Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
Well, thankfully, Smart Men are making decisions in Washington D.C. about things like where to put RD money. Just ask Jed. On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 1:52 AM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.com wrote: I agree 100% with Alain. Very powerful anti-CF memes are circulating and cannot be erased by words, just by facts. The many positive achievements of Cold Fusion from the past have no continuity and no continuation, are not correlable by some common logic techno(logic), it is very difficult to compose a coherent, convincing discourse- for example for a young absolutely ignorant, unprejudiced public. We need FACTS- new Facts. Peter On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 8:08 AM, Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.comwrote: A serial innovator I'm in contact with, and who is working to make LENR a vector of energetic transition, told me that there is no hope to convince people until there is a working prototype that we can put on the client table, and that clearly work, even roughly. However as soon as we have a machine on the client table, and that the advantages for the client are clear, nothing can block people to use it... no lobbies, no regulation, no fear... especially todays, where it is clear that people think that the system cannot continue as-is. what make me afraid is that the replication of LENR (like by MFMP), won't have any impact People , even open mind, seems not to be able to accept LENR. It must make a car run or a plane fly, and even, people will suspect fraud. normal poeple behave between SDciAm (don't look at facts) or MY (argue on tiny points to reject the mass of proofs) 2012/11/7 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com I have been reading some interesting articles about public opinion and the 2012 campaign. I have also been hearing directly from people in the Obama campaign. New methods of reaching the public have been developed in the 21st century. The Internet and social media are used to coordinate campaigns, gather support and encourage people to vote. I think we should make use of these techniques to promote cold fusion. Perhaps we do not need to do that now. We don't have the resources. However, if it becomes widely known that cold fusion is real, I predict it will become the focus of intense political activity. We will need to launch public relations campaigns. We should think about this now. We should prepare for it. As a practical matter I hope that I can contact some of the people in the Obama campaign to assist us. I have mixed feelings about using the manipulative methods of political campaigns and Madison Avenue. I find them distasteful. However we need these methods if we are going to win. Cold fusion is inherently political in many ways. We must deal with political realities. Both Republicans and Democrats made use of new techniques, but the Obama campaign in particular hired a cadre of young, hotshot social scientists who are pioneering new methods. These methods are first and foremost pragmatic. They have been refined with field tests and actual data from respondents. These researchers have discovered a number of facts and new techniques about persuasion and public opinion. Some of them overturn widely held conventional ideas. Here's an interesting example. In a campaign the goal should not be to persuade people in the middle so much as to: 1. Hold onto one's own set of supporters; 2. Persuading moderates on the other side. Suppose the range of opinions on a political issue can be quantified such that a range of responses are graded from 1 to 10. Extremists in support of your side are at 1 and 2; people at 5 have no strong opinion; and people at the opposite extreme are at 9 and 10. I mean that when you ask a question people fill out numbers, the way people grade movies at Netflix. Your campaign should strive to hold onto people from 1 to 4, and it should reach out to people at 6 and 7 rather than 5. They are more likely to come over to your side than the people at 5. To take concrete example, in the third debate we saw Romney espouse foreign-policy positions very similar to Obama's. I think it is likely he did this deliberately in response to this recent public opinion research. He was trying to win over moderate Democrats rather than middle-of-the-road people or extremists on either side. In other words, if we say the continuum runs from 1 for extreme Democrats to 10 for extreme Republicans, Romney was trying to appeal to people at 3 or 4, rather than 5. In previous campaigns the target would be people at 5 or 6. Romney was trying to win over moderately conservative Democrats who have stronger opinions than the undecided middle, or persuadable man in the street. It turns out that people who already have some opinion on the subject are more persuadable than people who have no opinion, even when the former have an opinion somewhat against the one you wish to sell them. Applying this example to cold
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
there is no hope to convince people until there is a working prototype that we can put on the client table, and that clearly work, even roughly. I could have sworn that was what I've been writing on and off for the last year or so! No one but scientists care if CF exists but isn't useful in the everyday world. The endless theories about how CF might work are, in practical terms, unimportant. If CF is shown to be useful, everything changes. All that is required is for someone or some company to fire up a CF device that has some measurable useful energy output and leave it running for long enough to convince everyone it's real -- that would be the kind of fact that I think Peter's referring to that would counter theanti-CF memes. In fact, Peter summed up the problem with the public perception CF perfectly: no continuity and no continuation ... not [correlatable] by some common logic ... [making it] very difficult to compose a coherent, convincing discourse. Now it's over to Mr. Rothwell to tell us why we're all wrong. [mg] On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 11:52 PM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.com wrote: I agree 100% with Alain. Very powerful anti-CF memes are circulating and cannot be erased by words, just by facts. The many positive achievements of Cold Fusion from the past have no continuity and no continuation, are not correlable by some common logic techno(logic), it is very difficult to compose a coherent, convincing discourse- for example for a young absolutely ignorant, unprejudiced public. We need FACTS- new Facts. Peter On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 8:08 AM, Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.comwrote: A serial innovator I'm in contact with, and who is working to make LENR a vector of energetic transition, told me that there is no hope to convince people until there is a working prototype that we can put on the client table, and that clearly work, even roughly. However as soon as we have a machine on the client table, and that the advantages for the client are clear, nothing can block people to use it... no lobbies, no regulation, no fear... especially todays, where it is clear that people think that the system cannot continue as-is. what make me afraid is that the replication of LENR (like by MFMP), won't have any impact People , even open mind, seems not to be able to accept LENR. It must make a car run or a plane fly, and even, people will suspect fraud. normal poeple behave between SDciAm (don't look at facts) or MY (argue on tiny points to reject the mass of proofs) 2012/11/7 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com I have been reading some interesting articles about public opinion and the 2012 campaign. I have also been hearing directly from people in the Obama campaign. New methods of reaching the public have been developed in the 21st century. The Internet and social media are used to coordinate campaigns, gather support and encourage people to vote. I think we should make use of these techniques to promote cold fusion. Perhaps we do not need to do that now. We don't have the resources. However, if it becomes widely known that cold fusion is real, I predict it will become the focus of intense political activity. We will need to launch public relations campaigns. We should think about this now. We should prepare for it. As a practical matter I hope that I can contact some of the people in the Obama campaign to assist us. I have mixed feelings about using the manipulative methods of political campaigns and Madison Avenue. I find them distasteful. However we need these methods if we are going to win. Cold fusion is inherently political in many ways. We must deal with political realities. Both Republicans and Democrats made use of new techniques, but the Obama campaign in particular hired a cadre of young, hotshot social scientists who are pioneering new methods. These methods are first and foremost pragmatic. They have been refined with field tests and actual data from respondents. These researchers have discovered a number of facts and new techniques about persuasion and public opinion. Some of them overturn widely held conventional ideas. Here's an interesting example. In a campaign the goal should not be to persuade people in the middle so much as to: 1. Hold onto one's own set of supporters; 2. Persuading moderates on the other side. Suppose the range of opinions on a political issue can be quantified such that a range of responses are graded from 1 to 10. Extremists in support of your side are at 1 and 2; people at 5 have no strong opinion; and people at the opposite extreme are at 9 and 10. I mean that when you ask a question people fill out numbers, the way people grade movies at Netflix. Your campaign should strive to hold onto people from 1 to 4, and it should reach out to people at 6 and 7 rather than 5. They are more likely to come over to your side than the people at 5. To take concrete example, in the third debate
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
The first person who goes around during a Sandy#2 and charges people's laptops and mobile phones with a portable CF-device is going to do a lot more to convince people it's a everyday useful energy-source than any amount of comments on SciAm or elsewhere. People want a real-life useful thing. I've tried to tell many about Free Energy devices, and they're always like: Well, can I power my stove with it?, which is a valid question from a real-life use point-of-view. A question without an answer, unfortunately. On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Mark Gibbs mgi...@gibbs.com wrote: there is no hope to convince people until there is a working prototype that we can put on the client table, and that clearly work, even roughly. I could have sworn that was what I've been writing on and off for the last year or so! No one but scientists care if CF exists but isn't useful in the everyday world. The endless theories about how CF might work are, in practical terms, unimportant. If CF is shown to be useful, everything changes. All that is required is for someone or some company to fire up a CF device that has some measurable useful energy output and leave it running for long enough to convince everyone it's real -- that would be the kind of fact that I think Peter's referring to that would counter theanti-CF memes.
