Is there a survival benefit for stupidity?

Continuing Hope springs eternal.

Is there a survival benefit for stupidity?

Probably not for stupidity itself, but possibly for persistence in the face of obstacles, if the person does know when to fold.

My son was about ten years old, walking in the woods with his friend. Recognizing poison oak, he told his friend to be careful not to touch it. His friend said, “That’s not poison oak!” My son said, yes, it is. His friend said, “Look!” and rubbed his face with the plant.

He did not lose his eyesight, but it was close. He was in the hospital for quite some time.

The discussion of the Quark-X continued on LENR Forum, with a few patiently explaining the electrical engineering aspects of the claimed “power input,” and others continuing to defend Rossi’s blatantly false statements with irrelevancies. They think those irrelevancies are important, perhaps, but … they don’t make Rossi’s claims factual, and some in the discussion continue to display their own foggy stupidity.

Does this make them happy? Perhaps some need hope to continue living. Personally, I prefer to place my trust entirely in Reality, knowing that I don’t know Reality except maybe a little, knowing that what seems solid and real in my daily life is a construct in the mind, knowing that I learned as a child to ignore most sensory input. And then ever more complex ideas were created, many shared with others, some not.

But Reality is a name, not an idea or explanation. Exploring that is work for a lifetime.

To LENR Forum:

THHuxleynew wrote:

IH Fanboy wrote:

@THHuxleynew: If the resistance of the QuarkX cell itself is negligible during operation (as Rossi had claimed), then there is no inconsistency, as I have pointed out to you before.

IHFB, you did, and were wrong then as well.

I covered this in the last post. There are LF users who seem to be incapable of parsing comments to make them true, when that is possible. Rather, they expect an “enemy” to be wrong about them, they do not recognize that they might misunderstand something, as one example, and don’t really look for it.

I have stated, so some ridicule, that I learn by writing. That is not how I normally learn initially. I learn initially through experience, which includes reading. When a topic comes up that interests me, I read about it. I read a lot! Then I write what I find, and then is when deeper learning starts. It proceeds in two ways: one is that to express what I have found, I need to understand it more deeply than just having a sense of understanding. That sense actually arises in the writing process, often. Sometimes not!

And then people respond to what I write, when I’m lucky. I write in fora where experts are present, and it is “lucky” if they take the trouble to correct my errors, because I do make mistakes. Making an error and recognizing it is probably the fastest way to learn, but many people were conditioned by school experience to avoid making mistakes, and one of the easiest ways is to not make any statements, to not risk being wrong.

That creates a confined life, and the sooner that is recognized, the better!

Ontologically, there is no right or wrong, those are concepts, interpretations, not realities. However, there are concepts and ideas that are more useful and those that are less useful. The physics of electricity is well-known, and highly useful as such. It is not complicated, it does not take higher math. And that’s what is being debated, what is actually not debatable. It gets mixed up with other topics.

Understanding what Rossi published in the Gullstrom paper and wrote about, as well, on his blog, JONP, requires understanding basic electrical concepts. There are some who seem not to understand, or who are arguing a different point, mixing it up with the basics, being incapable of recognizing the Rossi errors (and their own), or refusing to, because Rossi making a mistake with basic concepts of electricity, perhaps, could weaken their hope in the reality of the Rossi Effect or the Quark-X.

It’s a logical non sequitur. Yes, electronic stupidity weakens the idea that Rossi is a Nobel-worthy “scientist,” but a garage inventor, his head full of stupidities, could still come across an effect.

Because of the history, not because of his dumb explanations, I think that Rossi is a fraud or insane or both. The effect is of fraud, “insanity” would be a defense against a criminal charge.

IHFB’s error was in confusing the actual power input to the device, but which can be estimated, IHFB thinks, with an assumption of very low resistance, as Rossi claimed, with what the paper does: claim that the input power is known from what THH describes below. That claim is what is incorrect. Rossi explained this in detail, as shown in the preceding post, and that explanation was utterly mistaken, incorrect, misleading. IHFB is defending the indefensible.

While it may not be intentional, that is a form of trolling. THH continued:

Both the Blackboard and the paper calculate a specific input power from a single voltage, measured across the resistor as stated in the paper and clearly shown on the whiteboard circuit diagram. That is incorrect, and says nothing as to what is the real power. A single measured voltage cannot deliver both input voltage and current. In fact, from the whiteboard, it is clear that the voltage measured is across the resistor and delivers current, but not quark-x voltage.

You can hypothesise that the quark-x power is nevertheless very low, even though not measured or calculated. Rossi can say this afterwards, the way he says many things, with no evidence from the contemporaneous account.

In that case why was he calculating V^2/R and saying in the paper that that was the input power (and also on the whiteboard)?

This is all accurate, but the last paragraph is a rhetorical question, and not necessary. The paper is explicit, as I have pointed out before.

Energy input: V=0.1 R=1 Ohm → W=0.01

That is V^2/R.  From the paper, V is the voltage across the 1 ohm sense resistor, so the power calculated (it is called “energy,” which is an error, this would be the rate of energy input, or power) would be the power dissipated in the sense resistor, not in the device, whereas this is being compared with heat dissipated by the device (from the heating of the oil).

Adrian Ashfield wrote:

P = I 2 ⋅ R

We know the current from the V drop across the 1 ohm R so if R is known so is the power. Rossi states R = 1 or less. I would still like to see the V across the reactor.

Rossi did not  state “R = 1 or less,” as far as I’ve found. He first wrote that the resistance was zero. When that was confronted, it modified it with what would be a practical equivalent, it would seem.

Peter July 23, 2017 at 3:51 PM

The resistance of the E-Cat QX is close to zero, because it id an electric conductor, correct? Did you measure its resistance?

Andrea Rossi July 23, 2017 at 9:26 PM

Yes, it is a conductor, same conductivity of the silver, more or less. Yes, we measured its resistance.

