BRAND NEW "EVOLUTION" THREAD

[♪alt13]

According to those studying the issue, scaling up the technology is a question of building better conductors. With a superconducting chamber, you can get a thrust of up to 630kN/kW. That's probably enough to lift a city. But I do agree that we shouldn't jump to any conclusions about practical applications until we know if this is even real. I am glad you actually looked over the calculations, so here is the theoretical basis of conductivity v. thrust:

https://nextbigfuture.com/2014/08/shawyers-2014-presentations-for.html

So I read the pdf in full and I don't buy it.

Issues:
1) The forces are tiny and could be a result of other factors. They talk about waves from the gulf of Mexico causing issues.
2) Very few tests were performed.
3) The control is a block that is placed dead center over the pendulum. The tested "engines" are placed off center.
4) The heater inside the chamber.
5) The magnets and more especially the electrostatic fins.
6) The vibration from the pumps.

and the kicker

It works in reverse? They turned the engine 180 degrees and recorded nearly the same amount of "thrust" in the same direction. That's a pretty big hint that they are measuring something other than the "engines thrust".

#coldfusion

 

[babe]

You honestly think that a human could beat the most powerful chess playing computer if only he had the opportunity to inspect the programming? I think you and Babe are vastly underestimating how much more efficient the computer is at processing all of the alternative plays than the human mind is.

Strictly speaking, electrons and microprocessors and computer programs are "human" in a certain sense. They are the manipulated objects of human intelligence.

A living, breathing human being can always improve upon the work of other humans, and can devise something that will be superior to what has been made in the past.

My argument started out to be simply the philosophical point that humans are endowed with certain inherent abilities that transcend what any computer can do, namely the power of creativity, imagination, and will. . . . not to mention things like "love".

Siro has claimed that new computers have enough computing power to out-think a human, which I still maintain is not true. A human sitting down to play a game of chess with a computer can still out-think the computer, but it will take a long long long time to do that, and is not "allowed" or provided for in these kinds of matches.

OB is on to something in observing that Siro and I are talking past one another, Siro asserting the powers of a computer will easily out-perform the human who "thinks" more slowly about alternatives and consequences. Whle I am still talking about the essentially "human" powers of creativity and imagination. . . . the very powers that create computers.

I was asserting that a human could in the process of time develop enough understanding of the computer and it's program to devise a plan to exploit some characteristic of it, and thus "win" the game of chess.

Historically, "chess" has always been a match of wits. If you are going to allow one side to use computer technology, it would only be fair to let the other side do so as well. So the "human" side need only develop a computer program for evaluating other computers and produce the facts needed to design a better strategy. A human can learn such things, and sit down with understanding, and beat any static computer.

What a computer cannot do is devise a program for evaluating humans. It needs humans to write such programs.

So, I declare, the computer will lose. Any specific computer, any specific computer program, will eventually be '''beaten" by a human.

But Siro is right. The computers we have devised already can beat our best human chess players, so long as the humans are forbidden or occluded from studying the computer and it's programs.

In historical terms, the best chess players have always gone to understanding their opponents in order to beat them. I simply say it is an unfair rule to stop our human chess masters from doing that now.

 

[Siro]

So I read the pdf in full and I don't buy it.

Issues:
1) The forces are tiny and could be a result of other factors. They talk about waves from the gulf of Mexico causing issues.
2) Very few tests were performed.
3) The control is a block that is placed dead center over the pendulum. The tested "engines" are placed off center.
4) The heater inside the chamber.
5) The magnets and more especially the electrostatic fins.
6) The vibration from the pumps.

and the kicker

It works in reverse? They turned the engine 180 degrees and recorded nearly the same amount of "thrust" in the same direction. That's a pretty big hint that they are measuring something other than the "engines thrust".

#coldfusion

1 - Yes. But it was still at least an order of magnitude above the sensor's resolution. The thrust measured is real, but it can be from other sources.

2 - True. But NASA agreed to perform the tests because a number of different entities have reported similar results in the past few years. Most importantly, the same experiment was done by a Chinese university a while ago, and they produced a much larger thrust. It can all be ********, obviously. Many Chinese universities still suffer from credibility problems, and the other tests were conducted by private interests, which also affects their credibility.

3 - I don't understand why this is relevant.

4 - According to the pictures, the strip heater was mounted on the outside of the chamber. Am I missing something?

5/6 - What about them? The magnetic dampeners are used to cancel out any tiny vibrations taking place, and that includes pump vibrations. The linear displacement of fins is the mechanism with which the torsion pendulum works. It is a pretty standard way of measuring a small thrust.

