A revolution in thought

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Adam

Have you considered that you might avoid this "theme" by providing some evidence for the claims you've made (or, I suppose, the claims the author has made and you are evangelizing)?

Oh my god, I give up.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

From 2003

Janis, I am telling you, explicitly, how to talk so people will listen. I communicate with humans for a living, and (forgive me while I toot my own horn here a minute) I have earned a certain level of respect here at and other places around the net because I communicate clearly. If you don't want to listen to me (or the myriad others who have told you the same thing), then that's your choice, however I predict you will spend another decade spinning your wheels if you do not.

I have never said I don't respect you, but you are not respecting me. I don't care about all the others. You all follow the same rules. It's almost like the people on these forums do not like being told to read anything. They like their discourse, even if it sacrifices gaining new knowledge. I know you are all intelligent and would have absolutely no problem with the book. I guess you are avoiding answering me about reading 13 pages. This just goes to show how little progress we have actually made. Sadly, we never got past the introduction.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I'm not just giving the book away. I'm selling it to make back some of my out-of-pocket costs and maybe be able to get a Starbucks coffee once in awhile. lol But I am creating a website where people can ask questions and the answers will be posted.

Then might I suggest a few dollar eBook download instead of a 41.00 paperback from which you only make .46.

There are no assertions. If you read large portions of the book, as you say, I gave you the pages to start. Why can't you tell me what pages 46-59 are about? Is it that hard?

Are you kidding me with that question? YOU can't even tell us what pages 46-59 are about...why should I be expected to offer you a summary when you can't offer one? I didn't find anything coherent. It was moslty an argument against the concept of free will, a point I concede from minute 1

It's not that I can't answer your questions; it's that I can tell by the questions you ask that you have not done the required reading for us to have a discussion. If you have, then I will repeat, give me your feedback on pages 46-59.

We don't have free will

When you say the book isn't clear to you and apparently to others, who are these others? Let them come forward. It sounds like a cop out to me but maybe I'm wrong.

How about the people at every forum you have had this discussion on in the last decade?

I'm certainly not deflecting or blaming the listener. I do see a problem in that people expect me to deliver what I cannot unless the text is read. How can anyone have a decent discussion when the material is not read. Help me here?

Offer a summary. Create some fairly succinct definitions. Post some pertinent selections and explain what they mean to YOU, how YOU interpret them. What you seem to be telling me is that it takes 500 pages to explain the concept. Seriously why can't you bullet point the major tenets?

You are right. These forums have a definite rules, which don't include a new book.

We have no rules at the forum. I am talking about accepted forms of intellectual discussion.

Unless one has read a philosopher and carefully scrutinized his intentions, thoughts, and meanings, how can anyone be objective in their critique of said work.

I can discuss a quote or selection or summary, or discuss another's interpretation of a passage ,without having to read every word of the piece.

It astounds me that you and others seem what I'm asking for is beyond reasonable.

It is not beyond reasonable, at all.

No woos here. If no one wants to read 13 pages and come back with questions that make it worthwhile for me to hang around, then I'm sorry to say, we'll have to part ways.

Okay see ya

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I have never said I don't respect you, but you are not respecting me.

I have shown you a lot of respect that I feel you have not earned. You think I am working so hard to get through to you out of disrespect? That would be a spectacular waste of my time and talents.

I don't care about all the others.

Then you have spectacularly wasted your time and talents trying to promote this concept.

You all follow the same rules.

Why do you think that is?

It's almost like the people on these forums do not like being told to read anything.

Most book promoters at least offer a synopsis, you can't even do that.

They like their discourse, even if it sacrifices gaining new knowledge.

Deflection and blaming the listener

I know you are all intelligent and would have absolutely no problem with the book. I guess you are avoiding answering me about reading 13 pages. This just goes to show how little progress we have actually made. Sadly, we never got past the introduction.

Why have you avoided offering a definition, summary or synopsis yet you expect me to?

[Naru]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Often scientists are biased and will skew the results in order to confirm their hypotheses.

I bet you can back this statement up with as much solid logic and evidence as you have the rest of your statements.

That is to say, none.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

...13 pages...

Yah,I read that. The author's claim that free will does not exist rests, first, on the trivial observation that whatever a person chooses is, by definition, what they wanted to choose and, second, on an idiosyncratic definition of free will under which one must be able to choose something that one does not want to choose in order for will to be free. It's dressed up a bit with flowery talk about the "motion of life" and some Randian nonsense about how since life is not death, yadda yadda yadda, and by using "mathematical" as a random adjective, but in essence it's just the idiosyncratic definition and the trivial observation.

[Kael]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

We don't have free will

[Crumb]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

It's almost like the people on these forums do not like being told to read anything.

I would say as a general rule we aren't people who do what we are told. We are free thinking adults after all. There are more books in the world than a person can read in a thousand lifetimes, you need to give us a good reason to spend our precious limited time on yours. So far you have mostly failed here, you got me to read about 5 pages and then give up in boredom.

I would listen to LadyShea if I were you. She is very smart and is trying to be helpful and patient with you.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Crumb

I would say as a general rule we aren't people who do what we are told. We are free thinking adults after all. There are more books in the world than a person can read in a thousand lifetimes, you need to give us a good reason to spend our precious limited time on yours. So far you have mostly failed here, you got me to read about 5 pages and then give up in boredom.

