At 11:02 PM 12/17/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
On 12/17/2009 08:38 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
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.
He'd have to be truly phenomenally stupid. And surrounding himself
with that level of Yes-men would be extremely expensive. It's
blatantly obvious that this isn't a demo of the technology, it's a
show. Show of what?
Show of phenomenal chutzpah. Having the desired effect. Buzz.
Attracting the very small percentage of people with the means and
inclination to buy in, in some way. The internet is huge. There will
be people who will buy in just to find out WTF is going on. And they
may be getting enough of a belly-laugh to be worth the investment,
and then all Steorn has to do is keep them happy, either with a
refund or with them becoming, with not much risk, a part of the
scheme. A legal Ponzi scheme. Ponzi schemes are generally illegal
because of the fraud involved. If there is no fraud, no illegality.
Another writer here mentioned multilevel marketing. Yup. It could be
working like that.
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.)
I consider the series of phony demonstrations to be strong evidence of it.
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.
That is exactly how a skilled magician operates, I've seen beautiful
work by magicians that looks at first sight like totally bumbling
efforts, the magician drops the props, reveals concealed cards, etc.
And then comes the clincher, at the end, the magician reveals the
true trick, and it's stunning. Very skillful, and the impression left
in the end is that the magician is truly skilled. At the whole thing,
the bumbling was clearly part of the act. It's a show, after all. And
we love reversals, where what is underneath appearance is radically
different. It's the basis of humor, and the basis of magic. Entertainment.
You have interpreted "skilled magicians" narrowly. What are you
looking for, black top hats? Magic wands? Rabbits? Half-naked ladies?
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.
I have experienced the exact opposite. They are very good at starting
with that label, they amplify it and play with it. You don't expect a
magician to actually pull a rabbit out of a hat, you know that there
must be some trick. When the magician promises to do something you
think impossible, you believe he or she is lying. Does that drive you
away? No, it fascinates you, it draws your attention! Then, when the
magician fails several times in a row, you may start to think it's a
true con, there isn't even a trick here, just a clown. And then when
the actual trick is revealed, the reversal makes you applaud.
And we don't prosecute magicians for having concealed devices or ways
of deceiving audiences. And there is no penalty for "practicing magic
without a license."
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.
Yes. That's obvious!
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.
No, they come up with some phony-baloney explanation of why those
batteries were running down, and then they announce that they are
fixing the problem by substituting supercapacitors. And guess what?
They don't run down, they prove that there is energy coming from the device.
It's just one scenario, their actual plan could be quite a bit more
sophisticated. After all, they are professionals. They can arrange
for energy to be "coming from the device," if by "device" we include
concealed batteries, external magnetic fields (how about a magnetic
stirrer, eh?), or whatever. Sure, that would be a fraudulent
demonstration *but legal.* And all they have to do is then say,
"Well, we are too busy to address these scurrilous allegations of
fraud, we've already shown enough. See you next year."
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.
Really? Some of them are. Some just want to know what the trick is.
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.
They don't care, that's my theory. All they need to do, being
completely safe legally, is to attract investors in their scheme, who
know what the scheme is: to attract more investors in the scheme. My
guess is that they could draw this out for some years, and then shut
it down legally and walk with what they collected in salaries, many
of the investors would have made a profit, and some would have lost,
particularly those who bought in late.
Sounds a bit like the stock market to me....
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!
They don't care about removing all doubt. They simply need leave
enough curiosity that enough people will buy in and stay in, hoping
for a return. Consider this: those people will know that they took
the bait, so they will assume, perhaps, that others will as well, so
they may make a profit (if it's set up that way.) The NDA may not
initially disclose this, it might allow, for example, for a refund.
But then, when someone asks for a refund, they get The Offer. Keep
your money in and we'll pay you out of continued proceeds from people like you.
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?
The level of competence required for the "convincing demo" -- if we
allow actual fraud -- is low. I'm sure I could build it, just give me
a little money. "Convincing" must be understood in context. That is,
more convincing than the earlier demonstrations. It doesn't have to
be bulletproof, just enough of an improvement *in appearance* that
they can continue the game a bit longer. They might have this planned
some years down the road, though that's not essential.
The idea that it will all be over, that we will know within X time,
is naive. Look, 2007 was a compete debacle, but, my guess, they are
still gathering money.
There were followers of "Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh" who knew (or
suspected) he was a magician and con artist (he was actually a
hypnotist and did use what could easily be called magic tricks,
deliberately) but who still followed him. They wanted to know how he
did it, so they could do it too!
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.
You assume incompetence from an appearance of stupidity. That's what
I'm cautioning you against.
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.
They don't care about you! When I sell something on the internet, I
don't care about what 99.99% of people think. I care about what the
buyer thinks. With regard to people like you, all they want to be
able to do is to make you look foolish, which they can accomplish
with their techniques, though they may not even need to go to those lengths.
My question is how long they will take to move to the next stage. As
long as the current farce is working, why reveal any more? Why make
the demonstration more outrageous, more convincing. Why not save that
for later? As much later as possible?
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.
Nope. That's a narrow assumption. I don't see them admitting to a
faked demo, they have no history of that. They have a history of a
failed demo with a totally dumb explanation given with a straight
face. They don't need high believability, just enough to allow some
people to be attracted to want to find out the truth. Hell, if I had
the money to spare, I might ask them to let me in. I wouldn't buy in,
if that were offered, I'd just want to see the pre-NDA, if any, and
then, if not, the NDA itself. They probably wouldn't allow me to
invest, my guess, because they might routinely look into people who
are offering to pay them, and they would find some excuse to blow me
off. My guess is that they have dozens of excuses lined up, and they
aren't obligated to accept anyone.
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.
I don't think so: so there must be our "bet." I bet it won't be
resolved in a few weeks. I don't see that they are anywhere near the
necessity of closing down and cashing out. So my bet would be on
continued murkiness and mystery, that's what my theory predicts.
