4 ms·

Eh, there was this weird guy back in the early 20th century that said he could get massive amounts of energy out of some rare metals - I think that one's worked

Eh, there was this weird guy back in the early 20th century that said he could get massive amounts of energy out of some rare metals - I think that one's worked out pretty well so far. Point being, just because something looks like it breaks reality or thermodynamics or whatever doesn't mean it actually does. Of course, this is still probably BS. Unless the US really is flying [0] legit 'ignore gravity and inertia' UFOs... 0: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27666/what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-ufos-and-department-of-defense https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27666/what-the-hell-is...

roywiggins 8y ago
The problem is a sort of Pascal's mugging. Yes, some breakthrough claims pan out. But if you take every claim equally seriously, you'll be absolutely snowed under amidst claims of breathtaking new discoveries. Extraordinary claims still require extraordinary evidence, because there are so many more extraordinary claims than actual breakthroughs. I mean, how many claims of Revolutionary New Battery Technology (for instance) are we going to get before we get a truly revolutionary new battery tech? Probably many! And those don't even require new physics! Lots of patents turn out to be totally useless (practically speaking), even ones that don't make extraordinary claims. Ones that do probably require heightened scrutiny. A better toaster? Probably works! A cheap and portable mind-control device? Maybe not.
- derefr 8y ago
  > how many claims of Revolutionary New Battery Technology (for instance) are we going to get before we get a truly revolutionary new battery tech We've already got lots of revolutionary new battery technologies. Just, none of them are optimized for the consumer-electronics usage profile (and, in fact, the "revolutionary" part of them isn't that they're better in all ways than existing battery tech, but rather that they allow for trade-offs we weren't previously able to make.) Such advances are already revolutionizing cubesats, supercapacitors, etc.
- ethbro 8y ago
  Batteries and nuclear power are probably surprisingly good analogies, inasmuch as both of them take obscene amounts of capital to productionalize. Per Brookings [1] the Manhattan project cost 2018:USD$34.52 billion. For comparison, from the same source, the entirety of US small arms materiel (ex ammunition) for all of WWII cost 2018,USD$38.41 billion. There was probably very easily a present where the Manhattan project was never funded, and nuclear chain reactions still sound like a crackpot theory. [1] https://www.brookings.edu/the-costs-of-the-manhattan-project/ https://www.brookings.edu/the-costs-of-the-manhattan-project...
  - roywiggins 8y ago
    The Manhattan project had the benefit of most of the physics being at least fairly well understood. Everyone knew there was energy to be liberated from the atom, the question was whether a bomb would be practical: could it be small enough to fit in a plane? Could the material be enriched and mined practically? All of that stuff was engineering problems, absolutely massive ones. There were big uncertainties about the physics, but they were about the size of the effect, not about whether it existed at all. But EmDrive ideas are putting the engineering before the horse, the physics supposedly underlying them are not mainstream at all. The Manhattan project got off the ground because all the heavyweights in nuclear physics at the time thought it was possible. Nuclear chain reactions were demonstrated first, before the Manhattan project was started. (Self-sustaining chain reactions did only come as part of the Manhattan project)
yongjik 8y ago
Well, yes, except that physicists were pretty confident that they nailed electromagnetism, except the pesky thing that the speed of light was c - but relative to what? Naturally there should have been some medium (the "ether") but when they looked for it they weren't there: the famous Michelson–Morley experiment. So people had already known that there was some glaring gap in our knowledge, and something had to fill in the gap.
pvg 8y ago
there was this weird guy back in the early 20th century that said he could get massive amounts of energy out of some rare metals That's a pretty good description of the opposite of what happened. It was new but mainstream physics and the potential was quickly and widely recognized, experiments designed, performed, reproduced, etc. And one of the central people wasn't even a guy.
jacques_chester 8y ago
This gives me a chance to blow the dust off a Carl Sagan classic: > But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
- brianpgordon 8y ago
  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Galileo_gambit https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Galileo_gambit
DoctorOetker 8y ago
That article is so poorly researched imho: 1. They pretend the term "UFO" is on equal footing as "flying saucer", and that in the past the military was incredulous on this subject. Of course it was and should be skeptical about "flying saucers", but I don't believe it ever was incredulous on UFO reports, indeed I'd guess the abreviation Unidentified Flying Object was originally a military term to designate flying craft, not identified by the observer... 2. They mention that this was one of the first large-scale deployments of sensor fusion: if one sensor detects an object, then it is digitally gossiped to all other stations: boats, planes, ... so this is the simplest explanation for "independent" sightings by the Nimitz Carrier for example, also if this is one of the first deployments with sensor fusion then many members of different crews could easily mis-interpret the appearance of objects on their local screen as deriving from a local sensor..., only one sensor system needs to imagine an object, and all crews believe they independently witnessed the same object... For the article to explicitly mention this from source material without connecting the dots is just poor reporting. 3. They describe top down behaviour resembling a cover-up, if genuine this is not very surprising either: nation states try to keep secret not only the performance of their system in optimal conditions (knowing and bypassing this limit undetected would be valuable to an enemy), but they also try to keep secret failure modes (since the enemy can exploit failure modes, think chaff etc...). Another explanation is that the manufacturers are well connected with top brass, and they try to keep their reputation by covering up shoddy performance off their systems...

