Old cranks and new...

Michael Lorrey (retroman@tpk.net)
Fri, 29 Nov 1996 01:49:35 -0500


Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote:
>
> > He did not show that there was not thrust produced, because he used the
> > wrong equation. The sticking point is the mechanism for putting energy
> > into the sytem that will not act as an opposite reaction to the
> > centrifugal force extracted as thrust. I have it, and thats my
> > secret....
>
> For the love of Pete, why can't you just bloody well say so on your Web
> page, instead of sending us off on a wild goose chase? Just note on
> your Web page:
> "The key to this mechanism is the method of accelerating and slowing the
> circling balls. If this was done by normal means, the total thrust
> would cancel out. I refuse to tell you how it works."
>
> Look, Mike, if you can impart forwards momentum to the balls without
> disturbing the rest of the system, what the hell's the cylinder for?
> Take the damn thing out and apply force to the balls directly, then let
> them bounce off a trampoline without this elaborate cylinder thing.
> What is all this? Camouflage? If you want to keep your drive a secret,
> SAY so, don't put up elaborate misleading Web pages designed to make
> every physicist within three light years call you a crackpot. Just
> say: "No, I won't tell you how it works." Mike, somewhere in your
> system there's got to be a module where you impart forwards momentum to
> something without imparting an equal and opposite backwards momentum.
> If you've got it, the Lorrey Drive is a success, if not, a failure. As
> far as I can tell, your page does not describe such a module. At best
> it describes an unnecessarily complex way of using the momentum produced
> by another module and falsely implies that this is relevant.
>
> No offense, here, but I've read a work on cranks and you're beginning to
> show some symptoms. You publish a device, I say the device has a flaw,
> you claim I used the wrong equation, and then when half the mailing list
> chimes in you claim that what you published is totally irrelevant and
> the secret lies elsewhere. This is NOT proper scientific procedure EVEN
> if you know what you're doing.
>

What symptoms? Countering the first glance arguments of someone I never
met makes me a crank? Now you're just ticked off that I'm not going to
tell you all my secrets for free. I'll take the damn simulation off
there if that makes you happy. It's obvious it did not do its job of
helping you understand. It's also quite obvious that you did not
actually READ the page.

> At this point I realized I had two choices. One, I could decide that
> Cantor's Diagonal Theorem wasn't true *anyway*, spend the rest of my
> life saying so, plague math professors with poorly typed equations, and
> become a general mathematical crank. Two, I could admit I made a
> mistake and get on with my life. Guess which one I chose?

If you made a mistake once, then maybe your the one making the mistake
here.

>
> Of course, I was, in fact, wrong. This has been known to happen to me.
> Perhaps it has happened to you. Perhaps it has not. Certainly I would
> not want the billionaire inventor of the famous Lorrey Drive to hold a
> personal grudge against me. On the other hand, I don't want to see a
> fellow human turn into a crackpot when I could have saved him.
>

Oh thank you!!!!

-- 
TANSTAAFL!!!

Michael Lorrey --------------------------------------------------- President retroman@tpk.net Northstar Technologies Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com Inventor of the Lorrey Drive Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com --------------------------------------------------- Anything I say can and should be used against me.