On Nov 8, 2011, at 10:54 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Horace Heffner <hheff...@mtaonline.net> wrote:
The question though should be which premise is more consistent with
Rossi's behavior, he believes his own claims, or not?"
The premise that best fits his behavior is the same one that fits
Harrison, Patterson, William Shockley, and many other people with a
personality similar to Rossi's. They are intensely possessive.
It is difficult to believe that Harrison, Patterson, or Shockley
would put on about a dozen demonstrations of their technology,
repeatedly botch the scientific aspects of the demonstrations, and
refuse to acknowledge or fix the problems. When Patterson could no
longer reproduce his results he freely admitted it. These were
scientifically trustworthy people. How about Rossi's self
contradiction record with regard to the E-cat? Does that put him in
the same camp with Harrison, Patterson, and Shockley, or in a
different class?
At what point does the balance of probability tip? How many failed
failed demonstrations and absurd refusals to correct does it take to
seriously question whether there is anything at all to the
technology. So far Rossi has left a critical degree of freedom
without observations in each experiment. His behavior is completely
consistent in this regard. Can this be considered random? At what
point does a Baysian model provide a sufficient confidence level the
behavior is not random?
Which premise is most consistent with Rossi's actions? He believes
in the technology and has nothing to hide from a black box evaluation
of energy out? He doesn't believe a rigorous test will confirm his
claims?
The answer seems fairly obvious to me which premise is most
consistent. However, others can look at the same set of facts and
draw opposite conclusions. This makes for an interesting world I guess.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
