Posts by THHuxley

@Abd

You will be missed if you leave; and I can understand it is hurtful when posts are removed.

Alan has a difficult job. He does not do it as I would, draws lines in different places, etc. But no line drawn will be liked by everyone and he is doing this job, I don't think he is distorting the topic by doing it: in this case the deletions were because off topic. Therefore I think we should all support him, regardless of whether we agree with details of what he does.

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So, although a full Professor in his working life he is now pretty much one of us garage/kitchen table researchers. Which is to be admired.

I remember you making similar points. I'm not contradicting what you say - equally it does not contradict what i have said.

@Walker
@MrSS

Headline figures don't make any sense unless justified by decent calorimetry. Parkhomov has not yet done it, and his later methods are actually less intrinsically easy to validate than the original (which merely needed some care about water boiling and splashing).

In any case power density is an unhelpful measure. There are many mundane sources that show ultra-high power density - it means nothing. So why quote it?

Science, if that is what you want to consider here, is not about headlines that sound good.

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Guys you are ignoring the enormous amount of papers published by many authors and industries involved if you speak ONLY of Rossi and ONLY against him the natural question is why only him ?

Rossi has made eye-catching claims that have convinced a few academics while at the same time nearly all of his tests have been obvious flakes. When he is asked (by friends) to corect this flakiness he does not do so, but comes out with more claims and flaky tests.

That distinguishes him from all those other guys. A few have repeated flaky tests (e.g. BLP) but they are not so obviously commercially applicable, the claims are not so extreme (e.g. for power density which is not constrained in any way by physics) and the test flakiness is more subtle, so the discrepancy between claim and reality generates less cognitive overload.

Rossi pedalled dreams. They are hard to give up, and the longer held the more of a disappointment the final break will be. Sifferkoll's dealings here were poisonous, but I don't wish anyone (except perhaps Rossi) losing money over these dreams.

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I find it interesting that THHuxley is willing to see both sides. He must be smoking thinking that "quantum uncertainty"

We have not opened the box yet! Let's hope the IH legal stuff will do this.

So the non-LENR explanation here would be:

Heat: we are all agreed this system offers many possibilities

Radioactivity: release of trapped Radon or some other radioactive product where the apparent half-life is in fact dispersal. Arguments about radioactivity from Radon ave very complex because we have a chain of transmutations in which radioactive intermediates of different life-times can build up, so that activity measures at equilibrium have both physical and nuclear components.

This is such a can of worms that I'm just saying I don't trust my ability to say what is or is not possible from this mechanism. Perhaps someone else could be more certain.

Mary, Abd

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the 1MW reactors are impressive

They are superficially impressive. You might think that only unthinking people would be so impressed, as Mary does. And some inhabitants of Planet Rossi are such on this issue. But, more subtly, a lot of Planet Rossi will argue: "so much effort, no-one would do it for something that was just a giant electric heater! And, it would be obvious if it did not work, so unless you believe Rossi to be a fraud it must be real!"

Now there are two errors here, as I see it:

(1) There are many ways in which Rossi might convince himself that it works even when it does not. Abd views, tentatively, Rossi as not sane, but you don't need this for him to have selective cognition over the matter of whether his pet invention operates. Or, as I tentatively claim, he could be essentially incapable of distinguishing between appearance (public effect) and reality. In our celebrity culture there are many who get close to this malady...

(2) If he is a total (conscious) fraud, or if he believes his stuff could save the planet, if only he got more money, and reckons one faked large-scale test is all that is needed for this desirable outcome, again the 1MW PR machine will be built.

Abd here naturally sees the grey areas between rational and insane: perhaps his wordiness is from a desire to be more precise about matters which are in the hands of God and difficult for us to know, and more difficult for us to communicate.

(Alan, I can feel your snarky comment at this point!).

Quote from MrSS

A COP of 1.10 or even 1.25 isn't convincing enough for the majority of hardcore cynics and is not irrefutable enough to keep those with an agenda to attack and belittle Ni-H LENR from viciously attacking the results.

May I respectfully suggest that you rethink this calibration of skeptical views as necessarily biassed?

Unless you believe MFMP to be "hardcore cyincs". Their experiments are more carefully calibrated and controlled than most. They have now documented error mechanisms from these setups of +20% or so, not initially recognised, that go away when properly controlled. And this is not unexpected, since the calorimetry used is susceptible to such artifacts as it does not push heat through a well controlled thermal barrier with isothermal edges to ensure accurate Tc measurement. I'm not criticising the calorimetry - it is relatively easy and can be got fairly accurate with effort. But high accuracy is difficult to get and therefore even more difficult to prove.

MFMP, to their credit (modulo the unfortunate Bob G Signal PR onslaught) are careful and correct to treat initial positive results with caution.

