Brillouin Energy Corporation (BEC) updates.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    I'd suggest that instead they spend $200K on independent research to check, test, and improve the SRI instrumentation and calorimetry assumptions.


    The problem is that the SRI reports are already independent research, and are being ignored/dismissed by people for dogmatic reasons rather than technical questions. There is really no certainty for Brillouin that another report by another independent research institute would convince people that what they have is real. Which is why they are going for proof through commercialization.


    I made my own investment mostly on the basis of such reports, and of confirmation by non-LENR people that Tanzella was neither dishonest nor incompetent as the main issue that is often raised is that Tanzella is biased because of his own research in LENR.


    If you are really interested in the question, getting in touch with Tanzella is not that hard and could probably be arranged.


    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    Don't worry, they won't. It's the last thing Godes would like else he would have arranged for it long before now-- remember that the claimed results 4 years ago are essentially the same as now. And I suspect they will be same 4 years from now, still unverified. BLP is the model for Brillouin.


    You have made a lot of references to the fact that the results are the same as the results four years ago, and I feel they have not been properly adressed. You are indeed right that Brillouin claims that they reached 4X in 2015 but an impressive section of the investment documentation is dedicated to explaining how this result was achieved and why it could not be replicated (I am not sure all this has been told by Brillouin in public communication so I won't say more). Of course you might say that they are scammers and that those explanations are lies, but their willingness to be transparent about those results and their inability to build on them is part of the transparency that distinguishes Brillouin from other LENR companies.


    This 4X result also explains part of the overly optimistic predictions of 2015.

    Quote from interested observer

    This latest battle is a real winner. SOT says that if there is an unlimited, cheap and safe energy source, it would change the world. Jed says he has no business saying that.


    No, that is not what he said. He said there is no point to discussing the benefits of cold fusion, or learning about them, or informing potential investors and the public, because the benefits are self-evident. I pointed out that many of the benefits are not self-evident, any more than the benefits of microcomputers were in 1980. For example, cold fusion is likely to reduce the cost of energy by a factor of 200. That is much more than other zero-fuel cost energy sources such as PV. Investors are more likely to be interested if they realize this. The reasons for this large cost reduction are not self-evident. See:


    https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusionb.pdf



    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    Jed, you are the poster child for nit picking. -Some- advantages are self evident. Happy now?


    Some of the advantages that are not self-evident are extremely important. That is why it is a good idea to inform the public about them, and it is why you should learn about them if you wish to contribute to this forum.

    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    Don't worry, they won't. It's the last thing Godes would like else he would have arranged for it long before now


    Mary Yugo: The gift that keeps on giving. Do you realise how easy it is to spot when you're commenting on something without reading the source material?


    It's beyond parody. Any normal person would realise how ridiculous they appear and buck their ideas up.

    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    Most EV1's had lead acid batteries, not at all like the Leaf.


    So what? They were functionally equivalent, with the same range, and they did not cost much. They were heavier but that did not hurt performance much.


    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    And the Leaf is a short range car of modest performance which is best for short commutes in the city where you can recharge at destination


    So was the EV1. What is your point?

    Quote from Zeus46

    Your [SOT's] bufoonery hardly undermines my “beliefs”. To think that someone could prefer their own uneducated opinions over gathering, and putting effort into understanding, the evidence - and then being highly vocal about it - is breathtaking.


    That is putting it a little strongly, but I agree. Here is the crux of the matter. A person who is not willing to study a subject should not come to a specialized forum and pontificate about it. As Fiorello La Guardia said when the Pontiff pontificated about sex: "you no play-a the game, you no make-a the rules."

    Quote from Shane D.

    Imagine the frustration someone like Godes must go through, while reading the list of "must do's" those like you insist he and his team accomplish, when it has been done already, *and* their work made public, *and* talked about on the net.


    For sure... My favourite Mary moment was when he was poopooing (steady on George!) Celani's latest report, by claiming that he should add more knots to his wires. Of course, Celani had already done this, and written about it - in the same report Mary/SOT was dismissing.