Silver is an extremely good conductor, so, unless the device is extremely thin, the device would have a resistance far lower than one ohm. (Thus justifying his earlier statement of “zero,” which would mean “for practical purposes.” But … this then means that the power input is effectively zero. Not 10 milliwatts as he calculated, which would only be the case if the resistance were one ohm.

If we cannot understand these simple things, how can we expect to understand more complex things?

IH Fanboy wrote:

THHuxleynew wrote:

In that case why was he calculating V^2/R and saying in the paper that that was the input power (and also on the whiteboard)?

Because he considers the internal resistance of the cell itself when in operation to be a trade secret, although he did state that it is essentially zero. And if that is true, then you can use the resistor in the circuit and V^2/R to determine a very close approximation of the input power.

Only if by “input power” one means the total input to the system, but not to the power supply (which will be higher), only to the system consisting of the sense resistor and the device under test. That is not what was implied, and the extensive Rossi explanations of this measurement (or explanations supplied by JONP “readers” with Rossi agreeing “exactly”) were incorrect, completely missing the point. Reading Rossi lately, I often get the sense that he is not understanding questions.

He could simply have given, ab initio, in the paper, the alleged “fact” that resistance was less than some stated value. The resistance could easily be calculated from the voltage across the device. If Rossi’s “silver” comment is factual, that voltage would be very low. He could simply say something like “less than a millivolt.” if so, the power input would be 10 microwatts.

In considering a LENR device, what we always want to know is the power input to the device, to compare with power output (and because power can be “stored” and “released” short-term, we want to know the history, and, where possible, the total energy input and the total energy output. We only want to know the input to a power supply as a check on this; it will always be larger because of heat dissipation in the supply. The Gullstrom paper clearly is claiming an input to the device of 10 mW, without showing a basis for that.

Very simple for Rossi to recover: admit the truth about the measurements, admit that they were inadequate for purpose, and, perhaps, apologize for the confusion. But Rossi never does that!

And if people want to defend Rossi, effectively, do not defend the indefensible, it will make him — and you — look worse, not better.

However, much of the strategy of Planet Rossi has become to attack critics, which is, of course, irrelevant to Rossi Reality.

Paradigmnoia wrote: (in response to Adrian Ashfield)

It is pointless, and possibly counterproductive, to include such an incomplete and potentially misleading experiment description in the report. I suggested the first time the report came out that Gullstrom should leave those experiment sections out of his report if he expects to get it published. Whether or not he was inspired by the Rossi experiments, the reported Rossi experiments as they are now presented add nothing but confusion to the already speculative work of Gullstrom.

Yes.

THHuxleynew wrote:

IH Fanboy wrote:

Because he considers the internal resistance of the cell itself when in operation to be a trade secret, although he did state that it is essentially zero. And if that is true, then you can use the resistor in the circuit and V^2/R to determine a very close approximation of the input power.

No, you cannot. V^2/R has in that case no relation to E2 = Pin (as on the whiteboard). V^2/R bears no relation to the quark-x input power, and therefore to the COP (which Rossi seems to think worth calculating, and calculates with this incorrect method).

V^2/R in that case would approximate the PSU power, but not the quark-X input power.

But it is also highly unlikely a bench PSU would be operated at 0.1V in that way. They don’t like such conditions and there is no reason at all not to have a larger series resistor. The reason for a small resistor is as a current measuring device, not a current determining device.

This is being repeated over and over. It’s simple and clear. Rossi clearly, in the paper, on JONP, and even more in the whiteboard equations, represents the QX input power as 10 milliwatts, and uses this in his COP calculation.

If the resistance were close to zero, the QX power input would also be close to zero. As THH knows — with specialized knowledge of electrical engineering, as has long been obvious — this would be an odd way to use a power supply (“PSU”). They are not designed to operate with precision at 100 millivolts, one-thirtieth of full scale. Without knowing the voltage across the device, or the total power supply voltage, we do not know the device power dissipation. If we trust the statement of very low resistance, we have an upper limit of 10 milliwatts, but this isn’t in the Gullstrom paper, in spite of the problem being brought up rapidly (on ECW!) and taken quickly to Rossi for clarification. No clarification on this appeared.

(By the way, it is common on Planet Rossi for “conservative measures” to be used as an excuse for not presenting precise data and analysis from available data. That is not what engineers do. They will present accurate data, then possibly, in later analysis, explicitly make “conservative” assumptions. Failing to report all the data then makes it much easier for artifacts to remain hidden.)

Axil wrote:

The report was submitted to arXiv. The intent for that submission was to subject the paper to peer review comments. In fact. a revised paper was subsequently published to address some questions that were submitted in the initial gogo around. I wonder if these new questions about the paper regarding the COP calculations would generate changes to explicate the thinking behind the calculations. Is it too late to submit questions?

Intention according to whom? There were two revisions so far. They did not address what Axil is calling the “new questions,” and the questions are not new. They were explored practically immediately on ECW, and questions were taken back to Rossi for clarification, and the “clarifications” simply repeated the errors. Axil is aware there are some problems. There is no sign of any actual interactive critique taking place with corrections. Maybe it will appear, otherwise Gullstrom’s career is toast. He seems to not be pursuing his PhD any more, according to Mats Lewan, who promised more information. The story is — I have not seen it clearly confirmed — that Gullstrong did not witness the QX demo, so the whole thing is Rossi Says, other than, likely, Gullstrom’s theory presentation (and I have seen no connection between the theory and the actual experiments claimed to be confirming it.)

IH Fanboy wrote:

THHuxleynew wrote: [quoted above, repeating only this:}

No, you cannot.

He was responding to IHFB’s:

you can use the resistor in the circuit and V^2/R to determine a very close approximation of the input power.

Yes you can.

IHFB is arguing confidently with an expert, in the expert’s field. I’d call that stupid, particularly if he learns nothing.

