Rossi-Blog Comment Discussion

Tony - you need to find a new bridge / subject to troll.

There is not a pico something something chance that anything energy related that the WCS is doing works as advertised.

We have 40 years of WCS history that should move the odds beyond the trillionth of a chance.

Having said that, if the Swedes do succeed in finding something useful as part of what might be extended research then it would be really nice to know

that our $20M contribution helped.

As previously stated - we'll see the real folks at the finish line. You won't be there.

AA - I'm about ready to classify your neural functionality into geologic territory (rocks).

@ Eric Walker,

Quote from Eric Walker

once you start from the premise that the DoD and related agencies may have launched a scheme that involves both Rossi and Jed Rothwell (and Melich and now, apparently, Ahern) and that uses LENR only as a cover in order to achieve other goals, you are unavoidably within the realm of (highly implausible) conspiracy theories.

But that's not MY premise. My premises are that no LENR exists and that a Rossi's scam is impossible, for the high level of elaboration that the Ecat operation has required (as properly described by Shane D. just in the comment below yours). It follows that almost every other hypothesis appears to be more plausible.

However, I'm not able to propose any specific theory. The many information available on internet are still largely insufficient to draw a comprehensive scenario (*). Probably the last chance to know the truth about this affair was the US House of Representative's request for a briefing on the LENR, but the answer deliberately ignored the Ecat issue (1).

(1) Rossi vs. Darden aftermath discussions

(*) Edit: It's obvious that such a scenario should also explain the role played by Melich, Rothwell, and, if Celani was right, by Ahern too.

Ascoli65, a year or three ago I went to the effort of verifying with you, yourself, on this site, what the outlines of your suggestion were. Shall I dig up the thread? You are good at this kind of thing; perhaps you will be kind enough to do the honors. Or perhaps your position has not changed since that exchange, and you can point out what in the description above I got wrong in comparison to the previous attempt?

Quote from Ascoli65

It follows that almost every other hypothesis appears to be more plausible.

In your sleuthing, you are studiously ignoring the most obvious and straightforward alternative hypothesis. Namely that things are what they seem.

Nope AA but NC red clay leaves a better mark.

I propose a truce for the sake of the others.

Quote from Adrian Ashfield

One might also ask, how do you know that? Nobody knows what Dewey thinks or would think, only what he writes.

I have spent a lot of time with him and talked about a variety of things, so I probably know more about what he thinks than you do. Plus, as I said, strictly from money point of view, if Rossi makes billions, I suppose there is a good chance I.H. will get its money back, so his success would be in their interest.

Quote from Adrian Ashfield

As an aside, as far as I now IBM invented very little of their PC.

As I said, I was talking about the 1970s, long before the PC and microprocessor technology emerged. IBM pioneered useful things but made little effort to sell them. I assume they did not want to cannibalize their existing market. Companies with a monopoly often do that.

IBM's view : https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/his…bits/pc25/pc25_birth.html

Quote

The manufacturing strategy was to simplify everything, devise a sound plan and not deviate. There was not time to develop and test all components. So they shopped for completely functioning and pretested subassemblies, put them together and tested the final product. Zero defects was part of the plan.

In sum, the development team broke all the rules. They went outside the traditional boundaries of product development within IBM. They went to outside vendors for most of the parts, went to outside software developers for the operating system and application software, and acted as an independent business unit. Those tactics enabled them to develop and announce the IBM PC in 12 months -- at that time faster than any other hardware product in IBM's history.

Quote from Shane D.

Your post was right on, but this caught my eye. I have read your accounts of the great, yet difficult, inventors in history. Curious though, if any of them ever got caught staging such an obvious, and elaborate sting operation to sucker a partner, as Rossi did to IH at Doral?

I do not recall reading about anything as outrageous as Doral. I have read about and even participated in some elaborate Dog and Pony shows that made products seem a lot more ready than they actually were. Back in the early 1980s, people with barely functional software and hardware would often "demonstrate" it with a canned routine that was actually the one and only thing it could do. Such as rendering one particular image. I read that the first public demonstration of a mouse by Engelbart was largely canned special effects.

