Rossi-Blog Comment Discussion

Quote from Rigel

Adb,

Heh! Abd.

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I was looking at EGOOUT on 11/13 (post dates are 11/13--11/14) and it quotes you at length but then in the next post it says you are not the post author. I re-read the post as it is in your style. I just can not understand why someone would post with your name and in your style. The post is not controversial, I just do not understand the motive.
I have also noted that Brian Ahern has said he also post that was not his on Vort. Why in heck would someone go to this trouble? This is not just a rhetorical question it seems bizarre.
And thanks for the work reporting on the case.

You're welcome. That was trolling, and the motivation may have been pure trolling, we have some of those creatures around and there could be a darker intention. It was my style, all right, possibly exact quotes in part, but then something added that I would not write, and even what I did write, somewhere, I would not have written there. I have no desire to poke Peter, who was an old friend. Rather than attempt to justify what I actually did wrote, let's say that context matters and the context was I was attempting, more or less last-ditch, to wake up someone who has fallen into some traps. But it's his life and his blog and I wouldn't have poked him like that with no particular necessity.

Here is what the troll wrote, with my comments:

http://egooutpeters.blogspot.c…6603#c8025775521202440162

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Peter said: "Abd, please abandon empty and useless rhetorics and answer to ACS! In a way it is your duty too."

Looking at this today, I realized that the Peter comment was not form above. Where was it from?

The day before. Notice that this post has the "u" capitalized. That is not how I prefer to write it, but I got stuck with that on Facebook and from using Facebook logins, it is that way in a few places. I normally use a google login, which is how I responded to this on Gluck's blog. it's "ulRahman." So I found the original post. At first, I wasn't certain. I might have written something there, I will see what I can find. But I will start with them, then come back to that post quoted above.

http://egooutpeters.blogspot.c…showComment=1479301171560

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RG November 12, 2016 at 12:29 PM
The most important meme relating to data is, "data speak to me."

Peter Gluck November 12, 2016 at 12:44 PM
yes, my friend- however speak forme, for my truth too...in one of the cases described

peter

Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax November 13, 2016 at 10:57 AM
Here Peter gives us a blizzard of invalid reasons. To put it bluntly, this shows that I am right, and he is wrong. Gluck is again demonstrating lack of clue. He's been falling for it for years.

I want to sit down with you Peter, because I know your history and your heart. You got stuck, it happens, and it's tragic. Maybe, in person, I could get through to you. Text sucks for this.

Peter Gluck
November 13, 2016 at 11:15 AM
Abd, please abandon empty and useless rhetorics and answer to ACS! In a way it is your duty too.

peter

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Peter had not given, here a "blizzard of invalid reasons." That was written for somewhere else. And I would probably not use "iinvalid" bald, like that.
and then

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Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax
November 12, 2016 at 8:34 PM
Peter

As far as I can tell, nobody other than you thinks LENR+ is a thing, and I think I'd probably know.

Peter Gluck
November 12, 2016 at 11:10 PM
OK, Abd!
But 'LENR not plus' i.e. PdD classic definitely is
a thing- then why even you are NOT answering to that dreadfully negative and hopeless paper apublished in C&EN and to the release of the American Chemical Society?
Why nobody (except Randy Mills) is NOT showing that hydrino energy and cold fusion are different species?
You peersonally are good and have a cionsustent rhetorics only when you deny, but you are so silent now when you cpuld drfrnd the essence ofCold Fusion. Do you and your friends in thinking mode agree that CF died in 1992? What differentiates you from a demoralized defeatist?
peter

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Peter fell for it. I'm not surprised. The troll used pieces of what I'd written, precisely to stir Peter up. I just checked. I do not have a linked Facebook account to Peter's blog. Only the google account. So the differing user name nails it. I didn't write that stuff in some sort of delerium and forget it. I didn't write it at all (except that pieces of my text have been put together.)

This one also establishes it: "As far as I can tell, nobody other than you thinks LENR+ is a thing, and I think I'd probably know."I wrote "I think I'd probably know" about IH paying people for blog comments. That is, I know many in the field that might be candidates for such a job, me being an obvious onem, and I have seen no clue of it. But about "nobody thinking" something, that would be just plain stupid. How could I possibly know that? I might have said about LENR+ not being a thing, if so, it was unguarded and perhaps a bit of blarney. It is for some people, and that is precisely why I would not add the "probably know" comment.

I checked. I did not find any other posts with the faked user name. Back to the troll, for the explanation. My emphasis:

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Forget the ACS. It is not important -- Nobody cares about it. What's important is to finish the process against Rossi. You need to answer the questions about Exhibit 5: Why you discount eyewitness testimony in favor of wishful thinking and interpretation of Rossi Says, and so far, why you have not acknowledged the problem of pump location -- that I've seen.

