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+--- Thread: How to make Bates Method more mainstream (/showthread.php?tid=2454)
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RE: How to make Bates Method more mainstream - arocarty - 01-12-2014
(01-12-2014, 02:06 AM)Daniel Wrote:(12-30-2013, 03:24 AM)arocarty Wrote:(12-30-2013, 02:11 AM)Daniel Wrote:(12-27-2013, 04:57 AM)arocarty Wrote: MILLIONS of very intelligent people believe in the afterlife, or this God or that God, yet they have not one iota of evidence.
There actually is evidence for the afterlife: near-death experiences. Thousands which have been reported on, and probably many more which haven't. People who have had them say that it felt very real, not at all like a dream.
One counterpoint skeptics raise is that many people who come near death apparently experience nothing otherworldly. Sound familiar? Some people try the Bates method and don't get improvement. In both cases I find that counter-argument wholly unconvincing, because any number of factors could have come into play.
Vision improvement can be measured simply with an snellen, and others people can, and have objectively witnessed it. Afterlife can be measured or confirmed with, what? Intelligent people choose what they want evidence for.
Actually an eye chart is not entirely objective. One could learn to recognize blurred letters, squint, etc. I do believe in an afterlife as well as vision improvement, but there is not yet iron-clad proof of either, so I can't blame anyone for disbelieving.
A agree, nothing can be perfectly objective. That's an easy argument you could make against anything. But even children can be taught how to test their visual acuity with an eyechart, taught how to avoid making any sort of effort, and obtain a reasonably accurate result.
Learning to recognizing blurred letters, or blurred anything is the whole point of vision improvement! Everything starts out blurry, then after one learns the correct way of looking at something, it becomes less blurry and more recognizable. Or goes from unrecognizable, to recognizable. And the smaller the letter, object or whatever point one is looking at that can be recognized, the better. It doesn't happen instantaneously once one removes refractive correction. Squinting is a symptom of effort, strain, and yes, should be avoided. That's the whole point of the Bates method, to learn how to avoid making and effort. You can force yourself to temporarily see better, but you cannot improve your sight with any permanence by making effort, or straining. Again, simple principles that the Bates method endeavors to teach. People aren't going to get it perfectly from the get go.
The world of optometry had to come up with some way of measuring visual acuity in a manner that would be universal, efficient, accurate, and as objective as possible. That standard (the Snellen eye chart) measures your ability to recognize spacial patterns that subtend a certain degree of arc. Is it perfectly objective? Nothing is, as you say. Since only you can see through your own eyes, they still have to rely on you to tell them which is better, A, or B. They observe you, and can easily tell if you're making any kind of physical effort. Unless you're not being honest with yourself, or forcing some sort of effort to see better, one can quickly determine their own ability to discriminate (or "recognize") their level of acuity. Is it perfect, never. Someone with 20/400 is going to have a very hard time recognizing a spacial pattern that someone with 20/20, or 20/40 vision can recognize, even if they make a huge effort, or squint.
I believe in the afterlife, but not because there is any tangible evidence. There isn't any. I believe based on faith. Faith doesn't rely on tangible evidence, or on things that can be touched, seen, measured, or are based on intellect or logic. (the world shows an 'intelligent design, therefore there must be an intelligent designer") The stories of NDE's are purely subjective. It's not that I don't believe what is shared by them, but I don't believe based on any tangible evidence.
Without the evidence of a standard method of measuring one's ability to recognize, or discriminate visual patterns, albeit not perfect, the optometry world would be in chaos, liability insurance would be through the roof, and nobody would want to get, or give prescriptions. Blur would rule, and we'd be left to our own devices, for the better or worse, trying to 'recognize' what all the blur means
