Talk-Polywell.org

parallel wrote:The extreme rudeness seems totally unnecessary

parallel wrote:these do nothing, paper scientists

There owuld seem to be many diverse opinions on many doverse topics around here. Rossi just happens to be one topic that unlike most others around here seems to bring folks to gether in opinion. Although there are dissenters in the majority.

One of the things I like about this forum is the varied opinions and ideas. Folks aren't shy to step up and toss a flag.

Polarization. Hmm. I guess 1 Billion Chinese can't be wrong...

CKay wrote:

stefanbanev wrote:The one who has money has it exactly for the reason it does not give it away foolishly. Money have tendency to flow along IQ gradient. Before investing a substantial resources any reasonable investor would hire a responsible technical staff to run benchmarks who faces legal consequences for giving a wrong expertise so, free advice is not required in fact it is irresponsible to follow a free advice.

That makes it sound like the stupid deserve to be ripped off!

What happens when Rossi starts asking for deposits for the home ecats? He claims to have a list of interested customers, so this seems a possibility.

Presumably, if a few thousand people were to lose their money, that would be just punishment for possession of a low IQ (because intelligence is not an accident of birth but a moral choice) and Rossi's gains a just reward for his display of cunning?

>That makes it sound like the stupid deserve to be ripped off!

It is exactly how world works and it is very ethical and rational from my perspective.

>What happens when Rossi starts asking for deposits for the home ecats?

The credentials and size of investment apparently correlate and is matter of personal choice; needless to say that size is a relative matter as well. I personalty would not put any money until I can test it or have a warranty to return if it does not work as claimed and I expect that any moderately sensible person would do the same.

Agree with all of this. What bothers me are the "you fool, can't you see that this is an obvious scam" type posts that drip with arrogance and condescension.

Those who worship do so at the altar ascribed by their belief system. Sometimes that belief system is simply 'science'.

Believing in science, and actually doing science, are very different things.

Engineering requires knowledge and skill sufficient to adapt principles of physics to solving human problems in an economical way. What LENR lacks is a principle of physics. Thus, when someone claims to have engineered something that seems to defy principles of physics, or the currently understood models of how specific bits and pieces of the universe works, dialectic must ensue to change or increase our understanding and revise models.

Those making the claims are responsible for engaging in this dialectic. The rest of us are only responsible for providing a forum where this dialectic is possible.

Instead, what we've had for the last 20 years is... name calling and hair pulling, which is pretty much what Defense Analysis Report DIA-08-0911-003 says.

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Gandalf wrote:The rest of us are only responsible for providing a forum where this dialectic is possible.

If someone claims that there's an invisible teapot orbiting Mars, do those who disagree really have a (moral?) responsibility to provide a forum for dialectic?

stefanbanev wrote:>That makes it sound like the stupid deserve to be ripped off!

It is exactly how world works and it is very ethical and rational from my perspective.

Then I guess it would be unethical for someone to forewarn the gullible about a potential scam, lest it prevent them from getting the natural justice they, as people of lower intelligence, so obviously deserve?

Gandalf wrote:Those who worship do so at the altar ascribed by their belief system. Sometimes that belief system is simply 'science'.

Gandalf
Carrying your religious analogy further I like to view the LERN community almost like a cult (in the least derogatory way possible). After the P&F mess it was “hearsay” to try publish anything on cold fusion. So an underground community has formed that shares ideas and experimental information outside traditional channels –this is why there are more PowerPoint presentations than peer revied papers and why the rigor (e.g. error bars) seem to be missing. This “cult” engages in dialectic among themselves but not the broader scientific community because they have been ostracized. Perhaps the LERN community has finally done enough work to overcome the reproducibility issues and now the world is taking notice. However because of the HUGE financial value of practical LERN those making progress are hunkering down and trying to crank out patents (Ahern, Rossi, Zawodny, Piantelli and others) rather than try to re-engage the mainstream science community.

On a side note based on the treatment the LERN community has received (real or perceived) are you surprised that they are slow to re-engage the broader scientific community?

CKay, sorry about the misquote.

Gandalf wrote:The rest of us are only responsible for providing a forum where this dialectic is possible.

If someone claims that there's an invisible teapot orbiting Mars, do those who disagree really have a (moral?) responsibility to provide a forum for dialectic?

I assume your hypothetical invisible teapot is not testable or detectable. And by forum, I mean only a podium. There's no guarantee of an audience.

Why would you bother to disagree with someone making claims that you cannot dispute?

