This is for you lot

Am · Post by Am » Sun Dec 18, 2011 8:02 pm

From Jed, in response to MaryYugo, but it applies to most of you too:

You say that, and I think you are sincere. But your actions prove you
are deceiving yourself. You despise cold fusion. You are working tirelessly
to prevent funding and destroy the field. Whenever it is mentioned in the
mass media, you go to the comment section and fill it with unfounded,
ignorant blather, technical mistakes about papers you have not read, guilt
by associations, and baseless accusations of fraud. You and hundreds of
others like you poison the well and destroy people's lives and careers with
your reckless accusations. You think it is all a game, and words have no
consequences. You pretend this does not matter.

Ask yourself: Have you ever once, in the mass media, mentioned that there
is quality work out there, or "I favor funding for cold fusion"? You say it
here, to this audience. Have you written at Time magazine, or Fox News? I
doubt it.

You remind of elderly white bigots in Georgia who say they got along well
with black people and loved them like family. Yet these people were in
charge until the 1970s, and they maintained race divided schools in
Atlanta, where the black schools had no books, no laboratory equipment,
filthy bathrooms with backed up toilets, and such crowded classes that half
the kids attended in the morning, and half in the afternoon, and most
dropped out. This was a machine intended to destroy lives and keep people
in dire poverty. The older people deny that is how things were. They say
they didn't know, they never saw it. They deny it was their fault. But it
was their fault.

http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40 ... 59278.html

GIThruster · Post by **GIThruster** » Sun Dec 18, 2011 9:49 pm

I think Jed started off well but then made an unwarranted moral judgement about the cynics and skeptics. What was done in the South was by design, while skeptics seldom have that much understanding of their own intentions.

Fact is, many for purely emotional reasons equate skepticism with rationality when this could not be farther from the truth. There are always two ways to fall off the fence. One can be a technological optimist and naively presume every solution that proposes itself is worth financial support, or one can be a skeptic and presume that the odds are less than 1 in 10 any solution that sounds really good is what it seems. Both fall off the fence and are equally wrong.

The in-between, the middle ground of rationality, is the realist's perspective: that no generalizations can aid in making a worthwhile presumption about a supposed emergent technology, but rather in order to make a judgement, one must invest serious time and energy doing an actual investigation. The devil is in the details. There is no short-cut nor work-around. If you want to make a judgement about supposed emergent tech, you have to investigate it with an open mind. Sadly, the cynics and the skeptics think themselves rational, when they are no more rational than the optimists they oppose, and they are a helluva lot more grumpy, cantankerous, and stink of day old fish.

tomclarke · Post by **tomclarke** » Sun Dec 18, 2011 10:02 pm

GIThruster wrote:I think Jed started off well but then made an unwarranted moral judgement about the cynics and skeptics. What was done in the South was by design, while skeptics seldom have that much understanding of their own intentions.

Fact is, many for purely emotional reasons equate skepticism with rationality when this could not be farther from the truth. There are always two ways to fall off the fence. One can be a technological optimist and naively presume every solution that proposes itself is worth financial support, or one can be a skeptic and presume that the odds are less than 1 in 10 any solution that sounds really good is what it seems. Both fall off the fence and are equally wrong.

The in-between, the middle ground of rationality, is the realist's perspective: that no generalizations can aid in making a worthwhile presumption about a supposed emergent technology, but rather in order to make a judgement, one must invest serious time and energy doing an actual investigation. The devil is in the details. There is no short-cut nor work-around. If you want to make a judgement about supposed emergent tech, you have to investigate it with an open mind. Sadly, the cynics and the skeptics think themselves rational, when they are no more rational than the optimists they oppose, and they are a helluva lot more grumpy, cantankerous, and stink of day old fish.

Re CF. I spent some time investigating it with open mind. Still do.

Alas so far, on careful investigation (which takes time), what seems really exciting becomes less so.

I think, from the number of CF believers out there, that not everyone does careful investigation.

Best wishes, Tom

JoeP · Post by **JoeP** » Sun Dec 18, 2011 10:12 pm

Making analogies to racists and Nazi's are in poor taste when making an argument. Risk of offending people and doesn't help you change minds. Read up on Godwin.