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
It sadly oppose to the mythology of science, of prevalence of experimental facts compared to theories and to usefulness... in fact if something oppose todays theories/continuity and is not so important, it is denied. I can translate into: I won't lose my job, for something than cannot make me a billionaire today. Add to that that with patent office denial, as soon as someone think he can be a billionaire, he fly under the radars, like Celani today. add to that that if you accept it is true, you will look stupid, then denial is the only visible option. It is not even a question of theorie... in fact theory in cold fusion have been fighting against cold fusion. Many are crazy, some are too difficult to understand by mediocre scientists who decide, and all are unproven. And they are not the proof of anything. In real science, theory is not so important. it is only a tool at the end of the process that start with experiments and measures. What is shocking for me, is that clear, converging coherent and numerous experiments are clearly rejected without any good reason. That despite a coherent picture, intelligent people focus on the color of the tail hairs of the elephant, not on the damage in the livingroom. I don't care if it is an elephant or a mammoth, if mammoth are impossible today, if an elephant cannot pass my door: it is big, powerful, it have destroyed my livingroom, and many neighbors agree that my living room is destroyed, even if my insurance agent deny it is an external force. anyway I cannot convince anybody that there is a big animal in my living room, until someone think he can sell the meat of it. 2012/11/8 Mark Gibbs mgi...@gibbs.com there is no hope to convince people until there is a working prototype that we can put on the client table, and that clearly work, even roughly. I could have sworn that was what I've been writing on and off for the last year or so! No one but scientists care if CF exists but isn't useful in the everyday world. The endless theories about how CF might work are, in practical terms, unimportant. If CF is shown to be useful, everything changes. All that is required is for someone or some company to fire up a CF device that has some measurable useful energy output and leave it running for long enough to convince everyone it's real -- that would be the kind of fact that I think Peter's referring to that would counter theanti-CF memes. In fact, Peter summed up the problem with the public perception CF perfectly: no continuity and no continuation ... not [correlatable] by some common logic ... [making it] very difficult to compose a coherent, convincing discourse. Now it's over to Mr. Rothwell to tell us why we're all wrong. [mg] On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 11:52 PM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.comwrote: I agree 100% with Alain. Very powerful anti-CF memes are circulating and cannot be erased by words, just by facts. The many positive achievements of Cold Fusion from the past have no continuity and no continuation, are not correlable by some common logic techno(logic), it is very difficult to compose a coherent, convincing discourse- for example for a young absolutely ignorant, unprejudiced public. We need FACTS- new Facts. Peter On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 8:08 AM, Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.comwrote: A serial innovator I'm in contact with, and who is working to make LENR a vector of energetic transition, told me that there is no hope to convince people until there is a working prototype that we can put on the client table, and that clearly work, even roughly. However as soon as we have a machine on the client table, and that the advantages for the client are clear, nothing can block people to use it... no lobbies, no regulation, no fear... especially todays, where it is clear that people think that the system cannot continue as-is. what make me afraid is that the replication of LENR (like by MFMP), won't have any impact People , even open mind, seems not to be able to accept LENR. It must make a car run or a plane fly, and even, people will suspect fraud. normal poeple behave between SDciAm (don't look at facts) or MY (argue on tiny points to reject the mass of proofs) 2012/11/7 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com I have been reading some interesting articles about public opinion and the 2012 campaign. I have also been hearing directly from people in the Obama campaign. New methods of reaching the public have been developed in the 21st century. The Internet and social media are used to coordinate campaigns, gather support and encourage people to vote. I think we should make use of these techniques to promote cold fusion. Perhaps we do not need to do that now. We don't have the resources. However, if it becomes widely known that cold fusion is real, I predict it will become the focus of intense political activity. We will need to launch public relations campaigns. We should think about
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.com wrote: However as soon as we have a machine on the client table, and that the advantages for the client are clear, nothing can block people to use it... no lobbies, no regulation, no fear... I think that's incorrect. Here in the U.S. we have powerful lobbies and corporations that can delay or possibly prevent useful technology for a long time. I will give some examples below, but first let me say this discussion has gone off the tracks. You, Mark Gibbs and others misunderstand what I had in mind. I was describing a situation that might emerge after cold fusion is demonstrated and everyone agrees the effect is real and that it can be made practical. I hope that capitalistic forces will then take over and make it a commercial success. That is what I described at ICCF17, in this paper: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJthefuturem.pdf I am cautiously optimistic that will happen. HOWEVER, looking at the history of technology, I am sure that it will not happen without a gigantic fight. As I said: Once it becomes generally known that cold fusion is real I am certain the vested interests will spend billions of dollars to prevent commercialization. I find it inconceivable they would not do this. Here are some well-known examples of technologies that were delayed or prevented by vested interests. These were delayed for several years were several decades in some cases. Hand washing and other antiseptic proceedures proposed by Semmelweis. Delayed for about 30 years. Hand washing and other improved cleanliness standards in U.S. hospitals today. Proposed new standards have been delayed for about 20 years, killing roughly 90,000 people per year. Obstruction continues, with no end in sight. See: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american-health-care-killed-my-father/307617/ Vaccinations, when they were discovered in the 18th century, with opposition continuing to the present day, in the U.S., India and elsewhere. This is why polio has not been eradicated, and why other infectious diseases are making a comeback. Anesthesia, opposed for religious reasons, albeit not for long. Transatlantic steamships replacing sailing ships. This was delayed for about 20 years. The Transcontinental Railroad. Although this was the most lucrative project in history, it met a great deal of resistance from businessmen in San Francisco and elsewhere for reasons that make no sense in retrospect. Pasteurization of milk in New York City. Delayed from 1860 to 1917 Safe coupling systems for railroad cars. Delayed for about 10 years and finally imposed by an act of Congress. Thousands of railroad workers were mangled or killed by coupling systems. Safe brakes and control systems for railroads. Seatbelts and other safety features and automobiles. Delayed from the 1920s until 1968, at a cost of ~10,000 lives per year. Improved engine efficiency in automobiles. Delayed until around 1975. Adequate brakes in SUVs. Delayed from the 1980s to the present. Still not implemented. Reduced consumption of cigarettes. Delayed