Edmund Storms <[email protected]> wrote: Jed, two different applications of the word random are being applied > without a clear differentiation. The effect in a particular sample involves > a random creation of the required conditions. These conditions are not > controlled, consequently they are present in some samples and not present > in others. >
That is certainly true. Although the ENEA is gradually learning to control conditions better to make cathodes more effective and predictable. My other point is that we know what additional steps are needed to improve cathodes and reduce variability. Metallurgy is not terra incognito. If the problems were completely random, no one would know how to fix them. No one could devise a project to make better cathodes. IMRA France lab would never have achieved the high level of success in boil-off events and sustained high heat. They were able to do that because JM is good at metallurgy. Progress in that project was not by chance, or by luck. > In this sense, the effect is created by a random series of events before > the effect occurs. > Exactly. But we know what kinds of events these are, and with enough money and effort we could eliminate them. The path to progress is clear, even though the performance is erratic at present. The same was true of erratic transistor performance in the 1950s. Transistors would stop working "when someone slammed the door" mainly because of minute levels of impurities. I think researchers knew that was the problem, but it wasn't easy determining what impurities were causing the problems, or how to eliminate them. > However, once CF is made to occur, the effect is real and does not rely > on random measurements. The heat is real and is not based on random > errors. In addition, the various correlations between several behaviors > eliminate any possibility that the measurements produce a random result. > Indeed, that is probably the meaning of "random" that Cude has in mind. > Cude is trying to make these two kinds of random events the same. I feel > sorry for him. His normal life must be Hell because of his inability to > adapt to new ideas. > Oh, I dunno. Many people are happy doing the same old things the same old way. I myself like living in a predictable rut. The only thing remotely interesting or novel about me are my ideas. Oliver Heaviside was famous for living an unvaried, uneventful life, cut off from people, being self-educated. He was an extreme example of a boring homebody living the life of the mind. As Arthur Clarke said, you could summarize his whole life in a few paragraphs. Outside of physics he was uninterested in new ideas or new ways of living. He never rode in an automobile until the last weeks of his life in 1925, when they took him to a hospital. Not to compare myself to Heaviside! - Jed
