Veritasium

Benjamin Franklin in 1786 observed that lead had been used for far too long considering its known toxicity.  "You will observe with concern how long a useful truth may be known and exist before it is generally received and practiced on."

 

The YouTube channel of Derek Muller presents enjoyable and stimulating thoughts about science and the way that human society develops and appreciates, or abuses, scientific knowledge.  I would invite him to investigate Randell Mills, but it seems likely that he would not wish to delve so far into such a deep rabbit hole.  There is enough non-controversial fact available that is very amazing, so that he does not need to risk a hard won reputation for intelligent content.  Still, it is possible to approach the subject of hydrino evidence in an objective fashion, but for far too many people, any hint of touching upon a subject that is tainted with snake oil stigma is automatic fodder for ridicule.  Most people do not have the luxury of spare time that I have of no family and a technical education which allows me to explore meaningfully scientific topics.  This is not my claim of having attained perfect knowledge.  I like to raise potentially significant matters in a way that most people can explore without too much trouble.  Derek Muller is similarly motivated.

So, this recent video got me thinking about how easily the potential for vast profits can warp the development path of society.  This is a very well known perverse incentive and we all have no doubt that it exists.  Each of us can summon a dozen examples, at least.  Capitalism is defined in a way to be blamed for it.

Despite the mountains of experimental evidence to support the claims of Randell Mills, those claims are rejected by the great majority, mostly because the existence of the hydrino is considered to be impossible because it is not supported by the Standard Theory of Quantum Mechanics (SQM).  Yet, we all know that empirical evidence has priority over theoretical constructs.  So, why else is Mills rejected?  Well, I cannot conceive of a greater disruptive technology than the SunCell throughout history, with the possible exception of the nuclear bomb.  The biggest difference between those two disruptive effects being that the former, on the whole, would greatly contribute to human welfare and the latter has degraded almost every aspect of human life.  However, in the short term, the disruption of SunCell might resemble world war in terms of the drastic effects upon all manner of industrial activity.

Unimaginable fortunes and political fiefdoms built upon the present way of conducting societies are at stake if Mills is right.  Very, very powerful people will find themselves no longer able to exert the total power they now possess.  Such people probably did not attain such positions by being stupid or poor.  They have learned how to use their power and position to protect and improve their power and position.  Much of what they learned was to watch technological developments carefully and apply funding toward development of those which suit their imperial goals and discourage anything which might threaten them.  Or, are we to believe that the elites of the world are strictly motivated by altruistic concerns?  They do create and fund foundations, after all, right?

Lewis Lapham considers himself a member of the ruling elite and is unabashed about admitting what has been an open secret since ancient times.  The worst among us tend to acquire ruling ability through all manner of deceit, corruption, insane cruelties, murder on all scales, etc.  Such abilities and tendencies are absolutely condemned when not held by the rulers.  He does not use the example of counterfeiting, but it is clearly a way of acquiring great power and wealth without working for it.  Consequently, counterfeiting was ferociously punished with horrifying tortures and death because power is a zero-sum game.  Unlike wealth, when one person acquires it, another must lose it.  Counterfeiting, like crimes generally, becomes institutionalized into government or quasi-government, as in the case of fiat money creating central banks.  Fiat simply means that the value of the paper money lies in the declaration of a powerful person or institution.  Having money means having power, but having power can mean much more than simply having money.  It can be the ability to create money from nothing ad infinitum. 

I do not mean to condemn the manner in which the human species creates social hierarchies.  Who am I to do so?  I do believe, however, that improvement, as well as decline, in such schemes has happened in history.  This is to say that there have been periods of history when people typically had opportunities to develop their potential for the society's benefit, willingly and happily.  Most of history is typified by slavery for the masses.  Today's forms of slavery are often less obvious and more insidious.  Improvement has always been initiated by a large scale awareness of valid ideas about Nature.  I call this "reality therapy".  The more we know about our situation, the better are our choices, individually and collectively.  The usual example for this is the Renaissance, which is largely a result of the great understandings that resulted from Newtonian genius and the printing press.  It institutionalized a determined understanding that rationality was a saving feature of human thought.  The certainty that rationality (science) can guide us though any problem is still real, but institutionalizing science had the effect of making science a political football.

The possibility that preservation of the status quo of monopolies and technologies as a prime motivation for suppressing the evidence in support of hydrino technology is real, but such consideration would constitute a conspiracy theory to many people.  Somehow, we are supposed to believe that conspiracies are impossible, or only detectable by law enforcement personnel, or something.  Well, if a person had considered the possibility that illicit profit motive might account for not just the adoption of tetraethyl lead as a gasoline fuel additive, but its continued use for so many decades, despite the quite obvious impact on human well being, would that have been a conspiracy theory?  Call it a ham sandwich, if you like.  It is what it is.  Humans get tightly focused tunnel vision when they see a quick way to make a huge amount of money or seize power with little effort.  Many people see this as inevitable, but it is only inevitable when people are fooled into accepting such solutions as necessary and unavoidable.  We buy them because we are sold on them.  Obviously, tetraethyl lead was avoidable and known to be dangerous long before internal combustion engines, but it provided a fix for a real problem and the destructive effects were disguised and ignored.

If Mills is correct, then suppressing him means perpetuating a lot of maladaptive societal mechanisms that continue to reward certain people and enslave countless others.  Consider the conditions in a third world coal or lithium mine.

Other startling examples provided by Derek Muller are here.  My father worked for General Electric when I was born.  He told his children that light bulbs were deliberately designed so as to last only as long as it took for the user to forget about when he installed the bulb, and he knew it.  He used the term, "planned obsolescence."  This guaranteed a continual market which the company decided was their goal.  I can remember learning this as a child, but then facing skepticism when I repeated the story to my peers.  "Everybody knows" that capitalism causes the best products to rise to the top because of competition, right?  The pressure I felt from the social reaction of suggesting that such chicanery was afoot in the light bulb industry caused me to wonder if my father was nuts.

"Competition is a sin."  John D. Rockefeller