This debate is interesting, because it exposes two different, important, but subtle points in the argument.
stefanbanev wrote:tomclarke wrote:stephanbanaev wrote:
Any kind of believe is an extreme, the believe in scam as well as believe in LENR. The believe is a result of lack of evidences and at this point (in my opinion) there is no a definitive facts supporting any side.
This sounds good, but does not wash. Some beliefs are more likley than others. Take ID versus evolutionary theory. Both equally explain facts, but scientists have a very low belief in ID because it requires additional otherwise unproven mechanisms - an omnipotent creator etc.
The two explanations for LENR possible positives - LENR versus experimental error. In principle LENR could equally explain the results. It is just that it requires a whole lot of extra otherwise unproven mechanisms which do not seem to be otherwise detectable, whereas experimental error is well understood and expected to lead to false positives in all the types of experiment that get positive LENR results.
LENR and ID are unsatisfactory scientifically also because they have no way to prove the null hypothesis. In neither case is there anyway to disprove the theory. In LENR's case this is because the mechanism is unclear and therefore there is no specific result mandated by LENR. Of course, the "experimental error" hypothesis can be easily disproven by clear evidence of nuclear reactions, excess heat or gammas etc.
So far, all evidences (from my perspective) are circumstantial/indirect thus, the assessment of probability is a personal choice... very likely (in my opinion) LENR is a practical tech and quite soon will make a dramatic impact; who first will come to market is irrelevant for me... when - is more interesting... By the way, the pathological skepticism is an admission of own mediocrecy, once someone has failed to make a splash they deny such ability for others (as self-defense) and in-fact, in 99% cases they turn out to be right just because any breakthrough of such magnitude is really a rare event...
This is self-contradictory. You say skeptics are skeptical for personal reasons, and then affirm that they are right 99% of the time. Does that mean over LENR you agree chances are <1% it is real? And tell me, surely a rational person, given this 99% chance of not working, should be skeptical?
>Take ID versus evolutionary theory. Both equally explain facts,
ID does not explain, it postpones the explanation or/and it gives up to explain (delegating the act of creation to entity it can not define (it is indefinable by its own definition ;o)).
Of course I agree with your statement about ID. The explanation is an meta-explanation - it moves the problem to one of explaining the divine creator.
My point is that in principle this is the same process as happens with an LENR explanation. For divine creator read "as yet unknown LENR mechanism". One perplexity is exchanged for another.
Now of course we see unknown LENR mechanisms as less implausible than unknown divine creators. But they both have the same difficulty.
Interstingly, W-L theory scores better on this scale than "LENR". That is because it is a more complete mechanism. There are still some gaps, but there is enough detail for the theory to be in principle supported or denied by specific experiments testing its elements. I have a lot of sympathy with the NASA people who want to prove or disprove W-L. they have some chance of doing this. It is however still true that disproving W-L will be difficult, because the theory does not state precisely how to obtain the conditions for its exotic physics, and is essentially untestable until these conditions are met.
Thus suppose W-L theory is just not true (see for example Chubb's sympathetic but definite informal rebuttal). How can this be proved? No amount of negative experiments can do this, because maybe they did not hit the sweet spot allowing the W-L phenomena to occur.
However W-L can be conditionally disproved. Suppose experiment X (perhaps Miley's MIT demo) is thought to provide definite evidence of LENR. It can be tested for high energy gamma production. It can be tested for high energy gamma shielding (as suggested by W-L). Now:
Conditional on X being an example of LENR, if gamma shielding is not observed, then W-L as explanation for LENR is false. Conversely if gamma shielding is observed W-L is true. Since such gamma shielding is otherwise unknown in physics it is a strong indicator.
Furthermore, if LENR is real and W-L theory is the explanation the gamma shielding effect must be very consistent and powerful. that is because the theorised by W-L gammas are never in practice detected from many many different experiments. So checking for gamma shield effect in LENR experiments is the most fruitful way to prove/disprove W-L.
