Sunday, March 10, 2013

FOURTH LESSON FOR YOUNG LENR WORKERS. MAINLY ABOUT METAPHORS.




MOTTO
Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back!” Piet Hein
Cold Fusion/LENR is of very high worth, is the very key of the Energetic Renaissance, therefore- it is clear as day- that It has beaten us with the force of an 800 pound gorilla. The result is that 24 years after the advent of the problem, we do not understand it well and we are not able to scale it up to the commercial level of an energy source. Actually, the situation is much more complicated than that, both in the negative and the positive sense. We are at the border of a new world, we do not understand our situation well and we must RE-THINK everything we believed we know. You must learn that the ability to re-think is vital (at least in the realm of LENR). We must re-think – with respect but with no mercy for the old data, facts, ideas and memes.
Actually, why are we in this rather bad situation? I have told it many times clearly, this is my personal opinion, because we are trying the impossible, squaring the circle, walk on air, bending the steel with our hand- finding a simple short actionable explanation for a complex, long sequence of events. Worse than introducing a square peg in a round hole. Who, except humble reality will believe me that this is the crux of the problem? A theorist who is not in love with his own theory, created by himself, is not a pur-sang, genuine theorist.
For a radical, deep, bold re-thinking of LENR we need powerful tools and an especially strong willpower...
Now I will tell you about one of these tools, one very efficient
and immensely popular- the METAPHOR. As everybody, I was searching, using and abusing metaphors all my life, however more instinctively and not taking them too seriously. Then I had a revelation.
It has happened before the Internet era; at our local library I came upon this PhD Thesis: "Hyperknowledge and Continuous Strategy in Executive Support Systems” by Hannu Vanharanta, Abo University. Finland 1995.
This Thesis, a high level strategic management opus has a short but crucial part about the functions of the metaphor in management.

“To describe an infinitely complex reality (only) by words is a difficult task and therefore the metaphor plays an essential role in thinking. A successful metaphor as “windows” for computers is a powerful means for communication and understanding.
 In management, the metaphors have 4 functions, they are:
- expressive, throwing a new light on the target domain;
- exegetic, trying to describe and to interpret complexity;
- explanatory, explaining for predicting
- exploratory, suggesting new directions and activities for search.
I was very impressed and this fragment of the thesis became a
strong personal meme for me. The effect was enhanced by a beautiful metaphor authored by Piet Hein that I have read the same day, this one:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

The Paradox of Life
a bit beyond perception's reach
I sometimes believe I see
that life is two locked boxes, each
containing the other's key.

I have started to use consciously metaphors as a tool for problem solving and for deep understanding, as an antidote of the sometimes overwhelming complexity I met in many places. I included them in my life long learning programs. I have collected them and I have subscribed to some newsletters dedicated to metaphor as http://www.annemiller.com/archives.asp

You, my dear young friend have to discover the richness and enormous potential of the metaphors, starting with their definition and basic features- for example in the Wikipedia:

Expand your thinking and change your life (if you can) with Metaphorology: http://www.metaphorology.com/  I wish to change my life, to be fifty again and to join the team of Defkalion but I have doubts that even myriads of smart metaphors can help me. My last personal metaphor will be: smelling the flowers from the side of the roots. But this is not urgent.

