On 12/17/2009 08:38 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
At 02:44 PM 12/16/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
On 12/16/2009 02:23 PM, Terry Blanton wrote:
So, not only are the batteries running down (obvious from the slowing
of the motors discussed in another thread) but the units seem to be
failing. The cameras also go off line at convenient times. What in
heck are they up to? Too much Irish whiskey?
Conclusions:
1) They're not slick, after all. (I was certainly theowrong about that.) I
guess we should have guessed that from the earlier fiasco.
2) They're not all that bright, it appears. This isn't going to
convince anyone of anything good, and they should have at least had a
good idea of how long their batteries would last. Did they even test
this design before they set up the demo?
3) There's no hidden power source.
4) Their demo is obviously totally phony.
5) This is too blatant to be self-deception. Nobody capable of
building a motor of any sort could be so totally retarded as these
guys would need to be to continue believing their own nonsense with
stuff like this going on.
6) When I said things would still be murky come the end of January, I
was wrong.
Didn't someone have a theory that they were doing all this just to
show how good they are at running a PR campaign?
If Steorn really does have investors, they may get into rather deep
trouble over this -- they are surely in violation of a number of
securities laws. Madoff's team had no exit strategy, which I found
nearly inexplicable. Perhaps these folks have the same disease
(whatever it is).
A "perpmo machine" built from existing novelty toys would work better
than their demo.
Well, Stephen, my comment is that you are effing naive.
Indeed. Ça, c'est un peu fort, n'est-ce pas?
None the less, I'm flabbergasted at the appallingly low level of this
demo. It is light years worse than anything I expected.
The fact that the machines are *slowing* *down* as the batteries drain,
right on camera (according to Terry, I haven't double checked it but I
trust his comments), is really startling, because it contradicts
assertions made by Steorn to the effect that the batteries aren't
driving the motors. It shows them lying. Explaining away a lie is not
something anyone wants to need to do.
The fact that they are having the cameras shut down frequently, that
they are blatantly swapping out machines as they slow down or stop
(which makes their claim that the demo would show a really long run into
another lie), just leaves me feeling amazed. The issue of changing the
batteries just isn't coming up: They're changing out whole units! This
goes so far beyond leaving an "obvious objection" around for critics to
pounce on that it smells really strongly of plain, simple, old,
technical incompetence.
In short, they're painting themselves as liars in loud, garish colors.
Your theory that they're doing all this so they can come up from the
rear in a Garrison finish and charm the world is interesting but, at
this stage, difficult to believe.
As yet, I see no evidence whatsoever to support your assertion that they
are really very slick showmen.
More and more, I'm liking the alternate theory, which is that Sean
McCarthy is surrounded by yes-men and is out of touch with how far off
his company is from being able to pull off a decent demo.
You are correct
about the visible facts, but are making exactly the kind of assumptions
that a skilled magician would want you to make. There are people who
know how to do this stuff, you know!
Yes, but at this point I'm not convinced any of those people are in
charge at Steorn. (If they are, they are staying very far out of sight.)
You are apparently _assuming_ that there are "skilled magicians"
involved here. I haven't seen any evidence to support that, any hint of
such a person being behind the scenes, any fingerprint of a talented
slight of hand artist. All I *see* so far is garbage put together by
boobs, and blizzards of words to explain away the problems.
I have some serious problems with the Amazing Randi, but he is good at
smelling out some of this stuff, because he's been good at it himself.
It's called Magic. The art of deception, and a major device is
misdirection. You create an impression in the audience of what the trick
is, building that, allowing them to believe it, then you turn it upside
down and show that their theory is totally false. You have done
something entirely different, and, having put so much energy into the
hypothesis you led them into, with all your skill, they are flat footed
and their jaws drop and they have no ideas at all.
Sounds good. But magicians don't usually start by working to convince
everyone that they are incompetent liars. That's a label nobody wants
to start with.
Consider, once again, the bit with the machines slowing down, apparently
as a result of the batteries draining. If that's not for real, then
it's done solely to make it look like the batteries are running down --
which means Steorn is obviously, right there in public, treating the
whole business as a big game. A joke -- they've intentionally *faked*
having the batteries run down. Yet they presumably want serious people
to give them serious money. Is that a good way to go about that -- to
start by showing something which you must later admit was an intentional
fake? I doubt it.
In a magic show, we are hoping the magician will fool us, and if he
shows that we were entirely mistaken about him, well, that's cool. It's
what we plunked down our $5 for. But this is not a magic show, and
people are not walking in hoping to be fooled: If they are potential
investors, they're hoping to be convinced that Steorn is playing it
straight and has a real invention. To learn that Steorn has very clever
showmen on board -- which is what we'll all learn if it turns out the
"batteries running down" business was *faked* -- is not going to
reassure anyone who wants assurance that Steorn is entirely on the up
and up.
Proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that they *can* totally hide the real
power supply in a way we can't detect -- which is what they'll do next,
in your scenario, when they remove the batteries that were "running
down" in Stage 1 -- is not going to help to remove all doubt about the
legitimacy of their machines -- quite the opposite!
That's the effect of that contrast between expectation and reality. For
a moment, it creates the impression that they don't know Bleep. That's
actually a good thing, by the way. We don't, more often than we like to
admit. But that doesn't mean that you should give all your money to a
someone who can turn a $1 bill into a $20 with his little box, so that
he can multiply it for you. Even if he lets you look at the box all you
want. There are other ways to run that trick that don't involve anything
odd about the box! More than one.
Really, if you are up against a skilled magician, you are dealing with
someone with a thousand times as much experience in the situation as
you. This person knows all the responses you might have, can observe and
see exactly what you are thinking, etc., and knows how to lead that
thinking exactly where he wants it to go. It's skill, born of study and
practice, and isn't really a mystery -- except inasmuch as human
consciousness and skill are mysteries....
Sure, sure, sure. The bit about magicians is all true. But what makes
you think that Steorn fills the bill of a "skilled magician"? What
EVIDENCE is there that anyone at Steorn is competent to pull off any
kind of convincing demo of anything?
I don't see any more evidence of that, than I see evidence that they
have an OU magmo. In short, everything they have done in public has
been incompetently executed. Only the explanations have been slick.
If I had been teetering on the fence, thinking maybe they were for real,
the current fiasco would have ended my uncertainty, and I would already
have walked away in disgust. I would not wait for their later
"explanations" of the obvious fakery, and if they later claimed they
were just faking the "batteries running down" bit, it would certainly
not convince me to come around and give them money.
Staging an intentionally faked demo, and admitting to it, is a bad way
to do business -- and that's what they'd have to do as the next step, if
your picture of them is correct.
But this argument of ours will be entirely moot in short order, when we
see how this absurd non-demo plays out in its final weeks.