Edison often made elaborate claims and then failed to follow through. The biography "A Streak of Luck" has some hilarious examples. By the time he was working on the incandescent light, his investors included the creme de la creme of Wall Street such as J. P. Morgan. Not the kind of people you can fool. The lights were not working worth a darn, and the investors were getting antsy, so he invited them for a demonstration in his house which devolved onto a trade-show nightmare. He accidentally set fire to the curtains in the living room. His wife called the distinguished guests into the dining room while his assistants batted out the flames. You have to realize that incandescent lights were invented 20 years before Edison began working on them, so Morgan knew what they were, and he knew they were not supposed to explode and set fires. This was not as bad as the Doral test, but it did not inspire confidence. The investors went home wondering if they would ever see their money again.

(As I recall, after Edison began electrifying lower Manhattan, he installed a stand-alone system in Morgan's house that set fire to his office. I think it was Morgan.)

Edison's attitude toward capital, money and investors was hilarious to read about, but it must have been infuriating to people who funded him. On the surface it made him look like a scam artist. He was a "sharp dealer," meaning he liked to take advantage of business partners. He would get vast sums of money and instead of spending it on what he agreed to do, within a budget, he would spend it overnight on all kinds of experimental equipment and nifty gadgets. He was basically a black hole for capital, spending two or three times more than planned. One Wall Street guy heard nothing for weeks and sent over his accountant to find what happened. The accountant showed up and Edison said, "it's about time you got here! Where have you been? Did you bring more money???"

He did not take the money for his own use or indulge in luxuries. He wanted the latest and best gadgets and instruments. As often as possible, he did not want to pay for them. They found stacks of unpaid invoices in his desk after he died. I recall reading that they found what had been the best lab. vacuum pump in the world borrowed from a university, and never returned.

Edison knew way more about chemistry and laboratory science than he let on.

Quote from Shane D.

I say elaborate, not because it was technically sophisticated, but because of the many acting roles he played,

Rossi's Doral demonstration was not sophisticated. It did not fool anyone, as you see in Murray's account.

Quote from Adrian Ashfield

Apple & Tandy had PCs in 1976 - 1977. I owned an Exidy Sorcerer (non IBM )C) in 1978. I think IBM's first PC was 1981. So we are talking the same time frame.

Actually no. I am talking about the late 60s and early 70s, when IBM was at the height of its monopoly power. The computer business was "IBM and the seven dwarfs." IBM had more market share than all of them combined. Others big companies such as GE spent huge sums trying to compete, and then abruptly gave up.

IBM did spend a lot on R&D, and they did introduce a lot of important stuff. The IBM 360 project cost $5 billion, which was 2 years of IBM's revenue and more money than the Manhattan Project (in real dollars). That took guts!

The monopoly began to erode when Hitachi and others found they could manufacture IBM mainframe compatibles and peripherals without spending more than the Manhattan Project. The invention of the microcomputer was the beginning of the end. By the late 1980s, IBM lost more money than any corporation in history and almost went out of business. See the book "Big Blues":

https://www.amazon.com/Big-Blu…aul-Carroll/dp/0517882213

Success in business is never permanent. Dominance seldom lasts more than a generation.

Quote from Dewey Weaver

I propose a truce for the sake of the others.

Good Idea.

@Tony,

Yep, Dewey Weaver goes the extra mile to trash the Swedes (but only if he is not intimidating and harassing them).

It seems probable to me that Thomas Darden ended his long chain of IH screw-ups with the biggest blunder of all time; parting from an impossible invention.

On the contrary, it seems very improbable to me that IH is now making "methodological progress" in the LENR field without using Rossi's IP and ideas. If we see Dewey Weaver and his former LUX Energy buddies at the finish line it is on the back of a very naive LENR entrepreneur.

Cheers,

JB

Adrian, I'm reminding you of Bob's question:

Adrian Ashfield:

"I will stick my neck out and forecast there is a better than 50% chance Rossi will come up with a believable demonstration in October. "

https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/thread/5127-blp-update/?postID=71231#post71231

So, do you think you won that parlay? Was the "Stockholm" event a believable demo?

To which you replied:

Nothing really to add. Hard evidence is missing and contradictory, and the opinions don't count for much.

Despite your protestations it seems likely that, like the other skeptics here, what you say doesn't tell the whole story.