roywiggins 8y ago

The problem is a sort of Pascal's mugging. Yes, some breakthrough claims pan out. But if you take every claim equally seriously, you'll be absolutely snowed under amidst claims of breathtaking new discoveries. Extraordinary claims still require extraordinary evidence, because there are so many more extraordinary claims than actual breakthroughs. I mean, how many claims of Revolutionary New Battery Technology (for instance) are we going to get before we get a truly revolutionary new battery tech? Probably many! And those don't even require new physics! Lots of patents turn out to be totally useless (practically speaking), even ones that don't make extraordinary claims. Ones that do probably require heightened scrutiny. A better toaster? Probably works! A cheap and portable mind-control device? Maybe not.

derefr 8y ago
> how many claims of Revolutionary New Battery Technology (for instance) are we going to get before we get a truly revolutionary new battery tech We've already got lots of revolutionary new battery technologies. Just, none of them are optimized for the consumer-electronics usage profile (and, in fact, the "revolutionary" part of them isn't that they're better in all ways than existing battery tech, but rather that they allow for trade-offs we weren't previously able to make.) Such advances are already revolutionizing cubesats, supercapacitors, etc.
ethbro 8y ago
Batteries and nuclear power are probably surprisingly good analogies, inasmuch as both of them take obscene amounts of capital to productionalize. Per Brookings [1] the Manhattan project cost 2018:USD$34.52 billion. For comparison, from the same source, the entirety of US small arms materiel (ex ammunition) for all of WWII cost 2018,USD$38.41 billion. There was probably very easily a present where the Manhattan project was never funded, and nuclear chain reactions still sound like a crackpot theory. [1] https://www.brookings.edu/the-costs-of-the-manhattan-project/ https://www.brookings.edu/the-costs-of-the-manhattan-project...
- roywiggins 8y ago
  The Manhattan project had the benefit of most of the physics being at least fairly well understood. Everyone knew there was energy to be liberated from the atom, the question was whether a bomb would be practical: could it be small enough to fit in a plane? Could the material be enriched and mined practically? All of that stuff was engineering problems, absolutely massive ones. There were big uncertainties about the physics, but they were about the size of the effect, not about whether it existed at all. But EmDrive ideas are putting the engineering before the horse, the physics supposedly underlying them are not mainstream at all. The Manhattan project got off the ground because all the heavyweights in nuclear physics at the time thought it was possible. Nuclear chain reactions were demonstrated first, before the Manhattan project was started. (Self-sustaining chain reactions did only come as part of the Manhattan project)

yongjik 8y ago

Well, yes, except that physicists were pretty confident that they nailed electromagnetism, except the pesky thing that the speed of light was c - but relative to what? Naturally there should have been some medium (the "ether") but when they looked for it they weren't there: the famous Michelson–Morley experiment. So people had already known that there was some glaring gap in our knowledge, and something had to fill in the gap.

pvg 8y ago

there was this weird guy back in the early 20th century that said he could get massive amounts of energy out of some rare metals That's a pretty good description of the opposite of what happened. It was new but mainstream physics and the potential was quickly and widely recognized, experiments designed, performed, reproduced, etc. And one of the central people wasn't even a guy.

jacques_chester 8y ago

This gives me a chance to blow the dust off a Carl Sagan classic: > But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

brianpgordon 8y ago
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Galileo_gambit https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Galileo_gambit

DoctorOetker 8y ago

That article is so poorly researched imho: 1. They pretend the term "UFO" is on equal footing as "flying saucer", and that in the past the military was incredulous on this subject. Of course it was and should be skeptical about "flying saucers", but I don't believe it ever was incredulous on UFO reports, indeed I'd guess the abreviation Unidentified Flying Object was originally a military term to designate flying craft, not identified by the observer... 2. They mention that this was one of the first large-scale deployments of sensor fusion: if one sensor detects an object, then it is digitally gossiped to all other stations: boats, planes, ... so this is the simplest explanation for "independent" sightings by the Nimitz Carrier for example, also if this is one of the first deployments with sensor fusion then many members of different crews could easily mis-interpret the appearance of objects on their local screen as deriving from a local sensor..., only one sensor system needs to imagine an object, and all crews believe they independently witnessed the same object... For the article to explicitly mention this from source material without connecting the dots is just poor reporting. 3. They describe top down behaviour resembling a cover-up, if genuine this is not very surprising either: nation states try to keep secret not only the performance of their system in optimal conditions (knowing and bypassing this limit undetected would be valuable to an enemy), but they also try to keep secret failure modes (since the enemy can exploit failure modes, think chaff etc...). Another explanation is that the manufacturers are well connected with top brass, and they try to keep their reputation by covering up shoddy performance off their systems...