Also, cold fusion is not some kind of scam. It is still an active area of research. Before the 1980s scandal, most scientists believed quantum mechanics allowed for the breaking of the Coulomb Barrier under special circumstances. The scandal dealt the field a serious blow, and very few self-respecting scientists are willing to openly investigate the issue any longer. Smaller efforts persist, however, and intriguing results continue to be reported. The field is now referred to as Low Energy Nuclear Reactions.

Good analysis, by the way. Are you a scientist or an engineer?

 

[Joe Bagadonuts]

Strictly speaking, electrons and microprocessors and computer programs are "human" in a certain sense. They are the manipulated objects of human intelligence.

A living, breathing human being can always improve upon the work of other humans, and can devise something that will be superior to what has been made in the past.

My argument started out to be simply the philosophical point that humans are endowed with certain inherent abilities that transcend what any computer can do, namely the power of creativity, imagination, and will. . . . not to mention things like "love".

Siro has claimed that new computers have enough computing power to out-think a human, which I still maintain is not true. A human sitting down to play a game of chess with a computer can still out-think the computer, but it will take a long long long time to do that, and is not "allowed" or provided for in these kinds of matches.

OB is on to something in observing that Siro and I are talking past one another, Siro asserting the powers of a computer will easily out-perform the human who "thinks" more slowly about alternatives and consequences. Whle I am still talking about the essentially "human" powers of creativity and imagination. . . . the very powers that create computers.

I was asserting that a human could in the process of time develop enough understanding of the computer and it's program to devise a plan to exploit some characteristic of it, and thus "win" the game of chess.

Historically, "chess" has always been a match of wits. If you are going to allow one side to use computer technology, it would only be fair to let the other side do so as well. So the "human" side need only develop a computer program for evaluating other computers and produce the facts needed to design a better strategy. A human can learn such things, and sit down with understanding, and beat any static computer.

What a computer cannot do is devise a program for evaluating humans. It needs humans to write such programs.

So, I declare, the computer will lose. Any specific computer, any specific computer program, will eventually be '''beaten" by a human.

But Siro is right. The computers we have devised already can beat our best human chess players, so long as the humans are forbidden or occluded from studying the computer and it's programs.

In historical terms, the best chess players have always gone to understanding their opponents in order to beat them. I simply say it is an unfair rule to stop our human chess masters from doing that now.

Try not to injure yourself convoluting that argument.

 

[♪alt13]

1 - Yes. But it was still at least an order of magnitude above the sensor's resolution. The thrust measured is real, but it can be from other sources.

2 - True. But NASA agreed to perform the tests because a number of different entities have reported similar results in the past few years. Most importantly, the same experiment was done by a Chinese university a while ago, and they produced a much larger thrust. It can all be ********, obviously. Many Chinese universities still suffer from credibility problems, and the other tests were conducted by private interests, which also affects their credibility.

3 - I don't understand why this is relevant.

4 - According to the pictures, the strip heater was mounted on the outside of the chamber. Am I missing something?

5/6 - What about them? The magnetic dampeners are used to cancel out any tiny vibrations taking place, and that includes pump vibrations. The linear displacement of fins is the mechanism with which the torsion pendulum works. It is a pretty standard way of measuring a small thrust.

Also, cold fusion is not some kind of scam. It is still an active area of research. Before the 1980s scandal, most scientists believed quantum mechanics allowed for the breaking of the Coulomb Barrier under special circumstances. The scandal dealt the field a serious blow, and very few self-respecting scientists are willing to openly investigate the issue any longer. Smaller efforts persist, however, and intriguing results continue to be reported. The field is now referred to as Low Energy Nuclear Reactions.

Good analysis, by the way. Are you a scientist or an engineer?

2) I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that NASA didn't devote many resources to this. The experiment was clearly rushed. If NASA as an org had faith in this(as opposed to a few people that work for them) then I think they would have ran the experiment more than just a few iterations.

3/5/6) It may not be but they were producing an em field within the objects that they were testing. I believe both the magnets and fins were mounted centrally along the axis of the pendulum. They said they used a calibration voltage on the fins and registered a force of 29 micronewtons. So an em field that was acting on either the magnets or the fins could give you a force reading. Especially if that em field was off center.

4) The heaters were used to heat the interior of the chamber. It probably isn't having an effect but the thought did cross my mind that the reflected heat from the cylindrical chamber may have an effect.


The main issue I have is that the engine gave them similar measurement in both orientations. They screwed up somewhere.

