Conversations: Pweet

Pweet posted a comment, and it brings up some issues worthy of a blog post. We seem to be establishing a Conversations series here, creating connections and understandings. This will, I expect, expand and will greatly expand when we have more users here with Author privileges. Eventually, we will have a governing structure that is not Abd Says, but here is where we start. Every real journey starts Here, not in some imaginary place.

Before I cover Pweet’s comment, some history. Googling the name, besides a lot of porn (I have no idea why, except that the porn pages have thousands of words at the bottom to trick Google into displaying them), I found what may have been my best post ever to LENR-Forum, put up shortly before I was banned, as a response to Pweet speaks and Gluck responds. As can be expected at my age, I had forgotten about it, though I did immediately recognize it.

As usual with LENR Forum, what might be useful or cogent or thought-provoking is buried in the avalanche of dreck. There is no process for creating or measuring consensus, other than a crude upvote/downvote system that doesn’t sort posts, so to find anything of value takes massive work which mostly isn’t done. We could set up a rating system here that would allow finding the Best Posts on any forum, and that can be done with overall neutrality. However, that’s a suggestion from a chief, a tribal elder. Are there any Indians?

Looking for the original Ego Out posts, I came across one of the strong evidences that Rossi lies. So why not collect these? Rossi Lies.

Little by little, we go far. And for one of those massive Lomax diversions, see this page, which shows how blogs create rumors that are passed on as fact. I knew that aphorism from the Spanish, which he covers, but also from the Arabic, “shweya shweya.” Now, where were we? 

From here on, what Pweet wrote is in plain text, and my comments are in indented italics.

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I think there is little doubt Rossi always knew the real COP of the 1MW plant was nominally one. On that basis, you can be sure the test procedure was arranged from the very beginning to falsify the results to make the COP appear as positive to the extent that the technology would appear valid.

One of my goals is to establish in the cold fusion community (which properly includes genuine skeptics, either of this or that particular claim or of the entire field of “cold fusion”) some ontological sophistication, because it can create a field where conversation is possible. This requires discriminating between “belief” and “fact.” Strictly speaking, all alleged “facts” are beliefs, but when a belief is not controversial and is accepted by all participating, we may take it as fact. There are layers to the sophistication, but for ordinary conversation, it’s not necessary to delve into all of them.

Here, Peter (assuming that is his name from the Gluck mention — he can correct and I’ll fix this) declares a belief. He first states it more neutrally, as “I think there is little doubt,” but he then loses this and simply declares it as a belief. I’m sure he would be able to lay out “reasons” for his belief, but “belief” generally telegraphs some conclusion that is fixed, has become an assumption, even an axiom. And where axioms differ, there is no hope for consensus.

To negotiate consensus famously takes lengthy discussion, and usually facilitation, i.e., people, especially people with strong opinions, may not be able to do this on their own. However, there are people skilled at such negotiation. Few ask for their services, unless they recognize how much more powerful consensus is than entrenched disagreement.

Given the underlying belief, the conclusion stated is reasonable, though not certain. My lack of precision on this is due to the underlying belief not being stated explicitly.

Pweet claims that, at one time, he believed the Rossi claims, or at least was excited by them. Then came October, 2011, which apparently blew his fuses. Now, IH knew all that, I’m sure, with far more information than anyone in the public would have, and yet IH decided, in 2012 to investigate, to “crush the tests,” to risk capital, $1.5 million to start, and they risked even more, $10 million, in 2013, and the probable investment spent was about $20 million.

Pweet did not have adequate information to sanely form a definitive conclusion as to the reality of the Rossi Effect, and did not have adequate information to sanely form a belief about its unreality. Rather, he reacted one way to appearances and then the other way to different appearances.

