[IMPORTANT] Trolling and insulting users / Forum rules

Would it be possible to implement an ignore function such that if I chose not to see the posts of a particular poster they would not be displayed? Couple that with a user stat the showed the number of ignores a poster had garnered might be useful.

A poster expressing a negative opinion is not an issue. A poster expressing the same opinion over and over again with out contributing any new information is an issue to me. That applies to both positive and negative opinions. This forum is about discussing the progress and failures of LENR. That is an evolving situation and to be a useful contributor to the forum the evolving nature of the discussion has to be taken into account by the posters.

Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur

Mary Yugo: Always ready to use a loose definition of "fraud" which is a crime, and requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, yet be very stringent in her scientific standards regarding LENR experiments. While I applaud the SECOND of those traits, the first, her willingness to bandy terms like fraud with no standard of proof, is hypocrisy of the first order. This has been a standard and ongoing technique he uses. Another example is the claims of incompetence on the part of various researchers. Not a shred of proof that any individual is in fact incompetent, just a relentless stream of slanderous accusations. This is why most sincere bloggers see you as a bully and troll.

Please, Mary Yugo, continue your technical critiques, and if possible, suggestions for improvement, but lose the unjustified and hostile assaults. While there is no doubt that frauds and incompetents make up a significant portion of the "new energy" crowd, many sincere, hard working and competent researchers out there. You boil them all in the same pot, and the resulting soup is sour beyond any need.

How is it Mary Hugo that you can appoint yourself as the judge and jury for all those you chose to brand as fraud and incompetent? A one man firing squad? Shame on you. Just continue to give us the evidence you find and let each one decide. I think it is even OK to announce what you think they are. But you state it as fact, and NOT opinion, which it is. It simply sours the whole discussion when you do that. You should know better, and it is exactly that which you often call other people out for. This is a thread about "rules of engagement" and "politeness". Why can't you understand that it is your absolute and superior attitude that diminishes your effectiveness and creates defiant proxies who simply cannot stomach your arbitrary pronouncements?

Mary Yugo: How you can be sure that something does not work or somebody is fraud if you have absolutely no evidence and no knowledge about it? Even if it is in a mainstream media, you still have no right to call somebody in this way without any solid evidence. You can think whatever, but sharing such statements is really not beneficial to anybody.

Well it appears you have researched your rights to make accusations of fraud. How many would know of their first amendment rights in that regard, but a professional troll? One who has been there before. As prosecutor you trot out your evidence and as judge you hand down judgement. But we will not let you execute so blithely. You have outed yourself. There are many reasons why someone would fail to bring you to court in response to slander and only a McCarthy like prosecutor would use that as further evidence of guilt. So you use your "right" in a self righteous manner to assault individuals, some, or even many of which may be guilty ignoring the fact that if you harm even a single innocent person you are guilty of the crime (in my eyes) of character assassination. You have scruples when it comes to scientific evidence which you seem to cherish, but seem to completely lack in moral matters. I take it you are a vigilante of sorts, at least in your own mind. But like lynch mobs everywhere you only have to be wrong once.

That, sir, is why the rest of us ignorant bloggers find your technical skills a poor substitute for belief in a world governed by laws and not self superior individuals.

Who appointed you and MY as the "parents" in the room? This superior "I'm protecting you from your own stupidity" rationalization is the same mindset held by everyone from Joseph McCarthy to the "I'll jail you for your own good for smoking weed" crowd. At least now we can discuss this "helping a blind man" superiority complex in direct terms. I for one do not want or need a new Mommy.

It just amazes me that obviously intelligent people can allow themselves this attitude, which in the end has always been a failure and moral disaster.

I just wonder how many other posters, here and at other blog sites appreciate "one-eyed man in the land of the blind" saviors?

But, in the end all that MY et. al, need to do is provide evidence as they are able and not judgements. I will draw my own conclusions.

Internet forums are for the owner to decide, and enforce, rules. So there is no "what it should be".

But personally here are my views:

(1) personal attacks towards discussants.
These are absolutely unhelpful. They may even be enjoyed by participants but they illuminate nothing and are at best self-indulgence, at worst hurtful.

The meme sometimes used here of labelling of specific skeptics as "pathological" or "obviously paid shills because otherwise they would not post" is actually personal attack, and unhelpful in this way. The first may be true, in a mild sense, of anyone who posts on the internet. The second is pretty obviously not true.

Labelling specific believers as mindless idiots of no sense is similarly an attack and unhelpful.

