At 05:27 PM 12/18/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
On 12/18/2009 02:31 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
At 11:02 PM 12/17/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
Sounds good. But magicians don't usually start by working to convince
everyone that they are incompetent liars. That's a label nobody wants
to start with.
I have experienced the exact opposite. They are very good at starting
with that label, they amplify it and play with it.
Eh, hold on -- they do it for a few seconds, a few minutes, perhaps
more than a few minutes. They patter away, with an ace of hearts
glued to the back of their jacket where all can see it, or whatever.
But very soon, far sooner than the "timeout" after which the
audience leaves in disgust, they do something which reveals they are
monumentally clever after all.
These magicians are playing a longer game, to a far wider audience,
with a longer attention span.
Imagine, instead, a magic show where the magicians did nothing but
show tricks that didn't work, or do slight of hand where all could
see the hidden card on the back of the hand, or attempted to juggle
but dropped the balls -- imagine that they did this for the ENTIRE
FIRST HALF of the show.
Then there's the intermission.
Then, only after the intermission, they show that they can really
pull off some fine stunts.
Only problem -- the hall's kind of empty at that point, because an
awful lot of folks didn't come back after the break.
Timing. When is the intermission for Steorn? Is it scheduled?
Scheduling one is part of what they might do. "We have decided to
close all public activites for X months to give us time to focus on
blah, blah." We will open a new public demo, which will reveal far
more about our technology than has been previously revealed, on [six
months away]."
That would be a show where the magician started by CONVINCING the
audience that he was an incompetent liar.
It's been more than seconds, minutes, days -- it's been years --
Steorn has yet to show the "clever" part. All they've shown is the boobery.
What they've shown is that they can continue to attract attention,
and that's exactly what they need.
,..
Sure, sure, sure. The bit about magicians is all true. But what makes
you think that Steorn fills the bill of a "skilled magician"? What
EVIDENCE is there that anyone at Steorn is competent to pull off any
kind of convincing demo of anything?
The level of competence required for the "convincing demo" -- if we
allow actual fraud -- is low. I'm sure I could build it, just give me a
little money.
Hah! Indeed, I'm absolutely sure you could. But, you're not an
"average Joe off the street". What makes you think anybody at
Steorn is as competent as you? Your definition of a "low level of
competence" probably doesn't match most folks'.
There are countless people who could build it. You hire one. They
have the money to do it, should it be that nobody already involved
could do it. There is a hint, by the way, as to what they intend to
do, and are doing: they have a product that is pre-announced or
something like that. Very low friction bearings. Now, why would you
need very-low friction bearings? Only if you have some perpetual
motion imitation that needs to run for a long time on inertia or with
extremely low power input. Or, alternatively, you have found, or
believe you have found, some tiny effect, an energy anomaly. So to
demonstrate it, you need a system with extremely low losses. However,
if that is all you have, you are nowhere near having found something
that can be exploited for power production, for you aren't producing
enough power to overcome losses in ordinary bearings. That isn't much power!
And suppose their real product is very-low-friction bearings? They
would have, with their best demonstration -- which hasn't been rolled
out, I suspect -- demonstrated these bearings. They would, when
ready, pull off the wraps, disclose the trick, and show what a very
low power input was necessary to keep the beastie running.
All I'm saying is that thinking of them as just plain stupid and
incompetent could be quite premature. There other other explanations,
for sure, and it seems to me that some of those explanations are more
likely than the "incompetent boobs" theory.
I'm serious here. I have seen no evidence of such competence at
Steorn. In the absence of such evidence, I see no reason to believe
it's present.
Elsewhere you contradict yourself. Here you are using "competence" as
the skill to build a convincing demonstration of nothing, a fraud.
But you can hire that competence, at a price that they could clearly afford.
Assuming incompetence is all "staged", and that more apparent
incompetence just proves it's "staged better" -- well, it's an
assumption, and I can't really see any reason for retaining it.
It's not an assumption, it's an organizing hypothesis. It explains
the behavior so far. Got a better one?
But this argument of ours will be entirely moot in short order, when
we see how this absurd non-demo plays out in its final weeks.
