It’s a criminal referral for what DNI Gabbard called a “treasonous conspiracy”. The DOJ has taken up the referral. What’s the trivial part?

Plants are biological organisms. Therefore if plants do not have agent-causal libertarian free will then your comments above are a red herring, and your conclusion a non sequitur. Autonomy as you've defined it is compatible with causal determinism.

I don’t know how biological autonomy is compatible with causal determinism.

Yesterday you made some interesting comments about human beings and it all being too complex, but I see you’ve changed your mind and deleted them. Which external forces caused that behavior?

Strawman. I didn’t say it was. I said that I can kill someone by pushing them off a cliff, which is true.

And what would a medical examiner say killed him? Is their answer a reduction to the absurd?

Deflection. I assume because you recognise the absurdity of your position and are just unwilling to admit it.

No, you equivocate between “kill” and “murder”. I think you realized your mistake and, once again, we can watch the goalposts widen.

Non sequitur. That something is possible and sometimes happens isn’t that it’s easy.

Then what is the difference between words that compel agreement and those that do not?

Red herring. Plants do not have agent-causal libertarian free will, and neither the existence of plants nor the possible existence of von Neumann probes disprove causal determinism.

It’s just one fallacy after another with you, along with absurd misinterpretations of “cause”, “determinism”, “agent-causal libertarian free will”, and “persuasion”.

I never said plants have free will. You just can’t talk about human beings for some reason. Why is that?

As above, this isn't mutually exclusive. It is both the case that head trauma is the cause of death and the case that I killed him by pushing him off the cliff.

Are you honestly going to argue that to be justly convicted and imprisoned for murder one must have either strangled someone or beaten them to death with one's bare hands, and that for everything else "I didn't do it" is true?

They are mutually exclusive because the push didn’t cause the death. Medical examiners can examine the body and find out exactly what did. Maybe they found he had a heart attack on the way down, or was dead before you pushed him. One thing they will not find is that the push was a death blow.

I’m not speaking of law here.

This is equivocation. If by "autonomous" you mean "has agent-causal libertarian free will" then in saying that biological organisms are autonomous you are begging the question. If by "autonomous" you don't mean "has agent-causal libertarian free will" then your reasoning is a non sequitur; you are missing a step that gets you from "is autonomous" to "has agent-causal libertarian free will".

As for "autonomous machines" that "self-govern, self-produce, self-differentiate, and maintain themselves", what of von Neumann probes? Would such things have agent-causal libertarian free will?

I honestly don't think you actually understand much about physics or determinism. As I referenced in an earlier comment – that you ignored – agent-causal libertarian free will requires a non-physical substance capable of acting as an uncaused cause. It certainly isn't proven true by the mere existence of plants.

No, by autonomous I mean organisms can self-govern, self-produce, self-differentiate, and maintain themselves. They are capable of creating their own components and structures, continually renewing and reproducing themselves. They can spontaneously create and maintain their complex organization from simpler components. They can maintain their integrity and functionality through ongoing processes of internal regulation and repair, counteracting degradation and external degradation like disease. No need for non-physical entities at all.

If you want to use spaceships from science fiction as an analogy, go ahead, but it doesn’t help your case in my view. Maybe stick with something more grounded.

I've been over this so many times. Speech causes the ears to release neurotransmitters to the brain causing certain neurons to behave in certain ways. Given eliminative materialism, certain neurons behaving in certain ways just is what it means for someone's mind to have been changed.

Then it should be easy to demonstrate. Use your words to change my mind.

Hence the impasse. I say that I can kill someone by pushing them off a cliff, and so therefore there is more to causation than just the immediate transfer of kinetic energy. You say that there is nothing more to causation than the immediate transfer of kinetic energy, and so therefore I can't kill someone by pushing them off a cliff.

You embrace what I would consider a reductio ad absurdum.

I think you embrace the reductio ad absurdum. The push killed him, with nothing to say regarding the impact with the ground. For me and medical doctors the cause of death would be the injuries produced by the impact, something like spinal injuries and head trauma. For you, it’s the push.

And you think that this is mutually exclusive?

I do.

None of which is a problem for causal determinism. Do you actually understand what causal determinism is, and how it differs from something like agent-causal libertarian free will? Some object "spending the energy and doing the work" does not prove that it has agent-causal libertarian free will, else plants and computers have agent-causal libertarian free will, and no reasonable person believes this.

