thanks aphasiac, i'll check them out!!

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It occured to me yesterday... what exactly is world changing about free energy, when it is going to be patented, and every device maker wanting to use it will have to pay royalties, and then the end user will have to pay even more, to include of course the "managing costs", "development and research costs", "installation costs" and so on

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aphasiac Wrote:Why would he stage something like this? (...)

Midlife crisis?

This reminded me about a humorous comment somewhere along the lines that 50 year old men suddenly find themselves busy with time consuming hobbies... something like that.

ファブリス Wrote:It occured to me yesterday... what exactly is world changing about free energy, when it is going to be patented, and every device maker wanting to use it will have to pay royalties, and then the end user will have to pay even more, to include of course the "managing costs", "development and research costs", "installation costs" and so on

Patent laws and the entire concept of intellectual property is completely absurd. It's insane that we actually let IP laws and the patent system come into existence.

ファブリス Wrote:

aphasiac Wrote:Why would he stage something like this? (...)

Midlife crisis?

This reminded me about a humorous comment somewhere along the lines that 50 year old men suddenly find themselves busy with time consuming hobbies... something like that.

Indeed! It might not look like an obvious scam, because maybe it isn't.

Rossi is now world-famous and appearing in national news media; also his blog has hundreds of comments from adulated followers. With his past history of failures, this could be the primary motivational factor - he wants his moment in the sun

There have been free-energy scammers who have done it for attention / fame in the past, then been caught out (look up Archer Quinn or the Mylow magnetic motor). Interestingly this just made it more believable at first - "he's not accepting money, so it can't be a scam, this MUST BE REAL".

On a side note, Steven B. Krivit of newenergytimes believes that Rossi is faking results and demo's to build up enough funding to make it work for real. There is no doubt Rossi has put alot of time and money into cold fusion research in the past 10 years - he actually had to sell his house to fund the e-cat launch. To believers this is proof that Rossi is genuine, but in my eyes this is further motivation on why it might be fake; if you'd given up *everything* for your product and it still didn't work, you have nothing to lose by "massaging" the results a little..

nadiatims Wrote:Patent laws and the entire concept of intellectual property is completely absurd. It's insane that we actually let IP laws and the patent system come into existence.

That's a little extreme...
Without patent law, instead you have trade secrets, and anyone who finds out the secret can make the same product. Patent law exists so that people will reveal their discoveries to the public and not carry secret techniques to the grave with them. This has done a lot to accelerate scientific progress and technological development.
It's true that patent offices don't think about -why- they exist as they do their day to day work, and there are certainly enormous problems with the patent system (such as being able to patent basic mathematical laws because you're the first one to do that particular math on a computer... or more generally, to be able to patent -anything- with a patent so obtuse and vague and full of extraneous claims that nobody could actually create the patented invention based on the written patent claim!)

Trademarks, if they were not protected, would mean that -anyone- could put caffeinated caramel colored sugar water into a red and white can and sell 'Coca-Cola'. That might not break your heart in and of itself, but for many other products (especially foods and medicines, where we really depend on what we're ingesting to have the effect we expect) we depend on brand names to assure us that we're getting the same item that we bought last week. Don't get me started on some of the silliness in trademark law (based on how you have to enforce your trademark whenever it is violated or risk losing legal standing to protect the trademark ever), but it does exist for a reason.

Copyright, of course, serves two functions - to provide some assurance that a book with a certain title and author printed on it is actually what you expect, and to assure that an author actually gets paid for his work. Of course copyright laws have extended out to an absurd period of time, among other strange issues with the way copyright has been extended beyond the printed word.

While I certainly am aware of some ridiculous and egregiously unjust results of the various types of intellectual property, it's a bit simplistic to suggest that we'd be better off without -any- legal protection.

ファブリス Wrote:It occured to me yesterday... what exactly is world changing about free energy, when it is going to be patented, and every device maker wanting to use it will have to pay royalties, and then the end user will have to pay even more, to include of course the "managing costs", "development and research costs", "installation costs" and so on

Not all countries respect patents. Take China for example..

huge domestic energy needs + free energy machine + no respect for IP law = total world domination.

Tzadeck Wrote:whenever someone around you makes a claim that they saw a miracle, which is more likely?

1) They saw a miracle, something that defies all the physical laws that men have come to know.
2) They are either lying or are mistaken.

You should always pick number two, because it's more likely.

As outsiders we have little to no evidence if this is a real deal or fake. We can only pick up traces and use these to make a guess based on our assumptions.