    ...Then after plenty of prompting, he eventually skim-read the report, but yet again somehow missed the reference to the extra knots - Even after being given the exact page number. *Eight times.* (Yes reader, this really happened). After lots of rants and capitalised text, he probably realised he was looking at the notes section (where a reference to the same page number was repeated). Although by then he was refusing to acknowledge the whole debacle.


    Classic!

    Quote from JedRothwell

    Some of the advantages that are not self-evident are extremely important. That is why it is a good idea to inform the public about them, and it is why you should learn about them if you wish to contribute to this forum.

    So in your book you list some 14 top-level application areas for cold fusion. How many do you think would have to come to fruition for it all to be worthwhile? My guess is exactly one. Sure it is interesting to think about all the ways such a technology would be valuable, but I don’t think the situation has any parallels with what faced computers, for example. Great minds at IBM and elsewhere couldn’t envision what most people would possibly want with a computer. I don’t think it is a mystery what could be done with a energy source like cold fusion. The lack of interest is not based on lack of vision; it is based on the widespread (whether justified or not) belief that cold fusion isn’t real. Listing all the great things it could be used for will not dislodge that view although it might make potential investors somewhat more inclined to take a gamble.



    Just a short reply to this. I have no reason to think Brillouin dishonest. That leaves open the possibility that what they interpret as Q-pulse induced power production is in fact Q-pulse induced experimental error. Their setup is sufficiently complex that there is easy room for honest miscalculation of that even from those expert in calorimetry: in this case SRI are the only experimental experts evaluating this (to my knowledge) and I don't know how many people that is.


    BLP, it could be argued, might be similarly misinterpreting error - the difference is the very long-standing and unimpressive sequence of claimed results - where old claims get abandoned in favour of new and completely different claims in a Rossiesque fashion.


    Brillouin are chasing the one system which looks like it can have results clarified as either extraordinary or error.


    There is also a grey area here. Given results that are positive but nevertheless not certain, should an honest company steam ahead with work that if they are real will be closer to commercialisation, or stick with the same lab setup and try to make the same results more certain? You can justify both, though my argument about return/risk applies - I think better validation first is smarter in terms of overall weighted return.


    THH

    The advantages to LENR are enormous, but I think that most people don't recognize it.


    Unlimited cheap, clean, portable, and power dense energy is only the start.

    THHuxleynew Exactly (in the above post). Well and succinctly put. I also doubt that Brillouin is dishonest. If they were, approaching SRI wouldn't make much sense. It's as if Rossi had done so. He would have been unfrocked in ten minutes of testing. I do think some groups at SRI are more gullible than others (classic example: Uri Geller) but they are far from incompetent enough to certify a Rossi. That requires... well, you know.

    Quote from Zeus46

    For sure... My favourite Mary moment was when he was poopooing (steady on George!) Celani's latest report, by claiming that he should add more knots to his wires. Of course, Celani had already done this, and written about it - in the same report Mary/SOT was dismissing.


    ...Then after plenty of prompting, he eventually skim-read the report, but yet somehow again missed the reference to the extra knots. Even after being given the exact page number. *Eight times* (Yes reader, this really happened). After lots of rants and capitalised text, he probably realised he was looking at the notes section (where a reference to the same page number was repeated). Although by then he was refusing to acknowledge the whole debacle.


    Classic!


    MY was unwise in being drawn in to making technical comments. He was not a technical commentator (and admitted this), and there would be not much point his reading technical reports.


    MY had a consistent and pessimistic view of human nature that inclined him to think that those claiming astonishing disruptive technological advance with no major backing from industry nor credence from mainstream science are almost certainly dishonest charlatans.


    I find myself very opposed to this position. Human ability to believe what we want to believe is inescapable and can lead to many honest but wrong people chasing dreams. Where the data on which the dream is based is subject to variable interpretations the distinction between an honest and misguided dreamer and a far sighted maverick who has the courage to advance science is difficult to detect. People tend to look at the same evidence and side with whichever picture they personally think is more likely a priori. Those like MY with a more pessimistic view will often take the same information and conclude that the person must be duplicitous rather than misguided.