In the face of this, how can you castigate skeptics here for being equally cautious? Whatever you want to be true, it seems that their caution is experimentally validated.

Quote from Abd

If that happens, it is not what I see coming. If such work exists, it's secret and I don't know about it.

If low temperature nuclear reactions exist it is likely that they can be commercialised with (effectively infinite) COP and very high power density. High temperatures are less clear since one can imagine effects that require low temperature to work (as Kim did, with BECs, some time ago).

Perhaps you were applying this comment narrowly to Ni-H systems? Or, perhaps you mean that the experimental evidence thus far does not support this: which I'd agree, but that is a (fairly weak, but real) argument against the FPHE being caused by nuclear reactions.

Quote from Zephyr

Problems of LENR forum:

1. Dilutitis- mixing few relevant and important things with increasing amounts of insignicant trivia.
2. Detailitis- losing the vision of the whole and inflating the sense of small details
3. Dispersitis- starting and organizing too many uncorrelated decisions in the same time- a damaging waste of times and ideas.
4. Disfocusitis focusing the discussions on invented , false or improper subjects
5. Defrostitis- the method by which the past sabotages the future and poisons the present
6. Disputitis- the gradual conversion of the Forum in battlefields, making conflicts as the standard state
7. Dictatoritis- the last, deadeliest one: organized groups trying to divide, dominate and conquer the forum

But I would-like to point to corrosive effect of few notorious skeptics, who are allowed to post at this forum from some reason (probably due to lack of better entertaiment) - despite they're openly hostile against the subject of this forum. They act here like some Kremlin agents and they unobtrusively but systematically poison the atmosphere of forum.

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This is an extraordinary (to me) slant on things. Who are these notorious skeptics? Me? Kirkshanahan? You reckon debate here would be better banning us?

There are a whole load of people here whose posts are repetitive and have little content, arguing many points of view. I can't say that skeptics have any monopoly on this. And you should tolerate other people being single-minded and boring. this, after all, is an internet forum: and of higher quality than many.

If you want just one side of arguments, with skeptical views filtered out, try ECW? surely, given Rossi's circus, a little skepticism (about Rossi's technology, which other than from Rossi has no credible replications with clear positive results, and results going lower the more careful the methodology) is reasonable?

Quote from MrSS

If there was no manufacturing equipment and James A. Bass never performed any real work producing a chemical product, then IH should -- according to my very limited understanding of the law -- get the case against them dismissed all together.

Well it certainly looks bad for Rossi but the argument is nothing directly to do with the customer, it is as I understand it to do with:

(1) Does the GPT contract hold - and if so which version
(2) Was this test the GPT
(3) and if so, did it fairly achieve the performance benchmark for IH to be contractually bound to pay

The matter of no customer relates rather to IH's counter-suit against Rossi that he engaged in fraud etc. now, if there was no customer, far from being thrown out, that might run. But the case against IH really has nothing to do with the customer, which is a Rossi "magnificence" and neither here nor there.

EDIT: and spot on oldguy, this case is nothing to do with "does LENR work". I reckon both Rossi and IH would say that it does, though maybe with very different levels of caution.

@Alan,

just think, if Abd was perfect people would hate him more. His failings take the form of long tendentious posts. There are worse, and he has his virtues too.

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Classically, discussions like this become monsters

Yes, it looks like we are hitting strongly held ideas where we disagree.

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A "pseudoskeptic" is so called because of an idea that the person pretends to be a skeptic, but is not, is, instead, actually a believer in their own ideas. (and not merely trying them on or using them as operating assumptions.)

And I'm making (with pseudobeliever) a similar distinction between someone whose belief is based on evidence, and therefore changeable with new evidence, and someone whose belief is a fixed point which will not change.

I think you should not be so ready to think there is pretence involved here. There is, as you point out, contrary belief. Why suppose people consciously dishonest when far more common is the error we are all susceptible to unconscious bias? In some cases this can affect specific scientific points, like evaluating the evidence for LENR. And in some cases it can be difficult to change:

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That denial was the sign of entrenched belief, wrapped up with identity and so to be heavily defended.

Quote from Abd

"Denial" -- in my usage -- is not about rejecting some outside idea, like LENR (or, say, global warming). It is, in the realm I have spent a great deal of time in, a term for refusing to recognize what is obvious in one's own experience, if one looks. A great deal of training is involved in discovering where one is doing this. In the end, it is something that, to be useful, a person must discover for themselves.

So: strongly defended positions (in a psychological sense) can indeed be as you say. It is the height of arrogance to imagine you know whether somone else's belief, or lack of it, is due to such a specific internal state. Maybe it is just that their judgement, or their experience on which judgement is made, is different from yours.