Not only would I not say that about the ACS, my goal is not "to finish the process against Rossi." My goal is to establish cold fusion research as legitimate, mainstream, and fully funded. Rossi is basically toast, already. He did this to himself. He essentially forced Industrial Heat to defend themselves, and I could go on. I cover the case because it is of interest, it is the first truly major case involving cold fusion IP. The Rossi affair contains many lessons for the future. And I'm a writer, like Sir Edmund Hillary climbed mountains, because they are there. I happen to know the topic, and then I study it and know more and write about it.

On Planet Rossi, the claim is that I'm a paid shill for IH. The same is claimed about Jed Rothwell, and Peter has been a bit friendly to those ideas, and began attacking Jed, in particular, going way beyond the pale. I attempted to head this off privately. Peter essentially trashed his relationship with the CMSN community over this. It's not about supporting Rossi, it was about attacking a long-term and highly valuable volunteer! So, yes, I was hard on Peter. I still hope he will recover. But I would not have rubbed his nose in it like this troll did.

The goal of the troll is to establish that I have a strong anti-Rossi agenda, with a desire to "finish" him. I hope to prevent damage, but that is the extent of it.

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Peter you are actually confused, but, yes, it results from your obsessions, possibly. I know that for myself, at 72, an additional factor shows up, fear of "losing it." If I react to that fear without clearly identifying it. I don't resist The S word... Senility. It is just your paranoia.

I am not sure that I wrote those exact words, but something like that, and a while back. What I wrote about "fear of losing it" is real. What I wrote about fear and reacting to fear was what I talk about much. What I know is that at my age, -- Peter is only a little older -- fearing senility is useless and can exacerbate it. But "rage, rage against the dying of the light," only rage doesn't work, it didn't work for Dylan Thomas, what works is living passionately, every moment, extracting the last of it ... and fully accepting reality.

And what "reality" means is not necessarily what most people think.

In any case, the troll knows who he is, and reality will handle him. He can't hide from reality. Trying to stir up an old man, doing his best to remain active, caring about something, and attempting to create hatred and opprobrium .... he will get his, it always comes back.

Quote from barty

Then the orbo/steorn flop where Frank collected over 1000$ from his readers to buy one...

I'm relatively sympathetic to that. He reported what he found. Actually testing things? Great!

Was anyone who donated deceived by him? I don't see that he flopped, Orbo did. Yes, he could have been, ah, harder on them.

But what maximizes fun?

Quote from Rigel

Abd - sorry about the dyslexia. As for Peter falling for it, I would also as when I ask a question and get a response I will always assume that it is honest until proven otherwise. It's not being gullible just the way I think it should be until proven otherwise. The difference between the troll and me the first day was relatively subtle. I will still say that Peter "fell for it," but that's not the same as saying he is "gullible." If he were less reactive, he might have suspected, but apparently he didn't -- and his comment when I did point out the fraud showed that he wasn't sure. I did not at that point show the difference. Peter could look back and see that all my posts were different.

[quote]Jed defends while controversial defends his positions well. Anyway that post is still a headscratcher. This someone is not a pseudo-fud-erator but I am not sure what to call them.

It's FUD all right, of a kind sometimes called a "joe job," though that took on other meanings.

The word "troll" covers it. This was someone deliberately seeking to stir up enmity and confusion.

(I don't get notifications of comments on Peter's blog. He does know how to email me if he needed to confirm anything. He also simply would not expect an attack like this.)

Quote from JedRothwell

What a strange thing to do. Someone has too much time on his hands, and nothing important to do.

Just because you are not paid to create FUD doesn't mean that someone else isn't.

Yeah, usually, trolls are basement dwellers, so to speak. What you said.

Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

Quote from barty: “Then the orbo/steorn flop where Frank collected over 1000$ from his readers to buy one...”
I'm relatively sympathetic to that. He reported what he found. Actually testing things? Great!

Was anyone who donated deceived by him? I…

For the record, that device was based on a technology that I do NOT consider to be true Orbo. Regardless if you think Steorn's technology ever worked or not, it was based on the manipulation of *magnetic* fields (manipulating the BH curve, taking advantage of magnetic viscosity, utilizing "free" domain rotation, manipulating the speed of magnetic field propagation) and NOT electrostatics. The basic technology in the O-Phone and charger that Steorn sold was 90% already existing. There have been multiple companies that have played around with teflon and high surface area electrodes to try and produce low current high-ish voltage electricity that could be stored and utilized for electronics. Like Steorn, at least one other went bankrupt.