    There can be shades between the MY view and the misguided dreamer view. Rossi (according to one reading) occupies such a space where he clearly lies through his teeth about many things, clearly devises complex false positive experiments, but could nevertheless believe parts of his own spin. If so it would make him much more convincing, but having said that, those who are consciously and clearly dishonest can in some cases also be very believable, so those who think Rossi knows well his stuff does not work at all and is completely cynical, laughing at his followers, also have a tenable case.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    There can be shades between the MY view and the misguided dreamer view. Rossi (according to one reading) occupies such a space where he clearly lies through his teeth about many things, clearly devises complex false positive experiments, but could nevertheless believe parts of his own spin. If so it would make him much more convincing, but having said that, those who are consciously and clearly dishonest can in some cases also be very believable, so those who think Rossi knows well his stuff does not work at all and is completely cynical, laughing at his followers, also have a tenable case.


    One only needs to look at Holmes and Theranos to agree with you. There does exist a space where people convince themselves that the false proof they create is necessary for the greater good of getting their crucial idea funded and eventually realized. And that is of course one of the great risk in investing in start-ups.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    (Whether) Q-pulse induced power production is in fact Q-pulse induced experimental error. Their setup is sufficiently complex that there is easy room for honest miscalculation of that even from those expert in calorimetry


    You keep saying this THH, although the (studiously ignored) question remains: Why doesn't this measurement error show up during the empty reactor control tests?

    Quote from interested observer

    So in your book you list some 14 top-level application areas for cold fusion. How many do you think would have to come to fruition for it all to be worthwhile? My guess is exactly one.


    That is true, but I do not see what relevance it has to the discussion. Here is the issue: the economic and social effects of cold fusion is likely to be complicated, and the impact will be much greater than most people realize. Probably more than anyone realizes.


    Quote from interested observer

    Sure it is interesting to think about all the ways such a technology would be valuable, but I don’t think the situation has any parallels with what faced computers, for example.


    I think it did have parallels. I was working with DEC, Data General and the PC makers in the 1980s, and I saw this play out, as I have briefly described here. Everyone understand the basic reasons why microprocessors and PCs were valuable. Just as everyone can see that cold fusion will have many obvious advantages. But many people failed to see the ramifications, and those ramifications drove most of the computer industry into bankruptcy. The people working in it, such as me, were fine. But the companies and stockholders lost their shirts.


    People thought of PCs as replacements for minicomputers, which is like thinking of automobiles as replacements for horses. This is like saying e-mail and the internet are replacements for first class letters. Automobiles were, of course, replacements for horses, but that's just the beginning of what they were. They revolutionized society and changed the whole physical landscape of the planet.



    Quote from interested observer

    Great minds at IBM and elsewhere couldn’t envision what most people would possibly want with a computer.


    Actually, IBM introduced the PC in 1981, so people there understood there was a market. The people at DEC, Data General and other companies did not envision what most people wanted, which is why they went out of business. In the late 1980s, IBM also lost track of this, and it almost went bankrupt.



    Quote from interested observer

    I don’t think it is a mystery what could be done with a energy source like cold fusion.


    You don't? It took me years to work through the ramifications, and weeks to write that recent paper. You could have done it before breakfast? You are smarter than I am! You are smarter than Arthur C. Clarke, who put a lot of thought into this.



    Quote from interested observer

    The lack of interest is not based on lack of vision; it is based on the widespread (whether justified or not) belief that cold fusion isn’t real. Listing all the great things it could be used for will not dislodge that view although it might make potential investors somewhat more inclined to take a gamble.


    You are wrong about that. I have communicated with many potential investors who thought cold fusion is real, but they considered it little more than a better version of plasma fusion. At best, they thought the impact it would have is about the same as PV, because both have zero-cost fuel. They did not realize there is a long list of other advantages, so they were only lukewarm about investing. I do not know if I managed to persuade them otherwise, but I do know they did not understand the potential, or the important differences between various energy sources. People often fail to see the advantages of a new technology, even when their jobs depend on seeing it. That is why Amazon.com is about to put Sears out of business.