More importantly: when such issues exist, precisely which areas of intellectual dialog they affect is variable and no way can you precisely scope them from the outside evidence you have. By assuming that your colocuter suffers a fixed inability to reason, and addressing them as such a person, you can be sure to reinforce your assumption. When, had you allowed in your dialog the possibility of chnage, and addressed matters more indirectly, allowing space for reflection without conflict, your assumption might turn out all wrong.

As a monster topic I'm not sure much more can be said. And the disagreement between us (if there is such) probably lies outside the issue of LENR, so perhaps not relevant here.

So

Abd I've upvoted two of your recent posts that contain excellent not obvious points but are very and unnecessarily long. I'm good at skipping, as are many here, but obviously not all from the number of people who don't like the length!

Quote from MY

Properly informed of the risks? Why would they invest without appropriate testing, if properly informed? C'mon Dewey. How hard is it to demand a proper and conclusive test performed by a reputable testing lab or agency before investing $50 million?! Or before IH's $10M for that matter. You really think it made sense to do a one year test?

I usually find your points here cogent, though I don't always share your views. Here you are being careless of details which Abd and others have reiterated.

IH might invest in Rossi because even though they are well aware that he is flakey and has never conducted a decent test:
(1) He could still have something, given his historic work with LENR types.
(2) If he does not have anything his bluff needs to be called to allow money to go to genuine LENR people
(3) Rossi would clearly not allow a decent test and continue his successful PR campaign if not made to ante up.
(4) (Not sure about this) The Lugano test might have convinced people, if they did not catch the bad technical error in it. I don't think IH realised this till quite a long time after the test, although they would realise in general terms that there was bad methodology the specific results would then still seem difficult to explain unless Rossi had something.

Abd: you will I'm sure forgive me making some strong comments below disagreeing with your post from a few pages ago. You'll see why I feel this strongly by the time you get to the end. Generally, while you often seem arrogant and patronising, those are never qualities that concern me (I share the semblance sometimes) and I often value your comment. But not here...

Quote from Abd

You could say this about any language, and it would be an error.

I disagree. Labels, applied to specific people, are inherently reductionist and substitute prejudice for perception. If the prejudice is accurate (it is usually not) and the person is typical of the group (often not) it is still rightly hated because it shows a lack of respect. This is true for all labelling of people, not some special sensitivity of those you label pseudo-skeptic.

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When I'm careful about "pseudoskepticism," it is about a known behavior, and some level of pseudoskeptical behavior is not uncommon for humans. I distinguish this from "genuine skepticism," which is essential to science. Pseudoskepticism masquerades as skepticism, but is founded in something much darker, typically contempt and disrespect.

. When you are careful, this makes sense. I accept that such traits exist and are unhelpful. Further it is useful to identify them. However even when applied with care the above problems with labeling people arise.

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I'm not sure what "pseudo-believer" means. I'd think it would have to mean someone who pretends to believe something, but doesn't. Now, this is something I have observed.

I was making a more precise parallel. A pseudo-believer will make strong claims for their belief, be contemptuous of those more skeptical, and is characterised by a lack of interest in the details. When challenged a pseudo-believer will resort to generalities, avoid the issue, impugn the motives of the challenger with contempt, etc. Just as pseudo-skeptic is inflammatory and generally unhelpful, so a pseudo-believer is the same. You will notice that I don't often use either term here, except when quoting others.

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Pseudoskeptics go ballistic over the word "pseudoskeptic."

This is no doubt true, but polemic. I could as well, and with as much truth, say that pseudo-believers go ballistic over the word pseudo-believer. Wyttenbach, for example, downvoted my post where I introduced the term, though perhaps for some other reason. He seems to have a peculiar attitude towards my comments here. I've indicated above why it would be appropriate for anyone to object to such labels, even if they were applied with, as you put it, "care".

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I have seen strident claims that it [pseudoskepticism] doesn't exist. This is all utterly unsurprising, and it is called "denial." Anyway, that is "pseudoskepticism."

Denial is a word which carries much freight. I don't myself mind its use when accurate (ignoring the historic resonances) but many would be unable to do this. In any case your argument here is leaky. I'm now going to ignore historic resonances and use denial as a neutral term. A person might indeed deny LENR. Or, they might deny the existence of pseudoskepticism. To do the latter they'd need a clear definition of course. But the two denials are different, and in principle separate. Personally, I find it difficult to deny the existence of poorly defined concepts. Thus I cannot deny LENR or pseudo-skepticism even were I minded to do so.

You may think this nit-picking. Actually, I think your comment above is polemic, words apparently making a rational argument but actually pushing rhetorical buttons.