A rational thinker responds to new info. Specifically, you were unsure whether Rossi's stuff works, or whether he is a vapourware fake (putting it charitably) or a Wealthy Career Specialist, putting it weirdly but less favourably.

You viewed the demo in October as significant, and thought it would quite likely support Rossi's case.

Now: it was an obviously phoney demo, in the sense that it did not show his device working., although it was presented as doing that.

(1) Do you agree that it did not show Rossi's device working? Less so even than his previous demos which, if you did not know the technical errors, appeared to be showing power out greater than power in by a large margin.

(2) Does this phoney demo alter your estimate of the likelihood that Rossi has anything?

If you answer that the demo provides no information: I'd say that you are not processing evidence rationally. After all a positive demo would (you implied) provide information that increases your belief that Rossi has something. So why would a negative demo not decrease that believe?

This is a concrete example of a general point noted by IO. That (he thinks) Rossi believers now (given the negatives already public) will go on believing pretty well regardless of how much negative evidence exists. We have alerted you to a lot of that negative evidence here. I'm wondering therefore what type of negative you need to make you more doubtful?

THH

Quote from AlainCo

Just a point. I read that some people want to establish a bet.

The problem is who will declare the reality.

people cannot even agree that Fleischmann&Pons proved excess heat above chemistry, that He4 is proportionate to Heat, that reaction happens near the surface, and that Lugano paper contain an error on emissivity, and that Doral was a (a what?)...

There are people still thinking that cold fusion was debunked by Lewis and Hansen, that earth is flat, that vaccine cause autism, yet the affair is closed since long with solid evidences, if not evidence of fraud and sometime even trial with definitive sentences.

Beside LENR I follow domaine where even my president is telling fakenews, leading to the ruin of one of the few domaine where French are good. I could trigger flamewar hot enough to burn the rainforest by just reminding data on a dozen subjects, fighting with even the most reasonable guys here.

I'm tired, it is impossible today to have people agree they were fooled.

It is even more painful to see valuable people get fooled that to realize you were fooled.

Don't bet money if you are not sure of how to revolve the issue.

Don't go to court if you are not sure the jury cannot be manipulated like some scientists are.

Don't try to convince, just give data. As I read, all have been said a hundred times.

Moreover don't expect to win money by being right, history prove that when a system is locked in groupthink, the realist dissenters can never win.

http://www.princeton.edu/~rben…IOM%202012_07_02%20BW.pdf

We have more serous thing to do, and no budget (partially because too much got wasted in Doral and in attorney's Lamborghini). that is the real problem.

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Yes, that is why I have not bet (also a 10% return in one year is not great investment given the hassle and exchange issues etc). It would perhaps be worth it with $100K staked, $10K return. But, then, i'd worry that the payment would hurt the person i was betting with. i never bet unless sure both sides are doing it for sport and prepared to lose their stake.

Adrian's it will be obvious because big news would be Ok if we could define big news as:

(1) serious national press take an interest, billing this as a solution to global warming, and sustain this for say a month.

(2) that is linked to independent - not chosen by Rossi, or conducted with Rossi equipment, or in his factory) tests. Obvoiously if these things are sold to custonmers a customer could arrange for independent testing, but this again is tricky. You can hire independent testers to come and validate aspects of your own test and write a report (I'm sure you have come across such a situation before in companies promising miracle tech). We would need independent testing paid for by a party with no conflict of interest: e.g. a newspaper, or a reputable major university willing to take the rep cost if wrong, etc.

(3) In fact I'd accept a major company if the company as a whole said it was pioneering this cheap carbon-free energy source (which would be good PR) and gave its own results for whether it worked in terms of power saved. We'd need to make sure it was a major company, and not a Rossi pawn pretending to be a company, or a figmnet of Rossi's over-active imagination.

If we had real buyable industrial low carbon energy from LENR it would be very big news globally, and the fact that in spite of investigations that would happen it stayed big news would validate, after say 1 month. the negatives about Rossi would mean such a claim if making national news seriously would get tested and rejected if not real pretty quickly. But, that would not be true for an article in a specialist or internet magazine. these have any number of wonder-claims, never much believed nor validated. Distinguishing what is serious interest might be sticky.

[snip] - I guess that now is a good time to remind you of the criminal slander laws in your country.