It is in fact a conservative approximation of the input power (assuming Rossi’s assertion about the cell itself having effectively a zero resistance is true).

A “conservative estimate” is not a “very close approximation.” In this case, good information was available, easily. All Rossi had to do was move one of the voltmeter probes to the other side of the device (i.e., to the line between the device and the PSU), and he’d have had the voltage on the device, and from the resistor voltage drop, the current through the device, and then an accurate measure of the input power; if the resistance was actually like that of silver, that voltage might not be measureable, i.e. it would be the same as on the other side of the device, within the precision of the voltmeter, which had a resolution of 100 μV (and the two meters, supposedly connected to the same points, showed 99.8 and 100.2 mV. What is the accuracy?

The meter on the right appears to be a Klein tools MM600. I could find no accuracy rating for it. Nor could I find data on the Mitek meter.

In any case, with silver-conductivity and a current of 100 mA, I’d expect very low voltage, probably well under 100 microvolts. At 100 microvolts, the power input would be 10 microwatts. That’s a factor of a thousand different from Rossi’s “estimate” of 10 mW. Rossi did not state it as an estimate, but as a value calculated from measures. This was incredibly sloppy unless it’s worse, deliberately deceptive.

Accompanied by an explanation that was totally bogus. Yet IHFB still defends it.

Think of it this way: if the cell has effectively zero resistance when in operation, then you can consider it as a good conductor (such as a wire) as an approximation. How would you measure the power in that case? By doing as Rossi has done. So why didn’t Rossi just take the voltage reading across both the resistor and the cell and use both resistances in the calculation? Because he wanted to keep the specific values related to the cell a trade secret. Is this ideal for the peanut gallery? No. Is it what happened and does it make sense in that context? Yes.

If it has “effectively zero resistance,” then the meter across the resistor is “effectively” across the power supply. How you would measure power input to the cell in that case would be, not what Rossi did, but by measuring the voltage across the device at the known current (known from the voltage drop across the resistor. You could do it by moving one lead from what he had, same meters. So, then, IHFB assumes that Rossi wants to conceal the resistance of the cell. There is no way for him to report data for a power input calculation, allowing COP calculation, without revealing “something” about the cell resistance. However, Rossi has, in fact, revealed information about the resistance, it is “like silver.” So the problem with giving data supporting that is?

No, Rossi, long obfuscated details that were not necessary to conceal. His friends justified this as him wanting to look flaky, to discourage imitation. So, then, when people point out that this looks flaky (or even deception), are his friends surprised? The very theory that allowed them to continue to believe in Rossi reality (the smartest of them) leads to that result. He looks like he is insane or a fraud, to neutral observers! Those who actually want to know, like people who might invest in imitating the technology, but also everyone else who actually looks at the information carefully.

Adrian Ashfield wrote:

THHuxleynew wrote:

V^2/R ?

Wat are you talking about?

He is talking about electrical engineering, his expertise, and about what Rossi and Gullstrom actually wrote. You are talking about something else, don’t understand what is being writtten, but are sure that it is “dirt digging,” when that dirt is simply the truth. You know less about people and life than you do about Rossi’s work and electrical engineering, and that’s a shame at your age. You don’t have a lot of time to remedy it. I recommend starting immediately, by stopping all your reactivity and just attempting to understand what is being written. THH and Paradigmnoia have been saying it over and over, explaining it in various ways.

I^2 = 0.109 so power = 1 x 0,190

Always state and keep accurate the units, or you will easily go astray. The math is completely incorrect.

Assume the reactor is 1 ohm.

That is not what Rossi stated, it is far from it. He actually wrote “zero,” then said that it was negligible, comparable to silver, a very good conductor.

If the reactor were 1 ohm, which is maybe a hundred times the resistance of silver (Rossi’s statement was quite vague as to actual meaning. Rossi makes statements, not to convey reality, but to create impressions he wants. This can be found all through the case documents in Rossi v. Darden. He may have some way of thinking in mind that makes his statements true, but the problem is that ordinary human beings — not Rossi — will misinterpret them, and the misinterpretations somehow end up being what Rossi wants them to think. This is a sophisticated kind of lying. It might arise accidentally, in someone who thinks in a particular way.)

With 100 mA current, which we have from 100 mV across the sense resistor, the power dissipation in the sense resistor will be 10 mW. If the device is also one ohm, it will have the same dissipation, so the input power for a COP calculation would be what Rossi states, 10 mW.

It the output is 20 W COP = 183.

What’s an order of magnitude among friends?

If the resistance of the reactor is less, the COP goes up

That’s correct. If. And if the power is correctly measured, and a series of ifs.

This then has to divided by the fraction of the time not in self sustain.

The input power was stated as DC. There is, then, no control through input power and no other visible method of control. Rossi is keeping his followers in the dark and feeding them bullshit. He uses words like “self sustain” and they go crazy with speculation. A plasma device stores an amount of energy in the plasma. When plasma heating is turned off, that energy will radiate for a time. There is a time delay between the input of energy and its appearance in a heat exchanger. What was called the “duty cycle” implies other than DC, so “DC” may be misleading. The implication in the Gullstrom paper was that the heat was measured with steady input power, not power turning on and off with some short duty cycle.

The data was mysterious, heat rise of less than 2 degrees C, for a period less than two seconds. That is not at all how to measure heat with any accuracy.

If Adrian chooses to trust Rossi, in spite of the obvious balogna, that’s his privilege. However, he is joining a long line of observers and investors who tried trusting Rossi. Most got burned, some actually lost significant money. Rossi sold licenses, you know, and the account I have is that he did not actually return the money, he merely said he was doing it. That might be misleading or some misunderstanding. But Rossi walked with $11.5 million minus his expenses, with that customer gaining absolutely nothing but the experience of being fleeced.