I don't think so: so there must be our "bet." I bet it won't be resolved
in a few weeks. I don't see that they are anywhere near the necessity of
closing down and cashing out. So my bet would be on continued murkiness
and mystery, that's what my theory predicts.
Oh, I agree that Steorn's fate won't be resolved. They are
extremely competent at explaining away problems, at drawing things
out, and at staying in business, and I'm sure they will continue to
do such things.
But that's the whole thing. That's their clear competence. What other
kind do you think they need?
What I think *will* be resolved is the question of whether
they're just teasing us with this wretchedly awful demonstration,
in preparation for rolling out something far better some time in
the very near future.
The "bet" I would make is this:
The current demo will continue to be of horribly low quality, and
there will be no deus ex machina which suddenly makes their machines
run better. Not now, and not any time in the next few months.
They will only pull out the rabbit when it's necessary, which they
will judge by the response of their audience. So I can't predict when.
If I've understood what you have said previously, you think the
opposite; you expect them to pull a "better rabbit" from the hat,
and suddenly upgrade their machines to something which will stymie
their critics.
No, it won't stymie the critics. You've misunderstood the process. It
won't stop the critics at all, they won't be fooled by it. But they
will *look* mean-spirited.
The reverse happened with cold fusion. Pons and Fleischmann had very
good excess heat data. But they published an artifact, substantial
neutron radiation. When the neutron radiation was shown to be bogus,
it pulled down the excess heat with it, drowning the baby in the bathwater.
By the intermission, the appearance of incompetent research was
solidified, and, in fact, the audience left. They didn't see the
recovery in the second act, they were no longer paying attention.
Now, suppose the original neutron findings had been of a much lower
level, and Fleischmann emphasized that the level was so low that it
couldn't explain the excess heat, it must be a secondary reaction,
and that was its only indication. Okay, someone comes along and
criticizes a possible artifact in that data, and the criticism looks
good. But immediately, Fleischmann pulls the rabbit out of the hat:
clear proof that the radiation isn't artifact, that there are
neutrons being emitted from active cells and not from controls. The
recent SSNTD data on neutrons might have been this.
Had this happened quickly enough, the power of the convincing
response on neutrons might have carried with it wider acceptance of
the excess heat. It's not logical, it's political. It's how people think.
In other words, I will go on record as stating that the current
wretched demo, as it currently exists, is the *best* *they* *can*
*do*, or very close to it.
You mean they couldn't hide some wires or magnetic coupling from
below? Why would they be so completely incompetent?
Further, we know that they can produce something more interesting. I
don't think Hoyt is lying. Do you? I see utterly no reason to suspect
it. No, they could come up with something better, I'm sure of it. But
they don't want to at this point. Consider the al-Jazeera ad. They
*want* to encourage the "impossible" reaction, it's part of their plan.
Consequently, we will not see anything better before the
scheduled end of this demonstration, and we will not see anything
substantially better in the coming, say, six months, either -- let
us say, before June.
Entirely possible. Depends on their perception of the audience, their
target audience, not the rest of us. I'm pretty sure they know it
better than I do!
And *that* assertion -- that nothing better will be forthcoming --
is what will be either proved to be true, or disproved, in
relatively short order.
It can only be "proven" with respect to a fixed time. You've stated
six months. I don't have any idea whether they are ready to turn up
the juice, so to speak. I don't know if they will actually run a
fraudulent demo. It is merely a possibility, eventually.
I really believe that if they had anything better they would already
have rolled it out (but of course, what they have but aren't showing
is something we won't know for a long time, if ever).
I think we will eventually know. People eventually break NDAs, given
enough lapse of time and change in circumstances. Hey, suppose you
are dying, you have a month to live. There is nothing that Steorn can
do to you. They have been aiming for 300 engineers. For I all I know,
they have more than that already, there is nothing that would stop
them from collecting more.
I don't trust a thing they say, in fact. They've shown that they can
make a statement, then make an opposite statement later, and it has
no effect. Now, will they file fraudulent financial reports? Probably
not, or, more accurately, it's less likely, precisely because they
appear to be smart. So where are the financials? Are any of them public record?
