At 10:05 pm Tue, 1 Mar 2005, Thomas Malloy wrote:
<snip>
> On a separate note, I just got done reading "Confessions
> of an Economic Hitman". It is an astounding book.
> I have little doubt that anyone who stands in the
> way of our oil based economic order could be killed.
> If you have serious free energy findings, please be
> careful. You could end up like Mallove, ....
Well, I always wear my scapular so I'm alright, Jack
[unless they catch me in the bath of course - but they
wont have many opportunities for that ;-) ].
Anyway, if you shed your blood for Truth, you get a
"Get out of jail free" card and go straight to heaven
without having to do your purgatory - so why worry! 8-)
And by the time they wake up to the significance of any
fundamental discovery, it'll be all over the internet.
You have absolutely no idea how incredibly stupid
these people are.
To give you an example, consider this extract from a memo
I wrote to my Director after escaping from the Spanish
Inquisitorial clutches of the "Expert Panel" (allegedly)
charged with scrutinizing all ten way-out papers I had
written in the course of my previous career.
******************************************************
USE OF PROBABILITY METHODS IN ENGINEERING
In the second paragraph on page 9 of the Expert Panel
Report the distinguished experts claim that I am,
"wrong in that the numbers of 2's -> 1/6
when N -> infinity and does not tend to zero".
If I really had claimed that for N spins of a dice the number
of 2's that come up tends to zero and does not tend to 1/6, I
would have not merely been wrong. I would have been grossly
incompetent.
What I actually wrote was this:-
===========================================================
".... however many trials I make there is no guarantee that
the percentage of 2's will be exactly 1/6."
===========================================================
So that things will be crystal clear and to eliminate any
possible misunderstanding, let me elaborate precisely what
I mean by that statement.
If I spin the dice six hundred times there is no guarantee
that I will get exactly one hundred 2's (one hundred being
of course. one sixth of six hundred as I'm sure the Expert
Panel will concede). I might get ninety eight 2's or ninety
seven 2's or one hundred and three 2's, for example. I might
even get one hundred 2's but. as I've said, there is no
guarantee.
If I spin the dice six million times there is no guarantee
that I will get exactly one million 2's. Of course it is
possible, but it isn't very likely. It is considerably less
likely than my chance of getting one hundred 2's when I spin
the dice six hundred times.
If I spin the dice six billion.... but I can't imagine that
I need to elaborate any further. Surely, the next sentence
of my note will now be perfectly clear. It continues on from
the previous sentence given above as follows:-
=============================================================
"On the contrary. if I make 6N trials where N is a very large
integer, even though the fraction of 2's could be 1/6, the
probability of this is small and tends to zero as N tends to
infinity ."
=============================================================
Weren't the Expert Panel curious as to why I should want to
make 6N trials where N is an integer rather than simply N
trials? Isn't the reason perfectly plain? Namely, unless the
number of trials is divisible by 6 then the number of 2s can
never be 1/6th?
Besides being accused of being wrong, I was also accused of
being repetitive. It seems to me I was not repetitive enough.
Perhaps I should have assumed that people's short term memory
wasn't sufficient for them to carry over the word "exactly"
from one sentence to the next, and I should have repeated it.
If I had been writing for my mother (aged 95) I would have
done.
As for the accusation of being trivial I fear that, on the
contrary, I might have been too profound.
I must say, I do applaud the Expert Panel's commitment to
intellectual freedom of expression in proposing that someone
who believes that in a long run of dice throws the number of
times that 2 comes up tends to zero. should be allowed 15
weeks to write up his ideas on possible failure of a nuclear
reactor. I fear I would be far less liberal. I would ask him
along to my office and say very kindly.
"Look here Frank. the management have been having a
little talk. We feel that you've been in research
non-stop for 36 years and really deserve. a jolly
good rest so that you can pursue your hobbies and
spend some time with your 14 grandchildren. We don't
have any voluntary premature retirement vacancies
at present. but we do have discretion and we feel
your case is rather special. How about it? Interested?"
And if I had been a member of the Expert Panel and asked to
question someone who believed that in a long run of dice
throws the number of times that 2s comes up tends to zero
I would have been quite fascinated. What could he possibly
think the other five numbers on the dice would tend to.