(Their willingness to take the risk is appreciated by me, they were not fools, though Axil is pushing that idea. They saw the ambiguities and problems and decided to “kill the tests.” And it did pay off for them in a different way, with the Woodford investment, which then allowed them to spend much more money on other LENR approaches. Still no cigar, but that’s LENR. This is not an easy field.) Ashfield continued:

I would be happy with a COP = 200 Obviously Rossi thinks the resistance of the reactor would give clues to others. I think it likely that with an audience of 70 he will show the COP in a believable manner. You seem just bent on finding anything wrong with what Rossi has said and miss the big picture. If the E-Cat QX works half as well as he claims it will be a sensation. If it doesn’t work all your dirt digging won’t matter anyway.

Rossi does not have to reveal the actual resistance of the reactor to provide usable data on power, and if he doesn’t want to provide usable data, why the paper (supposedly as a confirmation of Gullstrom’s theory) and why talk about it at all? Ashfield tells us what he’d be happy with, and then he focuses on Rossi’s excuse. If the QX works a tenth as well as he claims, it would be a sensation, but under one condition: independent confirmation. Otherwise it is all Rossi says, and we have been in that condition since 2011, with occasional appearances of something that looked a little different but that turned out to be the same old same old.

Rossi claimed, remember, to have a commercial reactor ready for sale and installation and usage, before the end of 2011. He actually sold that reactor to IH. It appears that it never performed adequately for a commercial application. Rossi has been saying since 2011, “let the market judge.” The market has judged, and is not actually interested, as far as we can tell. Only a few diehard fans continue to push for belief in Rossi.

I recommend assuming that Rossi reality is as unlikely as it looks. If that is an error, surely Rossi can remedy the problem! But not with Rossi Says, which, in fact, would contradict his own maxim. What Rossi Says is not the market.

IH Fanboy wrote:

LENR Calender wrote:

Or show me your math that proves your assertion.

Assume the reactor is a wire. Then measure power of the system. V^2/R.

As has become all too common, the argument continues in thin air. what was LENR Calendar asking for proof of? IHFB did not show any math, only a formula, without specifying exactly what the formula would calculate and what the variables were. Yes, I can make it up.

He is suggesting that the system be treated as if the reactor were a wire, with negligible resistance (which is what Rossi actually claimed, it is what he meant by “zero resistance.”) In this case, the voltage across the resistor would be the power supply voltage, and “they system” is the combination of the sense resistor and the device. But this is useless for purpose, because the purpose is to calculate the COP, which is what Rossi did with inadequate information.

He is arguing the obvious as a response to what he completely misses.

What was the “assertion” LENR Calendar mentioned?

IHFB had written:

It is in fact a conservative approximation of the input power (assuming Rossi’s assertion about the cell itself having effectively a zero resistance is true). 

This can be parsed to make it true, but that would ignore aspects of the statement and also the context. The Gullstrom paper, and the Rossi whiteboard, and JONP comments calculate “the input power” and use it for COP, which would then be using a number that is not an “approximation” of the input power in a COP calculation, and it requires the zero resistance assumption (which had not  been stated) and it requires that the voltmeters simply be measuring the power supply input  voltage, and it requires a series of other unlikely assumptions (such as controlling the reactor without putting significant voltage or power into it).

“Conservative” is not “approximation.” Assumptions can be conservative, but an “approximation” is an attempt to derive a value for a quantity, it being understood that it may contain some error. The data was not presented in that way. Rossi did not argue in that way, this is all post-hoc attempt to justify Rossi’s statements, in some cases not showing much knowledge of what Rossi actually wrote.

The statement is literally true, with possible meaning for “conservative approximation,” but misleading in context. I would not, however, use “conservative approximation” for an approximation of an upper bound. I would call it an “upper bound”!

This lack of precision in language foments endless argument. The imprecision continues in the latest IHFB response. What is the “power of the system”? What Rossi was showing in his whiteboard presentation was the input power to the QX, not the total power output of the power supply. What is “the system”? The measured power was not dissipated in the QX, it is not input power.

We don’t know the input power. If we assume zero resistance, we would then know the input power: it would be zero. And this leads to many problems, cheerfully ignored by Planet Rossi with “wait for the demo.”

LENR Calender wrote:

 

IH Fanboy wrote:

Assume the reactor is a wire. Then measure power of the system. V^2/R.

OK I think I understand where you’re coming from now.

But in your world, we’re just powering the rest of the system. And we’re not sending any energy to the reactor (since R=0).

How do we even turn on the reactor if no energy ever goes to it? Why is it even in the circuit?

Indeed. Psychokinesis. That’s why Rossi has to be there. I called it Rossi Grease, some years back. Look, ask a question, get an answer!

IH Fanboy wrote:

LENR Calender wrote: [the above]

I appreciate you seeing my point, but I must disagree that it is “my world.” This is Rossi’s world and I’m just peering into it and making sense of it for you.

This is hilarious. This is the very definition of “Planet Rossi.” The world of Rossi and those for whom it “makes sense.” If it makes sense to him, it is “his world.” In this case, the world is best defined by what IHFB ignores and sets aside, the zero-power-input problem. We can always find ways to rationalize about any statement. However, too often, this involves ignoring a great deal of evidence and argument, as IHFB is going here. He thanks LENRC for “seeing” his point, though his point was obvious all along, it wasn’t something obscure requiring great effort to understand, but he makes no effort to even acknowledge LENRC’s point, that “zero resistance” makes little sense in context.

It would be an astonishing result in itself if a plasma device has negligible resistance. If Rossi is actually seeing that, no wonder he would want to keep it secret. But he didn’t keep it secret! Basically, living on Planet Rossi requires accepting a series of internal contradictions; explanations are tailored to fit the immediate desired “understanding.” They are not simultanously considered. The history is completely set aside, as if it doesn’t matter at all.