Making meta comments such as "believers just don't understand human nature" or "skeptics have a fixed view of theory that prevents them from correctly processing new evidence" is in my view not a personal attack. It is not very helpful because such views tend to be predictable. If it is made in a context which attaches the general comment to a specific person it is unhelpful as above, because it will distract from the debate.

Overall I reckon I am on the "be polite" side of teh spectrum when it comes to personal preference here.

(2) Robust and critical comment
Suppose you think somone's argument is wrong. You have two options, say nicely "well, maybe your argument is wrong" or state precisely how and why it is wrong.

For me, pussyfooting around this is unhelpful. And it is impossible to note severe flaws in an argument without criticism. It does not need to be personal, but such debate needs to be robust when the facts are clear. When the facts are not clear the lack of clarity can be elucidated and agreed.

Technical work, in general, thrives on criticism. If things are wrong they can be corrected, if things are done in a cack-handed way then noting a better methods will be helpful. Insasfar as LENR research is part of science, rather than a sociological phenomena, it is technical work and deserves the same robust criticism that any other technical work would expect.

On this axis I guess I am personally towards the "impolite" end of calling a spade a spade. I greatly enjoy robust debate. I'm quite prepared (and in fact want) the same to be done to me.

(3) Balance

This is just not going to fly. My view of balanced debate will be very very different from Alain's. More generally prior views on whether LENR effects (as a real nuclear phenomena) exist will color all analysis of the marginal data and meta-data discussed here. So moderation for balance is an impossibility.

A site such as this has a choice. It can become a fan site in which the purpose is not to elucidate objective truth, but to affirm the views of its followers. That is what ECW does and if that happens I will leave. It may, however, be what people want here and if so it should probably happen. Why, though, would these people need something different from ECW which serves this function well?

Or, it can have as an objective the fostering of (polite) robust debate. For that, since most skeptics just don't bother with LENR forums on the internet, every skeptic with rationally presented views should be treasured. That includes MY. Her views are abrasive and not to my taste because of the strong statements that diverse people must be deliberately and cynically dishonest. But they are rationally argued and backed by facts. Occasionally she may descend to personal attacks on discussants here - that is regrettable but no worse than many others. So ban her and you are giving up on robust discussion.

(4) Signal to noise
There is an issue with comments that have no content. But I have not noticed that very bad here. I think some people use this argument because they don't like too many of the posts coming from a view that they personally disagree with - calling such opposing views noise.

Ideally, in absence of any one view dominating, you would have different viewpoints equally presented. If we take the two views as "LENR has been proved beyond reasonable doubt by evidence" and "LENR has no credible evidence, and given that if it were real such evidence would almost certainly exists it is highly unlikely" then both views are clearly held by different participants here. The best chance for elucidation must then be to allow both sides to be presented and challenged, with an equal number of skeptic and believer posts.

I can feel hackles rising at the skeptic vs believer dichotomy - many will reckon they are neither, or redefine skeptic to mean undecided.

(5) There is a lot of evidence about LENR as a scientific hypothesis. If, in the face of this, you reckon you can't take a robust balance of probabilities view one way or the other that is probably because you are not processing the science facts. If the experimental results, when examined, stand up then belief is correct. If the experimental results, when examined, do not stand up then skepticism in the sense of "extraordinary evidence is needed" is correct.

I've noticed here that a lot of people don't process experimental results but argue based on sound bites or other people's analysis of results. That is understandable, but it makes views dependent on whom you trust to interpret results. Caution, in such a quandary, would lead to "undecided" or siding with the consensus majority of scientists. Most here are so because they reckon the consensus majority is wrong. Actually science by popularity contest is wrong so if you take judgement in your own hands you are responsible.

(6) Robust discussion of players.

If all debate here has to assume every statement Rossi makes is true the site follows ECW and I'm out. There are players (Defkalion now defunct) that have had every external appearance of deliberate deception, though I'm not sure that can be distinguished from PR and self-deception. So scam or scam-equivalent is part of the scene here. Giving people the benefit of the doubt is fine but by definition biassed. Personally I'd hold off any judgement of motive (and hence culpability) but also not assume honesty of any commercial LENR enterprise. Free energy is a fertile area for scams and vapourware - so a strong level of skepticism is needed. Equally, it is easy to get carried away when developing new technology that will save the world - so innocent self-delusion is to be expected and scam should not be assumed.

Well, I think that I can get along with the views expressed by Thomas Clarke. There will never be a perfect solution to a dynamic problem so all we can do as individuals with different perspectives is define our endpoints, that is the ways in which the discussion can stop being constructive. Perhaps it is important to have each poster provide a statement of position before they are allowed to post. That makes more sense to me than having an avatar photo which is useless (but fun.)

