What does it mean to sell one’s soul to the Devil?

In the matter of Rossi v. Darden, and Peter Gluck, it’s becoming clear. On LENR Forum, yesterday, Peter Gluck wrote:

It ius better to have Rossi Diabolicus with a working technology than perfect man with no technology.

Here 80% goes about Rossi’s character and 20% about the issues of real interest, Y/N?

To me, and to most, people are far more important than technology. After all, what’s it for? If we have a perfect man, he will generate technology or not, it doesn’t matter, because such a man can and will transform society toward what is possible for humanity. If we have a major technology controlled by a “Diabolicus,” — a devil — we could have cheap energy and all die from a nuclear war, because that is exactly what devils do: cause people to fight, and they use lies or whatever means available.

Peter is promoting, though he probably does not realize it, the end justifies the means.

See Consequentialism.

In this view, whatever Rossi does is good, if it brings his technology to the world. The argument can be made, but the devil is literally in the details.

The technology is not going to be brought to the world with lies, nor as a result of “belief in Rossi.” It will be brought to the world if it works, and nothing is likely to change that. “Attack on Rossi,” Peter’s theme, would be irrelevant, unless they actually kill him and prevent him from communicating what he knows. He’s been asked and supposedly he has communicated his secrets so that they will not be lost if he dies.

However, if he is “diabolicus,” nothing he says can be trusted. Indeed, the goal of such is to mislead and deceive and to cause conflict. And from what I know of this force in life, it will continue even if he dies. Peter — like Bob Greenyer — is naive. My history includes reading Hostage to the Devil, by Malachi Martin, and then, as well, observing certain phenomena. This stuff, undigested, can lead to mania, easily. Consider the original Ulysses Pact.

There are consequences to Peter’s position. One would be that anyone who “attacks Rossi” is “Fair game,” and this transcends honesty, fairness, and law. It explains why Peter would attack someone — Jed Rothwell — who had supported him. Peter, himself, does not lie, to my knowledge, though the principle he has just enunciated would fully allow it, but, he does publish lies from others, and with apparent approval or at least not disapproval.

Peter has demolished his credibility, in the CMNS community. And that is, again, common with those who “sell their souls.” They have a “higher purpose,” even though that purpose may lead them to what I mentioned before as an occurring (not as a fact or wish other than reactive expression), burn in hell forever, because of the reality of what they do.

Anyone who thinks this is about ordinary good-faith disagreements is not paying attention.

I’d love to see Peter return to sanity, and my suggestion would be that he find someone he trusts to review what is going on. I’d suggest he choose well, because his entire future could depend on it. He would empower that person to “tie him to the mast,” if it is needed. The same for Bob Greenyer, by the way. And for anyone, for if we cannot trust anyone, we have nobody to trust, and we are, ourselves, in a dire condition, because sane people can trust others (at least somebody!).

Peter’s post, by the way, was off-topic, and about personalities or LENR Forum behavior, and not the topic, Rossi. v. Darden developments. He is supposedly lamenting lack of discussion of the topic, but helping create more distraction, as are some others…. However, what he has revealed is worth noting, because it has deep explanatory power, it places the conflict that grew over the last year in context.

Author: Abd ulRahman Lomax

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

7 thoughts on “What does it mean to sell one’s soul to the Devil?”

  1. We’re seeing a bit of the fist inside the soft glove of CFC here. The purpose of CFC is not to analyse the case for or against Rossi, but instead to prove one way or another whether LENR/Cold fusion is real and can be thus developed or whether it is a measurement problem, in which case those problems will also be exposed and learnt from. Either way it’s good for humanity. It is however a big task to reverse the cascade of the last 3 decades.

    Though I did not see the initiation of the law-suit as a tacit admission by Rossi that he did not have a real process, and thus stayed on the fence a bit longer before I became sure of this, it could certainly be seen as biting the hands that fed him. I have cats who do that if there’s something especially delicious….

