At 03:07 AM 1/14/2010, Esa Ruoho wrote:
At 05:45 PM 1/13/2010, Terry Blanton ." He claims that the energy
output is greater than the input, but he says that again and again
without showing a measurement of this. "Next week," he says.
So, Abd, do you even know what happens next week? They open it up for
visitors to come and measure it themselves. If they (steorn) had
measured it this or that way, the skeptics would have wanted it a
third way. If they did that, then a fourth and fifth way. If those,
then the equipment wasn't to be trusted, and so on. It never ends.
That's right, and that's exactly what they are about. Release just
enough to keep the buzz going. These people are marketers, and they
are marketing a product, very effectively. They are marketing
differently than they would market if they had an actual over-unity
device. If they had that, they might not be marketing at all, by this
time. They'd have a demonstration model that works, that can be
replicated easily, that shows the effect they claim to have
discovered. Do they believe they have a real discovery, or do they
believe that they have something that looks enough like a real
discovery that they can milk it for years?
What I'm saying is that their behavior matches the latter
possibility, not the former.
In one month, they go from a totally stupid demonstration, inviting
lots of derisive comment, setting up the conditions for it, then the
next month, they have a far more sophisticated demonstration going,
but still not actually addressing the points made by skeptics (or
just neutral critics that might even welcome an over-unity device!).
They've been at this for years.
This should be obvious: they aren't revealing enough details so that
someone can accurately replicate it. That's part of the plan, and,
directly asked, they might even acknowledge this. They are revealing
"glimpses" of the technology, meting it out carefully so as to
generate maximum interest among their target audience without dousing
that interest with a bucket of cold water. They would justify the
drips and dabs approach by saying that, after all, they are selling
the technology. Want to see it, pay for it!
They don't have a demonstration device. Look carefully. Everything is
"we are working on it." "We have arranged with a German calorimetry
company so that they will...." All future.
It is conceivable that they believe they have found an effect. A
small one. And they realized that scaling this up to something solid
would require much more money than they have or will be able to
obtain as direct venture funding. So they got the bright idea to sell
what they *do* have in hand. Some experimental evidence. Valid or
not. And if they sell this, what they are doing is legal.
But, of course, what they have, then, isn't a proof, it's just a
clue, with the far more likely truth being that it is simply an
as-yet unexplained anomaly. And by keeping it secret, they sure
aren't going to allow others to find the explanation, because that
would blow their business opportunity!
They are selling mystery. Call it entertainment. Have a few hundred
dollars to blow? Like puzzles? You can buy it and see for yourself.
Of course, since it's a secret and under a non-disclosure agreement,
you can't tell anyone else, and you sure can't get your money back.
Or maybe you can, under certain narrow conditions. We don't know
what's in the NDA, the NDA prohibits disclosure of its contents, and
I'd strongly guess that before you even receive the NDA you sign a
previous NDA that prohibits disclosure of the final NDA contents.
Someone judgment-proof might get through and around this, but, then
again, they investigate anyone applying and don't accept everyone. I
assume they check out this possibility. Whatever they are, they are
not stupid. And when they do a stupid demonstration, like in
December, be sure of this: they know that it was stupid. That's part
of their plan. You've got two reasonable choices:
1. They are stupid. This choice, however, is not terribly compatible
with the opinion that they have something real. More likely, it would
also be a stupid mistake, or even a less-stupid one.
2. They are not stupid.
(They might occasionally do a stupid thing, but as consistently
stupid as they appear to have been, no. Their apparent stupidity at
times is part of their plan. Oops! The bearings burned out! We've
only been working for a few years preparing this incredibly simple
demonstration, and we didn't anticipate that the temperature would
rise as it did. Silly us, we apologize. Then, how long was it?, a
long time later, another simple stupid demonstration. This time the
bearings don't burn out, but it's all run by a big battery that
obviously runs down, but there is no measure of power input, nor of
power dissipation in the coils, and no measure of acceleration of the
rotor, with any calibration of speed vs. stored energy. Yet they are
claiming, what was it, 200% efficiency?)
Imagine this scenario. They have a specific plan for how long they
will continue the charade. Steorn is a corporation, limited
liability. At some point the income will fall below what they'd want
to see to continue. So they walk, saying "Sorry. It seems we were
fooled by X. There is no Orbo effect. We quit. There are a few assets
left in Steorn, apply to our solicitor for refunds if you are due
anything. Oh!? The solicitor quit also since there wasn't enough left
to pay him? I guess you could apply to the bankruptcy judge. Sorry it
worked out that way, folks, but how could we know that it was a
stupid mistake? You think we defrauded you? Please read the
agreements you signed, they cover this contingency. Tell you what,
folks, to show how sincere and open we are, as my last act as CEO of
Orbo and on behalf of the board, you are all released from the NDA.
Enjoy, share it with the world. Don't you think this was quite a
show? Compare the budget of Orbo with any other similar
entertainment. And, by the way, I'm available for hire as a publicity
manager, if you like what I did, you could have it for your own
project.... but I've decided to take a vacation, these years have
been stressful, so you can write me care of this resort in the Bahamas...."
My advice to anyone considering buying in: it's almost certainly
bogus. If you enjoy a good scam, you can buy in, willingly spending
your money to gain access to the secret. Notice Sean's response to
the Zero Point Energy question? Designed to keep the ZPE people
interested without making any claim at all. No, they aren't stupid at all!
I
think they're doing a good thing, allowing visitors to measure it
their way with their own devices,
Really. Full access? No NDA? I'll believe it when I see it.
nobody is going to believe steorn's
way even if they filmed themselves walking into a shop buying a meter
and unwrapping it in front of the Orbo and cameras, skeptics would
still believe they're scamming, somehow.
