Jed reports that LENR has been verified by a U.S. Government Lab. WOW!

Quote from Jami

Quote: “ ...to suggest there is no evidence at all, is an odd position to take...”

Depends on what constitutes "evidence". A blurry photo of something unidentifiable flying in the night sky is "evidence" for the existence of UFOs by some…

The fingers-in-ears repetition of arguments (not evidence, but totally ignoring evidence) that we have seen hundreds of times from trolls is enough for me. Someone let me know if I make a mistake. I will still see quoted posts from users I have blocked. If anything from anyone, no matter what their past, is of interest, quote it!!!

Evidence is evidence, once conclusions are distinguished from evidence. This is basic ontology, something that trolls, if they understand, deliberately set aside to make points in debates.

So now, I'm far less tempted to waste time responding further. How do you spell relief?

ROTFWL! Abd will end up blocking everyone but himself and perhaps one or two acolytes. That is evidently how he learns things. LOL.

@penswrite

My fascination is, for the most part, not about LENR or Rossi. My interest is in how it comes about that people believe stories like Rossi's. My interest is in how even large investment funds screw the pooch enough to invest in such obviously absurd and fraudulent deceptive schemes without doing due diligence. Abd thinks he can explain it (they made money on it) but I fail to see how one makes money by being sued for $90M and having to try recouping $11.5M paid to a crook for a fraud. Anyway, I have a passing interest in LENR and I hope some of the claims are true but I know none of the claims, thus far, for high power have been properly demonstrated and/or proven. My interest, again, is in how and why people believe scammers when they are so obvious and have been obvious for so long.

Quote

You (almost?) concede that LENR/cold fusion exists.

Where did you see that? I have serious doubts that it exists and I have not seen conclusive and credible proof that it does. But at low power levels, claims are hard to judge so I allow for the possibility that some low level effects attributable to LENR are real. That's not the same as "conced(ing) that LENR/cold fusion exists." And I have maintained since at least November 2011 that Defkalion and Rossi are clearly frauds and now, I am pretty sure, though with much less evidence, that Brillouin is either a mistake or a deception.

Quote from penswrite

Mary Yugo wrote:

First of all, Mary will never find answers to these questions through a pretend identity. This kind of research -- attempting to understand human beings -- is most effectively done in contexts where authenticity is valued, and then what is discovered there -- mostly in oneself -- can be taken into the "real world" where others can be observed. I have a high interest in this same subject, but have spend most of my life in this study, and, in addition, in formal training where this is a huge topic: how we develop and believe stories that we invent or adopt, including the biggest story of all: our identity.

Quote

My interest is in how even large investment funds screw the pooch enough to invest in such obviously absurd and fraudulent deceptive schemes without doing due diligence. Abd thinks he can explain it (they made money on it) but I fail to see how one makes money by being sued for $90M and having to try recouping $11.5M paid to a crook for a fraud.

Knowledge begins with what happens, not with "understanding "how." As I have written, I think it likely that IH knew all the negative stories and interpretations about Rossi, and knew much more than that. They may have hired someone in Italy to research the Petrol Dragon history, or they may have decided it was irrelevant. I have developed a model of their behavior that does explain it, so far. Eventually, I will meet them, I expect and confirm or disconfirm it.

The model is not what I thought until I studied Rossi v. Darden in depth and in detail. However, the fact is that they did "make money." I.e., they had a goal: to foster LENR research, for environmental reasons. They looked at the field, and probably retained expert help doing that. There was a very public case of that happening before, when CBS News retained Robert Duncan, who claims to have been skeptical, to investigate cold fusion. The impression that cold fusion is unreal and has never been confirmed is maintained through held memory, past impressions, what is called an information cascade. Most scientists, because of the established impressions, won't give cold fusion enough time to understand the corpus of evidence. It is very easy to take each piece and come up with some alternate hypothesis. We saw an example, today, where a CERN particle physicists was asked about the SPAWAR report that just came out from DRTA, and his main comment was that he couldn't accept it because it might be deuterons from cosmic rays.

That is a totally preposterous hypothesis that would "explain" some kind of extremely low level nuclear reactions, maybe their neutrons, perhaps, but actually not, because the levels were too high close to the cathode. Cosmic ray effects would be distributed, and he's only looking at the neutron evidence, which is just fascinating to particle physicists, because they think they know all about it, My point is that someone new to the field will come up with many crazy explanations, even Robert Duncan, who for a few days seems to have thought it was muons. It's easy to understand the idea, and it only takes a little more knowledge to see it's not an explanation at all.

So they knew several things: they knew that LENR was real, they confirmed that, and there is the preponderance of the evidence on that, and I don't expect skeptics to agree unless they actually do the due diligence themselves. And it's a lot of work. This is why I do not blame skeptics at all, only pseudoskeptics who are focused on how wrong others are, but who don't do the work. Even that is understandable once one understands how the mind works. This is a form of self-defense.

And everyone in the field knew that Rossi could be a complete fraud. It was common knowledge in 2011, but it was also known that he might also have something, but was eccentric and paranoid. There was no clear way to distinguish.

So they knew what they were getting into. Why they did it I won't repeat here, but the result was that Woodford gave them $50 million. Because Woodford believed in Rossi also? Almost certainly not. At that point, IH would have told Woodford that they could not confirm Rossi's claims. But, here, he's running a show in Doral, wanna see it? And so Woodford saw the MW plant, and saw the power disappearing into a "secret area," and if there was an engineer with them, might have immediately noticed, "Hey, it's not hot in here." So 1 MW? Yeah, right.

Bottom line, why was Woodford inspired to invest in IH Holdings International, Ltd, a limited partnership created to become the owner of IH and to receive the Woodford investment? It is very clearly because of IH actually supporting research -- Rossi is not exactly research -- and because of what they accomplished with Rossi, something that nobody else knew how to do.