True, but I’m not just speaking of any object. I’ve long specified my application of agent-causal free will strictly to biological organisms. There are plenty reasonable people who can differentiate between machines and biological organisms. But for some reason you can’t, or refuse to.

Unlike biological organisms, machines are not autonomous. They’re heteronomous. They cannot self-govern, self-produce, self-differentiate, nor maintain themselves. I think you intuitively know this. That’s why I think you wish to use analogies involving machines and other devices designed, programmed, and engineered to be causally determined by forces outside themselves, so as to confuse the reader.

This is another non sequitur. Being persuasive is not a physical property that strings of symbols have in isolation, just as being poisonous is not a physical property that atoms with 33 protons (arsenic) have in isolation, and so you're obviously not going to see such things if you simply stare at them (under a microscope if needed); rather, someone's argument is persuasive if someone hears it and changes their mind. That's just what it means for an argument to be persuasive, and there are countless examples of it throughout human history — and we've even measured the neurological changes that occur when this happens.

You've constructed a strawman of what it means for an argument to be persuasive.

You might not have been persuaded by another's argument, but I have. I'm not superstituous and I don't believe in gods or ghosts or gremlins; I simply understand the normal, everyday meaning of English words and have a little understanding of human psychology.

Right, there is no physical or magical property in the words that changed your mind. In other words, there is no detectable property or force in those symbols that you can point to that caused any physical changes in your body. Yet you implore me to believe they changed your mind. If not through the physical properties in symbols or biology, how can words change, alter, or do anything to your mind? What has changed and how have they been changed?

I wasn’t aware of the whistleblower information, or that Obama and his crew ordered a reassessment after they lost the election. Is that old news?

And here are my arguments and objections.

There is more to causation, but you cannot quantify what that “more” is. That’s a problem to me. So I’ll stick with the quantifiable and measurable causation, whereby one object imparts a measurable physical property like energy or momentum onto another.

Whether voluntary or involuntary, the ear has the structure, spends the energy, and does all the work of hearing. It guides the sound wave, amplifies it, converts it, and so on. The wave itself does none of this. Therefore the human is the cause of hearing, not the soundwave.

Words and other sounds may appear in your chains of counterfactual causation but they cannot be shown to cause hearing or reading, and I’m not going to concede that. Further, words cannot be shown to possess any provocative, persuasive, or inciting properties. We could stare at words for days, record them, and we will never see them perform the acts of persuading, provoking, or inciting. Therefor they are not provocative, persuasive, or inciting. I cannot be persuaded to believe otherwise, incited to believe otherwise, provoked to believe otherwise.

If they cannot cause hearing or reading or understanding, can neither provoke, incite, nor persuade anyone into those actions, they cannot indirectly cause any following actions or emotions such as agreement, violence, hate, all of which depend on the temperance, hardiness, development, growth, psychology, history—the biology— of the listener or reader.

No it isn't, because there is more to causation than just the immediate transfer of kinetic energy.

Then what is this “more”? Counterfactual dependence? After this therefore because of this?

Yes, and different computers can have different responses to the same input, but it's still the case that the input causes the output.

Unlike computers, humans control the inputs. Humans can pick up books, open them, read them, generally without assistance. Humans control the focus and movement of their eyes as they scan words, for instance. All of this visible, measurable behavior in a single act of reading and it cannot be said the words have caused any of it.

No one will give us a demonstration of their powers so we’re unable to really confirm the veracity of their claims with the simplest of experiments. So in order to discover what behavior you claim to have caused with your words I’m relegated to examining flickers of “brain activity”, and other invisible movements. You won’t mention how much of that activity is the direct result of the physical structures that have formed over years of growth and development, I just need to know that this or that flicker is an indirect effect of those symbols out there on the screen because a counterfactual chain of causation makes it so. Therefor you caused my behavior. I just can’t swallow it.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, the BlueAnon dupes of Russiagate are in for some more surprises. DNI Gabbard just dropped some frightening info.