OF COURSE! They are milking this fact. Look, there is a "belief" that
perpetual motion machines are impossible. It's really a strong
hypothesis, based on centuries of experience with efforts, and some
kind of theoretical underpinning having to do with conservation of
energy. They are claiming, openly, violation of conservation of
energy. Okay, there is one known way to violate COE, and that is with
mass-energy conversion. So what is really known is mass-energy
conservation. I think of it as conservation of light, and consider
mass to be trapped light. Are they touching this, are they converting
mass to energy? I doubt it. So that leaves ZPE, zero-point energy.
What about their device would allow accumulation of ZPE? Nothing that
I can see, at all. It's a gross-effect device. Or is it? Could there
be some magnetic-domain effect that does tap ZPE. I'll freely confess
knowing so little about ZPE that I could be wildly off.
They have no clue that it's ZPE, and that's what Sean's comment
revealed. What he said was basically, hey, we don't understand this
thing, we are just trying to sell it so that someone else can figure
out what to do with it.
They found what looked to them like an anomaly, and they figured out
how to sell a mere anomaly without doing the work to actually
elucidate either what is going on or to verify and prove that there
is anomaly. It's *extremely* clever.
If THEY come with their OWN
precious devices and measure it THEMSELVES and then think that their
own device was magically tampered with, well, then I guess you have a
special breed of skeptic that don't believe their own equipment or
eyes, which would be pretty amazing.
What we have here is a believer ready to imagine preposterous
scenarios that haven't happened and then assert them as some kind of
validation of Steorn. And he talks about "headcases"!!!:
I know some of the headcases on
steornforum and villageofthebanned could even justify and rant about
that too, but don't you think it'd be a bit ludicrous?
Consider this: anyone sufficiently interested in this to join those
groups has to be some kind of "head case." You could even call me one
for bothering to explain what steorn might be doing. Serious skeptics
would probably think this. "We knew this was bogus, so why even
bother refuting it?"
I'm involved with Vortex because I became interested in cold fusion,
which was treated as obviously bogus by much of the scientific
community. But there is a huge difference. While initially the field
was dogged with the secrecy of Pons and Fleischmann, that secrecy was
transient and clearly motivated by legal necessity as perceived by
the involved lawyers. And enough had been revealed to allow
independent replication of the basic effect, which, within five or
six years, became conclusive evidence of nuclear reactions. Because
of the initial rejection for non-scientific reasons, pure theory
denying experimental results, which rejection became deeply
entrenched, a gap appeared between what was known by those who
studied the field and those who did not. That gap interests me, it
fits into my general interest of social communication and
decision-making structure.
How can we be both efficient, overall, and yet open to new evidence
that might deeply revise our opinions?
With the systems and structures I imagine, a real discovery, such as
might have been behind the Steorn work, could be examined and
reviewed by relatively small numbers of interested people, with what
they find expanding as needed until it finds either validation (which
would then expand further and become broadly accessible) or clear
rejection for clear reasons (which would also generally be accessible
for those who look). Cellular, hierarchical structure. It already
exists, but because it is informal and diffuse, it's highly
inefficient and often ineffective. Making it explicit, the structure,
will create the equivalent of a social nervous system for information
processing, with links and filters. 'Nuff said for now.
Next week is less than five days from now.
He said "next week," as I recall, I was using Sean's language. I did
watch the whole set of videos, and, except as might exist in the
value of watching a really skillful marketing obfuscation, it was a
waste of time. I predicted that Steorn would up the ante in January,
back in December. Did anyone notice the supposed examination of
attempted Steorn replications. Plural. Which only looked at one
claim, tore it apart briefly without really examining it, but looked
at nothing else. And most of that video was pure Orbo promotion, not
an examination of any replications. Sure, quite likely, the one
examined wasn't a true replication. So? It's obfuscation, which is
part of the business strategy. None of it is stupid.
They are promising results that they haven't obtained yet. But they
are'nt lying, unless they make a mistake. When you try to obfuscate
without lying, you will sometimes make a mistake, because the
intention to obfuscate is a form of lying that doesn't involve actual
statements of untruth, but the intention is similar, and intention
has a way of becoming manifest in actions. It's a bit of a dangerous
game, but my guess is that Steorn is sufficiently protected by the
NDA. And, notice what else they sell.
Equipment which can be used to investigate the Orbo effect (and
similar, or other legitimate research, even). Now, isn't what they
are doing excellent publicity for those real products? It might even
happen that their business in that area is sufficiently stimulated
that Steorn survives and doesn't go belly-up. I'm telling you, it's
extremely clever and probably effective. And legal.
Hey, here's my own plan for how to make money with Orbo. We find a
seriously trustworthy escrow. We make bets, the shortest description,
on whether or not Orbo is demonstrated to be over-unity within a
fixed period of time. The judgment must be sufficiently clear that
the escrow officer can determine the outcome. And then the payoffs
are made, after deductions for escrow costs. I'll put my money where
my mouth is, because I need to make some money, and I'm quite
sufficiently convinced by my own arguments that the probability of a
real over-unity phenomenon here is very close to zero. However, a
"believer" at this point might place the probability higher. So the
odds would be negotiated; and the bids would be public. Thus we
would, backed by real investment, be able to estimate and express
concretely the *depth* of our belief.
The funds would, pending, be invested in some conservative investment
agreeable to the affected parties (so they would share in the risk
and benefits of variations in values, there would be no debt at the
end. Unfortunately, any profit (including return on invesment) would
be taxable, but TAANSTAAFL.) To keep escrow costs down, it should be
very simple.
Interesting idea, eh? A fool and his money are soon parted, and
that's a good thing, because money represents social control, and
social control by fools harms the society. It's a rough system, but
it roughly works.