until 1964. It has been known that cigarettes cause cancer since the 1600s. Wind turbines in natural gas to replace coal-fired electricity. The coal industry is presently fighting a rearguard action to delay or prevent the use of coal and natural gas power generation. Congressional representatives from coal mining districts have proposed laws to ban the use of wind turbines in the United States ostensibly because they kill birds. Safety features in nuclear power plants that might have prevented the accident at Three Mile Island, Connecticut Yankee, and Fukushima. These features would cost trivial amounts in some cases. The industry and regulators have fought them tooth and nail and continue to do so. At TMI the accident could have been prevented with a new valve sensor, some wire, and an indicator light. After the accident, the Federal engineer who recommended this change was fired, and the top management who refused to implement the change were rewarded with thousands of dollars and promotions. That sort of thing happens more often than people realize. In most cases these delays were actually harmful to the industries that caused them. For example, the dairy industry refused to pasteurize milk because it added a few pennies to the cost of a bottle of milk. This killed hundreds of thousands of infants, including one of my great grandmother's babies. This made mothers fearful of using milk and thus destroyed a large fraction of the market for milk. In every example listed here the new technology caused no harm and did not have to cause any company or industry to lose money. For example, the transition to steam ships was delayed by vested interests in sailing ships. The people making sailing ships were eventually bankrupted by steamship production. That was because they were foolish. They could have transitioned into the new technology, but instead they
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
Let me clarify. I wrote: After the accident, the Federal engineer who recommended this change was fired, and the top management who refused to implement the change were rewarded with thousands of dollars and promotions. That sort of thing happens more often than people realize. Before TMI, there were nine incidents of stuck valves with Babcock Wilcox reactors. Two of these incidents resulted in serious accidents. An NRC inspector took note of this and strongly recommended that a sensor be installed on the valve so that people in the control room would be aware that it was stuck open. The inspector filed several reports and recommendations. Top management finally told him to shut up. At TMI, the valve once again remained stuck open and the people in the control room had no means of knowing this. That was the cause of the accident, which cost billions of dollars. After the accident, the inspector was fired and the top management who ordered him to shut up were rewarded and promoted. See the book Three Mile Island by D. F. Ford. This sort of thing happens in the government and in private industry all the time. If cold fusion ever succeeds, I have no doubt this will happen again. People in the physics establishment who opposed cold fusion will be rewarded and those who promoted it will be ignored. No good deed goes unpunished. That is the lesson of history. By the way, another example of delayed technology is air pollution control. I describe this in the introduction to my book. This was delayed from the mid-1600s of until 1965. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
I don't disagree with the power of lobbies. In fact the expert I talk to said thay they will try to oppose to the transition to maintain te problem they are the solution of. They will learn the new technology, while blocking it, until they can compete and establish a monopoly again. the way to get around is (non-crony) capitalism, or citizen organisation, users union/syndicate. The idea can be to find middle sized industrial who are desperate to find an innovation (the one that don't own an economic rent, and yet can move). then you find users/consumers that also desperately need a revolution, and are are enough autonomous in a niche market, a niche territory to accept this new technology... make one find the other, through a citizen organization, a business syndicate... and you will make the industry grow from the bottom. It will look small at the beginning from the point of view of the big incumbent... soon they will feel endangered, but it will be too late to oppose. Only those business syndicates can save the grid from shutting down at the end. Without those syndicate who can launch local smart grid, it will finish with home only generator like in Jed Book. 2012/11/8 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.com wrote: However as soon as we have a machine on the client table, and that the advantages for the client are clear, nothing can block people to use it... no lobbies, no regulation, no fear... I think that's incorrect. Here in the U.S. we have powerful lobbies and corporations that can delay or possibly prevent useful technology for a long time. I will give some examples below, but first let me say this discussion has gone off the tracks. You, Mark Gibbs and others misunderstand what I had in mind.
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
Public sector rent-seeking could be prevented in large measure by simply following the original intent of the US Constitution to a very limited Federal government role. Ultimately, you want to remove discretion from the appropriations process entirely with a CItizen's Dividend aka a non-means-tested Basic Income so that there is no chunk of money sitting around waiting to be stolen by people who have the resources to steal it by virtue of having stolen it before (lobbyists/special interests/etc.). This, of course, opens up the door to private sector rent-seeking (monopolistic investment, etc.) which could be dealt with at the State level if the full powers attributable to the States had been left them as was intended by the US Constitution originally. Reinterpretation of the Commerce Clause, the 14th Amendment, 16th Amendment etc. has rendered States virtually powerless to conduct the kinds of experiments the laboratory of the States was intended to conduct. On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 10:29 AM, Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.comwrote: I don't disagree with the power of lobbies. In fact the expert I talk to said thay they will try to oppose to the transition to maintain te problem they are the solution of. They will learn the new technology, while blocking it, until they can compete and establish a monopoly again. the way to get around is (non-crony) capitalism, or citizen organisation, users union/syndicate. The idea can be to find middle sized industrial who are desperate to find an innovation (the one that don't own an economic rent, and yet can move). then you find users/consumers that also desperately need a revolution, and are are enough autonomous in a niche market, a niche territory to accept this new technology... make one find the other, through a citizen organization, a business syndicate... and you will make the industry grow from the bottom. It will look small at the beginning from the point of view of the big incumbent... soon they will feel endangered, but it will be too late to oppose. Only those business syndicates can save the grid from shutting down at the end. Without those syndicate who can launch local smart grid, it will finish with home only generator like in Jed Book. 2012/11/8 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.com wrote: However as soon as we have a machine on the client table, and that the advantages for the client are clear, nothing can block people to use it... no lobbies, no regulation, no fear... I think that's incorrect. Here in the U.S. we have powerful lobbies and corporations that can delay or possibly prevent useful technology for a long time. I will give some examples below, but first let me say this discussion has gone off the tracks. You, Mark Gibbs and others misunderstand what I had in mind.
