Never attribute to mere stupidity that which can be explained by unenlightened self-interest.
On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 3:39 AM, Alain Sepeda <[email protected]> wrote: > > > 2012/11/6 Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> > >> >> >> Cold fusion has been suppressed. Not by powerful people at oil companies. >> Not by evil people trying to preserve academic funding. No, it has been >> suppressed by stupid people. Very Stupid People. >> >> "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." - Friedrich >> Schiller >> > > Great quotes... > > whether you hesitate between Machiavellianism and stupidity, best bet is > on the latest (quote used by Madelin a French politician ) > > Roland Benabou theory even says that the best reason to fall into denial > is to be involved in the question (to have something to lose, or to accept > to have lost). innovation specialist clearly state that to make innovation > you have to be alien, stubborns and have similar friends network... > > note also, that following other controversies I observe that part of the > reason to reject roughly dissenters is that there is more and more > dishonest rhetoric used by people with agenda (politic, religion, enviro, > big biz). The attorney/media culture... > and as explain wiki on hyperskepticism, arguing is impossible without some > honesty on both side... > there is one moment where either you let it go, or became corrupted on > equal level... > then it became a second natural behavior... > It is also much more comfortable and one have a limited budget of > "controvery" one can manage. > > For LENR I see two bad behaviors, liked to lasiness: > - the one that say, that they don't understand how it can work, thus it is > false (it is stupid to say that it cannot work, because QM allow manything > we cannot compute, like WL claims) > - the one that see that they cannot find a way using QM to make it work, > thus think that QM is false... > > in fact, I feel that we don't have yet enough data, not enough knowledge > in using QM, to exclude QM is compatible with LENR... and since it is much > more compatible with known facts than other theories, QM can be the first > bet... and anyway, first job is to gather data. > > note also that at low energy (low stakes) ad hominem, precaution, > conformism, is a good heuristic... > but when stakes get higher, crazy, corrupted, honest or rational people > can get as much genius, dishonest and stupid... only way to guess the truth > is to read yourself the data, but since you are not competent normally, > what you win on reducing group effect , you lose it on misinterpretation... > a kind of heisenberg inequality... > This mean that there is no good way to get the truth, other than to make > experiments... human profiling filtering is not reliable at high energy. >