D Tibbets · Post by **D Tibbets** » Sun Dec 18, 2011 10:55 pm

A typical attack. If you cannot defend your position on merit, you demonize the opposition.
Personally, I think 'cold fusion' research is fascinating. Both on the results and the experimental fallacies. Controls tend to be poorly thought out.
I have doubts about many of the claimed results, but concede that interesting things are occurring. From the aspects of metallurgy, hydrogen storage, electron behavior, etc. there is a lot to be learned.

Finally, any remarkable claim must be defended, not by attacking skeptics, but by well controlled, and repeatable experiments. If there is criticism the merits of the criticism needs to be determined, and if reasonable, the experiment needs to address the issue.

Of course the existence of convincing results does not imply widespread access to this information, so speculation plays a role. This certainly applies to EMC2, Tri Alpha, and many others. And from a funding perspective turf wars are a part of life, irregardless of the perceived merits of a particular approach.

Dan Tibbets

kcdodd · Post by **kcdodd** » Mon Dec 19, 2011 1:03 am

If a skeptic is evil, what is someone who fabricates, or just claims, results to dupe people into giving them money instead of those who are honestly working to find new sources of energy. Telling the difference is what the brain is for.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Mon Dec 19, 2011 2:10 am

JoeP wrote:Making analogies to racists and Nazi's are in poor taste when making an argument. Risk of offending people and doesn't help you change minds. Read up on Godwin.

Totally OT but there is quite a Godwin fight going on here. Along with several indelicate references to female anatomy.

http://classicalvalues.com/2011/12/endl ... versation/

ScottL · Post by **ScottL** » Mon Dec 19, 2011 2:20 am

I think AM is applying this here because of the Rossi conversation. To clarify, what Rossi is purposing is not Cold Fusion, but LENR. If I'm wrong as to why AM posted that quote, then I apologize. To clarify I am not anti CF or LENR, but extraordinary claims recquire extraordinary proof which of course would be backed by proper experimentation and verification.

Giorgio · Post by **Giorgio** » Mon Dec 19, 2011 6:02 pm

ScottL wrote: To clarify I am not anti CF or LENR, but extraordinary claims recquire extraordinary proof which of course would be backed by proper experimentation and verification.

You will now attract on yourself the ire of Rossi's minion troops.

JD · Post by JD » Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:59 am

ScottL wrote:I think AM is applying this here because of the Rossi conversation. To clarify, what Rossi is purposing is not Cold Fusion, but LENR. If I'm wrong as to why AM posted that quote, then I apologize. To clarify I am not anti CF or LENR, but extraordinary claims recquire extraordinary proof which of course would be backed by proper experimentation and verification.

Reaching for the Hitler/Bigot counterargument is an indication of moral/intellectual bankruptcy.

If it's in relation to the Rossi kabuki show I no longer have any interest in the argument. Rossi might have something, anything is possible, but if he does then he's went about validating his claims in the most boneheaded way possible. Six months ago a very very poorly orchestrated demo was made with some mysterious group buying the demo module and escaping into the shadows. Several press releases have been made alluding to further advancements of this fantastic device. Now it's supposedly in the hands of the UL for evaluation/certification which incidentally will take more than a few months (with many future delays to occur I'm quite certain). Also UL certification is not mandatory in all countries so WHY AREN'T THEY PRODUCING DEVICES FOR SALE SO THEY CAN... YOU KNOW... MAKE MONEY? I strongly suspect that by the end of this year more than a few people will be embarrassed but wiser when this whole mess fades away.

There's been some interesting little tidbits of information that have come from LENR research. There may well be something there. People such as Rossi only cause more damage to any remaining credibility of the theory by their actions.

ScottL · Post by **ScottL** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 10:01 am

JD wrote:strongly suspect that by the end of this year more than a few people will be embarrassed but wiser when this whole mess fades away.

I disagree. I think you'll find more zealots who claim conspiracy before years end. I don't for one minute believe Parallel, Icarus, and any of the others who believe in Rossi, would ever abandon that belief even if Rossi himself said it didn't work.