It was worth what they put into it, and paid off. Mary does not see how, but it paid off. That is reality, not Mary's imagination and ideas of good and bad and fantasies about having to "recoup the money," or the Terrible Harm of being sued for $89 million. Darden is an experienced venture capitalist, and we can read Woodford's recent comment that shows how they, also experienced, think about this. It's detached, which is characteristic of very smart people. Mary doesn't understand it because Mary is highly attached to Mary's ways of looking at things.

Quote

Anyway, I have a passing interest in LENR and I hope some of the claims are true but I know none of the claims, thus far, for high power have been properly demonstrated and/or proven. My interest, again, is in how and why people believe scammers when they are so obvious and have been obvious for so long.

Science is not about "high power." Some effects are known and real and accepted that are very low power. High power is only of interest as to commercial development, and high power is built on low power. If you can't control low power, you can't control high power, unless you have enough units that are statistically reliable. LENR technology is not to that point yet, unless it is. If it is, it's secret. As public, we can't count on it, and I recommend against arguing that secret work is "real." There is, by definition, no way to prove the matter, because it cannot be confirmed, and claims of "proof" based on such and such an expert seeing a demonstration and being impressed are obviously impossible to completely trust, because with a demonstration, it is possible to fool anyone. Independent confirmation is not a demonstration controlled by the inventor (though it might take place within explicit and clear controls. I.e., no breaking open the black box, could still be independent, though it's more difficult.)

What we want to see, scientifically, is independent confirmation, and, ideally, replication of experiment, not some vague confirmation like Parkhomov supposedly confirmed Rossi. To investors, I recommend due diligence, and I highly recommend communicating with LENR experts, known scientists.

Mary Yugo also wrote:

Quote

... And I have maintained since at least November 2011 that Defkalion and Rossi are clearly frauds and now, I am pretty sure, though with much less evidence, that Brillouin is either a mistake or a deception.

There are some serious people involved with Brillouin, both as investors and as scientists working with them. But the work is secret, so see above!

And penswrite responded

Quote

Mary, with respect, you are simply equivocating. You would like to allow the existence of LENR while impugning its relevance.

Not an easy razor to balance upon.

Easy for one maintaining a pretend identity for so many years, fingers stuffed in ears, The idea that Rossi and Defkalion were frauds was a cheap shot, especially with Rossi. With Defkalion, it's more complicated. Defkalion was working with some real scientists, actual experts. But still secretive, and the Gamberale story nailed it. Did they ever have anything? If I had to decide based on preponderance of the evidence, I'd say no. But that is just a guess. They may also have had something at substantially lower levels than they thought they had, or were claiming. Did they deliberately fake that coolant flow? If not, they certainly set themselves up to appear as if they did, with their moves to maintain secrecy with Gamberale.

My opinion: if it is secret, keep it that way. If you take on an investor, disclose everything. Don't take on an investor you can't trust. If you can't trust anyone, well, better luck next time. Life doesn't work for people who cannot trust anyone.

Some think that everything is black and white. So simple and clear to see. LENR is fake, Rossi is fake and anyone or any institution that will allow the slightest room for for possibility is stupid or fraudulent. There are no exceptions. A "major" university that allows LENR research will have discredited itself by the act of allowing LENR research. Dr. Duncan, a respected professor, is automatically deemed a dunce since he is researching LENR. Thus the Texas University he works for and himself are automatically disqualified from being capable or doing "real science". University of Missouri / Kimmel Institute are morons by the same definition. Same for Dr. McKubre and SRI. They are doing work with / for Brillioun, so they are either dunces or fraudulent. MFMP, even though completely visible, are inept because they do experiments with the goal of obtaining LENR proof.

No, to some, the only "Qualified" organization is by definitions, are only the ones who will not do research in LENR. Thus no qualified organization will ever conduct "valid" research!

"If our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we'd be so simple that we couldn't.” ― Ian Stewart

At some point, a person's prejudice about a subject will cloud their entire horizon. Anything that, as seen by them, even hints at contradicting that prejudice, is automatic grounds for effectual dismissal. After all, the world is flat dam it! The Sun orbits the earth!
There are four elements, fire, wind, earth, water! Newton's laws are all encompassing! We know all that there is to be known!

A person CAN have a strong belief and not belittle others. One CAN be convinced of an evident truth but still consider new evidence or theory. After a while, one's vocal proclamations, when of such a derogatory nature, will not allow them to change or reconsider. It walls them in to a view point that cannot be altered as it has become a core part of themselves. To deny it would be to deny their inner core. The "view" has become more important than the truth or the search for truth!

Quote from penswrite

I delight in my searches, and I presume you do too. If that makes me a Solipsist, well, I suppose so be it. That said, I doubt LENR cares very much what I believe of its truth.

I declare a concept called "reality" that is a concept pointing to what is beyond concepts, and I declare that there is one reality. Ekam sat, the ancient declaration.
I do not own that reality, rather, I'll declare, it owns me.
The question I see here is whether or not reality cares. I don't see that it cares as we may care, it is not attached to our opinions. We are free to accept them (if we think ourselves helpless as to our views) or choose them (a far more powerful position, because what is chosen can then be transformed), or to recognize our opinions as our own creation entirely. However, our choices have consequences, not as to reality, necessarily, but as to how we live and what we can see and learn.
The ancient choice is to trust reality or not. If we look at ourselves, we may discover many ways in which we don't trust reality. Many so-called "believers" actually are in major doubt and denial, being avoided by firmly declaring faith.
However, experientially, the root of genuine transformation is trust in reality, which may need to be chosen by declaration in advance of any "belief."
And that is inhibited by a socially-instilled fear of being wrong.