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
The uninformed public is getting the wrong message about LENR. Last evening I ran into a friend that I discussed the issue of cold fusion with last winter and he told me he had seen an article by Discover Magazine on Cold Fusion. His take was that PF was not replicated according to the article and that the concept was not proven or accepted by the physics community. I explained to him about the bias we encounter and that it was not true about the lack of replication and also that many other experiments have indicated excess heat generation. He went away with a slightly improved outlook, but it was clear that the articles are not helping our cause. Perhaps it would be important to educate the writers that actually mention the subject. I guess that it will not be long before events overpower the skeptics, but the waiting is painful. Dave -Original Message- From: Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Thu, Nov 8, 2012 2:52 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public I agree 100% with Alain. Very powerful anti-CF memes are circulating and cannot be erased by words, just by facts. The many positive achievements of Cold Fusion from the past have no continuity and no continuation, are not correlable by some common logic techno(logic), it is very difficult to compose a coherent, convincing discourse- for example for a young absolutely ignorant, unprejudiced public. We need FACTS- new Facts. Peter On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 8:08 AM, Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.com wrote: A serial innovator I'm in contact with, and who is working to make LENR a vector of energetic transition, told me that there is no hope to convince people until there is a working prototype that we can put on the client table, and that clearly work, even roughly. However as soon as we have a machine on the client table, and that the advantages for the client are clear, nothing can block people to use it... no lobbies, no regulation, no fear... especially todays, where it is clear that people think that the system cannot continue as-is. what make me afraid is that the replication of LENR (like by MFMP), won't have any impact People , even open mind, seems not to be able to accept LENR. It must make a car run or a plane fly, and even, people will suspect fraud. normal poeple behave between SDciAm (don't look at facts) or MY (argue on tiny points to reject the mass of proofs) 2012/11/7 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com I have been reading some interesting articles about public opinion and the 2012 campaign. I have also been hearing directly from people in the Obama campaign. New methods of reaching the public have been developed in the 21st century. The Internet and social media are used to coordinate campaigns, gather support and encourage people to vote. I think we should make use of these techniques to promote cold fusion. Perhaps we do not need to do that now. We don't have the resources. However, if it becomes widely known that cold fusion is real, I predict it will become the focus of intense political activity. We will need to launch public relations campaigns. We should think about this now. We should prepare for it. As a practical matter I hope that I can contact some of the people in the Obama campaign to assist us. I have mixed feelings about using the manipulative methods of political campaigns and Madison Avenue. I find them distasteful. However we need these methods if we are going to win. Cold fusion is inherently political in many ways. We must deal with political realities. Both Republicans and Democrats made use of new techniques, but the Obama campaign in particular hired a cadre of young, hotshot social scientists who are pioneering new methods. These methods are first and foremost pragmatic. They have been refined with field tests and actual data from respondents. These researchers have discovered a number of facts and new techniques about persuasion and public opinion. Some of them overturn widely held conventional ideas. Here's an interesting example. In a campaign the goal should not be to persuade people in the middle so much as to: 1. Hold onto one's own set of supporters; 2. Persuading moderates on the other side. Suppose the range of opinions on a political issue can be quantified such that a range of responses are graded from 1 to 10. Extremists in support of your side are at 1 and 2; people at 5 have no strong opinion; and people at the opposite extreme are at 9 and 10. I mean that when you ask a question people fill out numbers, the way people grade movies at Netflix. Your campaign should strive to hold onto people from 1 to 4, and it should reach out to people at 6 and 7 rather than 5. They are more likely to come over to your side than the people at 5. To take concrete example, in the third debate we saw Romney espouse foreign-policy positions very
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
Hello Mark, I appreciate the fact that you are open to exploration of the subject. We who are closely following the progress tend to become emotionally attached to the issue and have a difficult time understanding those of the more skeptical nature such as yourself. Of course I very much want to see LENR devices becoming important in helping to solve the energy and pollution crises that the world faces. I suspect that you will also be inclined to help advance the systems and research if you can become convinced that they will be both economic and useful. I think it is safe to say that most of the members of vortex have reached this conclusion. I am not sure that everyone can be convinced that the hypothetical CF device is real as you suggest. Some will refuse to look at the data regardless of the experiment as we have seen on many occasions. Others tend to suggest that the demonstration must be rigged even though they do not have any evidence since in their minds it is impossible. There is no way to overcome arguments by skeptics that have such a closed mind. Would it be advantageous to your readers to become active investors in this field just as it is becoming viable? Consider the economic gains that will fall to those that get on board in the early stages of this potentially world changing technology. And, of course the field would be tremendously advantaged by the influx of investment toward research that will follow. Please continue to closely follow the developments in LENR and I feel confident that you will find the proof you seek. Dave -Original Message- From: Mark Gibbs mgi...@gibbs.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Thu, Nov 8, 2012 7:04 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public there is no hope to convince people until there is a working prototype that we can put on the client table, and that clearly work, even roughly. I could have sworn that was what I've been writing on and off for the last year or so! No one but scientists care if CF exists but isn't useful in the everyday world. The endless theories about how CF might work are, in practical terms, unimportant. If CF is shown to be useful, everything changes. All that is required is for someone or some company to fire up a CF device that has some measurable useful energy output and leave it running for long enough to convince everyone it's real -- that would be the kind of fact that I think Peter's referring to that would counter theanti-CF memes. In fact, Peter summed up the problem with the public perception CF perfectly: no continuity and no continuation ... not [correlatable] by some common logic ... [making it] very difficult to compose a coherent, convincing discourse. Now it's over to Mr. Rothwell to tell us why we're all wrong. [mg] On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 11:52 PM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.com wrote: I agree 100% with Alain. Very powerful anti-CF memes are circulating and cannot be erased by words, just by facts. The many positive achievements of Cold Fusion from the past have no continuity and no continuation, are not correlable by some common logic techno(logic), it is very difficult to compose a coherent, convincing discourse- for example for a young absolutely ignorant, unprejudiced public. We need FACTS- new Facts. Peter On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 8:08 AM, Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.com wrote: A serial innovator I'm in contact with, and who is working to make LENR a vector of energetic transition, told me that there is no hope to convince people until there is a working prototype that we can put on the client table, and that clearly work, even roughly. However as soon as we have a machine on the client table, and that the advantages for the client are clear, nothing can block people to use it... no lobbies, no regulation, no fear... especially todays, where it is clear that people think that the system cannot continue as-is. what make me afraid is that the replication of LENR (like by MFMP), won't have any impact People , even open mind, seems not to be able to accept LENR. It must make a car run or a plane fly, and even, people will suspect fraud. normal poeple behave between SDciAm (don't look at facts) or MY (argue on tiny points to reject the mass of proofs) 2012/11/7 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com I have been reading some interesting articles about public opinion and the 2012 campaign. I have also been hearing directly from people in the Obama campaign. New methods of reaching the public have been developed in the 21st century. The Internet and social media are used to coordinate campaigns, gather support and encourage people to vote. I think we should make use of these techniques to promote cold fusion. Perhaps we do not need to do that now. We don't have the resources. However, if it becomes widely known that cold fusion is real, I predict it will become
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
I would bet that a demonstration of a charger would not convince many about the reality of CF devices. So many would suggest ways that the effect could be faked or scammed just as we have seen before. I think Rossi has the best idea when he says that the market place can make the final determination. Dave -Original Message- From: Esa Ruoho esaru...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Thu, Nov 8, 2012 7:08 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public The first person who goes around during a Sandy#2 and charges people's laptops and mobile phones with a portable CF-device is going to do a lot more to convince people it's a everyday useful energy-source than any amount of comments on SciAm or elsewhere. People want a real-life useful thing. I've tried to tell many about Free Energy devices, and they're always like: Well, can I power my stove with it?, which is a valid question from a real-life use point-of-view. A question without an answer, unfortunately. On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Mark Gibbs mgi...@gibbs.com wrote: there is no hope to convince people until there is a working prototype that we can put on the client table, and that clearly work, even roughly. I could have sworn that was what I've been writing on and off for the last year or so! No one but scientists care if CF exists but isn't useful in the everyday world. The endless theories about how CF might work are, in practical terms, unimportant. If CF is shown to be useful, everything changes. All that is required is for someone or some company to fire up a CF device that has some measurable useful energy output and leave it running for long enough to convince everyone it's real -- that would be the kind of fact that I think Peter's referring to that would counter theanti-CF memes.