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/DIG/DIG-Russia-Hoax-Memo-and-Timeline_revisited.pdf

Apparently a lot more is to come, which they might even use to build a criminal conspiracy case. Yikes.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2025/07/16/exclusive_secret_meeting_opens_document_floodgates_on_trumprussia_hoax_1123108.html

On the other hand, one argument for keeping children away from voting might be that it gives them the opportunity to live their formative years without being inured to state dependency, serfdom, and the utter farce that is electoral politics and representative government. They can learn to form their own bonds and organizations rather than having them hoisted upon them by some oligarchy. Sure, the desensitization to that power dynamic begins early enough in public education, but not having the fetish of representation and the fantasy that we can vote ourselves to a better world might help foster the self-governance required to do what's right in such a deranged system.

I didn't say that. I said that there is more to causation than just the immediate transfer of kinetic energy. All of your examples are examples of causation, but so too are all of mine.

You believe turning on the stove causes the water to boil. I believe the transfer of heat causes the water to boil. The problem is there isn’t always a pot of water on the stove. Siri doesn’t always understand. The bulb needs to be changed. There is a body of water below the cliff. It’s such a flimsy account of causation.

Smoking can cause cancer, droughts can cause famines, I can kill someone by pushing them off a cliff, and I can turn on the lights by flicking a switch, pulling a chord, pushing a button, clapping my hands, or saying “Siri, turn on the lights”. None of this is superstition or magical thinking. And neither is being persuaded by another's argument.

It is superstition to believe words have causal powers above and beyond the immediate effects of their physical structure. It is superstition to believe in telekinesis. We know this because you transfer no more measurable physical energy to a listener using persuasive or provocative language than you would if you were speaking gibberish or writing nonsense. We know this because writing begets varying responses, as is apparent in your own writing. Same words, varying responses. The only thing that could account for that variability is the listener. The responses are not a result of the words, but of the person reading them. No Rube Goldberg devices, no post hoc fallacy, no false analogies, nor weasel words required.

And you think that this is mutually exclusive with the words causally affecting your body and brain? The physical existence of the printed words are what physically cause light to reflect the way it does, which is what physically causes your eyes to release the neurotransmitters they do, which is what physically causes the neurons in the brain to behave the way they do ("understanding").

Your words cannot move my eyes. Your words do not transduce light into electrochemical energy. Your words do not send neurotransmitters. The words have not forced me to understand them. All of that activity is the result of and caused by my body, as is the response.

I can write a sentence in a different language and the words will never cause you to understand them. You’d have to first go out of your way learn what the words mean, whether through association or immersion. Understanding needs to be there before your cause, not after. That is why it cannot be an effect unless you believe in backwards causation.

Not so much of a democracy then.

Let everyone vote. Cradle-to-the-grave government requires cradle-to-the-grave participation, so why not?

It's not new. I first mentioned it a month ago.

The problems with counterfactual reasoning are not new either.

You keep repeating the same non sequitur ad nauseum. There is more to causation than just the immediate transfer of kinetic energy. Smoking can cause cancer, droughts can cause famines, I can kill someone by pushing them off a cliff, and I can turn on the lights by flicking a switch, pulling a chord, pushing a button, clapping my hands, or saying “Siri, turn on the lights”.

You don’t believe the transfer of energy has any effect? So the transfer of momentum from one billiard ball to another doesn’t cause it to move? So the transfer of heat to water doesn’t cause it to boil?

You don’t seem so sure either with your steady application of weasel words. Not all smokers get cancer. Not all droughts cause famines. People can fall off cliffs and live.

You being able to read and understand them is proof that they causally affect your sense organs and brain, and you responding to them is a causal consequence of that, as per both the counterfactual theory of causation and causal determinism (given that eliminative materialism is true).

Words do not cause reading and understanding. In every case it is me moving my eyes, focussing on the words, reading them, and so on down the line.

I'm just waiting when @NOS4A2 will come here to enthusiastically defend Trump. :lol:

You disappeared for a couple weeks there. Did you finally find a little angle to exploit?

What do you think it means to be persuaded if not the appropriate areas of the brain being active in response to hearing or reading some words?

I believe it means we come to agree with an argument by assessing it with our own reasoning and judgement.

The counterfactual theory of causation says that A causes B if B would not have happened had A not happened. So their comments would have caused you to not respond to them if you would have not not responded to them (i.e would have responded to them) had they not been posted, which isn’t possible.

So no, the comments that you didn’t respond to didn’t cause you to not respond to them, but the comments that you did respond to did cause you to respond to them.