After all, someone who believes that materials are held
together from the outside and not from the inside might
believe anything, might he not! Perhaps he would have an
obsession with lucky prime 3 and think that in a long
series of throws three would dominate number X and drive
him out of office. Perhaps he is a religious nut who
believes that a long series of throws would summon up
the devil and result in an interminable sequence of 666's,
the sign of the beast.
I'm very grateful to the Panel Secretary for not drawing
the Panel's attention to this total misunderstanding
{which I'm sure he must have spotted) since it serves to
illustrate a important psychological principle,
The error is unlikely to have arisen from simple
carelessness. The Expert Panel's Report is only 13 pages
long and will obviously have been read very thoroughly
by all three distinguished experts who have all signed
it at the bottom.
The Fellow of the Royal Society has a commendable
admiration for accuracy to nine places of decimals
(see paragraph 2 on page 5 of the Expert Panel Report)
so the probability of him missing an inaccuracy must
be very low.
The Senior Official from the Nuclear Industry
Inspectorate which is charged with the gravest
imaginable responsibility for protecting the
public from a nuclear catastrophe will no doubt
have meticulously checked and double checked
every syllable. So the probability of him missing
an inaccuracy must be extremely low.
The University Professor....... ? Well it's true
that University Professors do have a reputation
for being absent minded but I seem to remember a
saying from when I was at college which ran,
"Every student wants to prove the professor wrong"
and since in my experience they very rarely managed
it, I will assume that the probability of him missing
an inaccuracy is fairly low.
What about interactions? It can safely be assumed
that the three distinguished experts are all
sufficiently independent not to succumb to the herd
instinct so I can multiply the probabilities together
and claim that the probability of the group of three
missing an inaccuracy is,
fairly, very, extremely low,
Since this is no higher, say, than the probability
of three responsible professional nuclear engineers
carrying out an experiment on a reactor which leads
to its catastrophic failure, it is a probability
that can be neglected.
But since the inaccuracy cannot be ascribed to
carelessness to what can it be ascribed ?
It can be ascribed to the psychological tendency to
see what we expect to see rather than see what is
actually there. A good example of this is given in
Fig.l. It is a quite genuine cover, proof read at
various stages in its production by the Print Unit
of Sheffield University and yet the error was missed
by all who saw it until it was too late and it was
widely distributed. It is a fine example of
conceptually driven processing at work, dictating
what is 'seen', in this case at the expense of what
is really there.
People often see what they expect to see, the
stronger the expectation the more marked the effect.
When judging work professing quite unacceptable
beliefs then the expectation of finding gross errors
must be very high indeed.
Now the corollary of seeing what is not there is not
seeing what is there. As an example of this inverse
perceptual error consider the following popular
psychological demonstration.
If the piece of text within the triangle in Fig. 2
is cut out.. pasted on a piece of card and shown to
a series of experimental subjects, the more literate
the better, then the following effect is generally
observed......
******************************************************
And why did they misquote me in their final report? Was
it accidental? Not on your nelly. They knew damn well what
I'd written 'cos Clayton and I spent ages trying to convince
one idiot he was wrong whilst the other two maintained a
cowardly embarrased silence.
They deliberately misquoted what I said cos they knew that
if they didn't, then in the event that the Hartlepool AGR
did go up the spout, (albeit unlikely, though not as unlikely
as they imagine) someone would pull the file from the archives
and discover what idiots had been appointed to the expert panel.
You don't want to be scared of people like that!
As the the good book says,
-> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> ->
"And I say to you, my friends:
Be not afraid of them who kill the body
and after that have no more that they can do.
But I will shew you whom you shall fear:
Fear ye him who, after he hath killed,
hath power to cast into hell.
Yea, I say to you: Fear him."
-> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> ->
Cheers, 8-)
Frank Grimer
_______________________________________________________________
If you want to see a complete scan of the above document, go to
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blazelabs/ then go to the "Files"
section and open the folder titled "memo".
If you are not a member you will have to register but you can
always "unregister" once you've read the file.
_______________________________________________________________