No I'm not a scientist or engineer. I've been quite the underachiever thus far. I am going to go back to school starting next semester to study mechanical engineering. It's time I did something I think is interesting rather than just continuing to do something simply because it's what I do.

 

[Siro]

2) I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that NASA didn't devote many resources to this. The experiment was clearly rushed. If NASA as an org had faith in this(as opposed to a few people that work for them) then I think they would have ran the experiment more than just a few iterations.

3/5/6) It may not be but they were producing an em field within the objects that they were testing. I believe both the magnets and fins were mounted centrally along the axis of the pendulum. They said they used a calibration voltage on the fins and registered a force of 29 micronewtons. So an em field that was acting on either the magnets or the fins could give you a force reading. Especially if that em field was off center.

4) The heaters were used to heat the interior of the chamber. It probably isn't having an effect but the thought did cross my mind that the reflected heat from the cylindrical chamber may have an effect.


The main issue I have is that the engine gave them similar measurement in both orientations. They screwed up somewhere.

No I'm not a scientist or engineer. I've been quite the underachiever thus far. I am going to go back to school starting next semester to study mechanical engineering. It's time I did something I think is interesting rather than just continuing to do something simply because it's what I do.

Well, they are in the process of performing a comprehensive set of experiments to generate high quality data that will help us determine whether the effect is real. There is no need to speculate since we'll know a lot more over the next couple of years.

Mechanical engineering is a fantastic field of study. Given your interest in science, and your larger philosophical perspective, you sound like the kind of person who would excel in a technical field. Best of luck.

 

[babe]

Try not to injure yourself convoluting that argument.

If you don't wanna get hurt in the skating rink, learn first how to fall down. Then you can do all those crazy jumps, twists, turns, and spins. . . . and still manage to miss the flatfooters timidly shaking in their skates in the line of traffic going oh so slow.

(hint: the simple notion that computers are supra human is in the most fundamental way disproven by the fact that it takes humans to make the computers, so there is something wrong with the simplistic hypothesis. . . . but hell yeah, I have a hard time adding a column of figures faster in my head than I can do with an adding machine. Doesn't mean the adding machine is "smart" or "better" than human.)

 

[babe]

1 - Yes. But it was still at least an order of magnitude above the sensor's resolution. The thrust measured is real, but it can be from other sources.

2 - True. But NASA agreed to perform the tests because a number of different entities have reported similar results in the past few years. Most importantly, the same experiment was done by a Chinese university a while ago, and they produced a much larger thrust. It can all be ********, obviously. Many Chinese universities still suffer from credibility problems, and the other tests were conducted by private interests, which also affects their credibility.

3 - I don't understand why this is relevant.

4 - According to the pictures, the strip heater was mounted on the outside of the chamber. Am I missing something?

5/6 - What about them? The magnetic dampeners are used to cancel out any tiny vibrations taking place, and that includes pump vibrations. The linear displacement of fins is the mechanism with which the torsion pendulum works. It is a pretty standard way of measuring a small thrust.

Also, cold fusion is not some kind of scam. It is still an active area of research. Before the 1980s scandal, most scientists believed quantum mechanics allowed for the breaking of the Coulomb Barrier under special circumstances. The scandal dealt the field a serious blow, and very few self-respecting scientists are willing to openly investigate the issue any longer. Smaller efforts persist, however, and intriguing results continue to be reported. The field is now referred to as Low Energy Nuclear Reactions.

Good analysis, by the way. Are you a scientist or an engineer?

Insiders know the scandal was a hatchet job got up by petroleum industry schills. Nobody falsified any reports, but it turned out some trace "contaminants" in palladium were essential (Be: Be is used in many alloys as a hardening agent, for example, in such mundane hydrogen-packing metals as magnesium and aluminum, and serves well for that purpose at 15 ppm.)

And the scientists who are willing to openly investigate it today are in fact the most fundamentally "self-respecting" scientists there are, meaning they manage somehow to get the funds for their work despite whatever others think.

LENR is going to be one of the areas of research that will revolutionize a lot of things we thought we knew well enough before, and will produce fundamental new insights into the elements, the atom, and the nucleus.

rep for being one of the very good scientists who gives it some thought.

back from googling LENR and Mel Miles: look at today's news:

https://www.e-catworld.com/2014/10/...der-the-chicago-mercantile-exchange-bthprimo/

Oil trading impacted by speculation about a forthcoming report on the future prospects for cold fusion. . . .