Great, a new theory of causation.

I can give you the answer. What caused me to both respond or not respond to these comments was me in both cases. I read, ignored, dismissed as stupid, or took seriously each argument and at my own discretion. The influence of this activity was my own interest and desires. The force behind the reading, response, and each keystroke was my own. The comments themselves had no causal power, for the simple reason that they do not possess the kind of energy to impel such actions.

Your reasoning is:

a) A causes B only if B is the immediate effect of A's kinetic energy
b) the brain's behaviour is not the immediate effect of the kinetic energy of speech or writing
c) therefore, the brain's behaviour is not caused by speech or writing

When you say “[words] physically cannot move the brain” you mean it in the sense of (b), which is irrelevant given that (a) is false. This is the mistake you keep repeating ad nauseum.

Smoking can cause cancer, droughts can cause famines, I can kill someone by pushing them off a cliff, and I can turn on the lights by flicking a switch, pulling a chord, pushing a button, clapping my hands, or saying “Siri, turn on the lights”. These common sense examples are not metaphors or analogies or superstitions or magical thinkings, but are literal and prove that (a) is false. There is more to causation than just the immediate transfer of kinetic energy.

The impasse is that you insist on saying that all of these examples are false because (a) is true. You commit to the absurd implications of (a), which is evidently unreasonable.

Then you should be able to cause my brain state and any subsequent activity with your words, as if you were turning on a light. Let’s see it.

If any one of the people claiming to have the power to animate human beings with words animated me with words, it might show that they possess the powers they claim to possess. But a simple demonstration of the one requested is not forthcoming. So it raises the question, why can’t any of those who claim to be able to animate others with words animate their interlocutors with words?

one must hear/read the words from someone before one can (mis)understand them, yes?

Yes

The Neural Correlates of Persuasion: A Common Network across Cultures and Media

Yes, it’s obvious various brain regions light up when we read and come to agree with something.

How about you persuade me that the universe revolves around the earth? Should be a simple matter of arranging the symbols in various combinations and putting letters and numbers in your arguments.

Each of my posts has provoked you to respond. See the counterfactual theory of causation, coupled with the fact that eliminative materialism is true and that causal determinism applies to all physical objects and processes (whether organic or not, and whether "using its own energies" or not).

I’ve outright ignored countless people, even you. Did they provoke me not to respond, then? Did they cause me to ignore them?

This is another non sequitur. That words can persuade isn't that there's some specific sequence of words that can unavoidably cause any listener or reader to be persuaded. The human brain is far too complex for that.

You might not be persuaded by my words but it is an undeniable fact that many people throughout human history have been persuaded by others' words. Your persistent refusal to accept this is just willful ignorance.

People have said they were persuaded by another’s words. I don’t doubt that at all. That sort language has been in the western lexicon for thousands of years. The sophists of Ancient Greece actually treated words as if they were drugs, and the sophists of today carry on that superstitious tradition.

But none of that means the words moved or animated the brain, which is impossible, and for the reasons I’ve already stated. The words don’t make the eyes move over them. The words don’t force you to understand them. The words don’t cause you to agree just as they don’t cause you to disagree. They physically cannot move the brain in that way. Symbols do not nor cannot gain causal powers when they become words. It’s impossible and absolutely nothing has shown that it is possible.

This has been proved, empirically, time and time and time and time again. In this thread, through examples, and in your own life (obviously. Otherwise you'd not be replying here). Your refusal is just your stupidity being writ large. There are no versions of this than can be boiled down to an argument. You are ignorant. Plain and simple.

I’ve given you countless opportunities to demonstrate your powers and move me with your words and you haven’t been able to. There is really no excuse except that you’re projecting your mindlessness onto others.

Given your claim to some empirical fact it should be easy to devise some empirical test of it or some demonstration that anyone can observe. If words can persuade or otherwise move someone to some other behavior, then it should be easy to get me to agree. Yet I am not persuaded, and you have abjectly refused to persuade, incite, or provoke me into some behavior, as you have claimed to be able to do. No demonstration of your empirical fact is forthcoming.

So now that you’ve added your weasel words you have admitted the corollary that words sometimes cannot persuade someone. In those instances, where have the causal powers of your words disappeared to?

Thanks for the info.