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
When electricity is out city-wide, it becomes real convincing real quick. On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 8:06 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: I would bet that a demonstration of a charger would not convince many about the reality of CF devices. So many would suggest ways that the effect could be faked or scammed just as we have seen before. I think Rossi has the best idea when he says that the market place can make the final determination. Dave -Original Message- From: Esa Ruoho esaru...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Thu, Nov 8, 2012 7:08 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public The first person who goes around during a Sandy#2 and charges people's laptops and mobile phones with a portable CF-device is going to do a lot more to convince people it's a everyday useful energy-source than any amount of comments on SciAm or elsewhere. People want a real-life useful thing. I've tried to tell many about Free Energy devices, and they're always like: Well, can I power my stove with it?, which is a valid question from a real-life use point-of-view. A question without an answer, unfortunately. On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Mark Gibbs mgi...@gibbs.com wrote: there is no hope to convince people until there is a working prototype that we can put on the client table, and that clearly work, even roughly. I could have sworn that was what I've been writing on and off for the last year or so! No one but scientists care if CF exists but isn't useful in the everyday world. The endless theories about how CF might work are, in practical terms, unimportant. If CF is shown to be useful, everything changes. All that is required is for someone or some company to fire up a CF device that has some measurable useful energy output and leave it running for long enough to convince everyone it's real -- that would be the kind of fact that I think Peter's referring to that would counter theanti-CF memes.
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 1:06 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: I would bet that a demonstration of a charger would not convince many about the reality of CF devices. So many would suggest ways that the effect could be faked or scammed just as we have seen before. You don't actually believe that man walked on the moon, do you?
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: I am not sure that *everyone* can be convinced that the hypothetical CF device is real as you suggest. It would not have to convince everyone in the first round. We only need to set off a chain reaction where each generation triggers more reactions instead of quenching. In other words -- We can hope that the Celani device, replicated by 5 or 10 labs, will convince hundreds more researchers than we now have. Many of them will replicate, triggering thousands more. Once you get up to a million people who believe it, money starts pouring in, and thousands get to work frantically developing the technology. At that point it does not matter how many people still do not believe the technology is real. In 1912, four years after the first public demonstrations of airplanes, and three years after the U.S. Congress gave a gold medal to the Wright brothers, there were many small towns and small cities where people did not believe airplanes are real. A pilot showed up at one of these towns to barnstorm, with the airplane packed in crates in a railroad express car. The sheriff told him he better get out of town or they would tar and feather him for lying. Perhaps such a thing cannot happen today but I'm sure that many years into the development of cold fusion large numbers of people will still not believe the effect is real, including Robert Park if he is still alive. Such people do not matter. They will play no role. We don't have to worry about them. The only ones we have to worry about are people with large amounts of money and political power who will be determined to stop us. The only way we can defeat them is to mobilize public opinion and young people to support us. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
I wrote: It would not have to convince everyone in the first round. We only need to set off a chain reaction where each generation triggers more reactions instead of quenching. I mean a reaction of people, not neutrons. Each replication motivates more than 1 other group to replicate, so the numbers increase exponentially. If a replication triggers less than 1 other replication on average, the reaction quenches. With the Internet, accurate information can spread at lightspeed to any researcher on earth. That is why trends can accelerate at a rate unimaginably fast by the standards of the past. That is why the Gangnam Style video on YouTube has been viewed 671,542,084 times. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson svj.orionwo...@gmail.com wrote: And a recent political election would suggest the fact that some of those young whippersnappers know just how to accomplish this too. There is hope. Right. And I happen to have a line into some of them. Especially my daughter, who played a role in pushing through Obamacare and the 2012 election in Pennsylvania. She is at this moment on the phone with FEMA, NYCHA, Hizhoner the Mayor, and a Congressman trying to secure help for 80,000 people marooned in Rockaway and Hamilton Beach, NY. See: http://vimeo.com/52889667 One assumes that the forces of emergent economic behavior will eventually take over. Exactly. At a certain point the technology becomes unstoppable. As I have said before, that point will come when a large fraction of the population realizes this will save them ~$2,000 per year per person. To paraphrase a well known 12-step phrase: Go with the avalanche. Our job is to trigger the avalanche, using methods analogous to the ones shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxYur1sqnK4 (This is the end of the movie, so it is a plot spoiler.) The indirect approach is called for. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
http://www.quantumheat.org/index.php/follow/109-fast-paced-progress There is nothing new on the site today other than calibration data, which looks good. From: Jed Rothwell We can hope that the Celani device, replicated by 5 or 10 labs, will convince hundreds more researchers than we now have.