However, on Planet Earth, real people have reputations and when someone develops a reputation for deception, they will be ignored. On Planet Rossi, some justification for the deception is invented. He had to do it because of the terrible patent law. Even when the explanations are themselves preposterous (if Rossi had a real technology, he’d be basking in the sun in a nice place, IH did, in fact, raise the $89 million and more and would have been completely willing to support him to the hilt, if only he’d have shown them how to make devices that actually worked, and Rossi had already decided, by mid-2016, that he didn’t trust them. After all, they had received $50 million from Woodford and none of that went to him! And this is the story that Mats Lewan reports, as if this were perfectly normal behavior.

The wire analogy is simply one way to think of the circuit given Rossi’s statement that the reactor has an effective internal resistance of zero. Would it be better for us if Rossi measured the voltage across the reactor and the resistor, and included values for the resistance of the reactor as well as the resistor itself? Yes. Did he do that for us? No. Why? He explained why.

Rossi’s explanation (“secret!”) does not explain why he misrepresented the factual situation, with his phony JONP “explanations” of the measurements, and the deceptive — or at least blatantly incorrect or misleading — Gullstrom paper explanations. IHFB thinks that one would measure device power as Rossi did — given the assumption of zero resistance, but how would one know that the resistance was low? The answer is simple: measuring the voltage across the device at the known current. And if he didn’t want to reveal the actual resistance, simple: state an upper bound for the voltage, which then would allow stating an upper bound for the power input (i.e., a “conservative value.”

He has effectively revealed the “secret,” that the device has very low resistance, comparable to that of “silver.” So there is no business purpose for the errors, unlike what IHFB claims. It is all obvious obvious: an attempt to cover up and deprecate criticism of Rossi’s claims, without actually answering it — or even defending Rossi as “eccentric,” and perhaps “erratic,” which Rossi’s friends have done. Basically, Rossi’s claims don’t make sense, when put together with the known history and reasonable assumptions.

The practical effect is that no sane investor is going to touch Rossi with a ten-foot pole unless Rossi provides independent and strong test results. Rossi already spent his “assumption of good faith” capital. That account is empty. There may still be people willing to dump money on Rossi without proof, based on his convincing personality (it obviously worked for many), but it won’t be “sane investors,” IH explored that road, thoroughly.

LENR Calender wrote:

IH Fanboy wrote: [LENRC quotes the above]

 

Fair enough.

My intuition is that Rossi’s device could have R~0 when operating. Which means that input power ~0 (R*I^2).

Right, that could be the idea.

However, it must have received some energy at some point. So either R is dependent on temperature (seems likely), or the start up necessitates high Amps.

This then leads to the problem that instantaneous power can be very deceptive. Consider a capacitor. It can be charged up, which requires so much energy to reach a certain voltage. Then the capacitor can discharge, and during the discharge period, COP could be infinite, i.e., zero input, but positive power out. Heat devices can accumulate heat. There are some arguments that certain Rossi “self-sustain” demonstrations were this. Not difficult to do, but accurate measurement of all input energy and all output energy would discriminate the possibility that storage is involved. There are also practical limits on how much energy can be stored in a certain volume or mass. We have contradictory information about the QX. Input, Rossi has confirmed on JONP in addition to it being in the Gullstrom paper, is DC power. That literally rules out “duty cycle.” But perhaps Rossi’s expression is a little (cough, cough) “imprecise.” After all, English is not his first language.

In any case, Rossi must account for energy for the whole experiment. It’s possible that his COP calculation is correct and that R(reactor)=0, but that’s just a measure of instant COP.

Right. Storage, for example, or something else.

Who cares what power the resistance in the circuit receives. If what Rossi says is true, the instant COP is actually much higher as the device is receiving ~0 input power.

Yes. Obvious. But then there is the control problem, which LENRC also brought up before, ignored by IHFB.

Perhaps his device is in SSM and the reactor is not receiving any power, but then what’s the point of measuring V^2/R on some random resistance. Seems totally off topic.

Right. The device is reputed to be simple. It would need a decent level of control power. The power in the sense resistor is a huge red herring that Rossi waved in front of Gullstrom (probably virtually). Gullstrom fell for it. Mission accomplished, a magnificence.

Physicists who are not paying close attention are no smarter than anyone else. I highly recommend reading Feynman, Surely You are Joking. The man paid attention to everything around him. As a result, he was often considered a total genius for what was really an ordinary observation, but of something that nobody else was paying attention to. He was not perfect, he made a mistake with Papp, though I don’t see how he could have anticipated what then happened. Papp, by the way, did do an explosion in a desert. Papp also ran convincing demonstrations.

I wrote this in 2011: there is no way to distinguish between a good demonstration and a magic show, unless there is independent verification, and that does not mean mere “observation.”

In 2011, there were many “demands” that Rossi show this or that. I pointed out then that Rossi was not obligated to satisfy our curiosity. When I point out the lack of independent verification of the Rossi Effect, it is not to claim that he must provide more information. It is only, in fact, to point out why the smart money is not on Rossi at all. There is plenty of doubt, from his history, and there is no independent verification of the contrary.

There are enough problems with LENR that we don’t need more confusion from what is almost certainly insane or a fraud. And Rossi does not, if what he has is real, need us to praise him. His results would handle that. He could have been selling power in Sweden, with that 1 MW reactor, or with another made like it, since 2011. Rossi claimed, to Lewan after he withdrew his lawsuit, that he was blocked by his agreement with IH, but that was complete bullshit. Yes, they had a right of first refusal, so, simple: he could have extracted more money from them, or he was free to deal with the Swedes, and anyone else outside his territory.

