Roger Barker here

Quote from Roger Barker

4) Hot and bothered - Mary does tend to get quite hot and bothered about LENR

I confess to, once, trolling Mary with a comment, that while true, was a prod or a poke. It was along this line: "I'm thinking of buying my daughter a cheap Power Balance Chinese knock-off bracelet." I knew it would generate fireworks. Mention of the Sniffex "explosives detector" -- it's actually a dowsing rod -- would do the same, but I'm not planning on buying a Sniffex, Unless I could find it on eBay for a couple of dollars including shipping, then maybe. What fun! Something that sold for thousands of dollars, containing a dollars worth of basically nothing -- but with a nice machined case, making it look high tech or sort-of -- and it would have resale value!

(Mary is sure that the Sniffex "does not work." But this is based on a very restricted notion of utility, and attempting to discuss this with Mary has simply led to piles of evidence as to what I already knew, Mary apparently believing that this evidence clearly proved I was FOS. Yes, the Sniffex was a freaking fraud. However, how did that manage to propagate? Why is it that, in spite of clear blind testing showing that dowsing rods "don't work," they remain in confident usage by many? Is it all stupidity? Mary shows no trust in innate human intelligence, in fact, and in particular in what is called "intuition," and in real life, without intuition we are probably and quickly dead meat. We cannot analyze everything. Mary in response might propose (and has done this) that I use a Sniffex to walk through a mine field. Never mind that this would be a very difficult challenge to arrange, the fact is that needing to cross a mine field is a very dangerous position, period. If I somehow ended up in the middle of one, I would delay leaving as long as possible. Even if I had a Sniffex. Or a dowsing rod. Those are tools that enable intuition, but intuition feeds on massively distributed information. Conceal necessary information, as can be done and has been done in those "tests," intuition is no better than chance. *But not worse. And if there is *any information* -- such as subtly disturbed earth, which I might not consciously recognize -- intuition will increase survival rate. And we have learned that, and it is probably strongly established in instinct. So if I did have to leave my safe place in the middle of the mine field, yes, I'd pick up the damned Sniffex. Or use more direct techniques. One of which would be, with calm trust, to just walk across the field. I have seen miracles doing what is analogous to this. All of which would completely escape Mary. And if I die, so what? We will all die. One of the most powerful enablers of intuition is the dropping of fear. Sometimes a prop assists with that. It's a psychic trick.)

Mary has no concept of fun, and, as well, and this is somewhat surprising given what I know about him, of psychic effects (i.e, mind or brain-mediated).

Originally, we thought that Mary might actually be an expert on calorimetry. That was a red herring caused by an old association. In fact, Mary is an established and probably reasonably successful professional, and in one post here, we touched on a subject that would be known to Mary as that kind of professional, and Mary responded with an obviously well-informed post with only a little dribble of anti-Woo at the end.

Mary's position is, more or less, standard pseudoskeptical cant, common among "debunkers, " such as the faction that took over CSICOP. It is outwardly skeptical, but actually is the flip side of belief, the same prejudged coin. Occasionally, Mary contributes to the conversation. More commonly, he generates repetitive noise.

I do not approve of harassing Mary. I have blocked Mary because the density of useful contributions became very visible as low, and the ensuing conversations were highly distracting from my purpose here. It is not a punishment, and Mary knows how to directly contact me if he wants. Mary could actually become useful, if he cares to.