You can have a quick guess and say "miracles most likely don't happen". But this is a very conservative standpoint, because dependant on the circumstances that 'miracle' would have been flying, a microprocessor, landing a man on the moon or an atomic bomb. With most of these achievements of course there was a long road leading us there, slowly.
I think it's just not justified to rule out the possibility of a real break-through that he's been working on. But I have to admit, that it is indeed unlikely...


I have some questions for the scientific minds...

1) Do you think it's possible to lower the energy barrier of a fusion reaction by means of a metal lattice (and of course a secret ingredient...) plus some little pressure and little heat? I just think, there would be a lot of places (like in industrial applications) where this 'reaction' would have occured.

2) Rossi's set-up ressembles very much that of a Nickel–metal hydride battery. Can you imagine that he's measuring excess heat of the stored hydrogen? Do you think nobody of the involved scientists reckons this possibility, that is, would they all be blinded in front of this 'discovery', by Rossi's determination and by the hype the help to create?

That's all.

lernsky Wrote:As outsiders we have little to no evidence if this is a real deal or fake. We can only pick up traces and use these to make a guess based on our assumptions.

You can have a quick guess and say "miracles most likely don't happen". But this is a very conservative standpoint, because dependant on the circumstances that 'miracle' would have been flying, a microprocessor, landing a man on the moon or an atomic bomb. With most of these achievements of course there was a long road leading us there, slowly.
I think it's just not justified to rule out the possibility of a real break-through that he's been working on. But I have to admit, that it is indeed unlikely...

I'm not saying that it's not possible that he's on the ball. I'm saying that this being a scam is far more likely, and until we have good reason to believe that it is not a scam we should continue to believe that it is. If it's not a scam it's completely within his power to prove it. Until he makes moves to do so, there's no reason to take him seriously--and, in fact, taking him seriously when he doesn't deserve it just encourages other scam artists. They'll know that you can make money and get temporary fame from a scam before you actually need to prove that it works.

As for the miracles thing, it's not as conservative as you think. I didn't really go into details, but if you read Hume he goes over what he considers a miracle to avoid this kind of semantic dispute (Incidentally, it's available for free online and it's just a short little thing. Hume was one of the few philosophers that are really worth reading, so I recommend it).

As for the examples of miracles you gave, none of them were particularly miraculous in the context of the time they happened because there was a huge build up to them. For example, going to the moon was probably one of the two or three greatest things man ever accomplished. But it was accomplished in the context of great advances in engineering and science over the course of a couple of hundred years, after a number of other rockets reached Earth's orbit and a non-manned aircraft had already made it to the moon, and after a huge amount of money, manpower, and time was devoted to the specific task itself. In that context, you would look at landing on the moon as a great and difficult accomplishment, but not as miraculous.

If somebody had built something in his backyard out of wood in the 1650s, with no great strides towards space explorations nor knowledge about it in recent history, THAT would be miraculous. If someone had told you that in 1653, or told you that a blond girl with wings carried him to the moon, then you would not believe him because it would be so much more likely to be a lie or deception.

Tzadeck Wrote:I'm not saying that it's not possible that he's on the ball. I'm saying that this being a scam is far more likely, and until we have good reason to believe that it is not a scam we should continue to believe that it is. If it's not a scam it's completely within his power to prove it. Until he makes moves to do so, there's no reason to take him seriously--and, in fact, taking him seriously when he doesn't deserve it just encourages other scam artists. They'll know that you can make money and get temporary fame from a scam before you actually need to prove that it works.

I agree now. I have to admit that I was blinded by this the first time I saw it. There are I guess many reasons why you would tend to 'believe' that story. But now I strongly consider Rossi as a case of self-deception, and seemingly serious scientists did fall for that.
That's a big difference though if someone cheats consciously or if someone fools himself. The case becomes difficult when a lot of other people are fooled by his self-deception. I guess you can learn more about psychology and mass phenomena than about physics in this case...

I'll check out your recommendation...


Although, I have to make that point... fusion energy is wrongly dragged in that esoteric free energy corner. It's just a physical reality and doesn't defy any known or unknown laws. But I guess mankind has to go the long way to hot fusion to do this. Makes it more real, though.

I really think it's wrong to apply the miracle argument here Tzadeck. And of, course, i've read Hume too.

The problem with applying Hume here is that Rossi's experiment is entirely disprovable. We don't need to know what's inside the reactor to disprove it. All we need is to treat it like a black box, and get the correct measurements. Really, it's very very simple.

