I'm very interested in the optics and detectors and signal processing of our eyes, but apparently nobody else here is. Signal processing is my profession.
What revealed religion? I have only confessed to believing that evolution tends to optimize organs. That's a minority opinion here.
OK, you didn't read it.
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J
jlarkin
Give ideas a chance, and create more hope.
K
ke...
On Wednesday, 24 March 2021 at 08:17:52 UTC-7, snipped-for-privacy@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote: ...
... This discussion is not about the signal processing aspects of the eye - most of us consider that to be orthogonal to the basic optics.
T
Tom Gardner
Such as "the sun is pulled across the sky by a horse-drawn chariot?"
Just asking.
J
jlarkin
It's an integrated sensing and processing system. Everything gets optimized together. Local signal processing across most of the area of the retina is energy intensive but probably time and survival efficient. The small central, relatively clear region is the hi-res part, what's left of our shrimp eye. Its diameter could easily evolve in either direction, so must be optimal.
There is the majority low-res, high sensitivity, wide-field part and a smaller fast-steerable color-sensitive hi-res region without the light scattering stuff. That sounds awfully evolved to me. I don't think the design is a mistake.
All that could be discussed.
J
jlarkin
OK, don't give ideas a chance. Mocking and snarking seems to be your skill set.
Is that popular or profitable?
T
Tom Gardner
So it has to be ideas that meet with your approval?!
I think not.
W
whit3rd
Oh, no, you don't foist THAT on anyone after they've had a coffee and waked up!
Ideas are sometimes wisdom, sometimes folly, sometimes 'extraordinary popular delusions' and 'the madness of crowds'. No sane individual entertains every idea, some of those must be excluded. This is not chance, by any stretch of the imagination, it is effective thought, a necessary part of our perception and culture.
Design requires a workable set of ideas, and education requires clear expression of ideas, and logic requires consistency of ideas within a set of axioms or beliefs. So, we prune the hopeless, the uworkable ones.
T
Tom Gardner
No no no no no. All ideas are equally valid and worthy of consideration.
Aren't they?
J
John Larkin
Consider some everyday situations. Say, I'm skiing fast and some snowboard yahoo does a face plant right in front of me. Or I'm being attacked by a wild boar. Or I'm sharing a beach blanket with a yummy bikini babe. Suppose I'm looking at something appropriate but the sun is also in my field of view. Sharp lenses focussing sunlight burn holes in things. But I don't want to close my eyes just now.
So I aim my small delicate hi-res central patch at the interesting object, and the sun dot hits my retina a couple mm away, where all the blood vessels and scattering things are on top; they can take the heat.
Of course, prawns have different lives.
B
Bill Sloman
Not by you.
One aspect of the structure - having the nerves and the blood supply in front of the light sensing cells - is an imperfection, and an unnecessary one. It can be got around - to some extent - but it is still an imperfection.
Calling the structure a "design" begs the question, so you aren't discussing but rather propagandising.
J
jlarkin
Most all ideas meet with my approval.
Do you ever have any?
J
jlarkin
Have them first, exclude some afterwards.
Try it.
J
jlarkin
Equally valid, of course not.
Worthy of consideration? How can you tell if they are valid if you won't consider them?
B
Bill Sloman
Learn enough to exclude the entirely useless ones quickly. I'd advise you to try it, but you keep on trotting out climate change denial propaganda as if it represented useful ideas, rather than fraudulent distractions, so you probably aren't ever going to master the skill.
W
whit3rd
Didn't you read the things you reposted above? I DID consider your "wild ideas = hope" idea, gave it consideration and contrasted it to known consequences. That's why it has been excluded. It's too late for me to 'try it', I've held the trial and delivered the verdict, as you can see.
It's not enough to have ideas, it's important to encourage the workable ones and weed out the others.
A
amal banerjee
Yes, you too need to be open-minded. As Stephen Hawking said "if God created the universe, who created God?" Try "A Brief History of Time"
J
jlarkin
I read that ages ago. His observation is hardly original.
Read Dawkins too. Boring.
T
Tom Gardner
Neither is the avoidance of the question.
Yes, it would be at 400wpm.
J
jlarkin
OK, answer it. I never suggested that anyone created the universe.
Or read "The Devil's Delusion" for some good thoughts about the Big Bang.
Better to get it over with ASAP.
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