What did not go bankrupt and what NO ONE is talking about (skeptic or otherwise) is Hepha Heat. That company represents the magnetic OU legacy of Steorn.

On another note, I don't think there is any evidence whatsoever you or Jed are paid by IH. Anyone can lie and make up a tale of innocence, so the chance is non-zero but very low. The combination of admiring a company that on-the-surface from a certain view point seeks to advance LENR (although we don't know how they would handle a TRUE HOT POTATO of an LENR technology if they got their hands on one), recognizing Rossi's personality can often be infuriating, and seeing the issues with Rossi's account of the one year test could make a reasonable person feel the exact same way. I have to admit that to anyone who jumped into the LENR community right now, Rossi would seem like an outright snake oil salesman. So to jump to the conclusion that the ardent supports of IH are being "paid" holds very little plausibility. Very indirect compensation such as IH just happening to fund researchers they are highly interested in and support is more probable. This could provide an incentive to defend IH without any agreement (written or verbal) ever made.

But for those of us who have been closely following this saga for years, know more than the newbies to this field, and to differing degrees have been made aware of other information (such as undisclosed successful replications) the situation is more nuanced. Because underneath layers of strange behavior, exaggerations, dishonesty, and emotional outbursts, we are absolutely convinced of a working, real technology that has NOT been forgotten by Andrea Rossi.

EDIT: For the record, I know of NO ONE that has been paid by Rossi to spread FUD. His "sock puppets" make it pretty clear to me that he can't find basement dwellers willing to wage a professional PR campaign. Any professional troll would have told him to shut up, stop making himself look so silly, and let them do the work in a way that would actually have an impact. But then again, there is a non-zero chance that there could be a couple trolls officially working for him. I just don't find it likely.

Setting aside Steorn, Orbo, and Hepha Heat, which is where they may stay for ... a long time ...

Quote from MrSelfSustain

On another note, I don't think there is any evidence whatsoever you or Jed are paid by IH. Anyone can lie and make up a tale of innocence, so the chance is non-zero but very low. The combination of admiring a company that on-the-surface from a certain view point seeks to advance LENR (although we don't know how they would handle a TRUE HOT POTATO of an LENR technology if they got their hands on one), recognizing Rossi's personality can often be infuriating, and seeing the issues with Rossi's account of the one year test could make a reasonable person feel the exact same way. I have to admit that to anyone who jumped into the LENR community right now, Rossi would seem like an outright snake oil salesman. So to jump to the conclusion that the ardent supports of IH are being "paid" holds very little plausibility. Very indirect compensation such as IH just happening to fund researchers they are highly interested in and support is more probable. This could provide an incentive to defend IH without any agreement (written or verbal) ever made.

Like, ordinary.

SS, you are demonstrating a basically reasonable position. There is only one set of words I'd seriously question. "ardent supports." I do support IH, but it is "ardent"? This implies a kind of dedication that is absent for me. I developed a hypothesis regarding their behavior, that explains it in the face of both skeptical ridicule and Planet Rossi blame, but it is just a hypothesis, for which I see some evidence and little contrary evidence, but I'm fully aware of the human tendency to see, not just what we "believe," but even what we think. One of the ways around this is communication, discussion, sharing of various points of view. That is why pseudoskepticism can be so damaging, where it manages to create a rejection cascade. It shuts down communication through hostility, contempt, ridicule, and, too often, arrogant ignorance. It is not *at all* that skepticism is "wrong." It is, in fact, essential to science and many other fields ... such as law.

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But for those of us who have been closely following this saga for years, know more than the newbies to this field, and to differing degrees have been made aware of other information (such as undisclosed successful replications) the situation is more nuanced. Because underneath layers of strange behavior, exaggerations, dishonesty, and emotional outbursts, we are absolutely convinced of a working, real technology that has NOT been forgotten by Andrea Rossi.

For those who knew LENR, it was always nuanced. The position of "Rossi crook" was an easy one, even obvious. A series of possible realitiies is collapsed into the easy positions. "Rossi forgot" is one hypothesis that has been raised, and it could have some explanatory power if you consider it. It would allow those "undisclosed successful replications." (Again, I quiestion the term "replication." Replications include quantity, not just some ratio. They cover predictability. Full replication is not possible without predictability of an effect. The effect itself may vary, but then associated products or conditions may be correlated. That is predictability, as I've claimed -- under peer review -- for the heat/helium ratio, based on something on the order of 80 measurements by more than 12 independent research groups. -- and it can be and should be many more than that, with increased precision, as is happening.