1. a person can (often enough) understand words from another person
2. understanding another person's words is an effect
3. words can (often enough) have an effect

1. a person can misunderstand words from another person
2. misunderstanding another person's words is an effect
3. words can have an effect

Aren’t words an effect of the understanding? One must understand the language in order to know what the symbols mean, for example. If understanding was an effect of the symbols, one could know what a language means just by hearing it.

It’s not evidence against the claim. That’s why it’s a non sequitur. That I haven’t done something just isn’t evidence that it’s physically impossible. There are an immeasurable number of things that are physically possible but that I haven’t done.

The evidence for the claim is all of human history and psychology.

You said it was an empirical fact that we do so, nothing about it being possible or impossible. I’ve quoted it in full numerous times. I’ve corrected your strawman. Despite this you remain unpersuaded. That’s just more evidence to me.

But now it is in the realm of possibility; words both can and cannot persuade, incite, provoke. Before it was an empirical fact that they do, yet we no mention that it is an empirical fact that we don’t. And now it has to do psychology, a property of the listener, not a property of words and symbols. It’s a complete breakdown of the superstition at this point.

I didn't say it wasn't falsifiable. Try reading my words.

That we persuade, convince, provoke, incite, coerce, teach, trick, etc. isn’t pseudoscience. It's an emprical fact about psychology.

But you refuse to say what would falsify it. Nor can you give us a demonstration of your powers.

We went over this a while ago. That words can, and do, persuade, isn't that they always persuade. You're just continuing with non sequiturs. It's tiresome. Your position throughout this discussion has been found absurd and now you're just floundering. I should have stopped when you refused to admit that we can kill someone by pushing them off a cliff.

It’s not a non-sequitur to note that the evidence against a claim contradicts a claim. It’s why you widened the goalposts and included more weasel words, so you can keep trying to wiggle out of it.

If there is no way to test or observe your theory and contradict it with evidence, it’s pseudoscience, I’m afraid. But a question remains: if your words persuade, why aren’t they persuading?

Then what would falsify your empirical fact that you persuade people with words? It’s a simple question.

Yes, that was my claim. And you claimed that me not having convinced you falsifies my claim. This is a non sequitur.

Then what would falsify your empirical fact if not the empirical fact that you’ve persuaded no one?

“I simply acknowledge that it is an empirical fact that we do persuade, convince, provoke, incite, coerce, teach, trick, etc. with our words. It's not magic, it's not superstition, and it happens even if determinism is false.”

Quoted in full. It’s fine to admit that you were wrong, therefore your widening of the goalposts and your inclusion of other weasel words.

"You haven't done X to me, therefore X is impossible" is a non sequitur. This is such basic reasoning.

I never said that, though. What does your basic reasoning tell you about misrepresented arguments?



A complete lie.

I do know what a non-sequitur is but you have been unable to explain why the evidence against a claim (that I am not moved by your words) does not falsify your claim that it is a fact “people are moved by words”. If your fact is unfalsifiable, it is pseudoscience. If it can be falsified by observation, what can falsify your claim other than the direct evidence that I am unmoved by your words?

So either you don’t have a mind of your own, and live according to your claim that you are moved by another’s words, or you have a mind of your own and you are moved according to your own reasoning. So which is it?

Language, laws, government, and other products of the imagination change with the rise and fall of custom and usage, but the biology from which they are derived has hardly evolved since anyone started speaking them into existence. So it’s a matter of what it is we’re looking at, the people or their artifacts. The shifting veil of the artificial and abstract gives the impression of progress, or to some, of decadence and decay; but beneath the thread-bare language under which human history attempts to disguise itself is the same superstitious and tribalistic mammal that was there since the beginning.

I also mean that ideals such as “peace” or “prosperity” are so empty that we wouldn’t even know it if they manifested. Unfortunately, that is one of philosophy’s problems: it is often an exercise in multiplying nouns or playing with synonyms. Abstractions are a necessary fixture of language and thought, but when they cannot be tethered to the world by way of concrete example, or are stuffed solid with equally floaty terms, it becomes impossible to know what we are speaking about, let alone to know how to reach them.

I suspect that one who claims he and others can be moved by words is in some way is tacitly admitting guilt, namely, that he isn’t able to think for himself. This is now the fifth time someone has said my statement is a non-sequitur without explaining why that is so.