    In the Free Energy annals, there are a lot of examples of claims of amazing results which don’t stand up to scientific testing – mostly by avoiding such tests like the plague. Even after the “inventor” died (see Keely) and the methods used to perpetrate the fraud have been exposed, there are still followers who claim that it really worked and keep trying to replicate the results. The bigger the lie, the harder it is for people to accept that they’ve been lied to, it seems. Rossi has followed the play-book here, and built on what seems at least to be a real effect (Piantelli) and increased the size of the claim. Building on truth is quite effective, since it’s hard to be certain that the claims are really false. Disallowing genuine third-party testing is also a common technique for the fraudsters – choose instead some people who can be fooled but have some sort of reputation. Another common one is to allow a part of the data to be tested by a high-status tester such as TüV but to choose the sample very carefully, so obtaining a certificate that isn’t quite what it seems but passes muster for people who don’t know all the details. I can give examples of these, but it’s probably not needed here.

    Rossi followed the scammer’s play-book, therefore. Despite this, he did pretty well at keeping things ambiguous enough that we couldn’t be certain that there was nothing. The results could have been badly-measured but nonetheless real to some extent. Meantime, there was a lot of effort in trying to “replicate Rossi” and get a result, and a lot of these efforts were open-source. I would expect that Rossi watched those efforts closely in case one actually succeeded, in which case the Rossi version of that would be revealed as the results of 5 years of work in secret. The JONP was a crowd-source of ideas, with the non-puppets suggesting things to do. In all, Rossi gained himself a better chance of succeeding because people thought he had already succeeded. In the end, though, we see nothing useful came out of that.

    Diabolical? Not in the true sense of the word, but certainly both clever and false. It also sent a lot of researchers down the wrong path, and thus delayed the real entry of LENR into the world. For that, we may need to wait for Plan B to complete, and then more research once the reality is shown to be beyond reasonable scientific doubt.

    Is LENR worth anything to achieve? We already know how to make a safe fission reactor whose waste is only dangerous for around a century. Fairly soon we’re promised fusion, too. PV technology and costs are improving, and there are promising storage technologies showing up. It looks like we’ll be able to produce energy more cheaply than today fairly soon anyway. As such, LENR is not essential to our wellbeing but if it is workable it should provide energy more cheaply still and with fewer problems. It’s a large benefit, and is worth the effort if it works, and even if it doesn’t then the knowledge is worth having. I think it is real based on the evidence so far, but I’m not however sure that it can be pushed to Peter’s LENR+ outputs. Still, initially nuclear power was considered to be a puny amount of energy and was not expected to be worth exploiting. IH have the will to make it work if it is workable, and we’ll need to wait and see.

    I would have been happy if Rossi had been telling the truth and had taken his $100M in exchange for telling IH how to build a working system. With nothing real from Rossi, though, I hope IH has more luck with their other investments. With the court case, it can be seen that Rossi is again trying to delay progress. It looks like he will fail there, too.

    1. Yes, this is a possible description of the Rossi Affair. Strictly speaking, the purpose of CFC is not “proof,” but encouraging research designed to create definitive evidence. Literally, this is to create community to do that. The domain name was chosen for that purpose, and the original activity was sending me to ICCF-18, as a correspondent for Cold Fusion Community News. The first web page solicited others to participate. Nobody showed up. I have years of experience with this kind of thing. That result is quite common. So, then, what next? Give up? No, vary behavior and observe results!

  2. Abd’s point here: that the ends cannot justify improper means, is one I always consider. Like all such ideas it has limited applicability. But much more so than is often recognised. Living is a process, and what matters most about it is not where we get to but how we get there. And, although death is an ultimate end for all, other than that, it is pretty accurate to say: there are no ends.

    1. I suppose it’s a matter of whether you have the luxury of being able to avoid suffering bad behavior on a matter of principle, rather than to reject it no matter what the cost. But how many people put up with a rotten boss? Lots.

