Talk-Polywell.org

Joseph Chikva wrote:

cg66 wrote:I, like many here, want academic verification and I tend to ignore Rossi’s babbling and focus on what other researchers (like Celani) are doing.

I am afraid that you are babbling too about "verification" of non discovered phenomenon.
All truly believing Christians wait for the Second Coming while Jews wait for only the First. And whether there was a Coming? Who knows? Who saw? And whether that will be in the future?
Good luck.

Ahh, Joseph, you have touched on the subject of Belief (by mentioning religion), which has been danced about repeatedly for hundreds of pages of postings on this LENR topic.

#1 - Confusion. Some want so badly for something new and good to be real that they simply believe, and will search for anything that fits with their belief system. This kind of thinking precludes rational thought or anything that resembles science, and seems to fit well with the cognitive bias known as Confirmation Bias. It's like an optical illusion, except instead of incorrectly interpreting visual data based on problems with the data or the limits of our eyes, it is problems with the abilities of (some) of our brains to process information rationally. Some simply believe in the scientific process (without understanding it) in the same fashion that others believe in religion. This is bad, as it's a state of confusion that detracts from a real scientific process, rational thought, and progress.

#2 - Corruption. Mixing a confused and broken scientific process with intellectual property, profits, and corporate/commercial interests seems to be the same as the selling of indulgences - a pollution of the original concept so complete that hypocrisy is an insufficient label. Sin isn't even sufficient to describe what intellectual property and corporate profits do with confused science - bad Karma, or simply evil, may be more accurate. The harm spreads in ways that are hard to predict or contain. Think Mayans using knowledge of astronomical events to extract religious offerings and human sacrifice from their bamboozled subjects.

#3 - rational thought. A scientific process that extracts principles of nature in a way that increases understanding. I don't care if this new understanding is protected as intellectual property and profited from in some fashion, as long as the understanding is real and based on rational thought.

Rossi falls somewhere between #1 and #2. Unfortunately, much University research also falls squarely in the realm of #2 as the publication and tenure process has become a den of corruption. Perhaps Rossi knows this and thinks he's circumventing it by the way he's doing things. In fact, he's not, he's just making things worse.

Gandalf wrote:Some want so badly for something new and good to be real that they simply believe, and will search for anything that fits with their belief system.

You can divide people into two broad groups:

1. Those who, despite the evidence, believe what suits them.

2. Those who, because of the evidence, believe what they would rather not.

The first lot are responsible for many of the World's ills.

(Speaking of which, anyone want to take me up on that bet?)

CKay wrote:

Gandalf wrote:Some want so badly for something new and good to be real that they simply believe, and will search for anything that fits with their belief system.

You can divide people into two broad groups:

1. Those who, despite the evidence, believe what suits them.

2. Those who, because of the evidence, believe what they would rather not.

Very succinctly put.

It's the lack of coupling between evidence and beliefs that gets complicated. In this day and age the very word 'belief' belies some sort of, well, belief system. Or religion.

CKay wrote:

Gandalf wrote:Some want so badly for something new and good to be real that they simply believe, and will search for anything that fits with their belief system.

You can divide people into two broad groups:

1. Those who, despite the evidence, believe what suits them.

2. Those who, because of the evidence, believe what they would rather not.

The first lot are responsible for many of the World's ills.

(Speaking of which, anyone want to take me up on that bet?)

Don't forget the third group. Those who are poorly educated and or lack experience and so cannot interpret evidence correctly.

I think gambling over the Rossi affair is silly. Personally I took 10k and bought sherrit international for 4.90 a share. P/E of under 5, 3% yeild, and record profits. It is already at 5.60 a share just on its own fundamentals. If cold fusion is the real deal, I expect it to rise even more, if it's a fraud my downside is limited. Betting even if I was to win would be a simple doubling of my money ... how boring is that.

seedload wrote:

KitemanSA wrote:

seedload wrote: This is like arguing whether Alchemy is actually Magic or is just a form of Magic.

??? Your bias is showing.

Of course my bias is showing. That was the obvious intent.

A more subtle theme to my post was to again point out how much you love to argue on the basis of semantics, faining a lack of comprehension based on a trumped up specific definition of phrasing in a feeble attempt to avoid the actual intention of the OP.

The OP to which I was responding was this:

DanT wrote:Different subject?
Um, LENR is cold fusion, or cold fusion is LENR if you prefer.