You've walked onto the stage, stepped up to the podium after someone has made a hypothetical claim, you disagree, then propose to close the stage? I don't think this is what you intend.

cg66 wrote:

Gandalf wrote:Those who worship do so at the altar ascribed by their belief system. Sometimes that belief system is simply 'science'.

Gandalf
Carrying your religious analogy further I like to view the LERN community almost like a cult (in the least derogatory way possible). After the P&F mess it was “hearsay” to try publish anything on cold fusion. So an underground community has formed that shares ideas and experimental information outside traditional channels –this is why there are more PowerPoint presentations than peer revied papers and why the rigor (e.g. error bars) seem to be missing. This “cult” engages in dialectic among themselves but not the broader scientific community because they have been ostracized. Perhaps the LERN community has finally done enough work to overcome the reproducibility issues and now the world is taking notice. However because of the HUGE financial value of practical LERN those making progress are hunkering down and trying to crank out patents (Ahern, Rossi, Zawodny, Piantelli and others) rather than try to re-engage the mainstream science community.

On a side note based on the treatment the LERN community has received (real or perceived) are you surprised that they are slow to re-engage the broader scientific community?

Are you sure the LENR community has been ostracised?

When they write good papers, they are published. No matter how outlandish:

Theory: Widom & Larsen
Experiment: Badiel, Andersson, Holmid

it is a popular internet meme that the LENR experiments are not published because of prejudice, but maybe they are not published because when a decent scientist who cares about error bars and writes up calorimetry properly does the experiments, they do not get positive results?

cg66 wrote: On a side note based on the treatment the LERN community has received (real or perceived) are you surprised that they are slow to re-engage the broader scientific community?

I can certainly understand moving the podium further away from the fruit-throwing primates in the front row, but it shouldn't change the process.

What I've seen come out of LENR does strike me as low quality, but then I'm not exactly part of the forum. I'm simply making comments about the unruly nature of the crowd.

Gandalf wrote:You've walked onto the stage, stepped up to the podium after someone has made a hypothetical claim, you disagree, then propose to close the stage?

Where did anyone propose closing the stage?

Why would you bother to disagree with someone making claims that you cannot dispute?

If someone makes extraordinary claims that are difficult to dispute and they, or others, seek to profit from those claims at the expense of the gullible, then I think it is perfectly acceptable to raise concerns.

Gandalf wrote:I'm simply making comments about the unruly nature of the crowd.

You're on the outside throwing crap in?

tomclarke wrote: Are you sure the LENR community has been ostracised?

When they write good papers, they are published. No matter how outlandish:

Theory: Widom & Larsen
Experiment: Badiel, Andersson, Holmid

it is a popular internet meme that the LENR experiments are not published because of prejudice, but maybe they are not published because when a decent scientist who cares about error bars and writes up calorimetry properly does the experiments, they do not get positive results?

It played a role for sure – at some point the CF community self-reinforced this separation - found this write-up by Dr Goodstein from Cal Tech that says it better than can:

"Cold Fusion is a pariah field, cast out by the scientific establishment. Between Cold Fusion and respectable science there is virtually no communication at all. Cold fusion papers are almost never published in refereed scientific journals, with the result that those works don't receive the normal critical scrutiny that science requires. On the other hand, because the Cold-Fusioners see themselves as a community under siege, there is little internal criticism. Experiments and theories tend to be accepted at face value, for fear of providing even more fuel for external critics, if anyone outside the group was bothering to listen. In these circumstances, crackpots flourish, making matters worse for those who believe that there is serious science going on here."

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/fusion_art.html

CKay wrote:

stefanbanev wrote:>That makes it sound like the stupid deserve to be ripped off!

It is exactly how world works and it is very ethical and rational from my perspective.

Then I guess it would be unethical for someone to forewarn the gullible about a potential scam, lest it prevent them from getting the natural justice they, as people of lower intelligence, so obviously deserve?

I do not impose my point of view as the only right one, it's just my insight. The world is a noisy place with very fuzzy and complex relations with no absolutes thus, everybody does whatever he/she considers right/wrong/beneficial/entertaining etc... So, there is nothing natural or non-natural since it is matter of relative subjective perceptions - it's a beauty of this world as something seemingly concrete emerges out of this chaos and it makes interesting to see the patterns why it happens one way and/or not another. From this perspective the LENR story is really entertaining for me, it is such a mixture of science/psychology/social&political ingredients ....