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Message: [QUOTE="Stephen Horne, post: 1733948"] Well, I still think that the *local* 'flatness' of the Earths surface is highly significant (at least the fact that the general sphericalness has less significance at a local scale than the hills and valleys and other lumps and bumps), even if only locally. Our current models are much more general, of course, but showing that something can be explained as local effects in a new and more general model is not the same as proving that easily observable consistent patterns are insignificant. In the case of the Earths flatness, the historical model has not only been superceded but now seems cringingly obsolete as our daily lives have exceeded the limits of that model - not a day goes by without some reminder of the non-flat nature of the Earth at non-local scales. But are we likely to exceed the limits of perceptions where time is significant any time soon? Ever? If so, how come no smug gits from the future have come back to tell us how it is done? If you say that our perception of time is not a universal absolute, well some aspects of that are already proven fact and other aspects are perfectly plausible. I have no problem with that. But to claim that our local perception of time has no basis in our locally perceptable 'region' of reality is, IMO, daft. All the evidence shows that there is a consistent arrow of time that we cannot opt out of - and 'local' in this case seems a lot bigger than a few tens or hundreds of miles. Current evidence suggests that works much the same in distant galaxies as it does in the next town down the road, as long as we allow for relativity where relevant. It is qualified by the context of the discussion - the claims that there is no reality separate from perception (and therefore that the arrangement of matter called a brain has a special ability to write the rules that all matter in the universe follows). As I said in another post... """ Consciousness is not magic. Brains, like the rest of the body, are just another arrangement of matter - certainly a complex and useful arrangement, but it is still obeying (not defining) the rules layed down by the universe we live in. There is nothing special about people which lets them arbitrarily define the universe. """ Yes, the human brain is (currently, so far as we know) unique. It is special. But it does not need magic powers in order to be special. Yes, but why can we see the affects of superposition at the microscopic scale but not at the macroscopic. That is what strikes me as odd - if parallel universes work as an explanation, then why do they work differently at the two scales. In particular, why can we not see evidence of it at the scales we are good at percieving when we can see the evidence so clearly at the scales we are not naturally equipped to percieve at all. Looking at that again, I overstated it of course. Wisdom is not such a cheap thing. But still, these philosophers simply did not have access to much of the knowledge that, thanks to science, we now take more-or-less for granted. One last thought, at least for today... If there is no reality separate from perception, and if 'reality' is therefore just another perception, how come it is so bloody complex and impossible for most of the organisms capable of perception to understand? When essentially everyone on Earth believed in a flat Earth, why was there any perceptible evidence that the Earth was not flat - unless it was because of an independent reality 'taking precedence' over perceptions? [/QUOTE]

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