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 3:24 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: I am not sure that everyone can be convinced that the hypothetical CF device is real as you suggest. It would not have to convince everyone in the first round. We only need to set off a chain reaction where each generation triggers more reactions instead of quenching. In other words -- We can hope that the Celani device, replicated by 5 or 10 labs, will convince hundreds more researchers than we now have. Many of them will replicate, triggering thousands more. the Faberge effect... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCjmDI4AJlkfeature=related Harry
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
Don't be confused by the advertising of rags like Discover, SciAm and Nature. They're fashion magazines. Their writers wouldn't be caught dead in the wrong kind of look. On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 11:20 AM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: The uninformed public is getting the wrong message about LENR. Last evening I ran into a friend that I discussed the issue of cold fusion with last winter and he told me he had seen an article by Discover Magazine on Cold Fusion. His take was that PF was not replicated according to the article and that the concept was not proven or accepted by the physics community. I explained to him about the bias we encounter and that it was not true about the lack of replication and also that many other experiments have indicated excess heat generation. He went away with a slightly improved outlook, but it was clear that the articles are not helping our cause. Perhaps it would be important to educate the writers that actually mention the subject. I guess that it will not be long before events overpower the skeptics, but the waiting is painful. Dave -Original Message- From: Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Thu, Nov 8, 2012 2:52 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public I agree 100% with Alain. Very powerful anti-CF memes are circulating and cannot be erased by words, just by facts. The many positive achievements of Cold Fusion from the past have no continuity and no continuation, are not correlable by some common logic techno(logic), it is very difficult to compose a coherent, convincing discourse- for example for a young absolutely ignorant, unprejudiced public. We need FACTS- new Facts. Peter On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 8:08 AM, Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.comwrote: A serial innovator I'm in contact with, and who is working to make LENR a vector of energetic transition, told me that there is no hope to convince people until there is a working prototype that we can put on the client table, and that clearly work, even roughly. However as soon as we have a machine on the client table, and that the advantages for the client are clear, nothing can block people to use it... no lobbies, no regulation, no fear... especially todays, where it is clear that people think that the system cannot continue as-is. what make me afraid is that the replication of LENR (like by MFMP), won't have any impact People , even open mind, seems not to be able to accept LENR. It must make a car run or a plane fly, and even, people will suspect fraud. normal poeple behave between SDciAm (don't look at facts) or MY (argue on tiny points to reject the mass of proofs) 2012/11/7 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com I have been reading some interesting articles about public opinion and the 2012 campaign. I have also been hearing directly from people in the Obama campaign. New methods of reaching the public have been developed in the 21st century. The Internet and social media are used to coordinate campaigns, gather support and encourage people to vote. I think we should make use of these techniques to promote cold fusion. Perhaps we do not need to do that now. We don't have the resources. However, if it becomes widely known that cold fusion is real, I predict it will become the focus of intense political activity. We will need to launch public relations campaigns. We should think about this now. We should prepare for it. As a practical matter I hope that I can contact some of the people in the Obama campaign to assist us. I have mixed feelings about using the manipulative methods of political campaigns and Madison Avenue. I find them distasteful. However we need these methods if we are going to win. Cold fusion is inherently political in many ways. We must deal with political realities. Both Republicans and Democrats made use of new techniques, but the Obama campaign in particular hired a cadre of young, hotshot social scientists who are pioneering new methods. These methods are first and foremost pragmatic. They have been refined with field tests and actual data from respondents. These researchers have discovered a number of facts and new techniques about persuasion and public opinion. Some of them overturn widely held conventional ideas. Here's an interesting example. In a campaign the goal should not be to persuade people in the middle so much as to: 1. Hold onto one's own set of supporters; 2. Persuading moderates on the other side. Suppose the range of opinions on a political issue can be quantified such that a range of responses are graded from 1 to 10. Extremists in support of your side are at 1 and 2; people at 5 have no strong opinion; and people at the opposite extreme are at 9 and 10. I mean that when you ask a question people fill out numbers, the way people grade movies at Netflix. Your campaign
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
Those young whippersnappers have a facebook page too: https://www.facebook.com/#!/MartinFleischmannMemorialProject Harry On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 3:57 PM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: http://www.quantumheat.org/index.php/follow/109-fast-paced-progress There is nothing new on the site today other than calibration data, which looks good. From: Jed Rothwell We can hope that the Celani device, replicated by 5 or 10 labs, will convince hundreds more researchers than we now have.
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
Indeed Mark, the problem with cold fusion is that it is almost impossible to explain to skeptic convincingly. Sam Kean explained the problem with with cold fusion very well in his book Disappearing Spoon. Here is an excerpt from the book that I recommend to read. Jed does not like it, I know that very well, but the problem is how to explain the errors to the scientists. It is not that easy task and it cannot be just ignored arrogantly. This is, I think the main problem with cold fusion, that there are no easy answers to the criticism. Science is very hard, especially if it is required to rely on own intuition, without support from other scientist. it is very difficult challenge science, because scientists rarely make severe mistakes. That is because science is self-correcting institution and scientists are usually smarter than they look. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/28230378/papers/Sam_Kean_on_cold_fusion_and_pathological_science.pdf I also recommend the book as general good science book, although it is not anyway special. —Jouni On 8 November 2012 14:04, Mark Gibbs mgi...@gibbs.com wrote: there is no hope to convince people until there is a working prototype that we can put on the client table, and that clearly work, even roughly. I could have sworn that was what I've been writing on and off for the last year or so! No one but scientists care if CF exists but isn't useful in the everyday world. The endless theories about how CF might work are, in practical terms, unimportant. If CF is shown to be useful, everything changes. All that is required is for someone or some company to fire up a CF device that has some measurable useful energy output and leave it running for long enough to convince everyone it's real -- that would be the kind of fact that I think Peter's referring to that would counter theanti-CF memes. In fact, Peter summed up the problem with the public perception CF perfectly: no continuity and no continuation ... not [correlatable] by some common logic ... [making it] very difficult to compose a coherent, convincing discourse. Now it's over to Mr. Rothwell to tell us why we're all wrong. [mg] On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 11:52 PM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.comwrote: I agree 100% with Alain. Very powerful anti-CF memes are circulating and cannot be erased by words, just by facts. The many positive achievements of Cold Fusion from the past have no continuity and no continuation, are not correlable by some common logic techno(logic), it is very difficult to compose a coherent, convincing discourse- for example for a young absolutely ignorant, unprejudiced public. We need FACTS- new Facts. Peter On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 8:08 AM, Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.comwrote: A serial innovator I'm in contact with, and who is working to make LENR a vector of energetic transition, told me that there is no hope to convince people until there is a working prototype that we can put on the client table, and that clearly work, even roughly. However as soon as we have a machine on the client table, and that the advantages for the client are clear, nothing can block people to use it... no lobbies, no regulation, no fear... especially todays, where it is clear that people think that the system cannot continue as-is. what make me afraid is that the replication of LENR (like by MFMP), won't have any impact People , even open mind, seems not to be able to accept LENR. It must make a car run or a plane fly, and even, people will suspect fraud. normal poeple behave between SDciAm (don't look at facts) or MY (argue on tiny points to reject the mass of proofs) 2012/11/7 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com I have been reading some interesting articles about public opinion and the 2012 campaign. I have also been hearing directly from people in the Obama campaign. New methods of reaching the public have been developed in the 21st century. The Internet and social media are used to coordinate campaigns, gather support and encourage people to vote. I think we should make use of these techniques to promote cold fusion. Perhaps we do not need to do that now. We don't have the resources. However, if it becomes widely known that cold fusion is real, I predict it will become the focus of intense political activity. We will need to launch public relations campaigns. We should think about this now. We should prepare for it. As a practical matter I hope that I can contact some of the people in the Obama campaign to assist us. I have mixed feelings about using the manipulative methods of political campaigns and Madison Avenue. I find them distasteful. However we need these methods if we are going to win. Cold fusion is inherently political in many ways. We must deal with political realities. Both Republicans and Democrats made use of new techniques, but the Obama campaign in particular hired a cadre of young, hotshot social scientists who
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 9:04 PM, Jouni Valkonen jounivalko...@gmail.com wrote: I also recommend the book as general good science book, although it is not anyway special. The Violinist's Thumb is even better.
