On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 2:29 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > The answer is that people often make drastic mistakes. Even intelligent > people do. > Even cold fusion researchers do. > 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. > The only plausible influence of emotion in the cold fusion controversy is the one that was on display in 1989 when people stood and cheered Pons, and thousands ran to their labs to try to be among the first to be associated with the revolution, and get their names up in lights. People really wanted cold fusion to be true. It was in their interest, and it was especially in the government's strategic and economic interest, so this claim that people are emotionally resistant to cold fusion is nonsense. Storms wrote: "many of us were lured into believing that the Pons-Fleischmann effect would solve the world's energy problems and make us all rich." That's where the emotional pressure is. > > This is what history teaches us. Learn from it, or you too will make > dreadful mistakes, as George Santayana said. > > > History teaches that whacky ideas and fringe science are sometimes just wacky ideas and fringe science. There are degrees of certainty. We're all certain the earth orbits the sun and a rock falls to the ground, and proposals to the contrary would be dismissed with the certainty they deserve, regardless of how mistaken the Japanese were. The view that cold fusion isn't happening is not that certain, but I don't think the great unwashed, and some of the washed have any appreciation of how remote the possibility is. Almost like a rock being repelled by the earth. You've been singing the same tune for 2 decades. I predict you'll be singing it for another two.