This is a great list of lists of metaphors: http://userpages.umbc.edu/~lharris/metalist.htm
I have collected metaphors for subjects as: life, death, brain, learning, Internet, business, the Crisis, blog(s) etc. But in meantime the Web has grown tremendously and now you can find the best metaphors for all concepts instantly.
Just for fun I will show you a site with stupidity metaphors, my trolls have used for characterizing me: http://www.ironmagazineforums.com/open-chat/41936-43-metaphors-stupidity.html
You will discover step by step the world of metaphors, old and new, popular and abused (as the light at the end of the tunnel) and you will have the vision of an enormous swarm of useful, helpful locusts.
However let’s “return to our muttons”, that is to LENR, I try to teach you applied metaphorology for problem solving not theoretical just for PKM. I have already published an entire metaphor story when I understood the general situation in the field, its real history and the most probable perspective. http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/03/metaphor-story-of-lenr.html                                                                                       This is a 1 year old paper but I would not retract anything from it.
This came in combination with the Pdisaster idea actually hitting two sacred cows of LENR between the horns- i.e the possibility of creating an elegant simple, highly mathematical theory of the phenomenon and the idea that the cradle and the car of LENR will be made from the same noble metal palladium.
Opera as metaphor of LENR
This is a first attempt to use the functions of the metaphors in management (and in life and in science) to deduce some truths and to build a strategy for LENR. Please consider it what it is- a start.
Expressive:
Being an opera means being complex, composed of parts, multi-sequential, a difficult teamwork. Opera has action and needs a leader- LENR happens at useful levels and in controlled modes only in a very well adjusted combination of parameters (a lot of them) by strictly respecting some rules that have to be discovered and known by the participants. Once learned this lesson and rehearsed with intelligence and skill, the efforts become invisible and everything seems easy, simple at the surface and:”flowing” naturally. The opera is as the motto and the title of: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2011/03/explaining-opera-music-of-all-noises.html says it is very expensive; LENR on its turn is will consume huge quantities of intellectual and creative energy before being everyday global technological reality, a great source of energy...
An opera is the result of cooperation, but its action is based on confrontation between Good and Evil (or two evils), love and hatred, past and future. It is trial and error. It is un-moderated cruel fighting, death, murder and suicide are used and abused. This does not fit well for LENR, however a prioritary task is to discover the hidden enemies that can kill or diminish the functionality of the LENR generators.
The opera has acts and scenes and all are components of an artistic Whole; it is not possible to reduce the opera to the most dramatic scene or the most popular aria as “I have broken through the Coulomb Barrier” because there is much more at the stake. It seems any LENR opera has three acts: the first- pre-nuclear, the second nuclear but in a very special and strange way and the third post-nuclear when good and warm things happen.
The success of LENR depends on deep understanding and wise action i.e. much more than a theory.
Exegetic:
The opera metaphor has the potential to describe better than any collection of facts and ideas- the reality of LENR. When you understand the real role of metaphors in thinking you are aware of the “metaphor of the metaphor”. The metaphor of a healthy good metaphor is a living, changing, growing, improving, learning, developing entity not a static, invariable bureaucratic one. The relation between the subject of the metaphor and the object to which is compared cannot be standardized for all cases, being a relation in multi-layers form, more layers both in space and in time comprising the problems, the solutions, the history of the composition, the world-wide debut, the best performances. At first sight, the opera metaphor has three inherent seemingly destructive drawbacks that would make anybody less stubborn than me to abandon it immediately:                                                                                   
a)there are many operas but very few are successful see please a list of some 25,000 operas of 2500 composers at OperaGlass http://opera.stanford.edu, a much shorter list of important operas here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_important_operas and some data about popular operas http://iopera.www9.50megs.com/opera1.html, a really extremistan-ic distribution- but a merciless selection process. Conclusion we have to associate LENR with a really good opera!                                  
b) serious opera is a highly pessimistic, negative and depressive art, most operas are tragedies death is always there and its victims are young, lovable people. It seems some Twin Peaks principle (the Evil is indestructible and always wins) rules in the world of operas. There are a few cases where the opera is not so damned realistic and has a happy ending for the main heroes, usually after removing or sacrificing some victims; Conclusion: we have to find an opera with happy end!
c) for the actual LENR opera (or operas?)  there are only separate and mutually incompatible fragments of the libretto and the entire music still has to be composed. There is information about some rather simple primitive LENR melodies composed by Nature. However music is the highest form of art, while sculpture (as Michelangelo teaches us, works  by removing the unnecessary parts of the marble, music cannot be created by removing noise, it has to be created from scratch. Much more work than for a single song. Conclusion: the genuine opera metaphor of LENR has to be created!
These are difficult problems, and we have to use a lot of scipiology, the high art of converting disasters in triumphs and drawbacks in competitive advantages- in order to keep and develop our favorite metaphor.
Explanatory
As you could see, there are many unknown unknowns regarding the LENR opera. It is about love that’s certain and the lovers need a very strong love potion that’s also for sure. However, amazingly we don’t know who the lovers are! There are two popular operas centered on love potions: “L’elisir d’amore” by Gaetano Donizetti and “Tristan and Isolde” by Richard Wagner. Both are useless for our metaphor. In the first the potion is manufactured by a Dr Dulcamara, an itinerant snake oil merchant and such persons are “non-grata” in the LENR opera. The second, described in one sentence as: “They love each other and they both die." is eliminated due its bad ending. LENR will have no ending at all, but will become an opera seria in endless series, I predict. You have to remember that Defkalion, which has the best LENR (they call it HENI) scenario has stated that even a ternary love potion is not sufficient to “make hydrogen more reactive and nickel more receptive”. I can accept that in the original Pd based system it is about a deuterium loves deuterium non-straight system because this will not become a technology. (I bet!) However Defkalion’s results show that something very complex happens- lets it express with open-mindedness- kind of GruppenSex of the chemical elements. I think that everything is better than some form of the H + H reactions predicted e.g. by Ed Storms theory, Beyond any operas I think that Nature does not admit constrains and in different systems behaves very differently. On the technological level, I hope there will be tested successfully many precious transition metals besides nickel and Defkalion et al will be able to convert complexity to completeness, dynamicity to immediacy, diversity to diversification
Exploratory 
As in so many occasions in R & D we must accept a compromise, a non-ideal opera as more proximal metaphor for LENR as it is today. It has to be. as already shown a popular opera with a happy ending. I don’t understand much of Mozart\s Magic Flute (“Protege of mad Freemasonry sect marries abducted Princess”). Liberation operas as Beethoven’s Fidelio or Mozart’s “Abduction of the Seraglo” do not fit at all to LENR and carry too simple messages.
Then I have eventually found the “solution”: Turandot by Giaccomo Puccini. The story is very idiotic but much better than, say, Edgar by the same author or Verdi’s “Il trovatore” having librettos wit negative IQ... Turandot, in one sentence “In ancient China, a princess challenges suitors with riddles until a mysterious prince arrives and offers her a challenge to guess his true name.”
This opera is a good metaphor and the crazy, frigid, revengeful princes is a sub-metaphor of LENR’s basic problem... Turandot has asked only 3 riddles, our Calafs have to answer much more, all the time. The finale of the opera is wonderful exactly what will happen to LENR. Turandot (problem) is brought back to normality; Turandot the symbol of one main component learns the infinite power of love. Calaf, the genuine researcher is triumphant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VATmgtmR5o4 He says: "Vanish, o night! Fade, you stars! Fade, you stars! At dawn, I will win! I will win! I will win! "
 Something like this will happen with LENR soon. However, as you know, when life imitates art, it always adds some interesting complications.
Peter

No comments:

Post a Comment