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
Jed said, So far, so far, cold fusion has avoided any opposition from vested interests because it has such a low profile. It is like the airplane from 1903 to 1908. No one takes it seriously, and most people are completely unaware that it exists. Jed, I think there is a distinguishing feature (in contrast to the techs you listed) of CF that makes me hopeful suppression will not succeed. The technology, despite the seeming delays to get to production, and the difficulty in coming up with a theory to explain it, does not look to be rocket science. This is not to diminish all the difficult work being done in the field by many who are working blindly to a large degree, but to emphasize the fact that once demonstrated in a way that even the skeptics will accept, and with the knowledge of how that system was put together going public, the genie will be out simply because, to a lesser or greater degree, it will be something that any decently qualified engineer will likely be able to cobble together - essentially a realistic proposition for the growing number of 'makers' out there. Yes, maybe this wouldn't be the safest of devices nor the most efficient, but it will likely work to a degree that someone in a country where the laws and governing forces are not in sync with those of the west, will be able to put one together. Once that happens, word-of-mouth will be unstoppable. That the current world still still shows such a wide gap between the rich and the poor will, in this case, be a positive factor in helping cold fusion gain traction. The more dire the economic conditions of a people, the more likely they will be to adopt this technology given the relative low tech needed to build a counter-top unit (the possibility of injury notwithstanding). -- Adrian
[Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
I have been reading some interesting articles about public opinion and the 2012 campaign. I have also been hearing directly from people in the Obama campaign. New methods of reaching the public have been developed in the 21st century. The Internet and social media are used to coordinate campaigns, gather support and encourage people to vote. I think we should make use of these techniques to promote cold fusion. Perhaps we do not need to do that now. We don't have the resources. However, if it becomes widely known that cold fusion is real, I predict it will become the focus of intense political activity. We will need to launch public relations campaigns. We should think about this now. We should prepare for it. As a practical matter I hope that I can contact some of the people in the Obama campaign to assist us. I have mixed feelings about using the manipulative methods of political campaigns and Madison Avenue. I find them distasteful. However we need these methods if we are going to win. Cold fusion is inherently political in many ways. We must deal with political realities. Both Republicans and Democrats made use of new techniques, but the Obama campaign in particular hired a cadre of young, hotshot social scientists who are pioneering new methods. These methods are first and foremost pragmatic. They have been refined with field tests and actual data from respondents. These researchers have discovered a number of facts and new techniques about persuasion and public opinion. Some of them overturn widely held conventional ideas. Here's an interesting example. In a campaign the goal should not be to persuade people in the middle so much as to: 1. Hold onto one's own set of supporters; 2. Persuading moderates on the other side. Suppose the range of opinions on a political issue can be quantified such that a range of responses are graded from 1 to 10. Extremists in support of your side are at 1 and 2; people at 5 have no strong opinion; and people at the opposite extreme are at 9 and 10. I mean that when you ask a question people fill out numbers, the way people grade movies at Netflix. Your campaign should strive to hold onto people from 1 to 4, and it should reach out to people at 6 and 7 rather than 5. They are more likely to come over to your side than the people at 5. To take concrete example, in the third debate we saw Romney espouse foreign-policy positions very similar to Obama's. I think it is likely he did this deliberately in response to this recent public opinion research. He was trying to win over moderate Democrats rather than middle-of-the-road people or extremists on either side. In other words, if we say the continuum runs from 1 for extreme Democrats to 10 for extreme Republicans, Romney was trying to appeal to people at 3 or 4, rather than 5. In previous campaigns the target would be people at 5 or 6. Romney was trying to win over moderately conservative Democrats who have stronger opinions than the undecided middle, or persuadable man in the street. It turns out that people who already have some opinion on the subject are more persuadable than people who have no opinion, even when the former have an opinion somewhat against the one you wish to sell them. Applying this example to cold fusion, I target the papers and presentations at LENR-CANR.org to persuade physicists and engineers who are moderately opposed to cold fusion, rather than physicists who have no opinion about cold fusion. I should target professionals and those who have some standing and knowledge of physics, rather than people who are in the middle of the road, and people who have no opinions and nothing invested in the question. This may seem counter-intuitive but it has been tested field tested with large groups of people and I think it is probably correct. I will go through my browser history and buy some books, and report more about this in the coming weeks. In the 1980s and 90s, political campaigns about many techniques from Madison Avenue and commercial public opinion research firms. Starting in 2000 for the Democrats in particular began developing their own social science theory and public opinion theories. As I said, Obama has hired some of the most ambitious hotshot talent in this field. The DNC invested millions of dollars in computer databases and analyses. Some of these are superior to the best commercial efforts, and starting this year Madison Avenue is beginning to reach out to the campaigns instead of the other way around. As noted here in previous discussions, some corporations such as Amazon.com and Target have superb data mining and marketing techniques. In some instances described by the New York Times and others, the Target supercomputers were able to identify women who are pregnant before the women themselves realized they were. This is creepy. I have mixed feelings about it. But it is a fact of the 21st century. We do not have the resources to take advantage of this sort of thing, but if
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
You know what would be really swell, Jed? If you went onto Reddit ( http://www.reddit.com/r/AMA (Reddit's AMA (=Ask Me Anything) -forum)) and identified yourself like this: I'm a Cold Fusion / Low Energy Nuclear Reactions archivist, ask me anything or any permutation of. that should get interesting. On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 12:49 AM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: I have been reading some interesting articles about public opinion and the 2012 campaign. I have also been hearing directly from people in the Obama campaign. New methods of reaching the public have been developed in the 21st century. The Internet and social media are used to coordinate campaigns, gather support and encourage people to vote. I think we should make use of these techniques to promote cold fusion. Perhaps we do not need to do that now. We don't have the resources. However, if it becomes widely known that cold fusion is real, I predict it will become the focus of intense political activity. We will need to launch public relations campaigns. We should think about this now. We should prepare for it. As a practical matter I hope that I can contact some of the people in the Obama campaign to assist us. I have mixed feelings about using the manipulative methods of political campaigns and Madison Avenue. I find them distasteful. However we need these methods if we are going to win. Cold fusion is inherently political in many ways. We must deal with political realities. Both