Because any given test can contain an unidentified artifact, and because fraud is *not* impossible -- it would be rather boringly ordinary, though Rossi is not ordinary -- a single or even a series of *differing* tests will probably not be enough to turn the corner, especially now. This picture radically changed with the filing of Rossi v. Darden, which removed the doorstop keeping the general judgment of CMNS scientists open. There are now only a few left who think Rossi may have something.

But it is perfectly acceptable for you to hold out, to stick your foot in the door, if you don't mind a little pressure. Especially, as to what I write, I hope for correction of errors. It can be hard to come by. Where possible, when one is found, I go back and fix it, and if it's been noted, I fix it with strikeout and explicit amendment, that's an old Wikipedia habit, so that discussion does not become meaningless. There are people claiming everything I write is FUD, confusion, word salad, or Wrong, but they don't get specific, or what they claim is just fact, or explicit surmise, and if it isn't, I'll fix it. I will source it if required, and distinguish between sourced fact and personal interpretation.

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EDIT: For the record, I know of NO ONE that has been paid by Rossi to spread FUD. His "sock puppets" make it pretty clear to me that he can't find basement dwellers willing to wage a professional PR campaign. Any professional troll would have told him to shut up, stop making himself look so silly, and let them do the work in a way that would actually have an impact. But then again, there is a non-zero chance that there could be a couple trolls officially working for him. I just don't find it likely.

Thanks. What a reasonably sane skeptic may want to see from you is this simple recognition that skepticism is reasonable, and that, at this point, even a view that Rossi is a fraud is "reasonable." Reasonable does not mean "correct." In fact, in my training, they assigned us to do ten unreasonable things a day. It is absolutely amazing what can happen when we step outside of the "reasonable," but there is a difference from being crazy: we know we are stepping outside, people who are attached and/or crazy don't know that. They believe in all their "reasons" instead of seeing them as often-useful heuristics.

This training was fairly recent (2011-2013 or so, as to what was truly intense, it's really still ongoing in many ways) but I was prepared for it in and extensive and wide-ranging personal history. I was a friend of a very well-known scientist (a food chemist, actually), who discovered some numerical patterns in letter counts in the Qur'an. It was amazing stuff. (There really is a pattern!) He went over the edge, deciding that God was directly revealing to him.... but he didn't normally talk about that, and he came up with a whole series of iconoclastic positions. He became popular in some circles, some of what he wrote offended fanatics, and he was assassinated, in Tucson, Arizona. When I found out, I decided to research what he had found, in depth, to honor his memory. (He had been kind and thoughtful, even when I questioned him.)

It was all an extended diversion, an artifact of his search process. But he had developed dozens of "reasons" for what he was doing, and then, if some problem was found, he could explain it away. The human brain is highly skilled at finding reasons. In the training, they say we create them, and it is a piece of what humans are really good at. ("The human being is a meaning-making machine.") Call it pattern identification, but it goes beyond that. We can invent patterns that don't exist (that is, that have no connected underlying cause), and there's the rub, and it rubs two ways: one is obvious, we can mire ourselves in what doesn't exist, but the other is spectacular: this is how we create the future, as possibilities.

Back to here and lenr-forum, I often add the qualification that Rossi may pull out a Wabbit. It's a friendly term, perhaps mildly sarcastic, but ... magicians do pull rabbits out of hats. And someone who is as the "eccentric or even deranged inventor of something real" might do could exactly that. However, most of us won't bet on it, and if we need to place bets, we will bet the other way, and that's all. It's not "right" or "wrong," it is a choice, and you pay your money and you take your choice.

I am to some degree poking Planet Rossi to put their "silent majority" money where their mouth is. One might investigate Hydro Fusion and buy stock, if they are sane. Are they? I have no idea! I don't create strong opinions in the absence of evidence, or I attempt to avoid it. What are the Swedes doing? I don't know! One could create some kind of organization to support investigation of the Rossi Effect and crowd-fund it. One could also chat it up with scientists and polcy-makers, but beware of reputation blow-back! What I'm suggesting would be reasonably safe. Such efforts could be as "gullible" or "carefully skeptical" as the owners or donors choose.

This is what it means to actually stand up for what one believes instead of just complaining about "they won't let us" and "evil conspiracy," which never goes anywhere. It's good for maybe a few weeks, to create one's position, but beyond that, it is what is called in the training a "racket." "A persistent complaint combined with a fixed way of being." These have payoffs. By focus on complaint, we are relieved of all responsibility, it is all their fault. Not ours. We get to look good and make others look bad -- we think.

This has almost nothing to do with "truth." That was probably the most difficult aspect of the training for me to face. "But I'm right!" And I probably was, within the narrow terms of the problems I had created. But I was disempowered, and this came to be my saying: "I'm so right I make myself sick." And then there are tools, well-developed and honed, for moving beyond that.