Unfortunately, scientists who have been to visit it seem to have been quite sloppy in one way or another, every time. And this is really kind of ridiculous, because Rossi has allowed full access to everything outside the chamber. Not only that, but it wouldn't even require a Phd in physics to check it, it's all based on a verrrrrry simple equation.

Anyway, really, you only apply Hume's miracle argument where something isn't disprovable. Supposing you NEED to know what was inside the black box to find out whether it was really producing energy, you could apply it then. But you don't.

This doesn't actually have no precedent in science either. Other's have been doing similar work, but not with the results that Rossi is claiming.

i really think, if you look at a scientific invention and shout "scam" or "world changing invention" when it's disprovable, that's just poor scientific method. It's not philosophically justified. Hume's miracles have no part in this discussion.

I wasn't saying that this was a case of a miracle vs. a lie/deception; it's not supposed to be a perfect analogy. Rather, I'm saying that Hume's bigger point is that when we have insufficient knowledge, as long as we are stuck with insufficient knowledge we have to choose the most likely explanation. When somebody says that had a personal experience of a miracle, we don't have access to that as knowledge, so we have to get by with insufficient knowledge and conclude that the miracle is less like than a lie or deception.

(Hume himself wasn't really considering disprovable or provable in the scientific sense that we think about it now, since that's basically a Karl Popper idea that came way later)

So, in this situation, in the same way we take two possibilities, and choose the more likely one until we have sufficient evidence. I don't really see the point in worrying about this guy until evidence comes forward.

Before I was saying that it's a scam, and I think it is, but only using history as a heuristic--in any situation where someone is making a big scientific claim, but does not go through proper peer-reviewed channels, that person is generally lying.

Also, I admit that I maybe shouldn't even be talking about it since I haven't read too much. Since I'm taking N1 in a month, I'm trying to study Japanese three hours a day on top of work, so I don't have a lot of free time to dilly-dally.

yeah, but Hume + Popper should be our standard on scientific miracles, i think

Well, i kind of see Hume's argument as allowing us to write off certain things entirely, and not think about them anymore. On the other hand, scepticism is also a possibility... we don't have to pick one way or another. If we can remain in a state of skepticism without swaying too far one way or the other until further evidence comes in, it's probably better justified, because whether or not i personally have access to the right information, the right information does exist.

glgl with JLPT1!!!

Thanks! I'll need it, haha.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:Without patent law, instead you have trade secrets, and anyone who finds out the secret can make the same product.

And why is this a bad thing...? This would lower prices and is a win for consumers, and forces people to be constantly innovative to maintain market advantage.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:Patent law exists so that people will reveal their discoveries to the public and not carry secret techniques to the grave with them. This has done a lot to accelerate scientific progress and technological development.

Where is the proof that the patent system accelerates technological development?

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:Trademarks, if they were not protected, would mean that -anyone- could put caffeinated caramel colored sugar water into a red and white can and sell 'Coca-Cola'. That might not break your heart in and of itself, but for many other products (especially foods and medicines, where we really depend on what we're ingesting to have the effect we expect) we depend on brand names to assure us that we're getting the same item that we bought last week.

This is a legal matter regarding full disclosure of ingredients for foods/medicines and should be unrelated to trademarks. Btw, I believe the flavor of Coca-Cola is a non-patented trade secret.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:Copyright, of course, serves two functions - to provide some assurance that a book with a certain title and author printed on it is actually what you expect, and to assure that an author actually gets paid for his work.

An author can still get paid for his work, because they and the publisher will have a head start in publishing the material. They just can't expect to profit from it from an unnatural length of time. The material can remain profitable long as it takes for others to copy it. Legally obliging people not to copy should be considered a violation of human rights.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:Not all countries respect patents. Take China for example..

huge domestic energy needs + free energy machine + no respect for IP law = total world domination.

Why on earth should China respect patents? If a Chinese company can reverse engineer an iPhone, produce it cheaper and sell it a lower price than Apple it's win for consumers and win for capitalism. Patents are just a protectionist racket.

Nadiatims: I thought this wikipedia article was very good at explaining the general logic behind patent laws as well as the fundamental differences between the reasoning behind German/"continental" law and behind English law in respect to this issue http://tinyurl.com/d4d3wq5

Of course, if you want you can probably read basically the same thing at the English page, I just happened to read part of this article recently and thought you might like to practice Japanese while learning about it.