Clearly they’re not. But who knows? Someone might come to agree.

I never thought any demonstration of your powers was forthcoming. They never are, despite the claims.

Given your powers, it should be easy to trick, persuade, incite, or provoke me into tricking, persuading, inciting, or provoking you into this admission.

I would like you to admit that everything you’ve been writing is nonsense. How would I go about that?

That’s the rub for you.

What is compelled, and what is free.

I don’t think you can explain either consistently.

Do I have to put the words in a certain order or something?

I did way back - I tricked, incited, coerced, and provoked you into responding to me here on the forum. Remember? You are my slave now.

You keep posting as if you have a choice, but you don’t. My words are the cause, not you or your mind. I’m pretty sure if you posted some copyrighted material here I would be sued and you wouldn’t, because everyone knows you are just posting because I said so AND because you don’t understand how speech, like copy written material, can cause others to take physical action, like suing me.

The odd thing is, only if you have a mind of your own is there a possibility of words causing action. You seem to believe in a mind of your own. How is such a mind possible?

Maybe you can teach me your magic. How can I compel you to do what I want?

No it doesn't. Yet another absolutely inane non-sequitur.

Did someone convince you to say that, or do you have a mind of your own?

No it doesn't. This is a non sequitur.

You claimed “it is an empirical fact that we do persuade, convince, provoke, incite, coerce, teach, trick, etc. with our words”.

So then persuade, convince, provoke, incite, teach, trick, etc. me into agreeing with you.

I turned on the lights.

Proof by assertion.

See the Wikipedia article on libertarian free will:

No thanks.

If (a) physics is deterministic and if (b) nothing non-physical explains an agent's behaviour then (c) an agent's behaviour is deterministic.

An agent’s behavior is determined by the agent, which I’ve been saying all along. Agents are physical. Wikipedia isn’t going to help with this one.

P1. You have persuaded and influenced precisely no one
C1. Therefore, your theory is falsified

This is a non sequitur.

Yet this evidence completely contradicts your claim that “it is an empirical fact that we do persuade, convince, provoke, incite, coerce, teach, trick, etc. with our words”. Our mutual inability to persuade and convince each other is evidence against your claim that you can “influence their free decisions and behaviours by persuading, convincing, provoking, inciting, coercing, tricking, etc.”.

Given these statements your fact ought to be easy to prove with a simple demonstration, but for some reason you won’t.

You are misunderstanding the purpose of that example. Your argument was:

P1. Symbols and symbolic sounds, arranged in certain combinations, cannot affect and move other phases of matter above and beyond the kinetic energy inherent in the physical manifestation of their symbols.
C1. Therefore, incitement is physically impossible ("superstitious, magical-thinking").

The example of turning on the lights by saying "Siri, turn on the lights" is simply a refutation of P1. It's not meant to be anything more than that. Given that P1 is false you need to either offer a better justification for C1 or (which you now seem to have done) acknowledge that incitement is not physically impossible.

It wasn’t much of a refutation because you haven’t shown how you affected and moved anything beyond the diaphragm in the microphone.

Nonetheless, the other phases of matter I was speaking of were human beings. Human beings are not designed and engineered to operate according to your commands. So the question becomes: why aren’t you able to use a human being in your refutation instead of a device designed and engineered to move according to your commands?

I am not claiming that causal determinism is true. I am only arguing that agent-causal libertarian free will is incompatible with eliminative materialism, and so that your positions are inconsistent. If you want to argue against the "domino effect" then you must argue for something like interactionist dualism, because the domino effect is an inevitable consequence of physicalism (even counting quantum indeterminacy).

I just don’t understand how they’re inconsistent. And of course neither of them are really relevant. We can argue about the domino effect implied by your arguments with basic biology and physics, and without invoking free will, determinism, or non-physical entities.

With a domino effect, the energy required to move each piece in a standard set of dominos is provided and transferred by the fall of the preceding piece. But the body provides the energy required to both maintain the structure and function of all cells in the body, including in the ear and the subsequent parts involved in hearing. It also provides the energy required to transduce signals, to move impulses, and to respond to them. The body does all the work of hearing, thinking, moving etc. using exactly zero energy provided by the sound wave, and therefore completely unaffected and moved by it. In other words, all the energy required to move the body comes from the body, not the soundwaves, not from other speakers, and so on.