    The example I gave above, of people thinking that e-mail is little different from first class mail, is not imaginary. Some people thought word processing did not have many advantages over typewriters. Smart people such as Nobel laureate Paul Krugman thought the internet would not have much impact.

    • Official Post

    Here is the final SRI report (again). Take a few minutes to read, and then tell me if it has not been done, thought of, or addressed already? It is the least you could do, to show a little respect for the many thousands of man hours the BEC team, and SRI have put into this.



    Quote from LCC

    Here is the final SRI report: https://brillouinenergy.com/ne…ort-Final-Public-2018.pdf

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    People tend to look at the same evidence and side with whichever picture they personally think is more likely a priori. Those like MY with a more pessimistic view will often take the same information and conclude that the person must be duplicitous rather than misguided.


    Well yes, but as you admit, he's not actually taking in the same information. Incapable of it, perhaps.


    So how he has the brass balls to declare people like SRI as incompetent, is beyond me.


    Dunning-Kruger all over.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    MY had a consistent and pessimistic view of human nature that inclined him to think that those claiming astonishing disruptive technological advance with no major backing from industry nor credence from mainstream science are almost certainly dishonest charlatans.


    I find myself very opposed to this position


    Me too. Mainly because history is full of examples of astonishing disruptive technological advances that had no backing from industry, and no credence from mainstream science. There are many famous examples such as airplanes, the MRI, antibiotic treatment for H. pylori induced stomach ulcers, and modern electric cars. The reasons there was strong opposition was obvious at the time. Mainstream science is extremely conservative, conformist, and shot through with academic politics. As the Japanese say, anyone who sticks up is pounded down. Established industry opposes innovation because it reduces profits, disrupts markets, and it helps start-up competition. That is why GM and others did not want electric cars, and why GM scrapped the EV1. They only made it in response to pressure from the government of California CARB. They said it was not profitable, and they made every effort to keep it from being profitable. They only leased the cars instead of selling them, and as soon as they could, they not only stopped production, but they took back and crushed the vehicles. It was obvious they did not want to be in the electric car business. Innovation hurts existing industry leaders. It doesn't just hurt them; it often destroys them, the way Amazon.com destroyed Sears; the way steam ships wiped out the sailing ship industry, and Diesel locomotives destroyed the Baldwin locomotive company. Balwin might have manufactured Diesel locomotives, but industry leaders seldom make this kind of transition. They usually roll over and play dead instead. See the book "The Innovator's Dilemma" for details.


    This is not a controversial view of history. When it became clear these new technologies were real, most people recognized why there was previously such strong opposition to them.


    When a technology is not astonishing or disruptive, it will have backing from industry. No one objects to incremental improvements, or fails to incorporate them in their product line. No academic scientist objects to adding two decimal digits of precision to an existing textbook measurement.


    This is partly due to what Margaret Mead described: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." I consider that an exaggeration, but there is much truth to it.

    Quote

    There can be shades between the MY view and the misguided dreamer view. Rossi (according to one reading) occupies such a space where he clearly lies through his teeth about many things, clearly devises complex false positive experiments, but could nevertheless believe parts of his own spin. If so it would make him much more convincing, but having said that, those who are consciously and clearly dishonest can in some cases also be very believable, so those who think Rossi knows well his stuff does not work at all and is completely cynical, laughing at his followers, also have a tenable case.

    No. Rossi's efforts to deceive were so detailed and repeated in multiple variations that they required planning and a full knowledge that the premise was false. For example, the famous control tweaking video by Lewan with the voice over by Krivit (want to see it again). Rossi deliberately goosed the temperature controller to make it appear that the ecat was boiling water at a substantial rate. Nobody would do that if they thought the ecat worked on its own. Every experiment done by Rossi that I know of required advance planning and testing to make sure the false results were as desired. That can't happen if one thinks the device works.


    When you add consideration of the hundreds (literally) of lies, the fake customer for the heat at IH, the fake customer rep at the 2011 "megawatt" demo, and then if you think about Rossi's past, there can not be the slightest doubt about what he did -- con people and knowingly so with tons of planning.

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