Cude wrote: Has to do with self-interest, I think. But it is in nearly everyone's >> self-interest for cold fuison to be real. And in any case, my question was >> really why don't *all* intelligent people accept it. >> > In 1941, U.S. Adm. Stark said to the Japanese envoy Nomura:
"If you attack us we will break your empire before we are through with you. While you may have initial success due to timing and surprise, the time will come when you too will have your losses, but there will be this great difference. You not only will be unable to make up your losses but will grow weaker as time goes on; while on the other hand we not only will make up our losses but will grow stronger as time goes on. It is inevitable that we shall crush you before we are through with you." This fact should have been self-evident to every intelligent, educated person in Japan. Why didn't *all* intelligent Japanese people believe this?!? The newspapers in Japan reported how many aircraft carriers and battleships the U.S. was building. This was no secret. The very first knowledge that modern Japanese people had of the U.S., as the country opened up in the 1860s was that the U.S. had just fought a Civil War with 640,000 people killed. It was clear that the U.S. is a militaristic society willing to take enormous casualties in a protracted war. In 1941 it was common knowledge that the U.S. industrial economy was 17 times larger than Japan's, and automobile production 80 times larger. Even if ordinary people did not realize this, why did nearly all Japanese admirals other than Yamamoto fail to see that their cause was hopeless? The answer is that people often make drastic mistakes. Even intelligent people do. It is human nature. They often do things against their own interests. In this case, their actions resulted in the destruction of every major Japanese city and the death of 1.7 million people. The fact that the war could only end with that kind of disaster (or earlier with an unconditional surrender) should have been obvious to every Japanese leader from the Emperor down to every town mayor. It was not obvious because these people were blinded by emotion. So are the people opposed to cold fusion, such as Robert Park and Cude. Facts, logic, analysis, common sense, education, the lessons of experience . . . all are sacrificed when emotions and the primate instinct for power politics take over the mind. This is what history teaches us. Learn from it, or you too will make dreadful mistakes, as George Santayana said. - Jed