This is normal human behavior, my commentary here should not be taken as some kind of accusation, it is, to me, simply more-or-less obvious. These comments are not claiming that he was “wrong.” Rather, we make choices based on the preponderance of the evidence we have, and he made a choice. However, he also did more than that. He began arguing for his choice as right. He would benefit greatly from examining this. Holding a belief in one’s rightness takes us straight out of science and the scientific method, into what might as well be called a religion.

I think the long hours spent in the supposed development of new and improved e-cat devices was actually spent in discovering new ways to create the illusion of excess energy production in the ongoing variants of the technology. I believe the Quackecat-X is just another one in the magic series, and I believe the low power output of just 20 watts is a critical part of the planned method of establishing the illusion of excess power.

Pweet has constructed a model of Planet Rossi. We can look at the sequence of Rossi demonstrations, and the flaws found with them, and see this as a development of new ways to imitate excess power and fool observers, as he says. Once we see this sequence, it’s difficult to avoid Pweet’s conclusion.

I use various models to attempt to understand Rossi behavior. The model that he is a deliberate and willful fraud, with no real effect underneath his work, historically, has some difficulties, but all models may have difficulties. As one approach, I attempt to understand Rossi as an inventor who found something of interest, it might be real or an illusion, artifact, and these abound in LENR work, and it takes great care to avoid these errors. The Defkalion history is of high interest here: many simply dismiss the Defkalion results as pure fraud; however, there is an alternate explanation: they had found out how to “make the device generate heat,” with a specific start-up protocol. It did not occur to them that they were learning how to create faulty flow meter readings. Perhaps they knew that there were anomalies in their results, and they did not understand them, and they certainly did not want these noised about. I can come up with a scenario that was major error, but not fraud. Gamberale blew this up, violating his NDA, so they were pissed. But …. we don’t know what happened next, because they essentially disappeared.

The point here is the idea that they taught themselves “the correct way to set up the reaction,” and might have been teaching themselves, instead, “the correct way to create massive errors.” Rossi may have done that. Is it likely? Not particularly, but I’m not yet willing to consider it impossible, because the smoking gun has not been found of total fraud, for the whole history. Rather, individual frauds are coming to light, the fake customer being huge.

Knowing what methods could be used to create the illusion of a large amount of excess heat, the year long 1 megawatt test plant was set up and the wording of the test protocol was carefully chosen specifically to cover the aspects of the test which Rossi knew could be manipulated in such a way as they could be justified by a collection of data which could simply be read off a few meters and measuring devices by some proposed third party expert, who in all probability, simply read a few meters and wrote down the readings. These could be taken as proof of excess energy so long as some other factors were kept effectively secret. Thus the sealed no-access ‘customer area’.

Indeed. Plausible, and this is more or less the “IH story.” We know more about what Penon did than that, though. He was only there a few times. He was depending on data collection, either by Rossi or Fabiani or both, or by a computer system designed by Fabiani, perhaps, continuously accessible to Rossi during the test. Or was it sealed?

Now, this is obvious: this is not how one would design a test on which a payment of $89 million would hang. There is no way that IH would sanely accept those results as a basis for payment, as they were created and gathered and under what we now know were the Doral conditions.

Yet if we assume that Rossi expected payment, I find that this tells me much about his psychology. Rossi simply could not understand that anyone who was not a snake, out to steal his technology or, alternatively, to assassinate his character, would question his honesty and reliability. This is completely obvious from his history, and Lewan remarks on it, more or less. So when he designed a “test,” it had no allowance for skeptical objection, because only a “snake or clown” would question what Rossi Says. There is no room on Planet Rossi for the “loyal opposition.” I.e., genuine or reasonable skepticism. His response to any attempt to verify his claims was to walk away, he did it many times.

