I agree, Jed, with your description of human nature. I see this same
behavior being applied by people even within the CF field. You would
think they would not be prone to this behavior. But, as you note,
humans are the same no matter the subject. Perhaps, this behavior is
beneficial because it slows progress enough for people to adjust.
Present progress, thanks to the computer that does not suffer from
this limitation, is starting to exceed the ability of many people to
adjust. This failure to adjust does not give optimism about the future.
Ed
On Oct 17, 2013, at 9:20 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Edmund Storms <stor...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
Initially, the idea was not rejected by many people who later found
reasons to reject.
Some of them were standing by, nursing a grudge, waiting to speak
out in public. Especially the MIT plasma fusion group. That's what
Gene Mallove said. They hated it from the moment they heard about
it, and they began scheming to discredit it. They succeeded!
This happened with other discoveries such as the laser.
When it worked on occasion, I found these successes were generally
ignored. They were ignored locally at the laboratories where the
studies were made and later by the DOE panel.
This often happens. There are countless examples in history.
I can suggest three main reasons were used by normally rational,
honest, and educated men to modify what they believed.
1. The claim conflicted with known and expected behavior based on
hot fusion. People assumed CF and HF were the same phenomenon. Some
people still have this belief. . . .
I agree with these three main reasons. I would add a fourth reason:
human nature. Most people reject most novel ideas out of instinct.
People fear novelty. They fear the unknown; that is, unknown places,
sights, smells and other stimuli. This is instinct. It is a product
of evolution. There is a countervailing instinct explore the
unknown. The two instincts are at war with one another. Some people
are more inclined to fear, other to explore. You can observe the
same push-pull fear and attraction in other species. In the 1970s in
Japan I took part in studies in which we measured these effects in
guppies, and in Japanese ground squirrels.
This was masterfully described by Francis Bacon:
"The human understanding, when any preposition has been once laid
down, (either from general admission and belief, or from the
pleasure it affords,) forces every thing else to add fresh support
and confirmation; and although more cogent and abundant instances
may exist to the contrary, yet either does not observe or despises
them, or gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with
violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority
of its first conclusions."
- Novum Organum, 1620
And by William Trotter:
"If we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have
begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely
stated."
- Jed