I would listen to LadyShea if I were you. She is very smart and is trying to be helpful and patient with you.

I am sure she means well. In time, I will definitely find people (not in forums) who will read the book and the ask questions. I will be selling the book shortly (they are working on the proof as we speak), and will contact people from other fields, not just philosophy. Like I said, I don't mind answering questions but not without people reading the first two chapters. It really isn't asking that much.

[Crumb]

You are going to have to give them a good reason to read it though, so far you sound like any other snake-oil salesman.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Kael

Your preaching to the choir!!

[Adam]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I don't mind answering questions but not without people reading the first two chapters. It really isn't asking that much.

A couple posts ago, it was just pages 46-59 that people had to read before you were willing to discuss the book.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Crumb

You are going to have to give them a good reason to read it though, so far you sound like any other snake-oil salesman.

And I'm out of breath.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Adam

A couple posts ago, it was just pages 46-59 that people had to read before you were willing to discuss the book.

And no one did. I said to myself let's keep going... and now look at the problem it's caused. We have gotten nowhere. Everyone believes the book has nothing of value. I'm am being seen as no more than a snake salesman. In fact, the more I recommend the book, the more everyone resists.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

And no one did.

Originally Posted by Adam

Yah,I read that. The author's claim that free will does not exist rests, first, on the trivial observation that whatever a person chooses is, by definition, what they wanted to choose and, second, on an idiosyncratic definition of free will under which one must be able to choose something that one does not want to choose in order for will to be free. It's dressed up a bit with flowery talk about the "motion of life" and some Randian nonsense about how since life is not death, yadda yadda yadda, and by using "mathematical" as a random adjective, but in essence it's just the idiosyncratic definition and the trivial observation.

indeed.

[Kael]

No, she's saying no one read it and liked it, which for her purposes amounts to not reading it at all.

[JoeP]

I have not read the book. Not yet. But I have read the one (1) review on Amazon by a helpful K Greene, who give it one (1) star.

The book is presented in an awkward style where the author presents imaginary conversations he's having with people that he readily gets the best of. The other person then gushes enthusiastically about the authors reasoning.

And this reminded me of someone who has occasionally posted here.

The caveat is that these ideas can only been tested when he first has complete compliance from the entire worlds population. This last part even requires a period of military action first where dissenters are taken care of.

This reminded me of the same person ...

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Adam

indeed.

Categorically wrong!!! This phoney academia that you are displaying is exactly what this author had to deal with all his life (you know, the 'quasi intellectual' who skims text and acts like he is now an expert on the subject) and you should definitely not be reading this book. I'm not saying this as a form of reverse psychology. Pleeeasssse don't go any further. I wish I had the power to ban you!

[LadyShea]

I think the passage below is a false statement, because I believe it possible for people to "fall in love" for a lot of non-sexual reasons, and people who cannot experience sexual satisfaction due to, say, paralysis, fall in love.

it is impossible for a boy or girl to fall in love with or be
physically attracted to someone no matter how physically appealing
this individual might be considered if they know in advance that this
person was born without sexual organs which knowledge makes them
aware that he or she is incapable of giving or receiving sexual
satisfaction.

Can you defend this statement with any kind of evidence?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

I accidentally duplicated my post.

You cannot know that. Scientists don't even know that. You believe it, only.

Lessans was a scientist of human behavior. No one can believe that someone could actually have a discovery of this import. Why wouldn't this be major news, right? Anyway, it's water under the bridge at this point. I see the direction this thread is taking and it doesn't look good.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

I think the passage below is a false statement, because I believe it possible for people to "fall in love" for a lot of non-sexual reasons, and people who cannot experience sexual satisfaction due to, say, paralysis, fall in love.

Can you defend this statement with any kind of evidence?

LadyShea, have you not listened when I told everyone not to open the book at random? In the foreword and introduction it was mentioned that it would look like a fairy tale. You did the exact thing the author urged over and over not to do. Are you trying to make me look foolish? Why are you doing this?

Since you already posted this, I guess I have to defend it. Anyone can tell you that for the most part female/male sexual attraction is what brings two people together. If one person knew that the other had no sex organs, most people would not be happy with this set up. There may be exceptions. I know a girl who was paralyzed from the neck down and her boyfriend married her anyway. But for the most part, men and women marry to have a family and sex is part of that.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Categorically wrong!!!

Perhaps this would be a good time for you to explain your thoughts on the subject, then?

[LadyShea]

Can you provide evidence that the statement below is true?

Sight takes place for the first time when a sufficient accumulation
of sense experience such as hearing, taste, touch, and smell — these
are doorways in — awakens the brain so that the child can look
through them at what exists around him. He then desires to see the
source of the experience by focusing his eyes, as binoculars. 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. The brain records various sounds, tastes,
touches and smells in relation to the objects from which these
experiences are derived, and then looks through the eyes to see these
things that have become familiar as a result of the relation.

These are the types of passages that I referred to as mere assertion. The book is full of such things.

[Adam]

I think you have to read the entire book from page 1 before you're allowed to point out any factual errors in the text.

[Crumb]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Lessans was a scientist of human behavior. No one can believe that someone could actually have a discovery of this import. Why wouldn't this be major news, right?

Without evidence it is not a discovery, it is just an idea. Most ideas are wrong.