Republicans and Democrats made use of new techniques, but the Obama campaign in particular hired a cadre of young, hotshot social scientists who are pioneering new methods. These methods are first and foremost pragmatic. They have been refined with field tests and actual data from respondents. These researchers have discovered a number of facts and new techniques about persuasion and public opinion. Some of them overturn widely held conventional ideas. Here's an interesting example. In a campaign the goal should not be to persuade people in the middle so much as to: 1. Hold onto one's own set of supporters; 2. Persuading moderates on the other side. Suppose the range of opinions on a political issue can be quantified such that a range of responses are graded from 1 to 10. Extremists in support of your side are at 1 and 2; people at 5 have no strong opinion; and people at the opposite extreme are at 9 and 10. I mean that when you ask a question people fill out numbers, the way people grade movies at Netflix. Your campaign should strive to hold onto people from 1 to 4, and it should reach out to people at 6 and 7 rather than 5. They are more likely to come over to your side than the people at 5. To take concrete example, in the third debate we saw Romney espouse foreign-policy positions very similar to Obama's. I think it is likely he did this deliberately in response to this recent public opinion research. He was trying to win over moderate Democrats rather than middle-of-the-road people or extremists on either side. In other words, if we say the continuum runs from 1 for extreme Democrats to 10 for extreme Republicans, Romney was trying to appeal to people at 3 or 4, rather than 5. In previous campaigns the target would be people at 5 or 6. Romney was trying to win over moderately conservative Democrats who have stronger opinions than the undecided middle, or persuadable man in the street. It turns out that people who already have some opinion on the subject are more persuadable than people who have no opinion, even when the former have an opinion somewhat against the one you wish to sell them. Applying this example to cold fusion, I target the papers and presentations at LENR-CANR.org to persuade physicists and engineers who are moderately opposed to cold fusion, rather than physicists who have no opinion about cold fusion. I should target professionals and those who have some standing and knowledge of physics, rather than people who are in the middle of the road, and people who have no opinions and nothing invested in the question. This may seem counter-intuitive but it has been tested field tested with large groups of people and I think it is probably correct. I will go through my browser history and buy some books, and report more about this in the coming weeks. In the 1980s and 90s, political campaigns about many techniques from Madison Avenue and commercial public opinion research firms. Starting in 2000 for the Democrats in particular began developing their own social science theory and public opinion theories. As I said, Obama has hired some of the most ambitious hotshot talent in this field. The DNC invested millions of dollars in computer databases and analyses. Some of these are superior to the best commercial efforts, and starting this year Madison Avenue is beginning to reach out to the campaigns instead of the other way around. As noted here in previous
Re: [Vo]:We should employ new methods of persuading the public
A serial innovator I'm in contact with, and who is working to make LENR a vector of energetic transition, told me that there is no hope to convince people until there is a working prototype that we can put on the client table, and that clearly work, even roughly. However as soon as we have a machine on the client table, and that the advantages for the client are clear, nothing can block people to use it... no lobbies, no regulation, no fear... especially todays, where it is clear that people think that the system cannot continue as-is. what make me afraid is that the replication of LENR (like by MFMP), won't have any impact People , even open mind, seems not to be able to accept LENR. It must make a car run or a plane fly, and even, people will suspect fraud. normal poeple behave between SDciAm (don't look at facts) or MY (argue on tiny points to reject the mass of proofs) 2012/11/7 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com I have been reading some interesting articles about public opinion and the 2012 campaign. I have also been hearing directly from people in the Obama campaign. New methods of reaching the public have been developed in the 21st century. The Internet and social media are used to coordinate campaigns, gather support and encourage people to vote. I think we should make use of these techniques to promote cold fusion. Perhaps we do not need to do that now. We don't have the resources. However, if it becomes widely known that cold fusion is real, I predict it will become the focus of intense political activity. We will need to launch public relations campaigns. We should think about this now. We should prepare for it. As a practical matter I hope that I can contact some of the people in the Obama campaign to assist us. I have mixed feelings about using the manipulative methods of political campaigns and Madison Avenue. I find them distasteful. However we need these methods if we are going to win. Cold fusion is inherently political in many ways. We must deal with political realities. Both Republicans and Democrats made use of new techniques, but the Obama campaign in particular hired a cadre of young, hotshot social scientists who are pioneering new methods. These methods are first and foremost pragmatic. They have been refined with field tests and actual data from respondents. These researchers have discovered a number of facts and new techniques about persuasion and public opinion. Some of them overturn widely held conventional ideas. Here's an interesting example. In a campaign the goal should not be to persuade people in the middle so much as to: 1. Hold onto one's own set of supporters; 2. Persuading moderates on the other side. Suppose the range of opinions on a political issue can be quantified such that a range of responses are graded from 1 to 10. Extremists in support of your side are at 1 and 2; people at 5 have no strong opinion; and people at the opposite extreme are at 9 and 10. I mean that when you ask a question people fill out numbers, the way people grade movies at Netflix. Your campaign should strive to hold onto people from 1 to 4, and it should reach out to people at 6 and 7 rather than 5. They are more likely to come over to your side than the people at 5. To take concrete example, in the third debate we saw Romney espouse foreign-policy positions very similar to Obama's. I think it is likely he did this deliberately in response to this recent public opinion research. He was trying to win over moderate Democrats rather than middle-of-the-road people or extremists on either side. In other words, if we say the continuum runs from 1 for extreme Democrats to 10 for extreme Republicans, Romney was trying to appeal to people at 3 or 4, rather than 5. In previous campaigns the target would be people at 5 or 6. Romney was trying to win over moderately conservative Democrats who have stronger opinions than the undecided middle, or persuadable man in the street. It turns out that people who already have some opinion on the subject are more persuadable than people who have no opinion, even when the former have an opinion somewhat against the one you wish to sell them. Applying this example to cold fusion, I target the papers and presentations at LENR-CANR.org to persuade physicists and engineers who are moderately opposed to cold fusion, rather than physicists who have no opinion about cold fusion. I should target professionals and those who have some standing and knowledge of physics, rather than people who are in the middle of the road, and people who have no opinions and nothing invested in the question. This may seem counter-intuitive but it has been tested field tested with large groups of people and I think it is probably correct. I will go through my browser history and buy some books, and report more about this in the coming weeks. In the 1980s and 90s, political campaigns about many techniques from