Through this behavior, he filtered out any genuine and open and honest — and knowledgeable — skeptics. What I’ve inferred is that IH understood all this by 2012, so they decided to play a role that would create independent testing. The role was to act as if they believed him, and to give him every opportunity to deliver, to give him whatever he wanted “within reason.” Many would think that $10 million was not “within reason.” To them, finding out the truth was worth that. When IH was unable to confirm Rossi’s results, it is natural that he then became suspicious of them. After all, the reality of his results was unquestionable! At the same time, perhaps, Rossi had some problems with reliability, but his meter readings were showing massive heat! It never occurred to him, in this scenario, that this was an artifact he had created by system design, and that a megawatt was otherwise implausible. The heat was just going out the roof vents! (As he wrote.) Great! Did he measure temperatures and air flow rates? Let me guess.

No.

Would it really have been such a huge security risk to the ‘customer’ to have someone look through an open door and observe for a minute some sort of industrial process taking place?
Of course not. But it would be critical to the validity of the test if they noticed there was nothing of any significance happening in the so called ‘customer’ area.

The Rossi “fake customer” device may have been created with an intention to actually use the heat for some chemical process. They might even have hired Bass to work on this, but never got around to it. A day of fake activity could easily have been shown. Mats Lewan has claimed that someone saw such, but we don’t have details to make much of it. What is clear from the evidence we have is that JMP was entirely dependent upon Rossi for cash flow. There was no money there to independently pay relatively small bills that would have been JMP legal responsibility, so the woman handling JMP billing asked Rossi for the money, and he asked her to bill him for some chemicals. In other cases, he simply paid it. The evidence that the customer was a shell created for purpose by Rossi and Johnson is overwhelming at this point, even the trust (apparently a Florida trust, not a U.K. one), that was the apparent JMP owner, had Johnson as sole trustee and was, again, from timing created for purpose. It was not, as implied by Rossi in his email proposing the move to Florida, already in operation as a chemical business and it was definitely not Johnson Matthey, as apparently claimed.

I think Mr Rossi still believes he can win his case so long as he can have the court consider only the words of the written agreement and that the test actually complies close enough to the wording that the agreement can be ruled to be complied with and completed.

Unfortunately for Rossi, he did not comply with the “wording of the agreement,” which set up specified conditions for a “GPT.” He created a fuzzy impression of that, which falls apart of closely examined as to details, most specifically, the “start date of the test.” If Rossi believes he can win the case, he is not listening to his attorneys, possibly, or he has deceived them.

If he can do this without the court having any regard for whether natural justice has been denied then he has a reasonable chance of winning, and that is why he would continue on with it.

As Pweet knows, he can’t do this, for multiple reasons. What he may be able to do is create enough smoke and mirrors that if, say, IH moves for Summary Judgment and it’s granted, he can claim to his followers that this was all unfair, improper, the Judge was probably bribed — he’d need to be careful about that one, raise this after he’s out of the U.S.! — and so, now, he needs the capital to set up his Quark-X factory, or some more E-Cat steam sales, so please support one of his licensees, except, of course, not those snakes, IH.

There are some countries where that would work, but typically, America is not one of them.

I hope not, since I live here.

Natural justice demands that if you pay money for a device or a technology, then that device or technology has to work in the manner claimed. If it does not, or worse still, if it is only made to appear to work by deceit, or knowing deception, the agreement, however it may be worded, is void and of no effect.
On that basis I think it most likely that Mr Rossi is about to lose.

That’s not a difficult prediction, as to the primary case. I don’t see a snowball’s chance in Hell of Rossi winning his primary case and largely expect that it will be dismissed prior to trial, if IH so moves on the grounds I think I understand. What is more difficult is the IH countersuit. I think IH has a running chance of winning it, enough to go to trial if needed. Rossi is running some risk of prosecution for fraud, and a larger risk of a major judgment. At some point his attorneys may become forceful about this, though we may never know. That kind of advice is always highly privileged. 

Yes, if the Agreement was founded in fraud or conducted with fraud, it could be voided on that basis, even if the terms literally seem to require otherwise. This is relatively routine. Thus the Planet Rossi meme that Penon said Yes, IH had to pay, ipso facto, was simply an error, based in a lack of legal understanding, which, after all, is common.