 

[Joe Bagadonuts]

If you don't wanna get hurt in the skating rink, learn first how to fall down. Then you can do all those crazy jumps, twists, turns, and spins. . . . and still manage to miss the flatfooters timidly shaking in their skates in the line of traffic going oh so slow.

(hint: the simple notion that computers are supra human is in the most fundamental way disproven by the fact that it takes humans to make the computers, so there is something wrong with the simplistic hypothesis. . . . but hell yeah, I have a hard time adding a column of figures faster in my head than I can do with an adding machine. Doesn't mean the adding machine is "smart" or "better" than human.)

There are two huge problems with the bolded logic. First, nobody is arguing that computers are supra human. It is clear to everyone that humans have many, many capabilities that exceed those of computers. Second, the preceding facts do not mean that there aren't things that computers are able to do better than their creators. Playing chess is an excellent example of one of those things that a correctly programmed computer can now exceed the most skilled human at doing. It takes crazy convolutions of logic to claim that this is not true. Playing chess is a skill that does not take any intuition, insight, ability to love, etc., (in fact, pure logic is a much better way to make the relevant decisions than are any of the preceding skills) so pointing out that humans can do those sorts of things and computers cannot is completely irrelevant to this discussion.

 

[babe]

There are two huge problems with the bolded logic. First, nobody is arguing that computers are supra human. It is clear to everyone that humans have many, many capabilities that exceed those of computers. Second, the preceding facts do not mean that there aren't things that computers are able to do better than their creators. Playing chess is an excellent example of one of those things that a correctly programmed computer can now exceed the most skilled human at doing. It takes crazy convolutions of logic to claim that this is not true. Playing chess is a skill that does not take any intuition, insight, ability to love, etc., (in fact, pure logic is a much better way to make the relevant decisions than are any of the preceding skills) so pointing out that humans can do those sorts of things and computers cannot is completely irrelevant to this discussion.

the reason folks of your general thinking here are still "wrong" is because anyone who doesn't think intuition, insight, will (including motives like love or hate or ambition), and other things we might agree are not generally programmable because they are absolutely beyond predictability. . . .. all play an important role in a chess match.

what happens when a human goes up against essentially infinite logic is called "washout". . . . it just takes a human longer to assess the situation and make choices, and minimizes the effects of human strategies arising from purely human choices like will.

I often beat better players because I can in some way predict their will or their reactions, and if I can forsee a way to turn it to my advantage, the game goes my way.

I still maintain that a human can 'trick" a machine because it is completely predictable, and perhaps the programmer does not know how to predict me. It just gets infinitely hard to do.

the game is called chess. It is a human game. I suppose you could do the same thing with Poker, but how is a computer going to bluff it's way through if it's just logic.

 

[Siro]

the reason folks of your general thinking here are still "wrong" is because anyone who doesn't think intuition, insight, will (including motives like love or hate or ambition), and other things we might agree are not generally programmable because they are absolutely beyond predictability. . . .. all play an important role in a chess match.

Why do you think these things are ultimately unpredictable and un-programmable? They are physically encoded into the human brain, and thus are perfectly programmable. Any book about neurological disorders would tell you that things like ambition, love, hate, or any emotional and personality traits can change if the brain is damaged. Through out the many years I've been debating you, I've yet to hear one objective argument from you as to why you think these attributes are beyond the reach of materialist understanding. I've heard you go on about my blind faith in logic or science, and about the tyranny of the humanists, and so on. But why do you actually believe what you believe when the evidence to the contrary is quite staggering? I'd like an answer in a simple way that I can comprehend. Do you agree that a human can be changed beyond recognition through changes to his or her brain? If so, then how are humans not programmable? If not, then how do you explain the numerous cases that show it to be so?

what happens when a human goes up against essentially infinite logic is called "washout". . . . it just takes a human longer to assess the situation and make choices, and minimizes the effects of human strategies arising from purely human choices like will.

I often beat better players because I can in some way predict their will or their reactions, and if I can forsee a way to turn it to my advantage, the game goes my way.

But that is precisely what makes computers better than humans at chess. They can calculate a bazillion possibilities in a fraction of a second. Human intuition cannot save you because chess is a game of logic. To have a chance against a computer, you need to get the program source code, study it carefully in order to find out how to force a miscalculation, have an agreement with the programmers to keep the program static through out this whole process, and finally, be a world-class chess player. And all of that is theoretical. I am not aware of anyone who successfully been able to reliably beat a leading chess program in a very long time. This is as clear a case as any for computers surpassing humans at something. If an alien invasion came to Earth, and agreed to settle the war in a game of chess, then you would have a computer do the playing. You would not ask them to give you their brain structure and infinite time and chances.