>You say skeptics are skeptical for personal reasons, and then affirm
>that they are right 99% of the time. Does that mean over LENR you
>agree chances are <1% it is real? And tell me, surely a rational
>person, given this 99% chance of not working, should be skeptical?
The probabilities are relative - the player in Russian roulette wins 100% from his perspective; even it is a joke but illustrates well my point. Let say you get back in 1910th and you know how to build atomic bomb, for you the chances are 100% to create it (with enough resources). Your opponent is a government clerk who knows nothing about nuclear physics and in fact he is a manifestation of mediocrity who is right in 99% cases simply following a mainstream position so all "perpetuum-mobile" inventions are reliably blocked and tax money are not wasted in 99% cases therefore clerk's performance is perfect. Yet, another rational person (in this case you) assess the probability quite differently... Thus, two rational persons may asses probabilities differently. If someone just wants to be right in 99% cases - it is very simple - just follow a mainstream...
The logic of this argument remains faulty. In fact two rational people, given the same observations cannot in principle assess probability differently. (Bayesian probability theory is definite and will lead to identical beliefs, anything else is provably inconsistent with probability axoims that all rational people would hold).
True, people with different info (observations), will have different belief. But in this case the LENR people have no information, including scientific theories, that are not generally available.
Furthermore just because an unthinking fool following the mainstream would agree with a brilliant, critical, scientist also part of that mainstream does not prove the latter to be wrong or blinkered. There would be cases where the scientist would see new stuff that the clerk missed. But being biassed against the mainstream is as bad as blindly following it, with the disadvantage that it is nearly always wrong.
Applying this to the real world where observations cannot easily be quantified is difficult, of course.
The error here is in arguing from a specific highly unlikely counterexample to the general case. Throw 20 dice inside a black box with a camera to show result. Let person A see the camera output, deny this to person B. Now maybe person A sees all 6's. He proclaims this. Person B would rightly be skeptical about such a claim, if he did not know about the camera. Even if he did know about the camera, he would be skeptical because such a regular score is highly unlikley, and maybe A is lying.
There is a universe in which 20 6's were thrown and B happens to be wrong. But rationally the chances of us being in that universe are smaller than the chances of A for some strange reason being mistaken or lying or some third party (C) rigging the camera or biassing the dice, to generate false results. So as a rational person B can do no other than to rate chances of mistake or deceit from A as much higher than chances of his being right.
Note that the LENR experimental results are all sufficiently ambiguous that mistake is not unlikely. To reduce the probability of mistake you would need to take any one apparently positive and replicable experiment, and have a (preferably but not necessarily) independent skeptical group duplicate it and subject it to many further carefully documented tests to confirm or falsify the various experimental error possibilities. In fact it is a lack of curiosity about and interest in experimental error that I see as the biggest weakness of the LENR people. They don't want to sit with a positive experiment for months thinking of how it could be wrong, trying to break it, and slowly accumulating better evidence. Yet that is what would prove LENR!
Of course, those people who
do want to examine LENR experiments really closely perhaps find (like earthtech) that they get uniformly negative results. These are just not interesting, by definition, to the LENR people. Nor do they disprove LENR - which can't be disproved.
For example. If Miley took his demo experiment, led a class working out
what are all the possible causes of experimental error and testing them with different controls, extra measurements, etc he would find one of two things:
(a) a very solid scientific paper showing LENR. This would then be replicated by many other groups. The first independent positive replication and the science community would believe, Miley would be very very famous and get Nobel prize.
or
(b) there was in fact some mundane explanation for the results.
His class would be a really interesting one where creative and analyitical thinkers could struggle with real scientific problems. If Miley is right they might even share a Nobel.
Some people will tell me that he is not doing this because he wants to commercialise LENR. I don't believe it. Nobel prizes are valuable. With a Nobel prize he could certainly get much larger funding for his commercialisation on better terms.