I disagreed with the equality. Then folks jumped all over me and seemed to imply nefarious purposes. Well, THEY are nuts. But again here you are jumping all over me. So, why?
I don't equate the two. Do you? Seems a fairly limiting viewpoint to me. How do you think about things with everthing all equated like that?

Gandalf wrote:Ahh, Joseph, you have touched on the subject of Belief (by mentioning religion), which has been danced about repeatedly for hundreds of pages of postings on this LENR topic.

#1 - Confusion...

#2 - Corruption...

#3 - rational thought...

We all (all people) are thinking rationally and irrationally at the same time.

But the claim on excess heat needs only a single type of verification - properly conducted calorimetry. And nothing more else. For that even middle school skill is enough.

Another issue is possibility of LENR.
May be some unknown reactions can be discovered in some special conditions. And what conditions are special? Extremely high or low temperature, extremely high fields or extremely high density.
E.g. if I recall correctly Rydberg matter may be created at number density on several orders of magnitude than any solid state has.
It is very funny to wait nuclear reaction after following procedures: take nanopowder (chemically activated powder), put in hydrogen environment (reasonable pressure), and add chemical catalyst.

That's all I would like to say to believers of LENR.

Crawdaddy wrote:I think gambling over the Rossi affair is silly.

I agree - anyone taking me up on that bet would indeed be daft to do so. From my side, it's an almost criminally easy way to double my money in 12 months. And in the stratospherically improbable event of my losing the bet, the consequences of such a discovery (delaying the collapse of civilization towards which we seem to so inexorably be heading) would easily be enough recompense. So, from my POV, there really are no downsides.

As for the notion that buying shares in a nickel mining company has little risk - well, those share could very easily fall in value, particularly if/when the present commodities bubble bursts.

JoeP wrote:Gentlemen, come on now. We can't wager for trifles like quatloos.
The stakes must be higher.

Will Republic credits do?

Or, given the centrality of energy to modern society, how about watts? Normally I'm not a gambling man, but I'll take up CKay on his offer. I'll wager 12 kilowatts of E-Cat-generated power that Rossi's Energy Catalyzer is not a scam.

Ivy Matt wrote: I'll wager 12 kilowatts of E-Cat-generated power that Rossi's Energy Catalyzer is not a scam.

Not confident enough to accept a bet with real consequences?

(btw what do you mean you'd wager 12 kilowatts? Watts measure power, that's a rate, not a quantity, of energy.)

CKay,
I'm quite prepared to bet you something.
The problem is that from the various posts following my last one, it seems that any measurement that shows anomalous heat must be a measurement error, by definition (because LENR doesn't exist). This makes it a little hard to win.

Er, 12 kilowatt-hours, then?

What do you mean no real consequences? If the E-Cat turns out to work, I get 12 free kW/h.

parallel wrote:CKay,
I'm quite prepared to bet you something.
The problem is that from the various posts following my last one, it seems that any measurement that shows anomalous heat must be a measurement error, by definition (because LENR doesn't exist). This makes it a little hard to win.

?

I stated that I'd accept a report from a reputable university or govt dept.

As Joe said above, simple calorimetry is all that's required to prove anamolous heat production of the magnitude that Rossi is claiming for his ecats.

If ecats really work as advertised, I couldn't care less if that disagrees with theory.

Or you could buy a domestic ecat and we could agree upon an independent body to do the calorimetry...

Edit: that independent body would have to be agreed in advance - the wager is offered now, not if/when any home ecats appear.

parallel wrote:CKay,
I'm quite prepared to bet you something.
The problem is that from the various posts following my last one, it seems that any measurement that shows anomalous heat must be a measurement error, by definition (because LENR doesn't exist). This makes it a little hard to win.

Parallel, I am as surprised as CKay by this statement. I remember you claiming to have worked as an experimental scientist. So you are surely capable of understanding the difference between careful calorimetry and what all the significant heat-positive LENR experiments show. Many of them have been repeated under tighter experimental protocols and hey presto - the anomalous heat gets smaller. Magic! Rossi's "demo's" are unusual in being much less careful than typical LENR experiments, so you really cannot deduce anything from them. Of course that is what he needs since he claims very high anomalous heat.

Ivy Matt wrote:Er, 12 kilowatt-hours, then?

What do you mean no real consequences? If the E-Cat turns out to work, I get 12 free kW/h.

CKay, on the skeptic side, is prepared to wager $1000.

12kW-h is $1

see the difference?