 

[carolinajazz]

(hint: the simple notion that computers are supra human is in the most fundamental way disproven by the fact that it takes humans to make the computers, so there is something wrong with the simplistic hypothesis. . . . but hell yeah, I have a hard time adding a column of figures faster in my head than I can do with an adding machine. Doesn't mean the adding machine is "smart" or "better" than human.)

....couldn't have expressed it more eloquently!

 

[carolinajazz]

....so can a human put a chess computer in "check"....and then pull the plug on the computer? I would think so! Can a chess computer put a human in "check".....and then pull the plug on the human? My point! You college kids aren't as smart as you think you are!

 

[Gameface]

....couldn't have expressed it more eloquently!

Well then you should have copy and pasted it as though it was your own.

 

[LogGrad98]

Hey babe you up for a jazz fanz game of chess? I'll start a thread, you can play white, and we each post a move and the current board setup in each post and everyone can ridicule us per JF standard rules. Doesn't matter how long it takes either.

 

[babe]

Hey babe you up for a jazz fanz game of chess? I'll start a thread, you can play white, and we each post a move and the current board setup in each post and everyone can ridicule us per JF standard rules. Doesn't matter how long it takes either.

Yes

 

[fishonjazz]

Rofl

You're going to kill a tiger with your bare hands by putting it in a chokehold?

This.

Scootsy, you done lost your mind

 

[fishonjazz]

Have any of you watched the reality show "Naked and Afraid"? I accidentally saw an episode once... and now I can't quit watching it. Virtually every time the male participant starts off bragging about what an amazing hunter he is, and by the end they are so beaten down that he and the woman are celebrating in a huge way if they triumph over an earthworm or a grashopper. They always lose massive amounts of weight during their 21 day adventure because they are literally no match for any of the animals that they face.

The only substantial prey that I have ever seen any of them catch and cook are a couple of big snakes. They sometimes get small fish, crabs, lizards... but not much else. Even mice are way too quick and crafty for these poor people to catch. On one episode they found a dead bird, and they were so starved that they ate it. I've seen them practically kill themselves even trying to get plant based meals. One guy spent days and tons of energy he didn't have chopping down a coconut tree with his knife, only to discover that the coconuts were unripe and inedible. Another guy ate some mushrooms and had a poisonous reaction. There is literally a new disaster every couple of minutes on that show.

Humans are only at the top of the food chain because of their brain, and even that does them little good if they don't have access to the technology that has been developed by other human brains over the millenea. The people on this show are only allowed to bring two pieces of technology with them. One of them almost always brings a blade of some kind, and the other is often a fire starter... but sometimes a pot. These people inevitably suffer like you cannot imagine. They can hardly even move around because lack of shoes fills their feet with thorns. They often become either covered with bug bites, or completely debilitated by sunburn. They get sick and dehydrated because they can't even safely drink water when they are fortunate enough to find it. Watching the difficulties they face, and by extension realizing how incredibly vulnerable humans are, I cannot help but marvel that we have not merely survived, but thrived on virtually every environment this planet has to offer.

BTW, for your poll I selected ant, cockroach and dog, but that assumes the dog was tame so I could get my hands around his neck. I wouldn't have a prayer against a wild dog. Anyone who thinks they have a barehanded chance against anything on that list higher than the dog is completely delusional.

I always lol at my friends who say "I could survive just fine in the wild with no supplies"
They are delusional. I have camped, fished, and hunted more than most people and I couldn't last more than like a week on my own in the woods..... geek, just the psychological/mental struggles alone would do me in

 

[LogGrad98]

I always lol at my friends who say "I could survive just fine in the wild with no supplies"
They are delusional. I have camped, fished, and hunted more than most people and I couldn't last more than like a week on my own in the woods..... geek, just the psychological/mental struggles alone would do me in

You ought to try out for naked and afraid.

 

[fishonjazz]

When I was younger I thought a lot about this, too. I think we don't give ourselves enough credit. I think you're exactly right that the paralyzing fear is the biggest problem. Humans are stronger than dogs. What I see when dogs attack a person is that the person immediately assumes a defensive posture, essentially curling up in a ball and begging for mercy. Sure dogs can bite but their claws aren't too big a problem. If you immediately went on the offensive against them I feel like they would be little challenge. Anything would be better than curling up in a ball and hoping for the best.

But Tigers? I'd say no chance there. They are stronger and much bigger than us. They could swat you to the ground and chomp on you until you were dead. With a weapon you might stand a slim chance, but without I say no chance.

Iawtp