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But sometimes I call a specific person a "pseudoskeptic." That is a judgment of mine that their behavior is commonly or at the moment characterized by the traits of pseudoskepticism, commonly contempt of others and certainty as to one's own beliefs.

Calling out such certainty in a person when it exists is proper and I'm glad you do it. And it could be directed towards or against any specific belief.

The main point of this post is that generalisation about people is inherently unhelpful. Here, it helps to label a specific action, not the person. This is 101 of how to address bad behaviour and it is obvious when you think about it, but not always easy to do in the heat of the moment. "that was pseudoskeptical behaviour" - OK. "Pseudoskeptics" - No.

This is not an esoteric debating point. It is absolutely key to a fruitful dialog, and also key to maintaining good relations with others in situations of conflict. I don't claim I do it always: but I can aspire to doing it.

@Paradigmnoia
@David.Daggett

Looking at the picture there appears to be a slight asymmetry in the area of the hot segments - maybe illusory?

If there is a slight difference in the size of the coils then the same power to each could result in different temperatures on surface just from geometric effects. A 6% change in hot segment length would lead to noted difference - which appears to scale fairly closely with the temperature increase at 6%.

Otherwise, differences from other work might be found if the alumina was different thickness above the coils, or the coils different material, or several other variables...

Anyway nice work, and a thorough investigation of what leads to these asymmetries would be valuable for all so in terms of advancing knowledge there are no negative results here.

EDIT - or, looking at the pic, a slight variation in thermal coupling to the two TCs could give this 6% difference? For example the thickness of the cement on the outside might be important, or the thermal resistance to the hot core.

The diameter of this piping, at least, would be known to IH and can be checked after the end of the test. As always we do not have definite information, but Rossi is keeping quiet and we have from a likely IH expert witness a definite and easily checkable statement. People make mistakes, but I'd not expect it here.

Quote from Abd

If there is an open magicians, the game is clear, and "success" simply means that the skeptic can't figure out how the magician did it. With a practically infinite world of possibilities, and the limited observational powers of an expert, this game favors the experienced magician. This is not a claim that Rossi is a magician, but that this is within the bounds of possibility. As well, there are people who function like magicians, but who believe in what they do. Not all "magic" is deliberate. Sometimes the force of belief of the person is enough to draw people along. Pseudoskeptics are contemptuous and think anyone fooled by a magician is gullible.

I can see that there are pseudo-skeptics, but don't find the word very useful. I could for example similarly call 90% of the people on blogs who support LENR pseudo-believers for the same dismissive lack of attention to details. That would be insulting, and not I think helpful. Generally labels do not help.

The thing about Rossi independent tests is that it all depends on the experience and attitude of the testers. Rossi can provide a box that apparently performs miracles (and perhaps believe it is truely doing this, though I'd say more that he does not acknowledge that question as important), in many ways:

mis-placed TCs
mis-used flowmeter
mis-measured electrical supply
mis-wired electrical supply
wrong assumption about water phase
wrongly calibrated IR camera
large internal high temperature block of metal

All of these are "magic" when not understood, and things automatically checked when understood. Jed has had a long learning experience and now is aware of pretty well all of these things (maybe not the high temperature block of metal one). These are however only things that I am aware of: I'd be very surprised were there not other "magic" I'm not considering. Few "experts" will be aware of all of them.

So an independent tester can be deceived by any of this magic. Given enough time, and repeated checks, these things get uncovered. For that you need the right mindset. I'm not confident this was present in the private tests that Jed knows and we do not.

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The lawsuit can be interesting and important to discuss, by all means, but if anyone is fully convinced that the reactor did not produce energy, why would that person then focus hour upon hour discussing (in twenty different forums) whether a 4 cylinder or 6 cylinder reactor was used. This is not rational behavior.

I agree the Rossi/IH arguments are getting tired now, since mostly what can be said has been said.

But your meta-arguments here don't wash. People can spend any amount of time arguing. And don't need material reward for doing so. I know its not rational. Welcome to the human world. We are not always rational.

Why would someone post such pretty coloured pics/fonts about astroturfing, except as part of a PR offensive?

Quote from Jed

It wasn't all that credible. But okay, you are now aware.

Thanks for this Jed. It is of course very proper for you to reach your own judgement on the data you have but cannot share. But I cannot agree with you that this makes me aware of credible data - especially since you say it was not all that credible and I know that I tend to be somewhat more cautious than you in evaluating this type of data.

But I am now aware of why you might have a different view of this matter than I have.

Quote from Abd

Well, compared with about everyone who posts in this group, he is.

I can see why you might believe that, but it is an unwise comparison when there are various people here who in some areas at least show greater technical competence than Jed. Let us just say that he has good general competence without making specific comparisons? Expertise is a slippery term, and has many forms.

Regards, THH