given any temperature gradient. The description does not really explain how the system was thermally isolated. There is also no purpose in showing participants the R chart either, positive or negative feedback should actually be controlled in this experiment and it is not. It is odd that the room would be made so comfortable as to allow participants to relax, and yet at the same time give them real time feedback of their performance... this seems somewhat stress inducing.

Furthermore, the things they do with residuals is odd, as they seem to show that the residuals show the same shape only shifted when in the control and the experiment. this is a sign of something that is inherent to an experiment rather than that of a participant or outside influence that is being tested

Anyway, my opinion as an experimentalist is that the data here is misinterpreted, it is a nice setup and an interesting study but i think it has problems, and the interpretation of the data is very dubious.