Also the "expanding Earth" thing is still oddballsy, the refutal video actually stated specifically that measurements HAVE been made and they didn't find that the Earth is expanding - you can read about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_e..._consensus

thurd Wrote:I'm curious but skeptical, I'll believe it when I see it.

Though I've read on some physics forum an interesting dissection of this experiment/demonstration done by supposedly renowned physicist (Nobel Prize involved or something) and it raised very interesting points, mainly in favor of this Italian guy. Maybe he is onto something

btw, i did a search on this professor earlier. I'm assuming it's the same guy i linked to earlier on the Cambridge University website...

... and found out that he's the guy who's currently researching parapsychological phenomenaｗｗ

yep, that same guy Nest0r linked to ages ago.

Surreal Wrote:Also the "expanding Earth" thing is still oddballsy, the refutal video actually stated specifically that measurements HAVE been made and they didn't find that the Earth is expanding - you can read about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_e..._consensus

Seeing that simulation linked to some posts ago I wonder how the coastline can be assumed to keep it's form over ages as it obviously depends on the water level...


But - to add another speculation - I really wonder if there is a fusion process going on in earth. Pressures of >300GPa and some thousand degrees could do the job...

nadiatims Wrote:

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:Without patent law, instead you have trade secrets, ...

And why is this a bad thing...? This would lower prices and is a win for consumers, and forces people to be constantly innovative to maintain market advantage.

Because technological breakthroughs are not shared, discoveries are kept secret as much as possible. Essentially only through espionage is the science found out by another company, who -also- will not make the information public even as they start competing.

nadiatims Wrote:Where is the proof that the patent system accelerates technological development?

There can be no proof, of course, because history only happens once. There is evidence, however, in that technology has advanced more rapidly under a patent system then under a guilds-and-secrets system. Of course, other social changes took place concurrently, but it is hard to imagine that science would progress -faster- if everything ever patented (and hence made public) was instead kept secret.

nadiatims Wrote:

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:Trademarks,

This is a legal matter regarding full disclosure of ingredients for foods/medicines and should be unrelated to trademarks. Btw, I believe the flavor of Coca-Cola is a non-patented trade secret.

Patents and trademarks are totally independent legal systems, so I don't know what coca-cola's recipe has to do with anything really. But, supposing that Albert's frozen vegetables are superior in quality to Bertram's frozen vegetables. Without Trademark laws, Bertram can just start printing up bags identical to Albert's bags, and nobody will be the wiser. The ingredients are the same so the laws regarding labeling are irrevelant. Both contain the same ingredient, just at different levels of quality. Not having trademark laws means -anyone- can print any label and put it on a can. Or a medicine bottle, or an automobile, or a power saw - areas where branding and corporate track records for safety are important.

nadiatims Wrote:An author can still get paid for his work, because they and the publisher will have a head start in publishing the material. They just can't expect to profit from it from an unnatural length of time. The material can remain profitable long as it takes for others to copy it. Legally obliging people not to copy should be considered a violation of human rights.

This is simply nonsense. If there were no laws preventing copying, everything published would be available within minutes. The technology exists to distribute any information to the entire world, hence, no published or publishable work could be profitable to create without copyright laws. I cannot see how it is a violation of human rights to not permit one person to publish and sell another person's book. Nor is it really a benefit to the consumer, since the 'discount printer' might simply abridge the work, or even substitute something else entirely. If there's no copyright law, then you could put the same title and cover on other material entirely.

nadiatims wrote that SomeCallMeChris Wrote:Not all countries respect patents. Take China for example..

huge domestic energy needs + free energy machine + no respect for IP law = total world domination.

I didn't write that.

Mind you, also, that I'm not saying the existing IP systems are good, fair, or balanced. I'm only saying that there are reasons they exist. Reforms may well be necessary, but 'no system' is not the same thing as reform.

IceCream Wrote:On the other hand, scepticism is also a possibility... we don't have to pick one way or another. If we can remain in a state of skepticism without swaying too far one way or the other until further evidence comes in, it's probably better justified, because whether or not i personally have access to the right information, the right information does exist.

Good point, I thought about this too, and came to the conclusion, that it is for most people just very convenient to stop worrying and make a choice. I remembered this TEDtalk:

Spencer Greenberg - Improve Your Life With Probability
http://youtu.be/GZ69g8LtZc0 (7min)

Also a good one, about break-through-moments etc...
Steven Johnson - Where good ideas come from
http://youtu.be/0af00UcTO-c (18min)