Rossi’s story makes no sense. It doesn’t even make much sense as a con, as often pointed out. Hence my default hypothesis of insanity. Insanity is always a logical possibility for human beings. People’s actions do not necessarily “make sense.” The rationalizations made up for Rossi behavior typically don’t consider all the issues, just what the rationalization might explain. So … “he doesn’t want to reveal the actual resistance of the QX” can seem to make sense, except that … he does reveal it! It’s close to zero! And that is so remarkable that if there is a clue in there, it’s been revealed. Planet Rossi got heavily diverted by the “negative resistance” of plasmas, which most flat-out did not understand.

THHuxleynew wrote: (to IHFB)

(Essentially the same thing, on the point of input power measurement, as others have written. included:)

What you suggest is in any case not what Rossi said he did in the paper, nor the whiteboard, nor originally in response to further questioning.

It is fair to state that “if [assumption]” then the Rossi estimate of power was correct, or was conservative, or something like that. But this then ignores a series of issues. For me, the issue here is that what Rossi Says proves, once again, to be unreliable, in areas where we can check, such as basic physics. So does this say anything about areas we cannot check?

IH Fan Boy wrote:

 

THHuxleynew wrote: (what is quoted above)

THH, your thinking is narrow and quite constrained. Do you not suppose that Rossi and his team have measured the device in every which way? Why wouldn’t they?

Clear thinking is always “narrow and constrained.” Fuzzy thinking is broad and unspecific, making unstated assumptions. FUD is promoted fuzzy thinking designed to raise doubt in a desired direction, and to distract from clear thinking.

A sincere and useful response to a statement like THH’s, begin with “Yes.” Not with an accusation of being “narrow,” which is an accusation which could be made about any clear and true statement.

Personally, I would not “suppose” anything about what Rossi did, and I don’t know if he actually has a “team.” Who would it be? Looking at what Rossi actually used, in the Gullstrom photo, I see a primitive measurement set-up, not something sophisticated. I would not think, in this day and age, of running experiments like this with manual recording of data, because the data acquisition equipment that would record data continuously and with adequate accuracy is cheap. I bought, for use in the planned SPAWAR replication (that I never actually did), a LabJack. A bit over $100, use it with any USB port on any computer. Many channels. Easy. And I’d use a temperature sensor that would output a voltage that the LabJack could record. Not a digital thermometer to be read manually, and especially not if the data collection period were short, as claimed in the Gullstrom report.

Now, maybe Rossi actually did that. I see what looks like the back of a digital oscilloscope, maybe. But … I would make no assumptions. Penon used the wrong flow meter for the expected flow, guaranteed to generate low-resolution results. He used the wrong pressure gauge for the conditions, and recorded the critical steam temperature with a low-resolution instrument. Was this just eccentricity, a garage inventor’s make-do? Or was it deliberate obfuscation?

I think that with years of observation of Rossi, with consistently questionable demonstrations and just as much consistency in avoiding independent testing, I can make a preliminary assessment of this. It’s obfuscation. I saw this as a possibility in 2011, and wrote about it, mostly privately to the CMNS list. I also saw the possibility then that there was a real Rossi Effect. Now, I consider that much less possible.

I don’t mind making predictions that could turn out to be wrong.

Do you really suppose that they have only measured it the way that is shown on the whiteboard? Or perhaps they have measured it only in the way that it is described in the paper. Or maybe they have measured it only in the way that it was described in response to further questioning? LOL.

THH does not state anything about what Rossi might have done. That is speculation. He wrote about what was actually reported and shown, as he said: in the Gullstrom paper, on the whiteboard, and in his explanations on JONP.

“LOL” is a favorite acronym for trolls who laugh at what they either don’t understand or pretend to not understand.

Or maybe Rossi always simply assumed the resistance of the reactor was zero, and didn’t bother to ever actually measure it. LOL.

Prediction: Nothing will come of the Quark-X. It will disappear, as the E-Cat 1 MW has disappeared even as Rossi claimed to have sold how many of them? Quite a few!

I’m not laughing. I find the whole affair tragic. Rossi lost his children in his earlier marriage, over the trouble that he created (either directly or by failure to prepare adequately, his paranoia preventing him from obtaining the necessary support). If his technology was real, he had it completely made in the shade, with the IH deal. If not, he could easily have walked with the payments (for legal reasons I won’t explain here, IH took that risk, knowingly). Instead, he spent a lot of that money on useless legal fees, for a lawsuit that was doomed from the beginning.

Planet Rossi has forgotten all the bluster from him about how he was going to demolish Industrial Heat. Then Lewan swallows the story that the return of the IP was all he wanted. He could have obtained that, much more easily without the expense and risk of the lawsuit.

At this point, with the experiments reported in the Gullstrom paper, Rossi surely knew the resistance, at least to a decent estimate, because he would have been looking at the power supply, even if he didn’t use a voltmeter to directly measure the input voltage to the QX. I assume, however, that he did actually measure the device voltage, but moved the probe for the photograph, so that instead of measuring power and current (through the voltage across the sense resistor, the standard way to do it), he had two meters on the current. With the two meters on the power supply (voltage and current), the basic information was there. The meters would add some precision, that’s all. (the power supply that has been claimed to match the photo, it might, has meters that read to 30.00 volts and 5.000 amps. So the precision on the current would be fine. It would still be 10% on the voltage (i.e., 10 millivolts out of 100.)

He knew that he was not disclosing the actual power, so the insanity is that he pretended it, and that’s what THH and others have been pointing out.

Rossi lies — pretends and deceives — even when there is no sensible purpose to it, in actual context. At best, it must be noticed that he never admits error (and attacks others based on his own misunderstandings, real or pretended). All this indicates he cannot be trusted.

Adrian Ashfield wrote:

oldguy wrote:

How is the output measured? How is the temp measured? Does he assume blackbody radiation?

As Rossi mentioned earlier & I later quoted, in his on going experiments he surrounds the E-Cat QX with a liquid and measures the temperature rise. He doesn’t have to assume blackbody radiation. What he will do in the demo remains to be seen. You really need to do some homework.