      I would like to say I would always reject bad behavior, but the reality is, if the benefit of ignoring it is great enough, then I put up with it. Most people do. Mostly it’s only temporary and in the greater scheme of things, it’s a blip on the greater horizon of life.
      In the case of our now lowly esteemed inventor, if I thought for one minute he actually had what he says he has, no matter how diabolical he was I would put up with it. The benefits are too great not to, and long after he is gone, we would still have that benefit.
      However, since I believe he has nothing, I think he is getting a ‘free kick’, when all he should be getting is a kick in the bum.
      On that basis, he has not earned the concessional allowance to be diabolical.

      1. This word “diabolical” is being used casually, as if it refers simply to some character defect. To accept “diabolical behavior” is to accept behavior designed by the master of deception to humiliate and debase humanity.

        That is the meaning of diabolical.

        This is not merely venal or corrupt, it is the very source of corruption and harm. In my training, use is made of “myth.” That is, invented stories that are not proposed as “truth,” but as empowering, and the concept of a deceiver who, in the language of the Qur’an, “speaks to use from where we do not recognize,” who desires our doom, is actually useful, as long as we recognise that this deceiver has no controlling power unless we follow him. In other words, we are responsible for what we do, “Satan made me do it” doesn’t change this, he doesn’t make us do anything. He tempts us, and this idea of a technology so important that massive deception can be tolerated would be one such.

        In pursuit of that “goal,” Peter Gluck is willing to attack the perceived “enemies” of Rossi. He interprets every piece of evidence as a diabolical creation of the “enemies.” He is arguing against Exhibit 5 as if it was pure deception, created as a calumny. One of the favorite tricks of Satan is to lead us to identify others as evil.
        Most people do not understand the ancient myth, how it expresses something that can actually be observed and experienced. We tend to think of myth as “false and wrong.” That is only reasonable if we insist that metaphor has no value.

        In a recent discussion, Peter claimed that Gamberale had written a “calumny,” the Gamberale report. That was whistle-blowing, Gamberale violated an NDA. He is a hero. If his report had been incorrect, Defkalion could have addressed it. Gamberale did assess that there was deliberate fraud. There are other possibilities. However, Gamberale disclosed his findings (fact) and impressions (judgments). That is honesty, and absent evidence of fraudulent intent, that is what is needed, specifically and generally. Peter has been attacking honesty, rejecting it as evil. That’s evil! (And we could also call it delusion, but this is a delusion that creates massive personal harm.)

    2. Yes. “How” is one way of saying it. Life is what we actually do, not what we claim about it, the judgments we make, or our imagined goals. The process is the product. We do make compromises, frequently, rational, instinctive, or otherwise. Typically we make them out of a belief that they increase survival probability, direct or indirect (i.e., the survival of our tribe or species). So the belief here would be that the technology is so important that it trumps all other considerations. However, how do we know that the technology works? If our attachment to it working is so strong that we will disregard all contrary evidence, and will rely on the claims of the inventor, and believe in independent confirmation when it is quite apparent that this was defective or, worse, manipulated, the issue of character rises.

      Until April, 2016, I considered that there was a substantial probability that Rossi technology did work. I knew about the misleading tests, but there was a huge weight on the side of Rossi having privately demonstrated the technology to the satisfaction of investors. When Rossi sued IH, that vanished, ipso facto. I didn’t have to read and study the IH responses or evidence. What IH had done eventually became visible. They knew there were major questions, reasons to doubt, but there was an entire field of possibilities at stake. They needed to know, not just infer and assume. So they applied the clothespin to their nose and dropped $1.5 million on the reactor, and then another $10 million even though the Ferrara Validation test stank. And more money to give Rossi every chance to show them how to make reactors that worked.

      This was a variety of end justifying the means; however, what they did was not evil, they did not deceive Rossi, though they may have allowed him to deceive himself. They took a position of “Okay, if what you say is true, here: money and support. Show us!” By the way, what they did may have prevented other investors from being defrauded. In a way, this was like a sting. I think someone used that word, calling my concept of what IH did the “Abd sting.”

