[extropy-chat] Elvis Sightings (was: cold fusion warms up)

Damien Broderick thespike at satx.rr.com
Tue Dec 26 21:36:39 UTC 2006


At 04:16 PM 12/26/2006 -0500, John K Clark wrote:

>So here is my bet, as before if
>the article appears in 2007 I will publicly admit that I was wrong and you
>were right about cold fusion. But If the article does not appear you don't
>have to renounce your views, all you need to do is say "I thought the
>article would appear in 2007 but I was wrong", and I get to say "I knew we
>wouldn't see the article". So do we have a bet?

I haven't stopped beating my wife either.

I don't have any expectations about when or whether "cold fusion" (or 
"bubble fusion" or whatever) turns out to be real and publishable and 
patentable. Yes, it would be a nice feature of a future we'd all like 
to see (with the usual danger! danger! provisos), but so would real 
AI and real nanotech and real SETI signals and real superluminal 
travel and real time travel. So I remain interested, and will keep 
posting links to any claims that seem to have some measure of support 
by non-idiots. Otherwise, I couldn't care less.

The reality of psi, on the other hand... yes, I do have a personal 
interest in that, and I've done both primary research and a lot of 
journal reading, and have a book on the topic coming out next year 
(OUTSIDE THE GATES OF SCIENCE). But there, too, I'm happy to admit 
that I might be mistaken. There are plenty of obvious reasons why psi 
looks not just anomalous but entirely inconsistent with aspects of 
the world we experience every day. However, the history of science 
persuades us that what seems obvious ain't necessarily so.

In short, John: you're taunting me with a bet I'm just not 
interesting in making. Sorry about that.

Damien Broderick





More information about the extropy-chat mailing list