In a debate type of interchange I can respect the use of good debating techniques, but also even a personal comment i.e. "pathoskep", or "true believer." We are, none of us, perfect, and it is unreasonable to expect perfect decorum.

However, I think that judgemental pronouncements regarding those not directly in the discussion should be strongly discouraged. No one individual has the right to decide who is or is not a scam artist, or incompetent, os a shill for the oil interests (of which I am guilty). They are typically not present to defend themselves, and more importantly the damage done by mistaken attacks of this kind is morally repugnant to me.

I have stated before I do not know if LENR (or any other new and remarkable energy source) is genuine. There has clearly been no result or technique published which even faintly resembles a "repeatable" experiment. The MFMP folks have thus far seemed determined to share their results quickly as well as being resolved to examine their results as stringently as they can while staying open to criticism and technically astute suggestions. There have been many positive experiments reported by other solid and honest researchers that simply are to important to simply discard as experimental error or (come on) more fraud. Remember that Pons and Fleischman had solid careers, and good experience in calorimetry. They were perhaps rushed to publication, and ended up looking foolish, but remember they also spent their time after their public destruction continuing to believe that their experiments had been remarkable and worthy of pursuit. And, of course, they are (were) not alone.

So the question to me is how all of us as bystanders who are somehow interested in this field can be useful. You, Thomas and probably MY and some others are in fact scientists with specialized training in relevant fields, I can only ask you to be constructive in your criticisms and leave the judgement out of it. Provide useful suggestions to the researchers, and terse, relevant reasons for your reservations to the rest of us. Just remember that if anything ever does come of LENR research it will require, without a doubt, new physics of some sort: it will impose a paradigm shift and I don't think that anyone can deny that. If you deny the possibility of there actually being an LENR phenomenon, and thust current physical science needs to be extended or changed then you are (in my opinion) being what we have come to call a pathological skeptic, that is someone who does not believe that current physical theory is ever subject to extension or revision.

I am tired of being accused of being irrational and living in La-La land because I think that that results of a large number of competent researchers, while incomplete and not repeatable, strongly suggest the need for a thorough and well funded attempt to find out what nature is trying to tell us. I think that is being done now in various places and while we will never be able to rule out LENR as a result of failures, there will come a time to say enough. Another year or two and I , for one, will lose any faint hopes of this being the discovery that saves humanity from its overwhelming insensitivity to the ravages the current energy systems impose on the Earth.

Not being trained in any of the relevant fields means that I can provide no technical insight. I can however resist the steamroller, no room for doubt perception of MY and other similar critics that they defend the idea that modern physical science has no possibility of being expanded, or revised. I just want them to be skeptical not only of exceptional results, but of the immutability of our current knowledge. In my opinion they are responsible for this perception because of the vigilante zeal they have shown by their long term, relentless and often impolite and hostile demeanor. I wish it were not so, but that is how they make themselves appear.

Come on MY, give it a rest. This is a thread about proper discourse, not fraud or Defkalion. I'll happily tell you what I think of them in another thread, but this kind of response is why you appear like such a relentless vigilante. It's a matter of style - you know, how to make friends and influence people.

I actually quite like the idea of a "skeptic's forum" which would contain balanced debate and have no censorship. It would then be possible for those who wanted to hear no evil to post without contrary opinions on other parts of the site.

As long as that did not lead to a lack of challenge everywhere.

I'm also not sure about the boundaries of this. For example there is a discussion of CR-39 craters on another thread. I've contributed to this by giving:
(1) a very generic non-LENR mechanism for cathodic crators (so generic it is difficult to disprove it)
(2) making the point that unexplained phenomena (such as these craters) are not necessarily unexplainable or extraordinary, and if not they do not provide evidence for other extraordinary and unexplained hypotheses, such as LENR.

Now, these arguments definitely advance a skeptical position, but are they therefore "conspiracy theory" and to be restricted to skeptics corner? I can feel quite a few duplicate threads being posted if so...

Alain's definition of "conspiracy theory" is perhaps such that anyone not convinced that LENR exists as a physical phenomena must be giving at least partial credence to a conspiracy theory?

Also I disagree that skeptical views necessarily are unhelpful to LENR research. Suppose, for example, that Ni-H LENR does not exist, whereas vanilla F-P Pd-D LENR does exist. In that case showing that apparently strong evidence for Ni-H is in fact weak would be helpful to those trying to understand LENR.

Personally I think anything which makes clear that Rossi's demos don't show LENR is helpful to the cause of genuine research since it reduces misinformation.