Ashfield does not really address the issues raised, but gives a partial answer. There were actually two measures, the first experiment and the second experiment. In the first experiment, the radiation was measured and blackbody radiation was assumed (very unlikely to be accurate). That is, an assumption of blackbody radiation was used to infer temperature as well as radiated power. It was calculated as 245 W.

In the second experiment, details are shallow, but it appears that the device was surrounded with 18 g. of oil, and the temperature rise in a period of time (given as 1.8 sec) was given as 1.58 degrees C. The temperature was measured with a digital thermometer with manual read-out, and with a precision of 0.1 C. From this, power was calculated to be 20 W (and an explanation was given that it was run at lower power “in order to not burn the equipmet [sic].”

oldguy doesn’t “need” to do anything in order to ask a question. He might need to do something to get answers, because he is sure not getting them from Ashfield, whose knowledge of what Rossi has claimed appears shallow and very selective.

oldguy also wrote, in that same post:

How is the device isolate[d] to be assured there are no hidden wires or use of supports to carry current?

No attempt appears to have been made to do this. What amounts to an in-house experiment would not ordinarily be designed to rule out fraud (which is next to impossible in a controlled demonstration anyway).

Practically nobody familiar with Rossi will believe what is shown November 24, anyway, no matter what. That’s the heritage of his history, and the only way for him to overcome that is not with more “impressive” demonstrations, but actual independent testing by someone reliable, with a reputation to protect, ideally chosen by a prospective investor, having real money potentially at stake. Not by Rossi, not as Rossi chose Penon, a total set-up for failure.

Or Rossi could simply sell power, as he seems to be looking to do. Selling power to a co-op which already has a traditional power source could reduce their cost, and they would measure the power to confirm what Rossi claims to be delivering (i.e., what JMP actually agreed to do in Doral but never did, they had no means of measurement). So the co-op has very low risk, and Rossi, if the technology is real and market-ready — as he has been claiming since 2011 — could give them a very attractive price. And train someone else to actually run the damn thing. If it’s real and commercially ready, it should not require continual Rossi presence.

These arguments are not new, but Planet Rossi ignores them and instead they praise Rossi’s brilliant business plan that postpones profit until a time that never seems to come unless he convinces someone to pay for a license instead of power or an actual working power plant.

 

Author: Abd ulRahman Lomax

See http://coldfusioncommunity.net/biography-abd-ul-rahman-lomax/

13 thoughts on “Is there a survival benefit for stupidity?”

  1. Truly great work Abd, I just love these kinds of articles. Adrian Ashville is one of my favorites as is is so profoundly stupid.
    One of the things that this debacle teaches us though, is the modern miracle of the electric grid, there is so much power flowing through it . This is the reason that Rossi will no matter what the claim never runs his devises on batteries, there is not enough energy in them.
    As fun as this is, and keep it up , this was a GREAT article, but it is beating a very dead bloated,diseased, dead ,horse. What about the others like BLP and the other one I’m sure they are intentional frauds too, but I’ve never watched them as closely as clown with snakes so the is some tiny chance that one of them might show an interesting effect. Do they? Who is showing the best legitimate work. The guy at Missouri? I believe IH although incredibly stupid, viv a vis AR, is actually spending millions of dollars in LENR research in an honest attempt. I’m pretty sure with a billion dollars and ten years there will be nothing of interest. But , they could surprise me at least they are not criminals, just criminals stupid. I would like to hear of some hope for this forlorn field, although if people want energy they could just not shut the fission reactors made by their predecessors and it actually does do transmutation which the fanboys do adore.

    1. BLP is not a fraud.

      I do not know where he got this but Shane D posted this on LENR Forum.

      Shane D
      Master
      11 hours ago
      New
      I hesitate to post this as I am starting to wonder about BrLP, but in support of open science:

      Randy Mills
      Nov 13 9:56 AM
      We are making great progress. I just filed patents on a new MDH thermodynamic cycle that is amazing. Engineering program is progressing well. More validation completed. Fantastic results on hydrino energetic material reactions. Just isn’t advantageous to constantly publicly announce and share our results.

      1. Alan Smith is Moderator on LENR Forum.

        Shane D asked Alan this today.

        Is anything else going on at the DPS other than 70 people staring at a small fluid filled box?

        Alan replied to Shane D

        More than you could possibly imagine. Tell you afterwards.

    2. I wrote about BLP years ago and don’t find there is enough there there, but I will say this: I saw a video demonstration last year that was truly amazing. The screen goes white and one can hear someone shouting Turn It Off! Now, that was impressive, they know how to put on a show!

      The Defkalion demo (the one with the flow meter failure) was boring, I walked out of the auditorium at ICCF-18. As McKubre has said, watching LENR is like watching paint dry. Even if it’s working!

  2. The input power to the QX device is not determined by the power dissipated in the current-sense resistor, and this is blindingly obvious to anyone who has any competence in electrical measurements. It’s therefore also obvious that the people who accept Rossi’s (and Gullstrom’s) calculations as valid are incompetent. In the same way, the data presented for Doral was internally inconsistent, and could not be true unless Conservation of Energy was violated.

    The interminable discussions between the (provably incompetent) people who believe Rossi has a working technology, and the competent people who point out the problems with the measurements, gets a bit silly. It’s true that Rossi has managed to string out the believers for longer than I’d thought possible, and that he’ll have a pretty full house for his “demonstration” of the device on Nov. 24th (and it seems ECW will even be running a live-stream video of it).

