> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > On Behalf Of jon louis mann > Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2007 10:37 PM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: magic formula > > Could you give me some example patents of revolutionary inventions > that were bought up and buried? > Dan M. > > good grief dan, i don;t have time for that!
Let me get this straight. You claim that there are revolutionary inventions, that would allow us to economically obtain energy from, say, solar power, and they are well documented. Yet, none of the solar sites references the clearly established documentation for this invention...even though it is put on the internet by the US government? I asked you to look because I hoped you would find out that the rights to those inventions are myths. It is theoretically possible for there to be trade secrets in a field, such as solar energy. But, holding on to trade secrets and doing nothing with them is dangerous. One has absolutely no protection if someone else rediscovers this. To first order, an invention who's time has come can only be delayed a few years if the original inventor buries it. > it should be self-evident, anyway. It is...those hidden inventions that would have transformed the world if it weren't for those evil companies are unverifiable stories. They are unverifiable because they have no basis in fact. > why do you think the world is still dependant on oil? It's an extremely easy to obtain source of low entropy energy. Coal is another one, but it doesn't combust as compactly, so transportation tends to use oil instead of coal. Nuclear is a third, but the environmentalists have stifled nuclear power. Others, such as solar or nuclear fusion, are inherently much more difficult. One unfortunate thing about science fiction is that it makes engineering challenges something that can be overcome overnight. Sometimes it takes decades, or even centuries. Finally, chemical formulas cannot be the solution. You have to have a low entropy energy source to start with if you make a synthetic anything. Now, there might be some efficiency in bioengineering plant decay so we can harvest the low entropy in the plants...but that's not a trivial solution...but the consumption of half the US corn crop for a modest amount of ethanol shows that it will be just a minor contribution. > if you are going to put me through that, you win. Jon, I don't think that data exist to back up your claims about companies buying up the rights to revolutionary inventions. That's what I hoped you realized when you looked....those inventions just don't exist...so you can't find them if you spend 1 second or 1 year looking. I'm not interested in winning by simply having you stop posting on a subject. What I am interested in is a comparison of two (or more) theories with facts...so that the better/best theory wins out. I very much enjoy debating with Gautam (for example) because we both end up with a deeper understanding after we argue through an issue. What I find frustrating in this, and many discussions with others on a number of topics, is that I see many viewpoints on the left and the right and some in the middle that are immune to empirical falsification. Now, there are clearly some things, like ethics, that are not empirically based. But, the ones that frustrate me are theories about empirical events that exist apart from facts and seem immune from contradiction by data. I hope to have time tomorrow to extend my L3 series on empirical knowledge to engineering. The third step will be to extend it to questions that are not inherently technical in nature. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
