Posted by Lurker (66.222.51.117) on June 04, 2003 at 17:08:54:
In Reply to: Re: Anyone see this? posted by Darren on June 04, 2003 at 15:48:45:
: : In the mean time, you can encourage the scam-artists and other frauds to put up a smoke screen to prevent the public from seeing what is really going on. Everyone then "knows" that perpetual motion and free energy is "impossible". After all, look at all the frauds who claim to have discoverd it. The fact that most of them are deluded or frauds gives the impression that ALL of them must be deluded or frauds. Many of these frauds may be deliberately consructed simply to put up a smoke screen to divert attention from the real secret.
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: Sound like a cheap thriller novel. Way too difficult in today's instant communication and hacking society. It is my opinion that the secret would have gotten out a long time ago. You can't keep that many people that silent for that long. I don't buy it.
Well, the problem with today's information based society is that there is so much information available that people do not have the time or energy to keep up with it all. Thus, it is very easy to keep a secret from becoming widely known simply by burying it within a large quantity of useless information that few people are interested in. That would essentially be the purpose of producing large quantities of fraudulent cases of perpetual motion. As people become weary of all of the scams, they begin to see everything having to do with it as being useless, and therefore a waste of time. That being the case, they are unwilling to spend any time examining it.
: : It is simply not credible that Besler was the ONLY person in history to have ever discovered it.
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: That's your opinion. It makes perfect sense to me. Bessler devoted *decades* to development. Now take all the people today and in the past who had the skills to figure this out and tell me how many of them have spent that much time on the problem... now assume that a percentage of the result will have simply missed the answer... and a percentage of the rest will have died, gone bankrupt, lost interest, etc. To me it's entirely possible it's happened that way.
This reminds me of Drake's equation for determining the number of technological civilizations within the galaxy at any given time. It goes something like this:
(# of technological civilizations within the galaxy) = (# of stars in the galaxy)X(% of stars with planets)X(% of planets capable of supporting life)X(chance of life arising on a planet)X(chance of intelligence evolving)X(chance of intelligence life surviving self-destruction)
This equation isn't exactly right, but I am trying to re-create it from memory. An analogous equation for YOUR theory would go something like this:
(# of people who discover perpetual motion) = (% of people who have the skills to figure it out)X(% who spend at least 30 years working on the problem)X(% who do not simply miss the answer)X(% who have not died)X(% who have not gone bankrupt)X(% who have not lost interest)
A very interesting point of view, Darren. I will consider it. However, I think there are a few other important considerations as well, now that I think about it. A certain percentage of the people who DO discover perpetual motion and try to tell the world about it will be ignored, misunderstood, etc. They will then simply stop trying to tell other people about what they have discovered because it is not worth the effort. A certain percentage of the discoverers will not even try to tell the world in the first place because they already know it will not be worth the effort. A certain percentage of the discoverers will be so paranoid of someone stealing their idea, that they will go to their deaths before they reveal it to anyone. That almost sounds like a cheap thriller novel, doesn't it? :-)
Lurker.