3 ms·

I don't think my heart can do this again.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
This was the case with Pons and Fleischman too, wasn't it? Reports that something strange was happening for years/decades afterward. I never knew what to make of that, either. Can people just never give up on false leads? Are there all these marginal effects in science that are being discovered, that never rise to the threshold of unambiguous detectability and once public sentiment shifts, no one's willing to admit there is something there ever again?
- dylan604 3y ago
  How do you know it's a false lead and not that someone just hasn't come up with the eureka moment that pulls it all together? For a really long time, people thought they could turn lead into gold. So we have precedent of people just "want to believe" that they can be the one to figure it out.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    > How do you know it's a false lead and not that someone just hasn't come up with the eureka moment that pulls it all together? F In the case of Pons & Fleischman, I still don't know. Did they find some marginal cold fusion effect? It might actually work (even if it's so marginal that it could never be exploited). And that happened when I was in middle school... the late 1980s. There are those who claim even today that it produces excess neutrons that aren't explicable unless atoms are fusing. Judging by that, I don't think I'll ever know if this is some marginal room temp superconductor either. Most will have dismissed it, slow pace work will continue with some reporting results that indicate it really does work, and this will linger on for decades. And I don't really understand why that will be the case. It bothers me. This isn't looking like a case of kooks who "just want to believe". They tend to be emotionally uninvested, non-magical-thinkers, people who have nothing to gain... even status. In fact, it seems like in some cases it undermines their status when they continue to pursue that which has popularly been dismissed.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
    We can turn lead into gold. With particle accelerators. Just not economically :-)

This was the case with Pons and Fleischman too, wasn't it? Reports that something strange was happening for years/decades afterward. I never knew what to make of that, either. Can people just never give up on false leads? Are there all these marginal effects in science that are being discovered, that never rise to the threshold of unambiguous detectability and once public sentiment shifts, no one's willing to admit there is something there ever again?

dylan604 3y ago
How do you know it's a false lead and not that someone just hasn't come up with the eureka moment that pulls it all together? For a really long time, people thought they could turn lead into gold. So we have precedent of people just "want to believe" that they can be the one to figure it out.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  > How do you know it's a false lead and not that someone just hasn't come up with the eureka moment that pulls it all together? F In the case of Pons & Fleischman, I still don't know. Did they find some marginal cold fusion effect? It might actually work (even if it's so marginal that it could never be exploited). And that happened when I was in middle school... the late 1980s. There are those who claim even today that it produces excess neutrons that aren't explicable unless atoms are fusing. Judging by that, I don't think I'll ever know if this is some marginal room temp superconductor either. Most will have dismissed it, slow pace work will continue with some reporting results that indicate it really does work, and this will linger on for decades. And I don't really understand why that will be the case. It bothers me. This isn't looking like a case of kooks who "just want to believe". They tend to be emotionally uninvested, non-magical-thinkers, people who have nothing to gain... even status. In fact, it seems like in some cases it undermines their status when they continue to pursue that which has popularly been dismissed.
- LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
  We can turn lead into gold. With particle accelerators. Just not economically :-)