      Real law enforcement stings can be morally problematic, where they encourage the unlawful behavior. However, I find no way to see IH behavior as creating the propensity to defraud. Rather, it channeled the fraud, if it was fraud, into targeting them, and they could afford the investment, either way. This is like a person acting as a sniper decoy. It would only catch someone already engaged in the activity.

      Retrospectively, the investment in Rossi was wise, as shown by the actual outcome for them, so far, and as it now appears. This is another variety of end justifying the means: actual outcome. For IH, now through IHHI, $50 million for LENR research, from Woodford, which knows that much more money may need to be invested before any likelihood of profit. Woodford has committed another $150 million. That easily might not be enough, and I’m sure they know that.

      So one of my goals is to support that money being directed to points of maximum leverage. Hence heat/helium study, to resolve, definitively, the fundamental question of reality, to “crush the tests” on that. I’m familiar with the existing evidence, and concluded that the preponderance is in favor of the correlation being real. THH, you don’t yet agree, but we do agree on what is important: testing this! I am hoping for your support in doing what is possible toward that end, toward fuller understanding and clarity.

      The heat/helium work is already funded, and it should be adequate. We can support that by looking for possible artifact to be studied. I find it very difficult to imagine an artifact that explains the existing evidence, but that I find something difficult is not a proof of anything.

      Within the field, heat/helium wasn’t considered important, the opinion was common that this had already been done, so it was a waste of money, and money was scarce. And then there were fringes within the field, such as W-L theory and Steve Krivit, doing whatever he could to attack heat/helium and anyone who had supported it. Though he was mostly hands-off with Miles, he smeared and libelled McKubre, and attempted the same with Violante. They are crying all the way to the bank, because they are now specifically funded to do what they know how to do. That’s smart funding, because it will leverage far more funding. And if the Texas Tech initiative fails, we need to know how and why. If cold fusion is not real, if it is some sort of systematic artifact based on a chemical anomaly (Shanahan’s theory) or mass delusion, we need the N-ray/polywater experiments, or else substantial effort will continue to be wasted.

  3. The above quote:

    “It is better to have Rossi Diabolicus with a working technology than perfect man with no technology.”

    I think the logic in that quote makes the very dubious assumption that Rossi has what he says he has, so it’s acceptable to suffer his strange behavior in exchange for the world-saving technology, rather than reject it and remain without his great new invention. It must be obvious that there is a serious problem with that thinking.
    The problem is that all indications so far show that he does not have what he claims to have. I’m pretty sure that if he did have it we would not be seeing the diabolical behavior. So far, all we have is a hope, resident in a diminishing number of people, that he has something workable.
    The diabolical behavior is merely a necessary defense which he uses to protect the secret that he has nothing working in the manner he claims. If he was charming and personable when someone was getting a little too close to the truth of the matter, being anything other than diabolical would be inviting them to proceed to the undesired endpoint of the realization that he has nothing. That end point to be avoided at all costs, so best to be diabolical.

    People who have met him, claim he is charming and personable, and consequently, quite persuasive. He must be quite persuasive to have been able to persuade other people to finance his various ideas over the last 40 years which consistently amount to nothing. Well, nothing other than a ‘cash sink’ that is. But then anyone can invent one of those.

    His diabolical behavior which results in the assessment that he is difficult to work with, begins as soon as someone tries to look too deeply into what he is doing, or claiming to do. In this regard, I believe his most trusted long term employees would be those who just carry out his instructions without asking what is it all for and what is it all doing. Those who eventually start digging and asking too many pointed questions and expressing any doubt, then experience less of the ‘charming and personable’, and more of the ‘diabolical’.
    On that basis, and from an outsiders perspective, there is no gain in tolerating the ‘diabolicus’ because it is only an enablement of the continued non-production of anything.

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