    As a philosophical point, I have to admit the possibility that Rossi may have something astounding. Based on the history, though, the chances of him telling the truth this time are vanishingly small, and so far the measurement methods follow the normal pattern of being somewhat odd and inconclusive. If we take the input power, then the 1 ohm resistor with around 100mV across it dissipates 10mW. The QX device, being in series, will also draw 100mA and the power it takes will be thus 1/10 of the voltage across it, and as Abd has noted that voltage is not specified. If we use a Silver wire instead of maybe 10 milliohms then the power dissipated in that wire would be around 100 microwatts and the voltage across the QX and sense resistor would be 101mV. You could run the whole thing from an AAA battery with a series resistor, rather than use the bench PSU. Incidentally I’m pretty sure my 30V 2A bench PSU would happily deliver 100mA on the current-limit, since the current-limit has a 10-turn pot – no great problem. At 200mA/turn that’s half a turn up from zero or around 1.8° per mA. We can be fairly certain though that a plasma won’t be struck at 30V (GDTs (gas discharge tubes used for voltage-limiting) have a much smaller gap for 30V devices and those are the lowest-voltage plasma-based devices I’ve seen) and that the actual strike voltage will likely be several hundred volts for a 1.5cm gap. That implies something other than a 30V PSU, which we’re not being told about.

    As usual with Rossi, we’re being asked to not look behind the curtain and to accept data that is inconsistent with reality. I should really put the effort into a full analysis of the available data, but I don’t really see the gain in so doing, given that the data is so obviously wrong. My days of being able to believe six impossible things before breakfast are long over….

    Though it’s not good practice to dismiss things as impossible without investigation, it is reasonable to stop such investigation once the data is shown to be wrong or evidence of bad measurements turns up. There’s thus not a lot of point in spending the time watching Rossi’s next demo except to be able to talk about it with slightly more information. I’ll bet he won’t use an AAA battery to drive it, though.

    1. I’m quite willing to believe six impossible things before breakfast, if they are fun and inspiring. My experience: some of then actually happen, or other shifts occur that were “not going to happen anyway.” It’s actually part of my training, and it works. But it is not pie in the sky, this is just about how the brain works. “Impossible” is a limiting story that shuts down possibilities — obviously. What is impossible may be one particular way of looking at something and understanding it, and reality might be different in some way that we don’t anticipate.

      The brain is really quite an amazing instrument, more than we often think.

      1. Abd – my training, on the other hand, has entailed reducing the amount that I take “on faith” and thus believe to be true without data to back it up. Experimental results are truth, though since some of the measurements are based on one thing affecting something else and there may be a chain of such processing before the data pops out the other end, it requires also knowledge of the measurement process to make a decision on the quality of that data. The explanation of why it happens is constructed to explain the results we have and to be able to predict what will happen in other circumstances, and that explanation may well be wrong. We find out if it is wrong when we do something that hasn’t been done before and see whether the predictions hold. If they don’t hold, then the theory is wrong, but if they do then the theory survives until an experiment is done that proves it is insufficient as an explanation. I thus see the foundations of physics as always subject to requiring re-thinking if new data turns up. On the other hand, that “impossible” occurrence (because our theories say it won’t happen) does need some solid evidence in order to make the theory-change required.

        It seems to me that we’re approaching the same ideal from different directions. Reality is likely different than what we think it is, and what is regarded as impossible may not be. Instead of believing the impossible thing, though, I speculate as to whether there is a way that it might happen, since I see beliefs as an impediment to seeing the truth.

        1. Faith is trust, not “belief to be true.” It’s a crucial distinction. Yes. Results are truth (unless truly faked.) Interpretations are distinct from results. The goal of explanation is, indeed, prediction, not “truth.” We explain with models, and models are not reality. When I accepted “believing six impossible things before breakfast,” I was affirming Lewis Carroll, actually, and “believing” in this context simply means allowing an idea to live, not killing it immediately with “Wrong!” “Impossible!” It actually means postponing judgment.

          There are then heuristics for the efficient allocation of time. They are not “truth,” they are, like other ideas, tools. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is not “truth.” There is no “requirement” in realilty. That statement can cover up a host of assumptions. “require” for what? What defines an “extraordinary claim” and how is “extraordinary evidence” different from ordinary evidence, and is ordinary evidence defective because it is “ordinary”?

          The enterprise of science has developed powerful models that have been very successful in certain ways. However, is there evidence that the models are complete? Is that idea falsifiable? My general definition of pseudoskepticism is skepticism that forgets to be skeptical of self, that reserves it for others. Pseudoskepticism is actually a kind of belief, in the wrongness of others, in discounting the experience and ideas of others, often without understanding it. It is dark and ugly when it is fixed and rigid, which it easily becomes.

  3. In a way Rossi has come a long way with the QX.
    A few months ago few people thought it existed.
    Now they are arguing if and how it works.
    I am happy that i know nothing about the technical
    part and avoid the arguments because of this.

    1. Yes Sam,isn’t it fun, but no rational or intelligent people have any doubt of this buffoon’s criminal plans. A long time ago there were those who argued how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

      1. Hi Paul
        Well Paul I definitely not intelligent in the technical.
        But I like to think I am in
        judging people.I think Rossi
        even factoring in his flaws
        has a good chance of being
        successful.
        Regards
        Sam

      2. People argued about that because some were right and some were wrong, and the ones that were wrong believed that anyone with a contrary opinion was a heretic or devil, thus actually doing the devil’s work. The ones that were right knew that it didn’t matter how many there were, and … it could be whatever, who cares about how many? Is this going to make any difference in our salvation? Faith makes a difference, not belief in ideas.

    2. The people who are now mostly speculating about how it works are people who knew it existed (i.e., a claimed device) long ago. I’m not speculating how it works, I’m looking at what evidence Rossi has presented, and at this point it appears to be entirely Rossi Says, and I do not trust what Rossi Says. He has said too much that was clearly deceptive, whether or not he believes it himself. I have known people who massively fooled themselves and even were willing to and actually did die for it.

      As well, Rossi has written about what I wrote, and it was radically incorrect, not what I had written. So I know, for myself. Rossi says what he does not know. It’s what he wants to think, or wants others to think.

Leave a Reply to Simon Derricutt Cancel reply