[Vo]:New here-- some general statements
hello guys, --first post here-- after watching the scene for a couple of months now -with increasing intensity- I would dare to say that Rossi is a tragic figure. His personal idiosyncrasies just don't match the size of the problem. Just three examples: a) Spending 500k€ for an evaluation at U Bologna. A black box-test would cost less than a 10th. b) having an unreasonable cost/timescale: 1mio units this year in a fully automated factory. ( Compare this eg to Nanosolar. They had hundreds of million $ and missed their time-target 3years up to now. This is a sort of lie: --time-cost-performance- which presumably keeps Rossi alive. He needs it. Newton or Galileo –ahem- did not have such pressure. Time was flowing slower then. Now we are in a time of instant gratification.) c) seemingly constantly changing his design. See his recent cost-estimates for 10kW units. Ridiculous. Improvements should be split into product-generations. Messing these up with small resources-he definitely has-, is a recipe for disaster. Look at the tables for his setups. The cheapest of the cheap.Not that is decisive, but simultaneously telling something about fully automated factories this year, generates cognitive dissonance. This probably can be explained by intense financial pressure. This can bring down even a strong man, and make him do/say strange things, especially if his central resource is creativity-intuition-rationality under time-constraint. Add to this commercial success. A nearly impossible task. So Rossi is most probably a tragic figure like Pons/Fleischmann at their time. They definitely had it better. I do not consider Rossi a fraud. He is tragic. In some aspects Rossi is presumably a genius with a superb intuition, which has been operationalized by Defkalion, as it seems. So the hope for an imminent (2012) breakthrough definitely shifted to Defkalion. My contributions here will be mainly focused on the global/societal consequences, if one takes e-cats as a given within a couple of years. As Jed already started with his book. Best regards. Guenter
Re: [Vo]:New here-- some general statements
(Guenter: Your e-mail is set so that responses here go to you.) Guenter Wildgruber gwildgru...@ymail.com mailto:gwildgru...@ymail.com wrote: I would dare to say that Rossi is a tragic figure. I sometimes feel that way . . . But it remains to be seen, doesn't it? He has not failed yet. He may yet end up being history's first trillionaire. He and Defkalion may reconcile and be friends again. Many good things may happen to him. He deserves them all. His personal idiosyncrasies just don't match the size of the problem. Just three examples: a) Spending 500k€ for an evaluation at U Bologna. A black box-test would cost less than a 10th. Ah, but he cancelled that. I did not think the U. Bologna test was tragic, but it did strike me as a waste of money. b) having an unreasonable cost/timescale: 1mio units this year in a fully automated factory. Rossi starts with unreasonable timescales. He sometimes achieves them. He astounds me! I thought he would never get a 1 MW reactor working by October, but apparently he did. c) seemingly constantly changing his design. See his recent cost-estimates for 10kW units. Ridiculous. I regard these constant changes as a mark of genius. This is essential part of inventing. Inventing -- as opposed to scientific research. Look at the different designs for incandescent light bulbs in Edison's notebooks in 1879. The variations are mind-boggling. His team went through dozens of different ideas and variations as extreme as Rossi's. They did not stumble upon the right design. They tried an incredible range of things, but they kept zeroing or coming back to the more practical ones. Improvements should be split into product-generations. Messing these up with small resources-he definitely has-, is a recipe for disaster. It was a recipe for success in Edison's case. Rossi seems to be succeeding. He has made more progress than most other cold fusion researchers combined. Rossi's methods are not orderly. Look at the tables for his setups. The cheapest of the cheap. Cheap is good. The cheaper the better. The cheaper and easier it is to make a product, the quicker sales ramp up, and the more money you make. Not that is decisive, but simultaneously telling something about fully automated factories this year, generates cognitive dissonance. I see no contradiction. Here is the ideal that every capitalist yearns for: A fully automated factory churning out ultra cheap products that people everywhere want and need. That is the key to making as much money as anyone can make. That's what Edison had in the incandescent light, and Gates had in factories producing CD-ROMs of Windows software. Few people in history have been so fortunate as to come up with something like this. Rossi may yet join their ranks. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:New here-- some general statements
I wrote: c) seemingly constantly changing his design. See his recent cost-estimates for 10kW units. Ridiculous. I regard these constant changes as a mark of genius. This is essential part of inventing. Inventing -- as opposed to scientific research. Come to think of it, Martin Fleischmann said that the NHE project and his own work in France failed to make progress because they wouldn't let us explore the problem. (I think that's how he put it.) They committed to a design and a modern product-engineering approach too soon. You need to try all kinds of stuff. Rossi does that better than anyone I know. He is astounding in that respect. He also takes whatever good ideas he finds, from Arata and others. As Steve Jobs said: Good artists copy, great artists steal. . . . We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. He really said that! He meant it, and I agree he was right: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU He attributed that quote to Picasso. It is apt. In my opinion Picasso had tremendous talent and skill, not much originality, and no taste. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:New here-- some general statements
Very few of us are destined to make a colossal financial killing in the world, particularly on the order of raking in billions of Dollars/Euros. It remains to be seen whether Rossi's name will be added to that rarified list. If Rossi does eventually succeed I would speculate that the history books will say his triumph was due to an innate sense of intuition which he exploited at every opportunity while building a global industrial empire. By focusing on mass producing his energy catalyzers (I agree with Jed, that mass-production is a major key to financial success) Rossi ends up marginalizing pretty much all of his competition. However, as we all know, glowing historical reviews of this nature is definitely dividing the bear before it has been killed. ;-) Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:New here-- some general statements
Von:Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com Rossi does that better than anyone I know. He is astounding in that respect. He also takes whatever good ideas he finds, from Arata and others. As Steve Jobs said: Good artists copy, great artists steal. We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. I do not feel competent to judge on all that in a decisive manner. it is all probabilistic, and a projection of personal beliefs. LENR itself seems to be for me highly probable (99%). The question to me -and certainly for us all here- is the quantity and stability of the effect. Is the out-in efficiency 1.x, 6 (Rossi1), 20 (Rossi2), 100 (Rossi3). This is quite similar to the EROI-problem, with the additional problem of energy-quality (electrical in, thermal out). I think this is a problem of the evolution of a technology, which is in its infancy, which can be overcome, if it is investigated by a broad community. As such, it would be truly disruptive. I do not have to tell You . You wrote about that earlier than I was thinking about it. Myself being more of a Doomer am having a hard time readjusting my worldview. With or without Rossi. The 'universe' being more benign than I ever thought. ;) But our capability to mess this all up seems to be nearer to infinity than the energy LENR-devices eventually can deliver. Ha.
